Now playing: Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Here I go again. Every year, or two, or sometimes more, I feel the urge to tap away on the keyboard and type for no one in particular. At least this time I have an idea of what I'll write about, so as to keep myself focused. I'll be keeping track of games I play, movies I watch, a sort of journal about various mediums of art (I insist that video games can indeed be art - to be expounded upon at a later time).

Today I will be brief. I finished Star Ocean a few days ago and am in the process of slogging through the extra dungeons. The one thing about the game that really took me by surprise was the quality of the story. It was awful. Utterly terrible. I felt as though someone grabbed a book full of cliches and battered my head until the book's binding fell apart. So Star Ocean is definitely a great example of a game that you play because it's a good game, and not for any other reason.

Perhaps the worn archetypes and stale dialogue wouldn't have been so jarring if I hadn't just finished playing Persona 4 and Persona 3: FES (in that order). Those two games present characters that speak like real people might and have emotions that go beyond the single facet expected with regard to the "epic" "mission" In the case of Persona 3: FES, friendship is shown to be more than just patting someone on the back and saying that everything will be okay. Indeed, sometimes such a bond is so fragile as to shatter with a single wrong touch, yet other times elastic, stretching, allowing two to pull further and further away, yet never breaking, in time to be effortlessly returned to its original state when the time is right.

A little longer than I expected. I only hope that means I return more quickly this time around.