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NOTE: If you’re interested in Pokemon, be sure to check out my other postings, linked at the bottom of this page. I promise you wont regret it (much).

Sadly, even though I share the same feelings about piracy on the DS, I don’t own any DS games, I only own a DS Lite so I can’t get anything online and my PSP battery died out eventually, meaning I could either do nothing, or start a game I don’t own.

I succumbed and decided to restart a Pokemon game. You see, Soul Silver was a game I played in the past, but I never reached the end, for some reason. I even still had my original save, showing I have 7 badges already earned, but I decided to start from scratch anyway.

Anyone who played a Pokemon game knows it’s all pretty much routine by now. The Pokemon series is kind of like an EA sports game. You get one almost every year, it usually changes a bit, evolves as it should, but it always follows the same basic premise.

Pokemon Soul Silver Starters

For some reason, I almost always pick fire.

Anyway, I took Cyndaquil as my starter because this is what I usually do. I don’t know why, but fire starters usually appeal the most to me. Mr. Pokemon’s house was more than a town away, so it took me quite a while to get there. I also couldn’t buy any pokeballs yet, so I wasn’t able to catch any other pokemon. I did, however, train Cyndaquil quite a bit and got her to about level 7. I got his package and also met the famous professor Oak while there. He gave me a pokedex and asked me to try and collect or at least observe as many pokemon as I can on my journey.As usual, I started out in my hometown. I got my starter right at the start, which is sort of unusual. Most of the times, you actually have to do something first and then it somehow happens that the local professor gives you a Pokemon. Well, professor Elm doesn’t have time to beat around the bush. You’re friends with her daughter and he needs your help. Back when people didn’t use pokeballs, they had their pokemon walk with them. This meant they couldn’t bring as many pokemon with them, but it also affected the trainer-pokemon relationship, which is what professor Elm is researching. My job is to take one of his pokemon and just walk around with him. Since I’m walking, I also might as well walk to some guy’s house. They call the guy Mr. Pokemon and he has a package for the professor.

I was on my way back to Elm when I was pulled into battle by my future rival, who I decided will be named Gold, since I chose my name to be Silver. This is the usual naming scheme I have for characters in Pokemon games, so I stuck with it this time around to. I easily beat him, since his Totodile wasn’t trained at all and then returned to professor Elm. A police officer was already there. It turns out, my pathetic excuse for a rival actually stole the Totodile.

I gave the package, which contained an egg to professor Elm and then visited my mom before starting my official pokemon journey. Again, as usually, she promised to save up a percentage of the money I win in battles and use it to buy various items I might not be able to get otherwise.

The stores in the next town over finally had some pokeballs available, so I bought some, but not before getting five for free from some random retired trainer who taught me how to catch pokemon. Since this isn’t a  Nuzlocke challenge, I went all out with the pokeballs and pretty soon had a full team of crappy normal and bug types. I wont be using most of them, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to keep the PC boxes stocked up and I definitely was asked to increase my pokedex stats.

It was about time to hit the first gym, though, so I made my way to Violet city. I got there, but they wouldn’t let me challenge the gym leader without climbing to the top of Bellsprout tower first. Before that, though, I traded a Bellsprout for an Onyx, because I haven’t seen one in the wild yet, but saw plenty of Bellsprout on my way to the city. Naturally, Bellsprouts became extremely rare as soon as I made the trade, because I couldn’t find another one to catch later.

The tower was easy to clear and contained mostly trainers with Bellsprouts. I used the opportunity to train my Pidgey and got him to level 11 during the climb. Somewhere along the way, my starter also managed to evolve, so I now had a Quilava. My rival was already at the top, but he used an escape rope before I could get to him. The master at the top of the tower gave me permission to challenge the gym and also gave me a Flash technical machine as a reward for getting to the top.

Pokemon Soul Silver, Falkner

Falkner, the bird trainer. Easy

I went east to get to route 32, which leads south. Just on the bend south, I’ve met a hiker who gave me my first hidden machine – Rock Smash. Azalea town awaits, but there are wild pokemon i need to catch and trainers i need to fight on route 32 first.The gym was full of bird pokemon and relatively easy to clear. I didn’t have anything strong against flying types, but my Quilava was strong enough to easily clear everything even without a type advantage. The first badge was mine and I was given my next goal – Azalea town.

 

How Did You Get Here?

For some reason, this posting is extremely popular among my readers. Maybe it’s something I wrote, maybe it’s a picture I’m linking, but one thing is for sure. It’s probably a bit disappointing this is where my “second attempt at a play through” ended – with the first posting.

Sadly, my NDS broke since I played Pokemon Soul Silver, so I won’t be continuing my play through, at least not any time soon. There’s plenty of content if you’re interested in Pokemon, though.

You can read about one of my two Nuzlocke runs. There’s my Fire Red Nuzlocke challenge, as well as my Emerald Nuzlocke challenge. I’ve greatly enjoyed both of those. There’s also my pride and joy – my challenge to play through a Pokemon game taking place in every region as Ash. I decided to follow each region of the Pokemon world by being Ash as much as I can be. I caught and used only Ash’s Pokemon, I tried to use his “tactics” and I tried to behave like he would. I even made guides on how to transfer Pokemon between the various games and generations. You can read all about it at:

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There was an announced power outage throughout most of the day today, so I had to fall by to my trusty PSP and my slightly lest trusty DS Lite for my gaming needs.

The thing is, my whole “no more piracy” thing kind off makes me not want to play most of the pirated games I have on my PSP, simply because I know I could fall back to one of the PSX games I actually own and be “legit” like that, at least in my mind. I’m still technically pirating the game, since I haven’t bought it on the PSN, but owning the old physical copy makes it OK in my book, and I don’t care what anyone has to say about it.

Anyway, I’ve been playing the game a couple of months ago, but didn’t write anything here back then, so I didn’t go all the way from the beginning today. I started out in Midgard, quite early, at the point where Shinra destroys a sector and blames it on the Avalanche. Aeris (NOT Aerith) gets taken by the Turks the rest of the team is stuck not knowing where to go next.

Final Fantasy VII, Shinra Building View

The Shinra building is the central point of the early game.

The Turks have also shown interest in Aeris ever since they tracked her down. She managed to avoid them until today, though. Today, she had Marlene with her, so she was forced to go with the Turks in exchange for Marlene’s safety. Upon hearing this, the gang decides to rescue Aeris, but not before Barret asks Elmyra to take care of Marlene for a while longer.Since Aeris was taking care of Marlene, Cloud, Barret and Tifa decide to visit Aeris’ mother, Elmyra. Things aren’t the way they seem though. Elmyra tells them she’s not really Aeris’ mother. She found her as a little girl next to the dead body of her real mother on a train station and took her as her own. It was obvious from the start that Aeris wasn’t normal. She would hear voices and talk about how the planet whispers to her. She even knew Elmyra’s husband died in Wutai before the official news arrived.

Since there’s no official route to the top plate and the Shinra headquarters, the gang decides to go to the Wall Market and see if they can find an alternative route. Sure enough, the collapse of the sector set a huge power cable loose, creating a possibility to climb to the top plate. A set of batteries was required to make the route completely passable, but the local weapons shop owner provided those.

Final Fantasy VII - Stairs Joke

Poor Barret. Always the comedic relief.

In any case, the gang reached floor 59 and now needed to get access to the rest of the floors. The problem was, the leadership was located on floors 60 to 65, making it extremely difficult to navigate through the security. Barret wanted to barge in through the lobby of the Shinra building directly, but Cloud and Tifa were smarter than that and decided they should take the stairs through the maintenance wing of the building. It’s an extremely tall building, though, so Barret had issues with climbing it to the top, but they eventually managed to get there. This part of the game was extremely memorable to me as a kid, even though, what with playing the game in German back then, I couldn’t understand most of it.

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As I previously said, I’ve recently started working my very first job. It´s pretty good. The atmosphere is nice, there isn’t much stress, and I’m familiar with the tools and the environment I’m working in, so there’s no anxiety about me not being able to do my part. The money isn’t huge, but my cost of living is extremely low, so most of it will be left for me to spend however I please.

The huge amount of free time I had is now gone, though. I wake up at six in the morning and I’m back home at around 16:00. I’m rarely ready to play anything before five in the afternoon. That´s still quite a lot of time available to play, but there´s also other things I want to do. Basically, pretty soon, money won’t be an issue with my hobby, but time will be.

That being said, my backlog library is huge, and a lot of those games are in it simply because they were bundled with something I actually wanted to play, they were dirt cheap, free, or I just thought they would be more fun to play.

This is why I feel a change in philosophy is in order. From now on, the goal of completing every game in my backlog is put on low priority. First and foremost, I’ll be playing games I know or really hope I’ll enjoy. That means I’ll also be buying new ones if the opportunity comes and I won’t be wasting too much time on games I´m not truly enjoying.

Of course, if I run out of those, I’ll be going back to my backlog, but that won’t happen too often. The blog will keep going, of course. It´s just that the games I’ll be playing will have more in common.

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It’s OK. There really isn’t anything else I can say about the game. It’s an OK game. It’s not great, it’s not awful, it’s just OK.

The gameplay can be fun enough, and could be great, but it’s worsened by artificial inflation of game time. Fly here, now fly back there, now do this mundane and simple thing. Fight these guys. Oh, you’ve killed them? Here’s another group of identical guys you also need to kill. This drags throughout the game and I really feel it isn’t needed. It took me about nine hours to clear this game, but I would have had more fun and a higher opinion of it if it took no more than five.

The voice acting would be pretty good, were it not for the main character. She’s supposed to be French, but it sounds fake. She’s supposed to be 14 at the start of the game, but she sounds like a 35 year old attempting to sound young throughout the game. She’s supposed to be human, but she sounds like a robot trying to act human and failing at it.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars DeeDee Writes Memoirs

Aww, she get’s married to Edwards!

The graphics are also OK, nothing special, but you get a few moments where you’re amazed by the lighting effects or the style. It’s not a graphical style that ages amazingly, but it doesn’t age badly either.The rest of the sounds are OK, though. On several occasions, I was actually surprised by the sound quality, but most of the time, it’s just enough above adequate to be good.

All in all, as I said, it’s an OK game. Get it if you have nothing else to play and if you find it for cheap, but don’t go out of your way to find it.

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This is a game I have already played through, both in its original version and in the form of this remake. However, it was just launched on steam and I pirated it the first time around, so I decided to make this right this time. The game is well worth the money, what with being a Spiderweb game.

Nethergate Splash Screen

There’s that music in my head again…

Since then, I’ve loved every single one of their games. The only series I never played extensively was Geneforge, but I intend to eventually remedy that as well. Any CRPG fan should get each and every one of these games.If you actually are a returning reader of this blog, you probably know I absolutely love games by Spiderweb Software. It started with me playing the shareware versions of their Exile series, back in the nineties. I loved the world, the mechanics, the open-endedness and the dynamic progression it had. Nethergate pulled me in with the Celtic/Roman combination of mythology and atmosphere as well as the fresh  new graphic system back then.

As I said, I already played through this one, but I got it anyway and I might play through it again,even

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Well, not really the Balkans. The first two battles involved liberating the Balkans, thus the name of the chapter. The rest of it, though, took place in Berlin. With Tommy dying in the last chapter, DeeDee was forced to go back to the British general she hated so much – McIntyre.

Berlin, though ruined, was not as grim as the previous chapter, probably because suddenly, there was a feeling of victory. Most of the missions were straightforward, with basically just destroying enemies as fast as possible or before time runs out. One of the missions involved captain Edwards, the young intelligence officer DeeDee met during the Neretva missions.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars, Egypt Flashback

The last flashback mission took place in Egypt.

With this knowledge, I’ve completed the final mission and was then provided with a choice. McIntyre was under attack by a couple of Nazi fighters. I could run away, kill him or destroy the two fighters. I decided to help him, because I really can’t see any other option as the morally right one.The flashback gave us the big reveal – the allies considered using chemical warfare during world war one. Even worse, they would use it against civilians. During one such mission, DeeDee’s father decided he would not allow it and attacked his own squadron to try and stop them. Because of this, McIntyre shot him down.

With this, the game was completed.

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Slovakia was a dark chapter of this game. After one of DeeDee’s friends died in France, Tommy, who was basically her caretaker started to drink again. Of course, you couldn’t tell this bothers DeeDee based on her voice. I’m sorry if I’m insulting anyone, but at this point, I seriously think the main character would be better if she didn’t have any audio, just subtitles. At least then, you could imagine the appropriate tone and emotions.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars Ground Screenshot

AIr-to-ground missions might actually be more common than dog fights. I haven’t really counted, though.

In any case, Slovakia wasn’t too difficult, but I did get a few levels that were harder to deal with. It was quite long to, so it took me close to two hours to complete it. I’ve also unlocked my first jet fighter in this chapter, which instantly became my favorite plane in the game. It’s extremely fast and extremely agile, so you can use it to basically run circles around any other plane in the game.

Now it’s time to go back to the Balkans, and to the final chapter.

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Operation Overlord was a bit harder than my missions in Poland. Well, one of the missions was harder – the one where I needed to drop of medical supplies, mainly because the only planes I could pick were the crappy ones. Other than that one mission, everything was cleared on the first try.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars - Train Collision

Apparently, it’s sometimes a pilot’s job to cause train collisions.

Again, I’m really, really hating the voice actor for DeeDee, but the rest are good enough. I’m also starting to dislike the length inflation. Some of these missions really aren’t needed to progress the story or the game. As it is, the game is probably about three times longer than it had to be. Not much I can do about that, though.

Next up – Slovakia!

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After getting some stability and organizing some things around my work and living place, I’ve finally managed to squeeze in an hour of gaming. Air Conflicts was as good a game as any to do this with, so I managed to clear the fourth chapter – Operation Belt.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars - Briefing

While there are slideshows between some missions, most of the time, all you get is this screen.

It was easy, for the most part, with no losses and only a few close calls. As usual, the voice acting of the main character is atrocious, but the rest of the cast is decent enough. I’ve been communicating some more with Night Owl, and I’ve met another one of DeeDee’s father’s army buddies, who told me a bit more about the legendary pilot.

I’ve also unlocked two new planes, one of which I like a lot for its speed and agility. It lacks firepower, though, so I won’t be using it too often.

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…because I finally cleared the Cathedral with her. After many, many failures I had with this character, it was bound to happen. I started a run today, completely refreshed, hoping it would help me play better. It didn’t.

Fortunately, where brains are missing, luck can still exist. First I got some damage upgrades, which made it much easier. Then I got lucky by having a barrel and an exploding enemy spawn in rooms with tinted rocks. This got me a couple of extra spirit hearts, so I could stay alive longer. With my first fifteen cents, I managed to score the Book of Revelations from an early shop.

Since I apparently suck at this game, I wasn’t really accumulating hearths, though. Lucky for me, a friendly Judgement gave me the Blue Candle for just four cents total. I was careless enough to trade it for my Book of Revelations and this made all the difference. With the bandage I got at the start of the game and the speed of clearing rooms with the candle, I managed to get enough hearts and spirit hearts to get to mom. I killed her and she dropped just enough health to get filled back up.

The Binding of Isaac Achievements

I still have plenty of achievements to go through.

The last incident of pure luck was when I picked the correct direction to find the boss room in the Cathedral. The candle made a hard battle much easier, but I still only managed to win with one heart left. It still counts, though, so there’s no reason for me to play with Eve again any time soon. Of course, this is a game that will go to 100% eventually, so I’ll have to beat the chest with her at one point to, but for now, I got ??? to tackle next. There’s Maggie and Samson to, but ??? will be the tough one.One last lucky drop, the Emperor card, which I got a few rooms before mom, was the key to my victory. You see, the Womb had Curse of the Labyrinth, meaning I could basically skip two levels worth of rooms and get straight to the bosses. Death was the first boss and he was relatively easy to deal with. It Lives was even easier, and I actually managed to get out of that battle with more health than what I had when I entered.