Before Final Fantasy Tactics, my favorite fantasy tactical battle RPG, there was the Ogre Battle series. I discovered the franchise the other way around, though: after loving and completing FFT on the PlayStation back in the day, I looked around and found Ogre Battle: Let Us Cling Together, the second game in the series, and was again blown away. Both games shared a creator – Yasumi Matsuno – who, along with the Ogre Battle series and Final Fantasy Tactics, also went on to work on Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIV, and the Vagrant Story PS2 game (which I also found). ...

I finished Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning today at 51 1/2 hours, making it one of the shorter RPGs I’ve finished. According to the Steam achievement, only 2% of the people who purchased this remake on Steam have killed the final boss as of today. Achievement%Destiny Defiant (final boss)2.0Hero of Mel Senshir (reached final continent)5.1Turning the Tide (completed the Adessa plot)7.1No Destiny, All Determination (midgame point)17.7Reborn (started the game)87.9 I’ve played the original twice before, but never finished it. From my Steam achievements on the original game, I can see that I got past the “No Destiny” point, and was into the desert area leading to Adessa when I stopped playing. Interestingly, according to Steam achievements, only 2% of the players of the original game reached the end – same percentage as in the remake. ...

Quick recap: Terraforming Mars is one of the most popular board games in the world right now, and has been for years. It’s a game not just about about terraforming Mars, but eventually exploring and colonizing our Moon, Venus, Mercury, and the outer planets’ larger moons through several expansions. The game play remains mostly the same, though, through expansions – you research activities to help with the terraforming (or to hinder your opponents) by buying cards; you play those cards in the action phase; you then receive a payment from the faceless Terraforming Council based on your contribution to the terraforming, plus whatever income your research projects provide. ...

Rathir and Mel Senshir are twin cities, on either side of a strait that separates the lands of mortals and Fae from the land of the Tuatha, fallen Fae who seek to destroy the mortal worlds. Mel Senshir holds back the evil horde, but just barely. Like Minas Tirith, everyone feels the fall of Mel Senshir is the will of Fate, and after the bulwark falls, the Tuatha will cross the strait to Renthir, and then their victory will be assured. ...

Magi over at Indicator was tagged by a “Mystery Blogger”, and like any good virus, he went on to infect at a “R” value of 10 other bloggers, including me. I know all this cool science virus fact stuff because we are in a pandemic. Yay for the learning. The award was created by a blogger named “Okoto Enigma”. Mentioning the tagger and the creator are two of the Mystery Blogger Award rules. There’s a bunch of other rules that I’m not going to follow because I want to get to the fun stuff. You can read all about them at Magi’s post or Okoto’s original post. ...

I’ve uncovered some unsettling truths about this game, or rather, the original version of it that I played when it came out in 2012, and then again a few years later in 2016. I was pretty sure I’d made it to near the end of the game in my first playthrough, and then had made it quite far in the second playthrough before again getting distracted by a new shiny. ...

I more or less love my 3D printer. More or less. I can make physical stuff out of bits – that’s pretty cool. But for every print I make, I have to go through the same long, tedious process of leveling the print bed. I don’t know why it goes out of adjustment every single print. Sometimes on longer prints, it can go out of adjustment while I am printing, ruining the print. ...

This post today isn’t actually about Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. Mostly. This post is, how can I talk about Kingdoms of Amalur – and going forward, other things I might play? There’s a few things that are stopping me from being a content creator. For one, I have a slow internet connection. And according to the Twitch app, my video card is of poor quality, even though it’s of the current generation (though not a 3080). I don’t have a webcam any more, I often leave the keyboard to deal with RL stuff, I don’t feel like doing hair and makeup and I don’t like the way my voice sounds on video. ...

When I started Kingdom of Amalur: Re-Reckoning yesterday, though I haven’t played for six years, it all came rushing back. I immediately remembered why I’ve never actually finished the game – the aching loneliness of running an MMO by myself. I remember really wanting, back in the day, a version of EverQuest without other people, just me and a party of NPCs, killing stuff and camping camps. Games like KoA remind me that something like that would be really boring. ...

Banner of the Maid has been my constant gaming companion over the past several weeks. In short, Banner of the Maid takes place in an alternate fantasy version of the French Revolution. Napoleon has fended off a British incursion and is now in Italy fighting against an Austrian invasion. Almost all the important NPCs existed in our reality, but in the game reality, there are the Maids – heroes imbued with divine powers whose powers arise when France needs them. The first, most famous Maid was Jean D’Arc. With France consumed by revolution, new maids have arisen. ...