Hello, everyone. It’s that time of the year again, where the weather starts to warm up, and I am suddenly compelled to try out new ideas for my web site. Because I am tired of my posts either being “high effort thing for Patreon” or “I am [mildly irritated/extremely pissed] about something,” and because I am trying to make web logs cool and something everyone should have, and because my Japanese peers also do this, I have decided that I will do at least one weekly post where I tell you about something I played, or watched, or listened to, or did. The plan is to do it every Wednesday. Yes, I am aware that today is Thursday, but I came up with the idea late last night before going to bed, so this one is a Thursday post. These aren’t meant to be full-on reviews or essays or analysis or anything like that. This is just me coming on to my site and saying things.
I mentioned playing through Dragon’s Dogma. Dragon’s Dogma is a game I have not touched or looked at since I played it on the PS3 over a decade ago, and I figured now would be a good time to give it another go. The thing is, is that I finished the game, beat all the dragons and everything, but I could not remember a fucking thing about DD other than how much I liked the combat. I remember the plot being extremely abrupt, characters being pretty bland, and a lot of stuff being permanently missed if I didn’t do specific things at specific times.
Having played through it again, my opinion hasn’t changed much. Dragon’s Dogma is an extremely fun game, with a plot that seemingly doesn’t mean much and characters I don’t especially care about. Still don’t know why the Duke is a fucking weirdo who completely forgot that he had me tortured and jailed when his wife accused me of attempted assault after I walked in on said Duke strangling her. Whatever, fighting big monsters rules.
My playthrough involved me playing as a gay little wizard OC who cast big spells, and my pawn was Link from Zelda. Or at least an attempt at creating Link.
I made it to the end, cleared a not insignificant chunk of Bitter Black Isle, and then I was reminded: New Game+ involves you and your pawn switching places. The appeal of telling an elven femboy what to do would be gone. So like a real brain genius who understands that we only have a finite amount of time in this world, I started a whole new game all over again, this time with a much more sustainable gimmick: a medieval Jessie and James from Team Rocket. Jessie as a Fighter-turned-Magick Knight, and James as a Mage-turned-Sorceror. This time around, I’m taking things even more slowly. I found out you can actually befriend the groups of bandits out in the wild! This still does not help me with any of Dragon’s Dogma’s story, but I think trying to understand the complexities of the story besides “big dragon is doing things” may be a fool’s errand.
I’ve been in a bit of a Pokemon mood as of late. Something that I don’t think I’ve ever written, but have joked about in private is that I’ve always felt like “Team Rocket” would be the best way to describe how I approach the concept of gender, especially in the last couple of years. This is a segue from me playing Dragon’s Dogma to me playing Pokemon.
Pokemon is one of those series’ that I like, but I always feel like I haven’t experienced enough of. Like many people my age, I played through Gen 1. But then by the time Gen 2 rolled around, I thought that I was “too old” for Pokemon, and skipped it. Gen 3 I didn’t play, because I did not play many GBA games, and when I got into emulating, I was too busy with Astro Boy and Castlevania. I got back into the series with Gen 4, which, holy shit, was…I don’t know. I’m still unsure about whether or not Pokemon Diamond/Pearl are good. Very slow games, with sluggish pacing, world design I did not care for, and good fucking luck ever finding more than two fire type Pokemon out there, asshole! But I remember liking the little smart watch you had on the bottom screen. I remember liking the rest of the Pokemon that I could catch. I remember going into the Safari Zone and catching a Quagsire that has followed me all the way into the 3DS games. So I don’t know if Gen 4 was great, but I do know that Gen 5 fucking ruled. I loved Pokemon Black and White. Spent so much pouring over the Pokedex, trading and battling, exploring every square inch of that map. Great games. Then I thought X and Y were okay, then gave up on the series with Sun and Moon because fuck having to buy a new 3DS in order to play those games at a frame rate higher than 2 FPS.
But back to Gen 5. For as much as I loved Black and White, I never did get around to playing Black and White 2. But also, while playing Pokemon Crystal and seeing why people liked it so much, I realized that I never played Heart Gold or Soul Silver, either. Another thing I realized, and keep forgetting (despite having done two DS reviews), is that DS emulation is actually like, good now. So right now I’ve started Soul Silver.
I’ll spare you all the suspense and say that yeah, this game is pretty fucking cool so far. Really is just like the originals, but with more stuff; I like having my lead Pokemon follow me around Pikachu-style. I only have one badge so far, because like many RPGs, I’m spending too much time grinding out experience with the Pokemon I have currently acquired. You may be wondering why someone so retro-brained isn’t just sticking with Crystal, and I will tell you: for as much as I love the Game Boy, and love RPGs on the Game Boy, I simply cannot shake my strong association of playing Pokemon with the Nintendo DS. I spent so much time with Gens 4 and 5 that it permanently warped my psyche. Once I finish/burn myself out on Soul Silver, I think I’ll give Black or White 2 a shot, too.
In any case, that’s it for this post. I’ll see you all for my next actual piece of work, then another post like this next week!
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