Emulator Hour: The Oregon Trail Deluxe (DOS)

The Oregon Trail Deluxe

Systems: DOSBox

Original Release Date: 1992

Publisher: MECC

Developer: MECC

I was listening to the recent episode of Triple Click and host Maddy Myers mentioned The Oregon Trail Deluxe being one of several formative games in her youth, and how just looking at the box art brought back a flood of memories.  Not being able to specifically recall The Oregon Trail Deluxe, I looked it up and while it did look familiar, I could not specifically remember the game.  My primary Oregon Trail memories revolved around The Oregon Trail from 1985 on the Apple // & //e and The Oregon Trail II that The Kid had that we played a lot of on our older sister's Macintosh in the mid-90s (it might have been 1996).  

So on my lunch break after a quick Google search, I found an online browser version of The Oregon Trail Deluxe, and I immediately remembered playing some version of this game.  The first non-Apple computer our family had was my Compaq Presario laptop I bought after high school in 1998.  By that point, DOS games were becoming less popular and I know that I only bought two DOS games, this not being one of them.  But I am pretty sure that I played this at some point, I am almost positive of that, so I ended up having to play it again because of course I did.  I should also add that when I started this game, I used people's real names because I was not thinking that I was going to be writing this article, so while I did edit the screenshots, it was only to remove the person's real name and put in their alias, which I will get to below.

Yeah, definitely played this game.

I decided to be a banker because it was the closest to what my current job is as I work in finance, but I do not actually work in a bank.  I knew that this job had the highest starting money and the lowest multiplier at the end of the game, but I was not playing for a high score, I was playing for nostalgia and memory retrieval.  For the people in my group, I decided to use Conklederp and The Squire because obviously, I am traveling with my family.  That left two open spots so I included Himo and Folly, being some of our closest friends who are married and currently without kids.  I knew that I wanted to have backup items because I knew that having a wagon wheel break or run out of bullets between landmarks without any reserve could easily end your voyage, and because I was playing as a banker and had $1,600 starting out (taking inflation into account, that would come out to $54,464 in today's US currency), I figured that that money would not do me any good if I could not spend it, so I bought several back-up items in the case of an emergency.  I decided to leave in April because the game warns you about leaving too early or too late, and April seemed like a decent enough month.

So April 1, 1848, our wagon headed out from Independence, Missouri.

By default, you start out the game with filling rations (the most food you can give people) and moving at a steady pace (the slowest you can move).  This seemed like a fine way to start and I had no real motivation to change it for the entire game.  At times when I reached rivers, I always opted for the safer option and would pay the $5 to take the ferry across.  Of the two times, we caulked our wagon as there was no ferry option, our wagon tipped over once, but we did manage to salvage all of our supplies.

And then more accidents would happen, like people getting bit by snakes, contracting measles, or experiencing exhaustion.  During these times, especially whenever someone was sick or broke a bone, I made it a point to have everyone rest for at least two days.  When the game script said there was no water or grass for the oxen to eat, I was not 100% sure what I should do.  Should I wait around for rain in the middle of July?  With the oxen not finding grass, what would resting do?  So I kept our wagon plodding along at a steady (not fast) pace.  When the game said that the trail was impassable or that the trail was rough, I felt like I was at the whims of the game and just continued.

Before we reached landmarks, I made a point to go hunting because the game says that you often cannot go hunting when there are a lot of other people around.  I do not think I ever feared running out of bullets as I would not be trigger-happy in the hunting sequences.  And like the good steward, I was hoping to be, I would only kill what I knew I could carry back, being a 200lb limit.  However, it is not always obvious how much meat you can get from a buck or a bear, so there were times when I did have to leave a few hundred pounds of meat, and for that, I apologize.  

Once at landmarks, especially rivers, I would have us rest a day or two with the idea that the oxen would be able to eat grass and drink from the water.  I do not know if that is actually how the game works, but that was what my headcanon told me, so that is what we did.  At outposts and forts, I would also have us rest for a few days for the same logic.  I would at times use the "Talk" option, but it never felt like most conversations were context or location-specific. It only served the purpose to give a bit of perspective and educational history about wagon trains traveling to Oregon.

This tactic of resting whenever something unexpected happened seemed to work out well enough until the middle of July.  Three days after The Squire suffered his second snakebite, Folly got her own snake bite and then died the same day.  I decided that we would rest that day too, but I obviously had to go hunting first, plus everyone was in poor health.  

We moved along another month-and-a-half, traveling another 300ish miles, then on September 1st, Conklederp came down with the measles.  The Squire had contracted measles earlier in our journey, potentially after our wagon was robbed of $99 and a few hundred bullets, so I blame the robbers for infecting The Squire.  So with Conklederp contracting measles, I had us rest for three days, then we had our aforementioned caulking wagon disaster of 1848, and four days later Conklederp died of measles.  I do not know how the game knew that Conklederp and I were married to give me a "Burying and mourning the dead" screen to show me sobbing over her grave 72 miles outside of Fort Boise (I'm sorry you had to die in Idaho).

The rest of the journey was thankfully uneventful as I had us head toward The Dalles as it was a city that I have actually not been to, but I have been to Hood River, being only 22 miles up the Columbia River from The Dalles.  Our option was then to take the trail over the Barlow Pass or up the Columbia River and because it was only early November, still "Warm" according to our thermometer, and not snowing, I felt that the Barlow Road would be safer than braving the river which seemed like a potentially faster and riskier option.  

In the end, I think that was best because we arrived in Oregon City sometime in the middle of November before the weather turned too cold and were beset by heavy(ier) rain and winter snow.  But we reached Oregon City with Himo, The Squire, and myself in relatively good health.

I do think I have played any iteration of The Oregon Trail (with The Organ Trail being the exception) since moving to Oregon and it is a little surreal with the Willamette Valley being the final destination as I can hop in my car and drive the less than 10 miles to the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in fewer than 10 minutes.

I would think that The Oregon Trail Deluxe holds up as a short and fun nostalgic game to play in just about 30 minutes.  That being said, there are some problematic depictions and our own perspective on the history and colonization of the West and the racist policies that built Oregon have evolved quite a lot in the last 30 years.  There is still a lot of ground to cover regarding an accurate depiction of what happened to any group apart from white settlers because as you can see in the images above, all of the characters are white and the only time you communicate with a person of color is when the game randomly generates one for you to talk to when you click "Talk" or "Trade."  When I played the original The Oregon Trail in class, I never thought about how it might feel to the 30% of our class who was not white, a very privileged position to be in.  

It really is a product of its time.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And Then He Ate The Priest

P.S.  I recognize that there was practically no transition from talking about the game itself to talking about the problematic history that exists in Oregon and the depictions of the Oregon Trail itself, let alone in most if not all interactions of the video game.  I just felt that I could not, not talk about it.  So I did.

MIDI Week Singles: "The Dome - First Half (Spicy)" - Gourmet Sentai Barayarou (SFC)

 

"The Dome - First Half (Spicy)" from Gourmet Sentai Barayarou on the Super Famicom (1995)

Composer: Kazuhiro Ogawa (aka Ikko Ogawa)

Album: Gourmet Sentai Barayarou Bande Originale Du Jeu Video 

Label: Cassetron, DIW Products

Publisher: Virgin Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Fupac, Winds

If you had asked me what Gourmet Sentai Barayarou was about before looking up to find out the context for this music, I likely would have said a platformer akin to the Mega Man series, but with a food skin on everything because of the use of "Gourmet" in the title.  Then, looking at the cover of the game, you have pictures of food that I would likely eat, two beefy bois, and a woman straddling/leaning over the title and glaring at you like you are about to pay for something you just said/did.  Still, I might have leaned towards a side-scrolling platformer.

Apparently, Gourmet Sentai Barayarou is a bizarre side-scrolling beat 'em up that takes place in a post-nuclear World War III world where people are hard up for protein, and your special military team of Bonjour, Mademoiselle, and Tres Bien have to stop the evil Bath organization from destroying the city of Zeus Heaven Magic City.  Please do not ask me to explain any further because that is all I was able to understand from the Wikipedia page.

The song, however, "The Dome - First Half (Spicy)" is why we are here.  I love that for a side-scrolling beat 'em up, the music to starts out as a slow piano solo intro for the first 15 seconds, not your typical track for beating the crap out of cybernetically enhanced goons.  If you only play those first 15 seconds, it would not sound out of place as the death music in any JRPG.  The rest of the song is a restatement of that opening and builds upon it with frantic synth energy and a killer bassline.  That is pretty much the whole song.

One interesting thing about this game, and directly related to this song, is that are hard/spicy stages, but I am not 100% sure how those stages differ from the normal stages because all of the longplays I could find only used the music from the standard stages and not the "spicy" stages as named on the soundtrack.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Ride Before the Fall, Yeah

Game EXP: Final Fantasy X HD Remaster (NS)

 

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster

Original Systems Released On: PlayStation 2

Remaster Systems Released On: PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: July 19, 2001

Remaster Release Date: December 26, 2013 - April 16, 2019

Publisher: Squaresoft, Square

Developer: Square Enix

Hmmm.  How so I talk about Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, specifically Final Fantasy X as played on the Nintendo Switch?  Rather than do a full-on Game EXP review of a 20-year-old-game, I am going to go over what I found different about the series, what I did not like, and what I eventually did like mixed into both.  You know, like a review article.  And yes, there will be a handful of spoilers because that is the only way I will know how to talk about this game, even if it is in a rather messy, roundabout, and incoherent fashion.  That is just the way things go.

First, let us start off with the notable differences.  

I understand that from Final Fantasy VIII onwards, Square has wanted to have some type of innovation to the otherwise stereotypical JRPG mechanics.  Rather than create another Final Fantasy IX, Square went back to the more realistic models brought about in Final Fantasy VIII, changed the leveling mechanic, changed the equipment mechanic, and changed the typical world traversal and how you interact with locations in the world.  But they kept the grinding.   So many options and ways to grind in this game that I felt bordered on ridiculousness.

Leveling up here was somewhat different from other JRPGs in that you do not have classical experience points that count against a "Next Level" until you level up earning you additional HP and increases to your permanent stats.  Instead, you are awarded Ability Points (AP) that function similarly to experience points in that once you reach a certain number of AP, you gain a point to use on a single node on the Sphere Grid (see above).  One node might give you +200 HP, +4 Magic Defense, or you learn a new ability like "Cure 2," or "Steal"; there is a difference between abilities, skills, specials, and spells, but we will not get into that here.  For the most part, I really liked the Sphere Grid as there was a serotonin burst each time I would save up AP points and spend 3-4 of them at a time, increasing each character's stats and abilities in a way that felt like I was the one making the decision on how I customized each character.  Since this was my first time, I chose the Standard Option instead of the Expert Option because I did not know anything about this leveling system, but halfway through the game I was more than comfortable.  Once I reached the end of each character's grid and learned their final skill (exceptions abound in that statement) I then started moving people around to other character's grids that were not inherently theirs, like having Yuna move through Auron's grid to increase her strength (higher strength = stronger Aeon attacks), or moving Rikku through parts of Lulu's grid so she could learn Doublecast and Flare.  This was the most fun for me because again, I felt like I could further customize each character's skills, abilities, and stats.  I actually had to tell myself that I needed to just go and beat the game after grinding AP for nearly 14 hours (after losing to the final boss the first time) because of how satisfying it was to spend points on the Sphere Grid.

I think what took me the longest to get used to, probably more than halfway through the game was the equipment in that unlike most RPGs, you do not find a weapon with higher stats such as one weapon having higher damage than another.  What character-specific weapons and armor have are augmentations such as +10% HP, or Lighting Ward (Decreases the damage done by lightning attacks).  Both weapons and armor might have additional customization slots for you to add effects by using consumables.  Maybe I missed this tutorial at the beginning of the game while I was trying to figure out what was going on story-wise, but I thought that the "Customize" in the pause menu was about gameplay customization options like text speed and window color.  It was not until after my first loss to Seymour Flux at Mt. Gagazet (maybe 3/4 of the way through?) that I learned about armor customization and I struggled to outfit everyone with some level of Zombie Wards.  It was also around this time that I found out you could increase the stats and abilities of the Aeons Yuna summons.  Yes, part of this is on me with feeling frustrated and not knowing new game mechanics and maybe my overall feeling would change on a second playthough, but it is not like I am a newcomer to the genre or video games in general, so let us just chalk it up to me complaining then.  Some of the stronger abilities you could add to your equipment, like Half MP Cost, and Auto-Phoenix you could only add by using up consumables you had saved for nearly the entire game, or by grinding in the Monster Arena (since specific monsters drop specific consumables and the rarer ones like Twin Stars and Mega Pheonix you could farm by defeating the rarer monsters in the Monster Arena).

The Monster Arena was an area just over halfway through the game that would be populated by monsters you "capture" throughout the rest of the game, the caveat here is that you cannot backtrack to other areas as you would in other Final Fantasy games until the very end of the game before you go to the final area.  This meant that you would need to basically stop your story progress in the game to go back to all of the previously visited areas to "collect" up to 10 of every monster you previously fought.  Then you would bring these monsters back to the Monster Arena and, in short, release them so that you could fight them again.  This just felt like another form of the Chocobo ranching to breed a Golden Chocobo in Final Fantasy VII, something to pad the length of the game out.  Which I was not interested in.

The other mini-game that felt like needless padding was Blitzball.  I realize and fully acknowledge that I did not give Blitzball a chance after that first game.  It was just a game that I did not have fun playing and the thought of devoting even more time to this mini-game that was not integral to beating the game felt like another Golden Chocobo hunt.  With that being said, I knew that the only way to acquire Wakka's celestial weapon was to win the final Blitzball tournament; but I have talked enough about Blitzball.  I did not bother gathering anyone else's celestial weapons, partly out of spite that their existence I do not recall ever being mentioned in the game.  I never again played Blitzball after that atrocious first required time you had to play.  I know that there is a whole recruiting system (which I felt was never explained) and the only time I was given the option to inexplicably play Blitzball was at save spots.  I just felt that Blitzball was kind of shoehorned into the rest of the game to give you something else to grind towards, especially since it was required to earn Wakka's celestial weapon, which is something that I never did for anyone else either.  Celestial weapons were another grinding aspect of the game that I only knew about because I read about Blitzball, but I do not recall them ever being mentioned anywhere in the game, you either had to stumble upon it or read about it in a player's guide.

As far as battle mechanics go, I am a little mixed overall.  I like being able to swap in and out characters on anyone's turn, but I did not like that only people who attack or perform an action during combat receive AP.  By the end of the game, you have to swap in/out all seven characters for them to receive any benefit which just becomes cumbersome.  However, in the final area, I had a pretty decent system when going up against Adamantoise which would allow everyone to get in any action before it died:

• Auron: Armor Break
• Wakka: Mental Break
• Kimahri: Extract Power
• Yuna: Doublecast - Flare - Flare (Yuna had gear that granted her half MP Cost)
• Lulu: Flare
• Rikku: Mug
• Tidus: Attack

This tactic worked fine against stronger enemies towards the later half of the game, but against weaker enemies in the early game, getting everyone a turn in battle, sometimes wasting healing or buff spells felt like a chore and an easier solution could have been awarding people who did not participate in battle 3/4 or even 1/2 of the AP that people who acted earned.

One thing I really did not like about combat in this game was how easy it was to run away without any consequences.  If there was a battle I did not want to do, all I had to do was call Tidus up (if he was not already in the party) and have him use the special action "Flee" and the battle would be over.  Being able to escape battles this quickly and easily, made including difficult enemies like Behemoth King, Demonolith (or three of those assholes at once), and Barbatos pointless.  Sure, you would be awarded 11,000 - 35,000+ AP, but only if you killed them and a lot of the monsters in the final area had high defenses, resistances, and immunities that made fighting them difficult, so why bother if they were going to eat up time and Yuna's precious MP (to cure everyone after the battle)?  There are so many easier ways to grind for AP than trying to kill (and have everyone survive) a battle against a Behemoth King.  Yes, you would enter battle-after-battle against tough-ass monsters so that you could capture 10 to take back to the Monster Arena.

Something else I did not like about battles, and this felt like a feature more than a bug, was how dangerous battles felt at all times when I wanted to actually engage in battles.  I often found myself needing to heal everyone after almost every battle because monsters would damage 1/3 - 3/4 of a character's max HP and I would be afraid of entering a battle without characters as max HP out of fear of some special attack that would kill everyone in a single hit; this did happen a couple of times, which causes the traditional TPK game over. Thankfully this version of FF X, at least in handheld mode had a feature that let me swipe on a specific part of the screen that brought up the option to fully heal everyone either using items or (only Yuna for some reason) MP.

Lastly, in regards to stumbling upon things, was the airship mechanic at the end of the game.  Unlike a lot of Final Fantasy and JRPGs, you only gain access to an airship at the end of the game rather than halfway through.  This I did not actually mind because I oftentimes feel overwhelmed once the airship becomes available because then you have to parse out where you need to go from an entire world.  Final Fantasy IV did this right with the Black Chocobo only being able to fly over certain areas and land in specific locations, similar to the Tiny Bronco in Final Fantasy VII.  My issue with the airship in Final Fantasy X was that you could only fast-travel to locations you had been to unless you somehow luckily clicked on an X/Y coordinate that had a predetermined location associated with it, a hidden location if you will.  What was frustrating about this was that there was no indication either from other characters or on the map that there would be anything on the map where you could visit, so you were forced to hunt and peck until the game said that you found something.

You know what?  This article has ceased to be pleasurable to write as I feel like I am just complaining about so many different aspects of the game, and I have not even touched on how the game felt like random monster battles intercut with walking and cut scenes every 10-15 minutes, the Cloister of Trials puzzles, how Tidus et al are able to breathe underwater, the Al Bhed Primers, Cid's annoying-ass voice, any semblance of sorting by character in any of the equipment screens, some kind of meaningful character development for Kimahri beyond being told that he helped Yuna in years past, and if Ronso or Guado existed in Tidus' Zanarkand of the past and why he did not seem surprised at all by non-humans.  I am now fully realizing how much of this game I did not like or wished was addressed differently.

All of that being said, there were aspects of the game I did enjoy, believe it or not.  As mentioned above, I did like the fight mechanic where you could swap characters in and out with each character's turn.  This added a bit of strategy, especially when trying to have a specific character follow another character's turn.  I really liked the Aeon summoning mechanic, and how it would take all of the other characters out of the battle (which I realized was repeated in Final Fantasy XII).  I loved a lot of the music and if Nobuo Uematsu was going to leave the Final Fantasy franchise as the principal composer, this is a pretty great soundtrack to go out on.  I enjoyed the overall story for the most part and I was eternally thankful when it was revealed that Yevon was a cult that manipulated the world for their own gains, or you know, like a lot of religions.  Was the player at any point actually supposed to sympathize/empathize with any of the characters (Wakka, Lulu, Yuna) whenever they tried to reason about Sin's existence, because I grew tired of their explanations before Tidus even left Besaid.  Any time Wakka said something like "If we keep faith in Yevon's teachings, it will be gone one day," or when Lulu said "Sin is the punishment for, and the incarnation of, the crimes we have committed," it just made me roll my eyes back into my toes.  And bloody hell was Shelinda an aggressively annoying zealot.  

I do not know if the Eternal Calm cutscene or Final Fantasy X-2 deal with the fallout of Yu Yevon no longer "existing" because the entirety of FFX felt like this was the predominant religion in Spira with the Al Bhed being in the very small minority (maybe something like 80% Yevon, 15% Al Bhed, 5% Unaffiliated?).  And with the fall of Yu Yevon, what effect, if any, did that have on the existence of the Far Plane and/or the rest of those who were unsent at the end of the game?  Did the fact that Yuna et al. "defeated Sin" actually overshadow the fact that Yu Yevon was a parasitic entity and religion or was that even brought up?  What happened to the other summoners who were on their pilgrimage?  Will the people of Spira who did not witness the physical fall of Sin actually believe that Sin is now forever gone or will Sin Cults spring up?  I have so many questions about this.  It did actually kind of feel like FFX's take on religion harkened back a little bit to the revelation about the Lucavi in Final Fantasy Tactics, but that game ended (and began) with Ramza being branded a heretic nonetheless and I doubt that the same has/will happen with Yuna & Co. considering that Wakka, Yuna, Lulu all went from devote Yevonites to killing God in the span of a couple of weeks or months.

So, where do I stand with Final Fantasy X?  I am not really sure, to be honest.  The game looked and sounded great, the Sphere Grid was a brilliant way to further customize characters which were then modified for Final Fantasy XII and was the inspiration for leveling in Path of Exile, The Laugh was not as I was expecting, but I still had a lot of issues with a lot of the mechanics and the developer's expectations on the player.  I think I will close by saying that I am glad that I played Final Fantasy X, even with all of the aspects I did not enjoy, but it will not stop me from playing Final Fantasy X-2 and figuring out the whole fashion mechanic job system that I have tangentially heard about*.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
This Has Come To An End

*P.S.  And also to find out how/why Lulu is not featured in FFX-2 because I am going to miss the belt-dress-wearing, living stuffed animal toting Black Mage.

MIDI Week Singles: "The Altar of Reincarnation" - Deep Labyrinth (NDS)

 

"The Altar of Reincarnation" from Deep Labyrinth on the Nintendo DS (2004)

Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda

Album: Deep Labyrinth Game Sound CD

Label: Interactive Brains

Publisher: Interactive Brains, Atlus, 505 Games

Developer: Interactive Brains

I know nothing about Deep Labyrinth that was not covered in the Wikipedia article as I had not heard about this game in any form before coming across the music.  So when the Internet via YouTube tells me that this song is called "Altar of Reincarnation," I have no context for what emotions this song is trying to convey with its beautiful piano solo-ness.  It was really the first 11 seconds that captured me, just something about how the melody resolves is something that I love to do the times that I have infrequently composed music.  

There are more exciting, complicated, and deeper-sounding pieces from this soundtrack, but sometimes I just need to hear a beautiful song on a solo piano.  And who better to bring that emotion than Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, the Xenogears and Xenoblade series) in all of its simplicity?  I could easily listen to this song on repeat, and I have a few times just while writing today's article.  While there may not be a lot of influences from the Chrono series in this particular song, there are times when the rest of the soundtrack sounds a lot like mid-90s Yasunori Mitsuda.

Great song, great album, except that this song does not appear on the one album I could find for Deep Labyrinth, which looks to be just a short sound collection, with only 6 of the 19 tracks.  So while there is an official soundtrack, it does not appear to have "Altar of Reincarnation" so I cannot say for certain that this is the official title of the song (but that is what the Internet tells me, so we'll go with that).

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I'm Gonna Share My Love With Everyone

MIDI Week Singles: "Dungeon Theme" - Astérix & Obélix (NGB)

"Dungeon Theme" from Astérix & Obélix on the Game Boy (1995)

Composer: Alberto José Gonzalez Pedraza

Album: No Official Release

Publisher:  Infrogames Multimedia SA

Developer: Bit Managers S.L.

First off, this is a fun song from Alberto Jose González (Tintin in Tibet).  Somewhat reminiscent of "Flight of the Bumblebee" mixed with "Night on Bald Mountain" (at least the first six seconds of this song) and some kind of high-energy classical European dance music that I am not at all qualified to actually refer to it as.  What this song does not at all invoke in me is the image of a 1st-century dungeon in the Roman-occupied isles of what will later be Britain.  Not one bit.  Granted this section of "Britain Part 3" involves either of the titular characters punching dungeon doors, fending off more prisoners and guards as they punch open cell doors and scale their way up and out of the dungeon.

I do not know the context for what is going on aside from Astérix & Obélix beating up Romans, but I guess you do not really need any more context to that.  But it is helpful to have a fun and energetic song playing in the background while you beat up those dirty colonizing Romans, even if it does not seem to fit thematically.  But hey, it's catchy.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Yo Check this Out!

First Impressions: Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning (NS)

 

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

Systems: Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, & Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch*

Release Date: February 7, 2012, & September 8, 2020*

Publisher: 38 Studios, Electronic Arts, THQ Nordic*

Developer: 38 Studios, Big Huge Games, Kaiko*

*Let us get some housekeeping out of the way before we get too deep into this, and if you already know why there is a difference between Reckoning and Re-Reckoning, you can skip the rest of this paragraph.  So Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was first released in 2012, then 38 Studios closed.  THQ Nordic bought the rights to the game and created a remaster that included all the previously released DLC and a third newly developed DLC in 2020.  The remaster, titled Re-Reckoning was released on the Nintendo Switch in March 2021, which is the version that I am playing and writing about.  That's it.

I started Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning (hereafter referred to only as Kingdoms of Amalur for simplicity's sake) as a corpse, not really knowing much about the history of the game, or the game in general.  I had heard that this was a good game around the time that the Switch was receiving its port.  I watched a couple of the trailers and was not initially impressed by what looked like a single-player RPG with World of Warcraft-type graphics.  And really, none of the trailers sold me on the game as they seemed primarily focused on basic video game mechanics like "Attack your enemies," "Create your character!" "Save the Kingdom!" type tropes.  It honestly could have been a trailer for a boss-rush game.  But that was about it really.  Only after I had started reading The Legend of Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore did I find out that he wrote upwards of 10,000 years of lore for the game.  And Todd McFarlane created a lot of the artwork.  And Grant Kirkhope wrote the score.  A few months ago I decided to pick up the game and after finishing Final Fantasy X, I thought that a western RPG was a good way to go rather than jump right back into another JRPG.

Well, 9h55m later, I am having a pretty good time with the game in the way that someone might enjoy The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Shadow of Mordor, or The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, in that so far I have completed eight side quests, and I am working on eight additional side quests and have hardly touched any of the three main quests that I have.  My primary motivator for doing so many side-quests is to further develop the skill trees which are broken up into three primary focus groups, finesse, sorcery, and might (essentially rogue, mage, fighter).  Because part of your character's story is that they seem to not be connected to fate, you can mix and match how you level up your character, although there is a bit of anxiety that I have or will put precious skill points into an ability that I end up no longer using as the game progresses; but such is the way with some RPGs I guess, but maybe there will be a skill reset option later in the game?

The character I created is named Halthora, a Varani woman who worships/believes in Njordir, the God of Water, although what overall effect race and religion have on the ultimate character development I am not 100% sure.  Yeah, I leaned into the nordic/Skyrim-type character partly because it seemed like a safe option since the main storyline seems focused around a Fae vs. Human conflict so I was not sure if picking an Elven/Fae race would play against how I play my character.  I probably could have done more research before deciding to create my character this way, but I tend to roleplay my characters rather than min-maxing them.  So far I have been focusing primarily on Finesse and Sorcery because that seems more interesting than smashing my way through everything.  Plus I like being able to sneak and casting spells in this game is not overly complicated and satisfying.

Combat is a little more involved than button mashing your way to victory, if only because there is some element of timing your attacks to disrupt your opponents and dodging out of the way from enemy attacks.  I quickly figured out that there is no stamina meter so I could, hypothetically, roll indefinitely, but that would make the game not a lot of fun and then I would not earn any XP to level up with.  I started out the game using daggers (you automatically dual-wield) with a bow as a backup weapon (which you can swap out on command) but I found that I did not like the aiming mechanic, which is pretty strange.   Early in the game, you have a couple of combat encounters and I initially did not like that there was no lock-on button, but it was something that I have gotten used to, and aiming in third-person with a camera that is pulled back does not feel ideal.  I eventually decided to use a staff as my backup weapon, again to have a dual focus on the Sorcery and Finesse skills, and I just liked the ability to cause elemental damage, although in the last hour or so, I have switched to using chakarams as they have a slightly faster attack rate and I like the area of effect of the powered up attack.  But the camera still took me a while to get used to as there have been times when the environment got in the way between the camera and my character during combat; so I just rolled my way back into frame.

Storywise, I am following the main campaign well enough, but the world-building has left me a little lost.  There is a lot upfront that somewhat overwhelms with what feels like every third or fourth word being a fictional race, a place, a faction, or a character name that is not Bob or Janice.  I think I would have liked a world or continental map to help me get my bearings.  I do not mean an in-game map of the various areas, but what the continent of this world looks like.  For instance, I usually have a map of Faerûn open whenever I am reading a Dungeons & Dragons book so I figure out where stories take place or referenced cities are located.  although you are told that your character likely lost their memory as part of the "bringing back to life process" that opened the game, so it makes some sense to be lost at least at the beginning But I think that is one of the reasons that I enjoy doing side quests is to find out more about the world and the lore than by only doing the main quest.

I guess this just means that I am going to continue playing.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I'm Going to Rock this Mother Fucking, Bi-atch!

MIDI Week Singles: "Requiem" - Cyber Org (PSX)

 

"Requiem" from Cyber Org on the PlayStation (1999)

Composer: Yoshihiro Sato

Album: Cyber Org Original Soundtrack

Label: DigiCube

Publisher: Square Co., Ltd

Developer: FuzzBox

I do love me a good organ intro, and the only complaint I have with the first 0:31 of the song is that, probably due to the music hardware on the original PlayStation, there is not nearly enough of the organ on the lower end.  Granted there does not always need to be a deep tone from the foot pedals, but that intro demands it.  And while we are on criticism right off the bat, I am not a fan of how the song ends.  From 2:42 when the snare drum starts along with the timpani, the music sounds like it is building to this incredible finish, but then 3:50 hits and the song just hits an ending chord and it is over.  Not having ever played this game, I can only assume that the music loops back to 2:42 and it repeats until whatever happens at 3:50 happens in-game and the song ends.  I think I would have preferred if the piece had looped and then faded out, but that is just a personal preference; which is odd coming from me because I am not a fan of fade-outs, but video game soundtracks are often the exception since songs are often written to loop back infinitely.

Speaking of ending, the song does have a pseudo-ending of sorts at 2:15 with the piano's final chord, but then is picked up by a harpsichord-like instrument.  This second seems like a strange fusion of Baroque and jazz (not being a music theory or music history person, I cannot comment on the similarities of Baroque and jazz and whether jazz borrowed anything from Baroque-era music) that builds as the harpsichord is joined by the choir, organ, piano, and the rest of the orchestra until it reaches that amazing part at 2:42 where the song takes off until its inevitable end.

I have no idea what happens in this game as it appears to have been released in Japan and might have been FuzzBox's only game they developed (that I could find).  I was also a little sad to see that Yoshihiro Sato does not have as large a discography as I was hoping based on the quality of the music that they would have composed for more games.  I guess we will likely end up using more music in the future from Cyber Org to feature more of Yoshihiro Sato's music.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Know You Hear Me

Thoughts on Amazon's "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power"

As is with all things, I am going to offer some context as to where I am coming from, going into watching the first two episodes of Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, because I feel that if I do not talk about my own history with J.R.R. Tolkien's books, I will be called everything from a fake fan to a Hobbit trilogy apologist because I enjoyed The Hobbit movies.

I have read The Silmarillion at least three times, so I am familiar with many of the published stories.  I have also read 11 of the 12 books in the History of Middle Earth series, which are more-or-less rough drafts, expanded, and incomplete versions of the stories in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.  These books contain several iterations of a lot of the same stories like the Music of the Ainur (the creation of all things), Fëanor and the Silmarils, Melkor and Ungoliant, The Fall of Gondolin, the tragedy of Turin Turambur, Beren and Luthien, Thingol and the Thousand Caves, and a lot of others that I cannot remember off of the top of my head.  And therein lies my problem.  I am not very good at recalling a lot of the lore from The Silmarillion from memory.  While reading books and stories, I am more able to recall characters and events.  Even when trying to recall events to Conklederp the other night, I later realized that I had forgotten key points in Fëanors forging of the Silmarils and the flight of the Noldor to Middle Earth.  Right now I could not give you many details about the battle between Fingolfin and Morgoth outside the gates of Angband (are there gates?), but I can tell you that this is one of my favorite events in the entire Silmarillion, and every time I have read it (and the different variations and drafts of this fight), that I get literal chills and that itchy-eye-nearly-watering-not-quite-crying thing happens.

So despite having read The Silmarillion and the History of Middle Earth series (minus the last book, The Peoples of Middle Earth because I have not gotten back around to it yet), I felt a little lost during the first two episodes, but some of that also might have had to do with how much of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings that Amazon had access to with The Rings of Power.  We "know" that when Amazon purchased the rights from the Tolkien Estate, those rights only included The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but according to the Wikipedia article about the writing process, Amazon was also able to use letters from J.R.R. Tolkien, which could expand on lore not covered in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion.  Additionally, one of his grandchildren, Simon Tolkien (eldest child of the late Christopher Tolkien) consulted on story elements and character arcs for the series.  But what Amazon does not have access to is The Silmarillion.  

Over the last few months leading up to the show's release, I feel like I have read conflicting accounts regarding finer details about what Amazon could and could not include in the show.  Everything from not being able to mention any places or characters not specifically mentioned in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings out of fear of legal suit, so if it was referenced in The Lord of the Rings and/or its appendices then it is fair game if the more detailed story is in The Silmarillion; think the "Lay of Luthien" or whatever the official title is whenever it is published.  The general consensus seems to be that it is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  Maybe?

All of this is to say that there were a lot of times during the first two episodes that I felt lost, not because I was not following the story that was being told, but because I found myself trying to recall how what I was watching compared to what I could remember about what I knew about the Second Age.  How much of Galadriel's quest to hunt down Sauron was in The Silmarillion?  Why were they having her be stranded in the middle of the Sundering Sea for an entire episode and did she ever visit Numenor (because that is where it feels like this might be leading; I know the guy said he was from "the Southlands," which I think end up becoming Mordor?)  I knew that she has always been pretty bad-ass and powerful, and not always as she was portrayed in both the books and movies; although her saving Galdalf in Dol Guldur in The Battle of the Five Armies I knew was in her characters wheelhouse.  And while I do not specifically recall her taking a contingent of Elves into the northlands, it could have been a sentence or two that was expanded into the opening of the first episode.  

I know that the story elements having to do with the Harfoots is created for the show and I think I find myself enjoying that because there was no pre-existing story there, only elements take from the Prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring, "Concerning Hobbits," that: 

"The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides," "The Harfoots had much to do with Dwarves in ancient times, and long lived in the foothills of the mountains.  They moved westward early, and roamed over Eriador as far as Weathertop while the others were still in Wilderland.  They were the most normal and representative variety of Hobbit, and far the most numerous.  The were the most inclined to settle in one place, and longest preserved their ancestral habit of living in tunnels and holes."

And you know, I think I have come to the conclusion that I need to reread the Appendecies.  I think the last time I read The Lord of the Rings, I glanced over a lot of Appendecies A I - II, but really dove into A III "Durin's Folk," because it delt with Dwarves and their histories, something that I have felt was always lacking in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion; but it makes sense that a book about the history of the Silmarils would not focus on the Dwarves.

So thank you very much for working through this with me.  I think that rereading the Appendecies I will feel less lost in the story that is being told, not that I think that the Appendecies are required reading to "get" The Rings of Power, but for me, myself, and I, it will likely allow me to better enjoy it, because that is the way my brain works.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I Only Want Your Heart to Find a Special Place

P.S.  I think the takeaway from this is that I just need to reread the specific source material and stop my complaining and enjoy a show that I am otherwise enjoying.

Monthly Update: September, 2022

August was a month.  It was a hot month.  Not as hot or as long as July, but still, nine days of 90+ degree temperatures is nothing to shake a burning stick at.  But our region is not historically equipped for prolonged and multiple heat waves every year.  Yes, Central California gets hot.  Yes, Arizona is hot.  Yes, the Great Salt Lake is on its way to generating toxic dust storms that people may just have to deal with for the rest of their lives if water usage continues to plod along with Human development.  But hey, what's a few thousand on an A/C unit?

I think it was around the end of August when I realized to Conklederp that there was a surprising amount of streaming TV shows that cropped up that I would like to watch.  From wanting to catch up with Season 4 of Stranger Things, to starting She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, to House of the Dragon not feeling as strong as I was lead to believe, to watching the first three episodes of Sandman while donating platelets two weekends ago, to Rings of Power starting yesterday (Thursday, September 21st) to which I will likely do a brief write up because how could I not, to Andor starting with three episodes on Wednesday, September 21st, to the second season of The Bad Batch debuting a week later on the 28th.  There is a lot of streaming TV that I want to watch, that is admittedly hard to catch up on with only an hour or so after The Squire goes to bed and I am not either playing F.E.A.R., Dropsy, Layers of Fear VR, or finishing up my Atari series that will probably (counting backward) run about nine weeks, running from either October through November or November through the end of the year.  

Not that I had initially thought that I would be planning out 18 articles, but try playing 51 games and writing just a little bit about each game and keeping that to two articles and you will see my conundrum.  And this has actually been a lot of fun, do not get me wrong there, as I likely would not have played several of these games.  But I get into a lot of this in the opening article, so I will leave that alone for now.

As of this writing, I am on the verge of finishing Final Fantasy X, but I am currently grinding AP.  It started out as wanting to just raise some "levels" (in the way that you learn abilities in FFX) after dying in the final boss fight, and it has turned into a skinner box of serotonin by learning abilities on the sphere grid.  And it does not help that moving from the airship to the midway savepoint (before you wander through the cyclopean city of Sin's bowels) that the only monster I choose to run away from is the Behemoth King, and can rack up 4-7 Sphere Grid points (or upwards of 13 with Tidus who has the Double AP sword equipped).  I will cover this more in the Game EXP article, but I am not actively participating in the Animal Arena outside of the first group you catch in the Calm Lands, I have only played one Blitzball match, and I only know of the Cloudy Mirror from an article.  So if you have played FFX, you will likely know what I am talking about and if not, then stay tuned for our article about it on Friday September 16th (calling it right now).  That really has been most of my play time on the Switch.  Just the grinding alone I have been doing, probably for the last six to eight hours.

I will likely be finishing the first of the games in the F.E.A.R. franchise soon and an article soon to follow.  I could probably finish the rest of the game in an afternoon where The Squire takes a long-ass nap, but I often find myself ready to stop after about 30-45 minutes, which is about how long it takes me to finish each chapter.  Not having ever played Counter-Strike, this might not be an appropriate comparison, but with F.E.A.R. I feel like I am playing in a Counter-Strike map with the occasional scare-chord and hallucination.  I am sneaking around corners and shooting at human militaristic enemies with guns, which really just describes 87.6% of all first-person shooters.  I am moderately curious to see how this ends, and so I soldier on.  Soldier.

In Dropsy, I have talked about Dropsy, and the couple of times I have dropped back in, I have not accomplished anything worthwhile apart from revisiting the same areas of the map I have already been to.  All 41 areas.  I counted.  It might be time to look up a walkthrough, or at least an item walkthrough to find out what I do with certain items which might lead me to figure out additional puzzles on my own.

Reading-wise, I finished Daughter of the Drow, which had some great passages of the Underdark from a human's perspective, then I started a collection of short stories about Drizzt, but stopped after only four stories when I realized that the remaining stories took place years after The Halfling's Gem, and the following two books (The Legacy, and Starless Night), so I put the rest of the book on hold.  Then I started and finished Darkwalker on Moonshae, the first novel written in the Forgotten Realms back in 1987, then I started on the second Elminster book, Elminister in Myth Drannor, and am currently 44% of the way through.  I also picked up three collections of She-Hulk comics through Amazon because they were offered "free" through their Prime Reading program and it is interesting to see where the concept of She-Hulk started back in 1980 and where she is going with the show.  I do not know if there will be an article about it, but I will likely post about it on the Gram if I have not already by the time this article goes up.

Lastly, in the real world, Conklederp, The Squire, and I went to our local bouldering gym, which neither Conklederp nor I had been to since February 2020.  Since spring 2021 we have been using the home climbing wall we built, but it was very nice to be back in a place that we used to frequent 2-3 times a week before the pandemic.  Probably because of our home wall, I was able to do two V-3s, so I was not completely out of practice or out of shape.  I am also down about 10 lbs from the last time I was at the gym due to various factors, probably not drinking as much beer as I did in the Before Times, and not going out for beer and chicken wings every Friday probably has a little to do with it.  Maybe.  But we did reactivate our memberships, so it looks like we'll likely be going back more frequently so we do not feel like we are wasting our money.

So that is me looking into September.  There is probably more, but that is all I can think of to get to right now.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Deliver Me The Princess Boy and You've Got a Deal