I was sick for two months and did not exercise at all.  But I did for the past three days and now I feel really good. 

I read about this old guy who wanted to die, but it's not because he's depressed or anything, he just wants to die because he's really crippled.  His advice to young people is to take every opportunity.  Opportunity.  Opportunity.  Opportunity...

1.  I don't know what I miss more... the summer 2016 frenzy of Pokemon Go, or winter 2012's Linsanity.

2.  I miss playing basketball.

3.  Being overwhelmed sucks.

Just got all rare blades in Xenoblade 2... is this going to be my favorite game of all time?

Another reason for me to stay healthy and fit: To contain my will!

If I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, I'll be depressed.

It's already the end of February... I have so many drafts it's driving me nuts.  The past two months I finished: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, NieR: Automata, Star Ocean V, and Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, but I had no time to put up a review or any retrospective piece on any of these because homework.

Final Fantasies

Last month I finished three Final Fantasies.

I didn't start any of them, I merely continued my old save file from years ago, and thanks to the Final Fantasy wiki, I was able to trace my way back into the story, kind of.  There was no way that I was going to let all my grinding go to waste.  Anyways, these are my opinions of these games, Final Fantasy V,  Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy XII. 

I was a bit over 20 hours into Final Fantasy V when I continued it (FF Anthology on the Playstation edition).  I left off at the start of "the other world..." My last save was in 2002.   

Of all Final Fantasies I've played, this is the most difficult.  I do not think I would be motivated to finish this game if it hadn't been backlogged all these years or if I did not have the Bradygames strategy guide.  I would say that the difficulty of this game is frustrating.

If you do not have the right classes mastered or the right abilities equiped, there is no way for you to win certain battles.  I know I would have died a lot if it wasn't for the strategy guide. It doesn't matter how much you grind in this game, it all comes down to having the right abilities and jobs for certain boss fights.  For instance, there's a boss in which all of your characters would have to spam lightning damage or the boss uses this special missle thing that wipes out your party within a set amount of time.  Normally I would have each character a different class, but certain circumstances forces you to make all your characters the same class spamming the same ability.

Anyways, that is my only problem with that game.  Other than that, the ending was solid, as the ending featured sprites never seen during the playthrough.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Also, I think Butz is the first character who had sort of a rebellious personality, plus having three close friends, who were all female! 

So overall, I think it's a good game for its time.

I stopped FFVIII probably around 2010.  I stopped at the final dungeon, and I do not remember my adventure at all.  I probably stopped because I did not understand the junction system. 

But after a few internet searches and experiments, I finally understood that the game is just a standard FF, it's just that grinding is different.  It's all about Drawing. I was told to keep my characters at a low level, and so I did, which was why the final boss was a bit easy for me.  I did a ton of preparation, just drawing all the best spells towards the end. I don't have that much to say about this game because all I did was beat the final boss, and that was that.  I couldn't see the ending though, my Playstation kept freezing towards the end, so I had to watch the ending on Youtube.  

FINAL FANTASY XII

Honestly, my favorite one of the three.   I continued my 40+ hour playthrough but this time, my approach is treating it as an Open World game and it changes so much.  I stopped playing before because I was stuck at this Bomb King boss, but it wasn't until later that I found out that it was an optional boss. 

Story-wise, I forgot what happened.  Throughout the game, I was thinking "who are you?"

Yeah... who are you?!?!

Who's this guy?

Are you that guy's cousin?

I tend to like political stories and that's what this game was supposed to be.  But about almost two months later, I recall absolutely nothing.  I heard there was some shady backscrene stuff going on in its production process, and because of that, to support the real people involved I bought Last Story and Mad World (original writer for FFXII) for the Wii, because I feel kinda bad for liking it as much as I have. 

I knew it would have been SO MUCH better if the producers allowed Yasumi Matsuno to do whatever he wants.  So, Final Fantasy XII joins Tales of Phantasia and Xenosaga Episode I in a pile of games that could have been great if it kept its original writers.

Anyways, Final Fantasy XII, I only remember it being a fun open world game, one month later. It was all about gameplay for me.

I also couldn't see the ending of the game, my game froze for this ending too!  So I had to watch it on Youtube.  My disc also has a problem starting up, and for that reason, I am not going back to do any of the sidequests.