Tuesday 9 January, 2007

I am currently a level 34-35 with all my carachters and have played many hours.
today i was doing Hunts. these sidequests are very dificult fun and interesting. the first hunt was truly a challage wich made me very happy when i managed to beat it. i had to kill a special bunny for the viaras, sounds ez right well problem is that the bunny never stops running from you. and to make it harder there are enamies in the map. i decided to kill everything on the map and than without worying anialate the bunny. but they braught a suprise for me. if i do that that much thougher skelaton mages apear. i had to run heal for the skeleton mages just kept coming and i was getting nowhere with hunting the bunny. i returned and attempted the hunt with use of spells that are supposed to make the bunny imobile. none of it worked. i than switched characters and tried to use decoy magic to get the bunny to attack my guy and that didn't work luckily i managed to hit the bunny with one blow from one of my characters dagger and that made it berserk and forced it to atack me at which point i easily killed it off. I really enjoyed that hunt because i failed at first. I find it an interesting concept that i enjoy it much more when i fail multiple times before i sucseed or when it seems i may fail than when it is easy. after killing the bunny and getting special lightning arrows as a reward, it is nice to do hunts because they give you weopons you couldn't get otherwise at tha point in the game. I think the concept of hunts having to kil random beasts is intriging because it is in no way requiered but to do well in the game it is almost a neccety. I went to the garif vilage and was givven another hunt.

The second hunt was fairly easy i used my two summoned creatures and nearly destroyed a person at which point he healed. i than just attacked him with my units and my unit with the special dagger caused him to go berserk and stop casting spells at which point i easily finished him off and got a reward. i was told by the person who gave me the reward to go talk to a person which i did that person told me i am still to weak to fight something in the middle of the mines.

I find it is fun for me to see my clan rank advance up quickly for it shows progress. I am now at a stage where i often walk through a path where the enamies are very weak and do not give me good items for killing them and it does annoy me but than again final fantasy does have teleportation crystals that work perfectly but i think are a little sparse in their locations. having to spend 5-10minutes walking through a place where i kill any enamy in 1 hit is not too fun especially when the enamy barly levels you up, this is also a way the makers use to get you to advance in the main plot. if you advance in the plot the enamies become much more difficult than they are currently. i think if they had a quick map movement option through the areas where your level is much stronger than that of your enamies so that the polayer can save time on non fun things.

stealing as a concept. it is interesting how final fantasy games often have the main charachter be a thief.l with the new item i have i can steal items from units that are often as good as the items i get killing them. but some things with stealing make no sense. for example how can you steal money from a bat or a mace from a beast or many other things that beeasts do not actually ever carry. still stealing in a game is easy, but than again it is a small side technique that you have.

freedom of control i find that having this kind of freedom is great, using boring weak enamies and only a limited abilaty to upgrade without moving along with the plotline. i think it is wise for it allows people to feel in controll while still forfced passively to follow a plotline and not just stay in one spot.

This is a nice gamelog entry, in that it has a lot of nice detail about your gameplay session, and you were reflective about what is fun in the game, and how some of the gameplay elements contribute to the experience (e.g., your discussion of stealing).

However, the writing just isn't at a college level. Please use standard capitalizations (e.g., "I" not "i"), and be more careful about spelling (enemy, not "enamy", for example). Please also be careful about runon sentences (e.g, "i was told by the person who gave me the reward to go talk to a person which i did that person told me i am still to weak to fight something in the middle of the mines.")

- Jim

The minute you spoke about the hunt about the hare who would continuosly run around, I knew I had to respond. When I found it, it wasn't long before it started hopping away and soon, the nightmare begin. I would run through many paths only, to get cornered by skeletons, blasted by tigers, and even chased by a dinosaur. It was very annoying untill I just decided the next minute I catch up to him, I would use my Quickenings(Character special attacks) on it. Sure enough, my first quikening combo took it down to half hp. I finally switched my main three characters for my other three and finished it off. Though it seemed very weak when I killed it, it was very hard in the sense to find a strategy to killing it. I had played 100 hours at the point of the game, and never had run into that kind of enemy. A truly brings another challenge to the game as there probably will be more and more tricky hunts in the future.

The hunts in Square-Enix's new Final Fantasy brings a whole new side to the game. The rewards for winning these are very nice. The more you do, and the harder the rank, the better the spoils. Final Fantasy has always to me had nice sidequests in my opinion but this installment goes far beyond the handful they usually have. Your entry shows how much freedom this game has with the side of hunts which I think is nice. There are lots of other things that make it seem free as well but hunts, are one of the newest things Square-Enix has done well with when making this game. I hope you further enjoy hunts and what Final Fantasy XII as a whole has to offer.

~Naroku