And it continues some more...

Sorry for my obvious lack of topical diversity, but I had to do something to prevent me from finishing Heart of Darkness or working on Calculus. After working strait through Saturday on non-academic stuff I just didn't have the motive to expend any really productive effort. I played LoD instead. My complaints still exist, though I have found some redeeming features that will be mentioned after the non-redeeming ones. First on the complaints is that I seem to be spending an awful lot of time preparing for parties and banquets. I never really considered that to be much of an activity, esp. since you don't change clothes ever and since I you never get any close-ups so makeup wouldn't matter. The love story's pretty sappy too, though there was a really cool cinematic involving a lost love. The musical score could still seriously use some work. And the game of storyline tag on the boat sucked. Here's the tag run-down. You start as the femle lead, who goes hunting male lead, who in turn seeks the myserious female counsellor who knows more than anyone else, who then seeks the aged, questing martial artist, who in turn begins looking for the powerful giant who starts trying to find the generic king traveling with the heroes who then goes to seek the immature female warrior who then goes and gets the male lead then both go hunting the mysterious female again, whereupon you find a ghost ship. The body count is suprisingly high for a RPG. I have not yet fought any enemy twice and still had them walk away except the Barbarian who is now a member of my party. The other cutesy little thing is that perspective affects a few things. The female lead sees a spice rack as "You see 20 spices at a glance, someone likes cooking" whereas the male lead sees the same wall as "You see lots of bottles." Anyways, today I defeated a dishonored bandit who was also kicked out of his martial arts training by none other than our questing martial artist and his thief sidekick (who has the RPG-banned abilities of both being unhittable (literally, he teleports out of battle except to hit you) and of having a reusable, remove-from-battle attack (which is precisely what Sephiroth did to Aeris, since remove-from-battle prevents the use of recovery magic). Speaking of magic, only in a dragoon state do you get it, unless you're the enemy who can cast it whenever, wherever, you get the idea. Which brings us to the next in my list of kills, the jetpacked female energy-boomerang weilder who then returns as a water Dragoon with a water dragon (easier than it sounds). Apparently, those not in the party get a mere 1/3 of the exp of those in party (though those who are not alive when the battle ends get 0). I also fought a pack of ghost knights (4 regular at ~300 hp, and their leader ~1000 hp) who revived when it was their turn if they were dead unless they all collapsed. So between that and their sleep, fear (no defense), life-drain, heavy combat damage, and the fact that I ran out of mp, it was nearly a loss. Which would not have been cool cause the damn ghost ship has no save point and it takes about 10 minutes not including the 30 or so battles from all the nearby enemies everywhere to get to that fight, but we pulled it out thanks to some heavy combined Dragoon firepower after using a MP restoring item. Speaking of items, the game lets you carry a max of 200 something weapons/armor/accesories (which you never find and rarely can buy a better one) but only 32 items of any nature. The attack items are usually a waste of effort but the mass area pumpables (everything involves button mashing in this game) can do some damage to weak enemies en masse I've gotten the hang of both of Lavitz's additions, I can pull off Spinning Typhoon (3 presses) with decent accuracy as well as the Wind Dance or whatever its called (6 adds). Though, unfortunately, both of my other two favorite heroes have reached their equivelents which I have yet to get the hang of: Dart (what a horrible name) with his Maddened Hero (what a horrible name too: 5 buttons, all really fast one-after-another) and Rose with some similar 5 button attack with a massive pause in the middle. But now it's time to see if I can makeup some stuff for the French debate of wars without using RPG quotes ("Humans have to make themselves insane to fight, and really insane to make war (LoD is not a good choice for quotes)) and finish the last 60 pages of Heart of Darkness with some degree of fact recollection.