Thursday 11 January, 2007

So I sat down to play some more after I made my first post, and was once again sucked into side quest activities, but it seems that I've come to a stand still that I previously hadn't seen in the game. I'm not strong enough to survive in the areas that I have Marks for, and I'm not strong enough to advance in the storyline.

It seems like I'm going to be forced to farm experience, thought the amount that I did that doing side quests I didn't think I would have any problems for the rest of the game. It's kind of upsetting but I'll get past it. Gameplay wise, it's not that hard to farm levels since I've had Golden Amulets equipped for the majority of the game so I get double the licenses points, which allowed for my main party to have the entire top license board full. So at twelve gambits a pop there's a lot of actions I'm having it do on it's own. This allows me really to just run at monsters and watch my roommate play Castlevania on his Ds.

This is kind of a draw back to the game, but I'm a person whose not bothered by tedious things as long as I know the goal will be worth while, or if I can be occupied at the same time by something else nearby. I'm still really enjoying the game, and I can't wait to see what happens with the story line.

Sort of brings up the issue of powerleveling. Do we like it or do we not? It seems to vary from gamer to gamer, but Squaresoft definitely embraces the power gamer so more power to them.

Now, completions whores complicate what seems to be a fairly simple issue. (I'm also a bit of a completion whore, so I know where your coming from.) I mean, you're an exec and some guy says, "Hey lets do this...its a ...borederline cool idea and ah, its optional so if players don't like it who cares!" But the truth is, to many gamers there is no such thing as an "optional" quest. If you don't play all the game why play the game at all. So maybe someone should smack those marketing execs who believe making something optional can compensate for it being frustrating.

But I'm just babbling, any thoughts?