Words On Wednesday

“Golden Sun” and it's sequel "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" are a pair of JRPGs released on Nintendo Game Boy Advance in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Frequently featured in lists of the best RPGs and JRPGs of all time, clearly they're good games, but what makes them so special? Also, why would I cover BOTH in the same post? I'm putting these two games together because they're almost more like two halves of the same game. Not quite like Pokémon where it's the SAME story with slight variations between versions. Golden sun is effectively the part 1 to The Lost Age's part 2. Playing JUST Golden Sun would leave you with an incomplete story. I don't want to suggest that this reflects poorly on either game. On the contrary, I think it was kinda nice to be able to sink about 25 hours into the first game, then take a break before continuing on to the second game. A sort of built-in intermission, if you will. I often burn myself out if I bum rush through a singl...

I’ve had an active membership with Runescape for a few years now, but I think it’s about time to take a break. I started back in 2018 with a three month bronze premier club. That taste of membership got me wanting more. In 2019 and every year since, I have maintained membership with the gold premier club option. That’s half a decade of sustained membership. I haven’t kept membership this long since the very first time I actually paid for Runescape way back around 2007. For a while, I played enough to justify premier club each year. My metric was whether I could play enough to make enough money to afford bonds for next year’s membership. I haven’t paid REAL money for Runescape since I canceled my monthly membership  back in 2013 . I was able to make enough in-game currency to buy membership that way. Over the years, a few things happened. Bonds got exponentially more expensive. What used to be 14 million coins  is currently 114 million coins (as of April). That’s way more mone...

I posted a review for “Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age” last month, but I didn’t mention how I got the platinum trophy, one that was an absurdly long time coming. My first exposure to Final Fantasy XII was actually the original release back on PS2. My roommate at the time had a copy and he really enjoyed the game, so he let me borrow it. I played for a while and got maybe a quarter through the main story. I liked the game, but I moved out before I managed to finish so I returned it to said roommate. Rest in peace to that save file that maybe still exists on some PS2 memory card somewhere; I haven’t played it since circa 2010. A console gap and almost a decade later in March 2019, I picked up Zodiac Age from my local library to play on PS4. Unfortunately, I did have to start over since saves from the original release aren’t compatible with Zodiac age, but it was a small price to pay for the improvements and availability on a current platform. I played for a while and got further than...

“Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age” is a JRPG released on the PS4 in 2017. As a remake of the twelfth entry in a series, “Zodiac Age” (as I’ll call it) has quite a few comparisons and a storied history of developments and release. Story - 8/10 As is par for the course with Final Fantasy games, Zodiac Age is very political in nature. There are some inter-kingdom disputes that have resulted in a war, which has impacted people from all walks of life. The main party consists of several of these people, each of which has some particular relationship with this conflict between regions. The entire cast has a complex background that affects their interactions in very reasonably human ways. They are relatable, they are understandable, and they often encounter conflicts that seem so lifelike. The characters show personal growth, they come together as an effective team, and work together to conquer evil. It’s fairly cliche as JRPGs come, but it isn’t hackneyed or boring. A familiar story done wel...

I recently set out to get a secret weapon in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. The process convinced me to be much more critical of what information I consume, and to always listen carefully to all instructions. Zodiac Age, as I’ll call the game for brevity’s sake, has a number of powerful weapons not available in the original release of Final Fantasy XII. Fortunately, none of them are as ridiculous as the original way to get the  Zodiac Spear , which could be rendered unavailable if the player unknowingly opened any specific chests throughout the game, without any indication that they might play a part in obtaining what was the most powerful weapon available. The Zodiac Spear is still available in Zodiac Age, but they’ve generously removed that awful chest mechanic. Plus, there are actually several more powerful weapons available, so players might not even decide to procure the Zodiac Spear anyway. Many new weapons are upgrades to existing weapon classes, like the  Ku...

The mobile version of Runescape recently entered beta release, and I was so excited to get into the program and try it out. Runescape mobile (not Old School RuneScape, as that was ported to mobile several months before the RuneScape 3 mobile beta) allows players to access the game through a genuinely mobile platform, rather than my unconventional access via remote desktop. With this release, there are some improvements over remote desktop access, but also some surprising shortcomings. Having played now for a few weeks, I have an informed opinion on the abilities and limitations of the mobile beta. I’ll go through a few of the elements for each platform, and evaluate which is better, or which I plan to continue using. First, the mobile beta is currently only accessible to paid members. Fortunately, that includes players who purchase membership through bonds as I do, but I did not have an active membership when I got into the beta program. I was already planning on using a bond agai...

It’s been quite a few weeks (months, actually) since I last posted about Runescape. Since that time, I’ve accomplished quite a bit and gotten banned again. Without further ado, an update on the current state of my Runescape account. To follow up with the final thoughts of my most recent post , I did manage to get the remainder of the golem outfit pieces and combine them into a full Magic golem outfit. Between Trahaearn hour Harmonized runite mining and Seren stone daily challenges, I did a lot of mining. Since level 99 mining yields double Gemstone golem fragments, I was getting roughly 200 fragments every 5 minutes. I already had several pieces of the outfit, and more than enough fragments to finish it out. The only missing requirement was level 20 invention. I got that pretty quickly after getting 99 fletching, but unfortunately before I discovered that you can disassemble noted items. That’s right, I disassembled loads of unnoted unstrung maple shieldbows, 28 at a time, all the...