Category: Platform

Crash Bandicoot 2 – Cortex Strikes Back

December 30, 2012 by Nikola·1 Comment

OK, full disclosure here. Sonic wasn’t my Mario, not really. He never stuck around long enough to become my Mario. Crash was actually my Mario. I met him a bit later, but we hung around for a long, long time.

You see, the only mainstream console I owned in my early years was a Genesis (or Mega Drive II over here in Europe). The console was expensive and way above my budget, and so were the games. This is why I only ever owned a single 6 in 1 cartridge and Sonic was the only high-profile platformer I ever got to play on the console. To make things worse, I didn’t even have the console for more than a year. It brook relatively soon and I wasn’t able to fix it.

In the late nineties, though, I got a PlayStation and that one stuck around for a long, long time. The first two games I got were Rascal and ReBoot and both were complete crap, but soon after, I got Crash Bandicoot 2 on a discount. I loved that game and played it to the point of my disc becoming unreadable.

Cortex is the big-headed, comical baddie of the game.

So after completing Final Fantasy IX, I started sorting through my PlayStation backups (legal, I swear) and stumbled upon this one. I really, really intended to play Grandia next, but when I saw Crash, I just felt the urge, so I copied it to my PSP and started it up. It’s still just as fun as it ever was. I played through a big part of it in my very first session, but this time, I’d like to write a bit about something I noticed in the design of the game.

First of all, I should probably say there’s a hidden intro level you can get access to if you decide not to skip the starting sequence. This intro level really shows how a game can teach the player how to play, without using tutorials. The game uses this method mostly abandoned in modern games through its entirety, but the intro level really paints a clear picture. Well, it will be more of a series of pictures, with subtext, but you know what I mean.

How Crash Bandicoot 2 handles tutorials

Your sister, Coco, wants you to go get her a battery. Immediately, you see two crates. One of them should be jumped on, while the other can be smashed from any side, as indicated by their markings. You can figure this out now, but you don’t have to. It’s all OK.

The first two crates.

Next up, you see your first pit, but it isn’t a danger yet. You can fall in, but you can also practice jumping over it. In the background, you can see a crate containing your first protective mask.

The pit and the mask.

Now that you got the mask, you see your first enemy. You might not figure out it can hurt you, but that’s OK, because the mask will save you, once. If the enemy hurts you, you’ll see it’s bad, mask or no mask. In the background, you can see your first surprise crate, which has special goodies – an extra life, in this case.

The first enemy and the first surprise crate.

Here comes the first real pit. This one is obviously way deeper than the last one, so I hope you figured out your jumping by now. Actually, If you haven’t you’re still stuck in your first hole, so it’s all good.

The first real pit.

Wow, this crate bounces me around when I jump on top of it! WOW! This other crate gives fruit if I hit it from the bottom to! Oh, wait, I could’ve hit that other crate from the top to get fruit to. Shame I just destroyed it from the side. Oh well…

The first “up” crate and the second “special” crate.

And that’s it. That was the first intro level and it taught you all the basic mechanics without any explanation, reading, pushing through annoying conversations or anything of the sort. The same thing happens throughout the game. Sure, your main goal is explained to you through the story, but the mechanics are left for you to figure out, with the game designed in a way that subtly guides you into figuring it out.

I’m sad to say that it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen such design. It’s only recently that I started appreciating this, though, mostly thanks to egoraptor, a known youtube gamer and his Sequelitis series, especially the Megaman episode.

In short, Crash is a beautifully designed classic platformer, which I greatly enjoyed as a kid and intend to enjoy just as much now.

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri

December 28, 2012 by Nikola·0 Comments

Alpha Centauri is another game I decided to buy now that it’s discounted on GOG.com. I actually bought it closer to the start of the holiday sales, but I didn’t get a chance to play it until a few days ago. Why? Because I didn’t have the time. The better question is, why did I finally have the time for it?

I fixed my laptop!

You see, I started working a few months ago, which means I had to move to a nearby city and take my PC with me. The problem was, when I was back home for the weekend, I didn’t have a computer that was able to play games. I had my laptop, but it malfunctioned ages ago. If you tried to run a game on it, it would simply lock up and go black. It did this, until recently.

I got an idea last week. I extracted the bios from the GPU and then modified the speeds and voltages in various operation modes. This basically reduced the power of the GPU by over a half, but as I hoped, it also eliminated the malfunction. I couldn’t play any modern games on it, but it was now finally good enough for the classics.

Let’s Play Alpha Centauri

Thanks to the fact that I finally owned it, as well as the fact that one of the YouTube channels I’ve been following, quill18, who has been doing a Let’s Play of the game as of recently, I decided that this amazing game will be the first one for me to play during the holidays. It ended up being the only one, but I have no regrets.

The final score was one for the records, since it was the first actual record.

I dare to say that Alpha Centauri is the best 4x game out there right now, which is amazing considering it was released well over a decade ago. It simply has it all – complexity, strategy, options, an amazing encyclopedia of data you can read through and an amazing amount of quality science fiction. It’s actual science fiction to, not just unresearched fiction that takes place in the future.

The University

I played as Academician Provost Zakharov of the university faction. My intention was to play purely scientifically, but over the course of the game, I got dragged into several wars. I eliminated a faction and dragged two more close to extinction, but ended up getting the transcendence victory.

Zakharov is my favorite faction leader, with some great quotes, though most of the quotes in Alpha Centauri are amazing and thought-provoking, especially considering the game’s release year.

This is is where my second game was when I had to end my session.

My next game was taking place in the expansion, Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire, which I haven’t played at all up until now, but I didn’t get a chance to complete that one, due to lack of time. I played as the Morganites and managed to eliminate the Progenitors early. Other than that, not much of note happened. I tried using specialized cities this time, but I don’t think it’s a good strategy when it comes to tile improvements. You could specialize in buildings, but each city needs to have a good amount of every resource to support its formers and defenses, so tile specialization seems out of the question.

Short lived…

Sadly, once this issue on my laptop was fixed, another issue was discovered. My hard drive, or possibly even my motherboard seems to be dying. It gave me some trouble while I was home and yesterday, my brother in law told me over the phone that it won’t boot and is instead just beeping during the POST screen.

I think I’m going to have to invest some money into an extra PC. I really don’t need a laptop, so a PC is definitely a better option. It can be cheap to, since I already have a high performance machine. As I said, if it’s good enough for the classics, it’s good enough for me. Alpha Centauri shall be played again.

Final Fantasy IX [28] – Final Impressions

December 27, 2012 by Nikola·2 Comments

I get it. I finally get why so many people consider Final Fantasy IX to be the best of the era. This is a game that did an insane amount of things right. It looks and sounds great, plays amazingly well and it actually fixed a lot of things people complained about in Final Fantasy VII and VIII.

A lot of the story and talking is optional, so those who don’t feel like going through it on their second play through, or even on their first, can easily skip it. As for myself, I enjoyed every moment of the story, and probably would do so again.

The part I did make use of are the optionally long summoning animations. Apparently, there was a lot of understandable complaining about the long summoning animations in Final Fantasy VII and especially VIII, so Square did what was probably the best solution. The first summoning of an eidolon shows the full length sequence. Future summoning only show the short version, unless the Boost ability is enabled on Dagger/Eiko. In that case, the full sequence is played, but the summon also does more damage. This way, people who are willing to wait through it get rewarded a bit, but most of the time, the extra damage is not needed.

It’s a classic happy ending, but it’s a classic game, so it works.

In one of my earlier posts about this play through, I complained about the frequency of random encounters, but over the course of the game, I’ve noticed it really isn’t a huge issue. Most of the time, the encounters are frequent only in areas where your characters could probably use some training. Other than that, I only rarely had trouble with to many encounters.

As I said, the game looks and sounds great. It’s probably one of the best looking games of the era and the soundtrack is something I often listen to as part of my regular playlists. It’ not just about the quality of the graphics, though. It’s design that makes it timeless and provides the atmosphere and charm. Everything just blends and works together perfectly.

Yes, Final Fantasy VII still is my favorite, simply because the story and the setting are probably the most developed (or the most familiar to me personally), but would have to agree that overall, Final Fantasy IX is probably the better game. Any fan of what JRPGs used to be should play this one.

Final Fantasy IX [27] – I beat Ozma!

December 25, 2012 by Nikola·5 Comments

I did it! I finally did it! I beat the strongest enemy in Final Fantasy IX – Ozma. It wasn’t easy, though, and there’s definitely a story to it, so here goes…

Last time, I beat the final area of the game and saw the ending. This was the easy part and I’ve done it with three of my characters being in the high 40s/low 50s. Final Fantasy IX at no point makes you grind, at all. In fact, with the proper items, which were easily obtainable, I could have probably done it in the 30s.

EDIT: Ok, Johnny got me in the comments. As with any JRPG, if you want to do the optional stuff, you’ll grind. To beat the story, though, you can just go through it the regular way. No grinding required.

In any case, while the game was beaten, some of the goals I’ve set for the game haven’t been accomplished. I’ve done all the side quests I wanted, but I haven’t gotten all the ultimate equipment, I haven’t learned all the abilities, nor have I beaten the optional boss. As I previously wrote, I decided to skip the optional boss of Final Fantasy VIII, simply because he seemed not at all interesting, and I haven’t even tried beating the optional bosses of Final Fantasy VII because I’ve actually done it as a kid, so didn’t feel the need to do it again this time.

For this one, I decided to go for it, since it just seemed like a hard battle, not an especially long one, or one that requires a lot of preparation. In fact, I was convinced it was doable right after I beat the game, so I decided to go for it immediately.

Well, not immediately. First, I wanted to learn all the abilities on all of my characters. For that, I needed to do several things. First, I needed to go back to Hades’ synthesis shop and synthesize a Pumice from the two Pumice Pieces I had. This was costly, but didn’t involve any challenge, since Hades was already beaten. Second, I had to learn the two remaining blue magics for Quina, both of which could be obtained from the “fake” guardians in the final, crystal area of Memoria. This didn’t take to long either.

The crystal guardians are ugly, to put it bluntly.

Lastly, I had to grind for a bit to learn all the remaining abilities. Luckily, the fake guardians were worth 7 AP each, which adds up to 14 points per battle, when combined with Ability Up. I didn’t time myself, but it probably took me about an hour to learn most of the remaining abilities that way. I got impatient, though, so I decided to go back outside, gathering all the remaining weapons I missed on my way in and make an attempt at Ozma now, thinking 60 000 health can’t be that hard to take away.

Boy was I wrong. On my first attempt, Ozma outright killed my party with one move – Meteor. On my second attempt, I tried the Auto-Life ability, but all that got me was that after his Meteor, Ozma used Curse to kill my recently revived characters all over again. I tried it another few times, but I didn’t have a chance. Sure, with some luck, I might have been able to do it, but that wouldn’t have felt like an accomplishment then.

I didn’t feel like going back to Memoria, so I trained on Grand Dragons for a bit, until everyone but Dagger learned all of their abilities. This got my main party, now consisting of Zidane, Dagger, Steiner and Freya to their mid 50s. It also maxed out Freya’s Dragon’s Crest ability, so this was now my second character able to reliably do 9999 HP of damage. In case I haven’t mentioned it, the first one was Steiner, with his Shock! ability and he was able to do it ages ago.

By the time Zidane got to the low 70s, leveling on Grand Dragons was really started to get slow, so I decided to take my chances with Yans on Vile Island. These guys are tough, really tough. They are fast as hell and counter every action directed at them with either Float or Snort, regardless of the action hitting or doing damage. Snort removes the targeted character from battle and if everyone gets snorted out, this means Game Over. In addition to that, their most common attack is Comet, which can do all the way up to 9999 points of damage, determined randomly. Luckily, Comet misses often, but when it hits, it hurts badly. Lastly, they also use an attack which causes the Virus status effect, though that isn’t completely bad, since the experience is never wasted, as long as at least one character is able to receive it.

They have close to 20000 health and they give over 40000 experience each, shared among the party members. Since they attack in groups up to three at a time, this is definitely the best enemy to train on, once you’re able to do it.

Final Fantasy IX – Yan Strategy

The problem was, I didn’t feel I was able to do it. I persisted, though, in spite of the Game Over screens, so I eventually figured out the proper strategy. I put Auto-Regen and Auto-Potion on all of my characters. Chemist wasn’t needed here, because it doesn’t matter how much the used potion heals for. What matters is that there’s an animation during which no one is attacking, but Auto-Regen is doing its thing. Next up, I added Auto-Life on top of that, just to make things a bit easier when a Yan manages to get an instant kill with Comet. Lastly, I added HP +10/20% and Gamble Defense to cut the chance of an instant kill, Restore HP to add a buffer on top of that and Distraction/Awareness to further nudge things into my favor.

Once I got inside the battle, it all depended on how many Yans I was fighting. With one or two, Zidane had to act first. Soul Blade with a Masamune equipped meant I was able to cast Doom on one of the Yans. This meant that Zidane was out of the battle after this, because the Yan usually retailiates with Float, meaning the next retailation would Snort Zidane out of the battle. After Doom, Steiner and Freya do their thing with Shock! and Dragon’s Crest, killing the second Yan. Throughout all of this, both Yans usually get to act at least once, so there’s a good chance someone will die. If that happens, either they get revived after the fight, or during it, by Dagger or Zidane. Of course, this is only the cause if Auto-Life already got depleted, which rarely happens.

The heroic party that got me this achievement.

If the battle is against three Yans, then Dagger acts first, with Odin. Odin is an eidolon with a Death attack. The chance of it directly depends on the number of Ores the party has in their inventory and maxes out at 50% with 99 Ores. This means that with 3 Yans, one or two are usually dead immediately. With that out of the way, the three other characters could do their usual routine with Soul Blade, Shock! and Dragon’s Crest.

The Application

I used this strategy for about 30 minutes, which got Zidane to level 78 and the rest of the group to somewhere around 65. I got confident, so I decided to try my luck with Ozma again and this time, it worked. Ozma started out with Meteor, but the party survived and, thanks to Auto-Potion and Auto-Regen, almost completely recovered before anyone could make another move. After that, Freya and Steiner did their 9999 damage moves, with Dagger throwing a 7000 Ark on top of it. That was 27000 out of 55000 HP gone right there. Ozma then tried using Mini, which got reflected back at him, meaning he wasted a turn. I got a chance to do another Shock!, but Freya didn’t get a chance to act before Ozma’s next move. This one killed both Stiener and Freya, but Auto-Life brought them back and Zidane and Dagger’s Auto-Potion gave them a chance to recover with Auto-Regen.
Finally, Ozma used Curse, which killed Zidane, causing him to come back with Auto-Life, while causing various status effects on the rest of the party. Freya managed to Squeeze in another Dragon’s Crest, with another Ark from Dagger, bringing me to a total of about 53-54000 damage. Then Ozma threw another Curse, casting Stop on anyone but Zidane. That was all I needed, though, because one last pysical hit from Zidane was the final killing blow.

Ark wan’t the biggest damage dealer, but it tipped the scales.

Final Fantasy IX – 100% Completed

With the optional boss defeated, all the interesting side quests solved, and all the abilities learned, I can now put this game on the 100% completed list. It took a surprisingly small amount of grinding to get to this point, but the game was no less fun because of it. In fact, I’d consider this a strength. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good JRPG grind, but I love it even more when there’s a point to it, without any boring filler.

Now I have to decide what to play next. I’m thinking one of my other JRPGs from the era, perhaps Grandia. I also have Koudelka, which I never properly played. Heck, I even have Final Fantasy VI, which is another game people consider a classic. Maybe Vagrant Story? Or I might just buy another one from the PSN. Who knows…

Final Fantasy IX [26] – Completed, But Not Done

December 24, 2012 by Nikola·0 Comments

Since the last time I wrote about Final Fantasy IX, I’ve spent a good hour or two fixing up Mognet Central. This side quest involved a lot of trecking back and forth, delivering letters to various moogles in order to figure out which item I need to fix the Mognet Central mail sorting machine. I had to go to Alexandria first, then to Burmecia, Ipsen’s Castle, Daguerreo and the Qu’s Marsh among other places. Each letter I delivered rewarded me with a kupo nut I promptly delivered to the moogle family at Gizamaluke’s Groto. It wasn’t really worth it, though. Past the first nut I delivered, which got me an Aloha T-Shirt, all I got was a couple of Ether’s and a Phoenix Pinion or two.

The item needed was Superslick, which is some hair gel that Ruby had.

The side quest itself, though, was well worth it, getting me a Protect Ring which, apart from teaching me a bunch of useful abilities, also halves damage from all the elements.

Eventually, I learned all or most of the abilities I could, so I decided to go to Memoria, the final area, just so I could get all the rest of the abilities and items. Killing the Nova Dragon was easy enough and the first part of Memoria wasn’t much of a challenge either.

Once I killed the first two Chaos Guardians, I got to an area where the random encounters involved fighting Behemots and enemies who look like the Materia Keeper from Final Fantasy VII. At this point, I also decided to switch my party up, so the less trained guys could advance a bit to. This was a huge mistake. Both of these enemies did a load of physical damage so several times, my whole party was nearly wiped. Somehow, I managed to survive and, once I gained a few levels and switched to stronger items, the place became easy again.

I kept pushing further, fighting fresh enemies, killing guardians and missing on items which were the only reason I entered the place (sigh) and eventually got to the final area. This is why I like this game! The very final save, which is located right next to the final room, with the final three bosses, has a “teleport back to the entrance” option. Basically, there is no “point of no return” in this game. Even better, once you kill the first of the three final bosses, you still get to exit the room, go to the save and teleport to the outside. Only the final two bosses are tied battles.

In any case, I saved my game and decided to just go for it. Killing Deathguise was easy, while Kuja might have been even easier. The final boss, Necron, provided a bit of a challenge, but I don’t think I was ever in real danger. It just took me a while because he kept killing my characters, so I had to play defensively.

Necron is introduced a bit out of the blue, but I didn’t mind.

Eventually, he fell and Final Fantasy IX is now the last Final Fantasy game of the PlayStation era to be completed by me. Did I like it? Yes, absolutely. Is it my favorite? It might actually be. I have to think about it. For now, all I can say is that I’m not done yet. I’ll reload on my final save, learn the Blue Magic from enemies in Memoria I can eat, gather up the rest of the items and then go back outside to max out my characters and kill Ozma.

I forgot to mention, I also killed Hades, which is an optional boss in Memoria. Killing him got me access to his hidden synthesis shop, where I made a Pumice accessory. This one allows Garnet to learn Ark, her final Eidolon. I also made a full stack of Phoenix Pinions, so Eiko’s Phoenix does more damage now.

In any case, it’s time to do some final grinding, before tackling Ozma. Lot’s of “finals” in this article. 😀

Populous: The Beginning [5] – Level 9

December 23, 2012 by Nikola·0 Comments

Level 9 of Populous, named “Fire in the Mist” was the introductory level for the Fog of War concept. It actually functions a bit differently in Populous, compared to your typical RTS. At the start, you can see the terrain under the fog, but no movement or buildings. Once you uncover an area, though, no line of sight is required to keep it uncovered – from that point on, you can see everything as if there was no fog of war to begin with.

Other than the fog of war, the level also introduced the shipyard, which allow you to build your own boats. The Chumara tribe used this ability several times, attacking me from sides I didn’t expect them from. At one point, they even managed to drop a Volcano spell on me, destroying a big part of my village.

Once I repelled that attack, I decided to have some fun with base building. I used the tall mountain created by the eruption to start creating a huge mesa for my village with Land Bridge. This took me a long time, but eventually, I had a huge mountain I could build on, with very little threat from the Chumara. Once I built a few guard towers on the edges, no one could even get near me. As I said, this took me a very long time to do, so I actually played this level for nearly two hours before I completed it, but I had fun, so I really didn’t mind the time spent.

As I said, I created a huge mesa.

Eventually, I had to complete the level the way it was intended to be beaten. I stole a single boat after repelling one of the attacks and used it to take my shaman to the peninsula on the edge of the Chumara village. This is where I their vault of knowledge was, so I was able to learn the plans for the shipyard without much trouble. Once that was done, I made a few of my own boats and sent braves around the map to pray at the various stone heads. This gave me a charge of Earthquake, Tornado and most importantly, Volcano.

With this, I used another boat to sneak my shaman into the back of the Chumara village and climb on a nearby hill. The three spells destroyed most of the coastal village, so over the next ten or fifteen minutes, it was easy to clear out the rest with my army of fire warriors, priests and warriors.

The shipyard is a pretty cool looking building.

Side Note

I’m kind of missing the voiced narrator from the PlayStation version of Populous: The Beginning. For those unfamiliar with this, the PlayStation version used an actual, real narrator for all the messages the game sends to your sidebar. He had this great, dramatic voice which I absolutely love. Sadly, the PC version uses text messages only.

What I’m not missing, though, is a save system that uses up an entire memory card for just a single slot save. I actually had to buy a whole memory card for just this one game. If I remember correctly, the old Constructor game did the same thing. I think both games were worth it, but it was still a pain, especially considering how long saving and loading took. Back then, I could select “Load Game” and go make myself a sandwich or something.

Final Fantasy IX [25] – Sidequests

December 23, 2012 by Nikola·0 Comments

I trained on Grand Dragons for a bit, but I got bored soon, so I decided to start checking side quests of my list. In order to do that, I actually had to make my list, so here it is. I’m only listing stuff that gives equipment rewards, etc. I’m not interested in cards, flair key items or anything of the sort.

Find all the friendly spirits to weaken the optional boss
Beat the optional boss
Find all 12 (13) Stellazio coins
Fix Mognet Central
Get kupo nuts to the Moogle family
Answer all the questions of Ragtime Mouse
Beat all the monsters in Treno
Find all the chocobo treasures
Get all the ultimate weapons
Upgrade all the special character skills (Frog Drop, Thievery…)
Learn all the abilities
Get the ultimate gear

As of now, I got all the friendly spirits. I even got lucky with the friendly Yan, what with getting it in my first fight on the island of sheep from hell (TM). I haven’t even tried beating the optional boss, but I’ll guess I’ll have to get around to that soon.

The friendly Yan is by far the cutest critter of the series.

I got all 13 coins, with Sagittarius and Scorpio giving me the most trouble. I remembered where the 13th coin was from my first play through, so that wasn’t an issue. This means I now have my first Robe of Lords.

I’ve found Mognet Central and even got my first letter to deliver, but I haven’t started the deliveries yet. This ties to the Moogle family feeding, since I get a kupo nut for each letter I deliver. I already had one nut, though, so I gave it to the family and got an Aloha Shirt. It’s a useless flair item, so I wont be using it.

I’ve encountered the Ragtime Mouse several times and already failed a few questions, so I’ll need to be really careful from now on. If I remember correctly, if I don’t get enough questions right, I won’t get the final reward, whatever it is. I might go for a guide on this one.

The monsters in Treno were beaten easily. That is, the final monster, a behemoth, was beaten easily by a tranced Zidane. While I was there, I also bought some items on the auction, but the one I needed the most wasn’t there yet. For this, I had to go to Daguerreo and make a guy there tell me he wants a Magical Fingertip. One he told me that, it instantly appeared at the auction so I bought it, with having just enough money for it. I’m serious here. I had 60 000 on me, and I bought the item for around 59 000. I brought it to the guy in Daguerreo, who gave me Excalibur, Steiner’s “ultimate” weapon.

The thing is, it isn’t really ultimate. First of all, it provides less strength than Ragnarok, which I already got somewhere, can’t remember where. Secondly, if you get to the final area of the game in under 12 hours total, you get Excalibur II, which is the true ultimate weapon. Since I’m at 40 hours right now, I don’t think I’ll get there in time.

I also finally managed to dig out (or dive out) Zidane’s Ultimate Weapon, after spending a bunch of Death Peppers. You can see the location on the screenshot (unless I forget to upload it). Same goes for Dagger’s ultimate weapon, which was hidden in the treasure chest for the Ocean Chocograph.

Final Fantasy IX - Zidane's Ultimate Weapon

You should probably use the small island in the background as a guide.

This brings me to the next point – I got all the chocobo treasures, including all of the Death Pepper ones (or at least I think I got all of them). In addition to Dagger’s ultimate weapon, this means I also have the Tiger Racket which is awesome for both Dagger and Eiko, as well as Freya’s ultimate, the name of which escapes me right now. I think it was Dragon’s Hair or something.

Four or five ultimate weapons are actually in the final area, but before the point of no return, so I’ll probably head there soon to get them. There’s also another optional boss there, Hades, which opens up a special Synthesis shop if I beat him.

Lastly, I wan’t to learn all the abilities on each character and boost their special attacks to the max. Not all of them have these attacks, but what I’m referring to are Zidane’s Thievery, which is maxed out by stealing, Quina’s Frog Drop, for which I need to catch a total of 100 frogs, and Freya’s random skill the name of which I forgot again. I must subconsciously dislike Freya or something. Consciously, I like her and her abilities very much.

Speaking of abilities, most of my characters already have most of theirs. I just need to figure out which ones I’m missing and which items I need to get those.

Overall, Final Fantasy IX has no shortage of side quests, and most of them are really fun to do.

Populous: The Beginning [4] – Levels 7 and 8

December 20, 2012 by Nikola·2 Comments

Levels 7 and 8 of Populous: The Beginning, though probably objectively a bit harder than 6, felt easier to me, since I wasn’t surprised by the rise in difficulty this time.

Unseen Enemy

Level 7, called “Unseen Enemy” was all about a new spell – Invisibility. The enemy shaman already had it, so I needed to get it to, but the level was clearly designed so I don’t get the spell until the end. The whole planet consisted of two continents, with me being on one of them, and the enemy on the other. The enemy shaman knew the Land Bridge spell, so it was just a matter of time, before she got over to my area. To combat this, I could pray at a stone head between our two continents, which would get me charges of the Erosion spell.

The continents can be connected on two sides, while the central island contains the stone head.

Instead, I just built a tower on the tallest hill at the center of my continent and built my village around it. I had a few attacks, but with my shaman being in the tower, I could easily fight of any major attack with a well placed lightning. Eventually, I gathered a small army and went to the stone head, just so I could make a quick shortcut towards the center of the enemy village, but the enemy shaman got a lucky shot and killed the entire squad, including my shaman. About ten minutes later, I did it again, and this time obliterated him.

Continental Divide

Level 8, “Continental Divide” was much more fun. First of all, this was the level where I could finally get the plans for the Fire Warriors training site. The whole planet was actually a single landmass this time, with a bunch of smaller or larger lakes on it. There was plenty of hills around my village, so I immediately started using Land Bridge to create what was basically an impenetrable wall. A couple of well placed towers on top of the wall meant I didn’t need to worry about any attacks.

The village can be defended amazingly well, with proper use of Land Bridge

Thanks to some stealthy play, I managed to sneak around the enemy village and learn the building plans without any losses, so I filled the towers with fire warriors. Once I got the two stone heads, one of which gave me Magical Shield and the other Tornado, I finally built up a small army and obliterated the enemy village in record time. The three tornadoes destroyed most of it, while my fire warriors cleared the rest. It was a big village, so it took some time to kill of the stragglers, but after a few minutes, the level was over.

Now Let’s Talk

This can’t be bias. Nostalgia cannot be the reason I’m enjoying this game so much. It has some bad, old school design choices, the controls can be annoying, but the game is just so much fun I don’t mind the flaws one bit. The level length is just about right to play through one at a time and the new spells and buildings are arriving at a nice pace Everything just clicks into place, in spite of all the issues old games have. Heck, I’m playing it in software mode in 800×600 and the graphics don’t bother me one bit.

The ease of saving is definitely an advantage over the PlayStation version.

I know Molyneux has hyped up his games for over a decade now, I know he almost never delivers, but God, I hope Godus is half as fun as Populous.

Final Fantasy IX [24] – Training on Grand Dragons

December 20, 2012 by Nikola·0 Comments

Again, due to work, Final Fantasy IX has been played extremely sporadically over the last few days, with not much of note happening in the game.

Before I get to the final area and complete the game, I’d like to get the ultimate weapons for all of my characters, possibly gather all the Stellazio (or is it Stelazios?), train up a bit and learn all the abilities. Additionally, I wouldn’t mind killing the optional boss, which I never even saw as a kid, for some reason.

In order to do all that, I need lots of money, which means I need to kill enemies. At first, I thought I could get money by buying the several key items at the Treno auction house and then sell them at a profit to various NPC, but after trying that for a while, I concluded it would be just as fast, or almost just as fast to get the money through fighting, and that way, I also get experience and ability points.

I forgot to take pictures, so here’s a random moogle letter, kupo!

I’m still not using guides, but I think I will become necessary very soon, at least so I can get the ultimate weapons and the stellazios in a reasonable amount of time. I’ve already tried going for Zidane’s ultimate weapon, because I distinctly remembered it’s underwater at the place where the entrance to Terra used to be, but I used several death peppers with Choco and I couldn’t find it. Either I’m missing something, or it needs to be a very specific spot.

What I’m doing now is training on grand dragons around Daguerreo. I’ve equipped my party with Thunder resistance and absorption gear and enabled the Antibody and Auto-Regen abilities, so I don’t even have to heal while killing them. Since their health is pretty low, a single Shock! by Steiner and a regular attack by Zidane are usually enough to take care of them. The only annoyance is the appearance of the black cat enemy, which gives almost no experience at all. Still, at least I get some money, so it’s not a complete waste of time.

Populous: The Beginning [3]

December 18, 2012 by Nikola·0 Comments

Not much time today, so I just played through the sixth level of populous. This one actually provided some challenge, but mostly due to the two opponents being annoying than anything else. The problem was, it was the first time for me to face two enemy tribes at once, but it’s still early in the game, so I can’t put up proper defenses against one tribe, while I’m off attacking the other.

The stone head grants Hypnosis, which can be used to control an enemy warrior on an island with a totem pole, which then casts land bridge between the two enemy tribes.

Because of this, I had to fall back several times, simply to stop one of the tribes from destroying to much of my village. The point of the level actually isn’t to fight against bot tribes at once. Instead, if you pray at the proper totem pole, you create a bridge between their two areas, causing them to attack each other. The problem is, this doesn’t always work, and it definitely doesn’t work all the time.

After some minor attacks, I decided to go destroy the Chumara (yellow) first, and then move on to the Matak (green). Of course, my memory being what it is, I might be completely messing up the names and the colors. Just to give myself another opportunity to make a mistake, there are three tribes in the game:

Enemy tribe colors in Populous, The Beginning:

Chumara- Yellow
Matak – Green
Dakini – Red

There! If I messed up, I’ll fix it later.

In any case, I eventually beat them, but it took me about an hour in total. Once I get the fire warriors, I’ll probably be able to defend my village better, allowing me to focus on offense. In any case, the game can be challenging now, but it still feels way easier than what I remember. I don’t think I got past the first ten or so levels as a kid.

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