I treated myself to my first birthday treat in the form of picking up Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. So far it looks like just the type of grid-based strategy game I’ve been craving (while I wait to get my hands on Final Fantasy Tactics). Many people have already suggested it to me, including the very passionate sales guy that sold it to me.

He did warn me with the bold claim that the voice acting was far worse than the first Resident Evil. After giving it a listen, it’s not that bad, really. No worse than most Cartoon Network anime dubs. And even that has an easy fix: I just switched the dialog to Japanese. Then it’s really no different than watching anime with subs.

I’ve taken a break for the time being because I’m at the point to where I can assemble troops. What has me hung up–of all things–is that you can name each of your characters. That makes things pretty personal for me. Naming each character gives them each a unique identity, and thus they become kinda like my “children”. After I go through the creative challenge of finding a suitable name for each of them, that will also affect how I make choices in how I “raise” them. As I utilize them throughout the game, I know that I’ll grow a certain fondness for each one. And with the potential of building an army of 100+ characters, you can see how this is going to slow down my progress through the game itself.

The cool thing is that DoubleJump Books released their official strategy guide free online in PDF format. That’s going to be a big help for me at least, since I’m completely unfamiliar with most games like this. The site has recently taken down the file directly from them, but you can still find it floating around on the web.

Meanwhile, I’m frantically trying to finish up Final Fantasy VI Advance so I can devote my portable gaming time to the new Ace Attorney game that I plan to buy with another piece of my birthday money. Right now I’m near the end of the game, having completed most of the side quests. I’m mostly just building up my characters’ levels and getting them learned up on all the spells. I’m eager to take on the new Dragon’s Den quest that’s been added to this port and I may take that up once I’ve finished Ace Attorney (which should only take a week or two).

At some point, I’m going to need to switch gears a bit to get in some Street Fighter time. Since I quit training for Animazement, I’ve fallen back down to my previous level of suckage. I might use Game Night as my excuse for that, especially since there are a couple people I can actually compete with there. And as if I weren’t saturated enough, I’m close to acquiring Melty Blood: Act Cadenza for PC. I’ll have to fiddle with that until I can get the PS2 version.

I’ll get into more about the birthday dinner I had with my folks some time in the next few days. Tomorrow night, I’m seeing The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D with Ashley. Between that and working almost non-stop, it may be a bit before I get some time for myself…

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Games, RPGs, Street Fighter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.