Dominica and Liesl ended up sleeping in until early in the afternoon.  I guess that they were really worn out.  My guess is that they were up quite a bit during the night and did not get very much sleep.

Work today was unbelievably slow.  I have no idea what happened but just about no one needed me to do anything today.  It was great.

Andy called in the middle of the morning and we spoke for several hours.  The day just flew by.

Dominica and I ended up not even starting to eat lunch until after two thirty in the afternoon.  Talk about getting a late jump on things.

This afternoon, while Liesl napped, Dominica was finally able to complete playing Paper Mario from the Nintendo 64 on the Wii Virtual Console.  She had to take a couple of runs at Bowser, the final boss in the game, before she was able to complete it.  When it was all said and done she was pretty happy with the game.  It took her between thirty-four and thirty-five hours of game time to complete the adventure.

Today was my email cleaning day.  I cleaned hundreds of emails knocking my inbox and sub-folders down to about half of their previous contents.  I also moved all of the attachments out of the mail and into local folders on my computer so that I am not using the email system as file storage.  Email systems are not meant for that type of use and are not efficient for it at all.

Katie was supposed to come over tonight for a late dinner but she got stuck at work late tonight and it was going to be incredibly late by the time that she would have made it up to Peekskill so we all decided that it would be better to reschedule for Thursday night instead.

After work we ate dinner and watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a movie that is available from Netflix On Demand.  FF7:AC is the direct sequel to the video game Final Fantasy VII from 1997.  I own(ed) Final Fantasy VII for the Sony Playstation back in 1997 or 1998 and played it while living in Greece with Josh.  It has been a really long time since I watched or played anything involving the FF7 plot.  Dominica has never played FF7 and was not familiar with the game very much.  So the movie was completely nonsensical to her.

After watching the movie we had to go back to Wikipedia and read the plot summaries from FF7 and FF7:AC to try to figure out what happened and who was who.  The FF7 storyline is so convoluted and bizarre that it is nearly impossible to keep track of what is going on.

After watching the movie I hooked up the Playstation 2 in the living room so that Dominica could play some of the games from our extensive PS2 collection which she has been wanting to play for a long time.  She popped in and started playing Escape from Monkey Island which she picked up just recently from Game Stop for just five dollars.  Dominica and I have both played Escape from Monkey Island on the PC before but it has been a long time and I know that I, for one, did not ever finish the game and I don’t think that Dominica ever did either.  We own the Monkey Island collection for the PC (Escape from Monkey Island is Monkey Island 4) but playing a game like this on the PS2 is so much more convenient and enjoyable that it makes sense to have it on the PS2.

Escape from Monkey Island plays a lot like a movie with full screen rendered video and fully voice-acted dialogue so it is absolutely perfect for one of us to play while the other one watches.  For me it is just like watching a movie.  Very entertaining.  Even though the game is quite old and we are playing it on a video game console that is almost a decade old it still looks good and is a ton of fun.  It is too bad that the original three games in the series aren’t available for any modern console.  They would have been perfect if ported to the original Playstation.  On the Secret of Monkey Island (MI1) was ever ported to any console and that was the SegaCD way back when.

Dad is thinking about coming down to Peekskill this weekend to see Liesl.  He hasn’t seen her in several weeks.  I’m sure that he will also be bringing a large load of additional stuff for the house with him as well.  That will give us several weeks of unpacking work to do.  Every load from dad’s house is full of unanticipated discoveries as we find all kinds of things that we have completely forgotten that we own.

Tomorrow morning I am working the early shift at the office so I have to be up very early in the morning.  So I am going to do my best to turn in before midnight tonight or else I will be very tired tomorrow.  Although what are the chances that I will really get to bed that early?  That never really happens.  Especially not when I am having an enjoyable time sitting on the loveseat with Oreo writing SGL and watching Dominica play her game.

I am very excited that we have the PS2 hooked back up and working now.  We have so many exciting games for the PS1 and PS2 that I am very much looking forward to playing.  We have quite the stack of classic PS2 titles that have been getting dusty and those two Final Fantasy games for the Playstation (PSX) that arrived yesterday too.  Far more exciting things for the PS2 than we have for the XBOX, PS3, Wii and 360 combined.

Since I was up late anyway I did some drive maintenance on one of my servers. I didn’t get a lot done but every little bit helps in the long run.  You got to keep working on this stuff every day.  My window for getting any amount of projects done has shrunk to nearly nothing these days so I have to take every opportunity that I get.

Dominica got really sleepy and decided to give up on her game a few minutes after midnight.  Even after getting up really late she is really tired today.  Hopefully she will be able to get some real sleep tonight.

Unlike other early Final Fantasy titles which were ported to alternative gaming systems in subsequent years (Final Fantasy II reached American audiences via the Game Boy Advance in the “Dawn of Souls” cartridge and Final Fantasy V and VI were released for the GBA each on their own) Final Fantasy III remained exclusive to the Famicom and to its Japanese localized version until a North American version was released for the Nintendo DS handheld game system in 2006 (several months after the remake was released in Japan.)

When playing FF3 it is important to keep in mind its 8-bit console roots.  Gameplay is shallow and much grinding is necessary.  Characters are flat and uninteresting but this is how jRPGs were in 1990.  When the era is taken into consideration FF3 turns out to be rather mammoth and much more deep and immersive than almost any other game of the era.  The DS port includes some interface tweaks, balance changes and updated sound and graphics including 3D rendered fight scenes and dungeons but mostly the game remains rooted in the 8-bit era.

Considering the age of FF3, who is going to be interested in playing it?  Anyone nostalgic for the 8-bit era (if you loved Final Fantasy 1 or the original Dragon Warrior games on the NES) then this game is definitely for you.  Or, if you are like me, and a big fan of the Final Fantasy series in general and want to play the series in its entirety now that it is officially available outside of Japan then you definitely need to play.  If you are looking for a modern, cutting edge RPG honed by decades of genre maturation then you will want to look elsewhere.  In FF3 the world plays like a transparent image of a real world being displayed for the benefit of the observer.  The shallow emptiness of early RPG games.

Graphically Final Fantasy III is a great improvement on the DS over its Famicom (NES) original.  The world map is updated to look a little better than it used to and looks, more or less, like an FF game of the 16-bit SNES era.  Once in a town or in a dungeon the game switches to a simple three dimensional style that works moderately well.  It is nothing too impressive but this is due more to the DS’s limitations than to the game’s design.  The new graphics work well and do not distract from the game.  Playing FF3 on the DS is likely far more enjoyable than it was on the Famicom eighteen years ago.

I am very happy to report that Square Enix did not add any unnecessary touch-screen controls to FF3 which so often happens with games when they appear on the Nintendo DS (or Wii.)  The mere existance of the interface so often prompts its use no matter how inappropriate it is for a given task but not so here.  There are some elements which can be controlled from the touch screen but nothing that requires its use.  The game can easily be played completely through intuitive and simple standard controls.

FF3’s gameplay is updated somewhat for the Nintendo DS to improve the original Famicom version.  Most of the changes, according to Wikipedia, are balance related to make the game work more smoothly.  There is a tiny bit of new material added to enlarge the game but only slightly.  The remake is very true to the original.

One new feature of FF3 on the DS is the addition of the Mognet system which is used to send “email” via WiFi connection to other FF3 players or to send pretend email to characters within the game.  Yes, this feature is as strange as it sounds and does distract from the game to some degree.  I doubt that anyone will actually enjoy spending the time to email each other through the game in this day and age of ubiquitous email communications but, unfortunately, some of the additional sidequests and special features are available only through this system and it ends up acting like a “cheats” input that is used for no other reason that to unlock hidden areas in the game.

One of the most interesting features of FF3 is the “jobs” system which is analogous to Dungeons and Dragons classes.  In FF3 you start out with a basic job (called Freelancer which is very general purpose allowing your character to do a little bit of everything.)  As you progress through the game new jobs will become available.  You can switch between jobs at any time but you must gain experience in the job that you wish to use in addition to your regular experience so changing often is not a useful strategy.

Final Fantasy III is the first Final Fantasy title to include the jobs system which became popular staples of the Final Fantasy series.  Unlike Final Fantasy itself (FF1) in which you could select a class at the beginning of the game you have more flexibility in the later titles which also allows for the addition of special, more powerful jobs that only become available later in the game such as FF3’s Geomancer job.

The concept of class changing was not new to Final Fantasy III, of course, and was a popular component of the RPG classic The Bard’s Tale which released in 1985.  In The Bard’s Tale only certain classes could switch mid-game and they likewise took penalties for doing so and needed to gain experience again in the new class in order to be effective with it.

In general, Final Fantasy III is an impressive game considering its age and the era from which it came.  I cannot say that all is rosey, however.  When I reached the end of the game what I found is that the very last portion of the game, that which exists after the player believes that the game has been won, is disproportionately hard and confusing leaving the player in a multi-hour long ending without opportunity to save that relies upon the old tradition of being frustrating and obtuse rather than clever and challenging like modern games.

I must confess that after dying from unbalanced battles, spending approximately five hours grinding to prepare myself for the game ending and then getting stuck wandering aimlessly and pointlessly around a “final” dungeon without any clear direction or purpose I deemed the game not worth finishing.  After forty hours of investment it was not worth my time to even attempt the final battle because I could not determine if there was one, what it was or if I was even supposed to do anything in particular.

It is unfortunate that a game that does so well for its era ends on such a sour note leaving players who have been willing to put in the time necessary to reach the end with a bad taste and poor memories of the game.  Only the most dedicated historians of the JRPG genre should put time into this title.

References:

Final Fantasy III on Wikipedia

If you are like me and never pull out the directions to the game you might get confused by the fact that there is no “run” option in the combat menu.  This lead me to believe that I had to fight the dragon.  I looked online and no one else is mentioning not knowing how to run away so I figured that I needed to post for those who are stuck and lost at this point.

In order to run from the dragon Bahamut you must hit the Right and Left shoulder buttons of the DS together instead of choosing to attack or use magic.  This will silently trigger the run option.  It is a very confusing bit of the combat interface and unnecessarily so.

Don’t worry that Bahamut will likely kill one or more of your party before you manage to escape.  Anyone who dies is magically alive again immediately after the battle.

Children of Mana is saddled with a tradition of being an action RPG which is always a difficult role to live up to. Action RPGs are, by their very definition, not very “RPGish” and have two distinct conflicting personalities that are nearly impossible to integrate well. CoM does far worse than that though by using an archaic “Legend of Zelda” style of action interface which is cludgy and extremely unrefined. It feels like a cheap afterthought or, more likely, just old code borrowed from some late NES-era game.

The graphics of the non-action portions of the game are amazing but few and far between. The backgrounds are the best I have ever seen on the Nintendo DS and top anything I ever saw on the SNES. But a few amazing backgrounds only go so far. The sprites are okay but don’t mesh fluidly with the background being of a distinctively different quality and style. And the moment that you step foot into a “dungeon” you will get the impression that you have gone into a different game altogether.

RPG and Console RPG fans will be significantly disappointed in this game. The RPG elements are weak approaching non-existant. In fact, calling this game an RPG at all is truly misleading. If anything this is an action game with a strong storyline. The really unfortunate thing is that the action is so poorly executed. There is nothing wrong with an action game with a strong storyline but CoM’s action elements are by far the weakest portion of the game. The action is boring and juvenile.

Overall, unless you are a serious Mana aficionado I would suggest avoiding this title. Children of Mana is not going to live up to your Secret of Mana expectations. One would think that the series would have covered some ground since the early 1990s but apparently it hasn’t.

In the end I gave up on attempting to play CoM.  I found that just by attempting to force myself to work through this game it made me no longer have any driving desire to play the Nintendo DS and it was keeping me from playing games that are much better.