Finally got around to downloading the Misadventures of Tron Bonne, been looking for it for years actually, but could never find it.  After seeing a random forum topic on it(and the other MML games), I decided to check romulation for it, and well, I think i was kinda surprised to see that the game actually exists.
Controls are kinda crappy now(No dual analog controls in a 3rd person game is just weird now), but the game isn't exactly hard so far so its no big deal.  I really wish my pc didn't suck though, since there are some epsxe plugins that make the game look like a decent cel-shaded ps2 game, but as is they slow it down way too much.

http://forums.ngemu.com/psx-plugin-questions-troubleshooting/76098-links-guides-custom-shaders-petes-opengl2-plugin.html
there's actually a bunch of different shader plug-ins of different effects, as you will see in the screen shots in that link.

Completed Chaos Rings 108% and got a sexy new intro screen. 8-)

I wish the old-school Adventure genre would make a comeback.

It actually is a little bit, at least compared to where it was just a few years ago.  Between Telltale Games, the MI Remakes and several old point-and-click games being ported to new devices (noticed a lot on the iPhone), it's definitely at least TRYING to.

Waiting on my roommate to finish Alan Wake so I can play his copy and not buy my own.

the more i play final fantasy 13 the more i think it fell victim to TOO MANY DESIGNERS. i feel like there were some people working on this game that came up with a bunch of fairly strong ideas which kinda made their way into the final version of the game, but they got more or less trashed by people who have no fucking idea what they're doing.

i think the way the character dynamics are supposed to work could have been pretty interesting. i'm not too far into the game, so i don't know if this changes, but i like how the game kinda shifts tempo based on who is in the party at that moment(both in the story and in the system dynamics). i don't think it works at all because the scenario is fucking awful and there's this idiotic junk inserted into every character, but i think that could have been a really outstanding idea if executed properly. i get the feeling whoever came up with that probably had some preliminary idea of how to make use of that, but it got ruined by the jerk on the project throwing completely ineffective action cutscenes into every fucking inch of the game.

also is it just me or is the music/graphics/gameplay just a big blur? like everything feels unintelligible. i guess superficially the game is very pretty if you pause it to look at it or something, but most of the time when playing the game i can't really make a lot of sense out of what's happening around me. the locations are all fairly abstract and messy. and they take enough control out of your hands in the battle system that you really don't have a reason to micromanage anything or even really pay attention to the details of what's going on(which would be impossible anyway since it's just a flurry of motion blurs and numbers). also the default setting on the music(i don't even know if you can change this?) is sufficiently low compared to everything else that you can't really hear it. and when you do you can really tell the composer just didn't want to be there and was waiting for the project to end so he could leave square(which he unsurprisingly did).

i guess what i'm trying to say with all this is that final fantasy 13 is just really badly made. it's not STUPID exactly, which is what i had expected, it just has this very incoherent, unprofessional tone to the quality of it. there was evidently some talent involved in making this game, and a few decent ideas present, but whoever was in control of the ship let it totally fucking fall to pieces. this is a little surprising from square, since their big problem lately has been a complete lack of intelligence rather than just profoundly sloppy direction.

I was going to say I really, really liked FF13's soundtrack in comparison to the last few (12, 10, 10-2). Seems I am the only one the internet that thinks this though...

One of my main beefs with the game, and I don't know how to sum this up into a particularly effective point, is how useless half the areas are in the game. Like, when you're playing as Sazh/Vanille, you're exploring this very nice green lush forest-y area, and when you're playing as Lightning/Hope, you get this kind of cool blue sci-fi forest place, but it's all just a backdrop. There's never a reason for it to exist, it just sort of happens that the plot denotes you need to move through an area, and so it gives you something that's kind of cool but you never really read into the background of it apart from maybe 2 paragraphs in the datalog if you can be bothered. The world of FF13 feels so inconsequential, like it's only there to serve the plot.

I've heard reviews saying WOWZA, THE SCALE... THIS GAME FEELS BIGGER THAN ANY FF BEFORE, but I couldn't agree less. You get a completely linear world for the most part with nothing to connect the areas (at least in FF7 you could see how Midgar related to the rest of the world, and how it transitioned to idk Cosmo Canyon or whatever), and your party is a group of people you meet in the first 2 hours with the exception of one other character. A Final Fantasy game has never felt smaller.

I was going to say I really, really liked FF13's soundtrack in comparison to the last few (12, 10, 10-2). Seems I am the only one the internet that thinks this though...

actually the more i play of this game the more i am inclined to agree with you. i still feel like hamauzu was pretty uninterested in the game, considering his music is usually more engaging and lively, but the last few final fantasy soundtracks were really awful. there have actually been a few songs i've liked from this game, which is more than i can say for really any of the last few final fantasy games. i think my beef with the game is that he clearly felt pressured to MAKE GENERIC RPG SOUNDTRACK for a lot of the songs, which is something he's talented enough that he shouldn't feel obligated to do.

i like it when hamauzu just kinda gives up in making some location-specific(or even game-specific) song and just makes A GOOD SONG. he usually does a lot of this when the game is not so good, and he does some of it here, but probably not enough.

One of my main beefs with the game, and I don't know how to sum this up into a particularly effective point, is how useless half the areas are in the game. Like, when you're playing as Sazh/Vanille, you're exploring this very nice green lush forest-y area, and when you're playing as Lightning/Hope, you get this kind of cool blue sci-fi forest place, but it's all just a backdrop. There's never a reason for it to exist, it just sort of happens that the plot denotes you need to move through an area, and so it gives you something that's kind of cool but you never really read into the background of it apart from maybe 2 paragraphs in the datalog if you can be bothered. The world of FF13 feels so inconsequential, like it's only there to serve the plot.

I've heard reviews saying WOWZA, THE SCALE... THIS GAME FEELS BIGGER THAN ANY FF BEFORE, but I couldn't agree less. You get a completely linear world for the most part with nothing to connect the areas (at least in FF7 you could see how Midgar related to the rest of the world, and how it transitioned to idk Cosmo Canyon or whatever), and your party is a group of people you meet in the first 2 hours with the exception of one other character. A Final Fantasy game has never felt smaller.

man, i was really hoping that this was just some isolated thing for where i was in the game and not a problem running throughout the game. but yeah, again, i completely agree with you. the scenario would be a lot more interesting if there was any real thought behind the locations. i'm (apparently) done with disc 1 and there was exactly zero legitimate use of the locations in the scenario. occasionally you'll flip a switch or ride an elevator but that's really just it. it's something of a common sense thing, but how the game internally justifies what you're physically doing in a game is really important. that you spend really the first cd just wandering around accomplishing nothing really undermines any effect the game would have otherwise had. i get that they're FUGITIVES ON THE RUN or something, but the game doesn't even do that right. i don't think the characters are intrinsically bad, but a lack of anything interesting going on in the game makes already boring characters a lot more uninteresting.

would you agree with me that the most annoying character in the game is fucking Vanille?

I would have to say the flow of the game almost seems backwards. The gameplay portion of it does not fully open up until the end of the game. The storyline just goes nowhere, and ends in a very stupid way.

would you agree with me that the most annoying character in the game is fucking Vanille?

She can make you cringe yeah, but no more than the rest of the game, and she is definitely nothing new to this game that people haven't put up with countless times before. She just makes dumb guys recoil in hatred and disgust because her presence makes it much harder to delude yourself into enjoying this game As A Man. Maybe it isn't Vanille we have a problem with...maybe it's ourselves.

I don't think she was the worst thing in the game, I mean you just take her as a given problem in any japanese RPG and try to enjoy what you can, right? If you're still going to go through with playing it, I mean. There are 20 different archetypal bullshit characters in this game who are as poorly thought out and as uninteresting as Vanille is, but they aren't nearly as abrasive because while say Sazh continues the tradition of black guys using strictly guns in RPGs/anime and throws out a couple of chris tucker cliches people aren't as tuned into racial stereotyping in games as they are to HEY THIS GAME IS REALLY FUCKING GAY WOW *FART* WHAT A GAY GAME FOR GIRLS.

I'm not saying everything done with the characters in the game fits in exactly with their stereotypes but they definitely all feel built from the stereotype up. Sazh is still likable enough that I felt bad everytime I heard him say something like 'Day-um, let's shoot until we can't! Bwa ha!'. Vanille has a determined aspect to her at a couple points in the game which made me become alot less irritated with her because she may be all cutesy but she deals with stuff so that's cool (this doesn't last at all, I am just saying it is there). Even Snow has a sliver of depth to him, because when I found out he was an orphan I felt a little sorry for him when he said 'i'm a big hero...' next time because he's just a five year old kid who needed to give himself something to believe in, right? The game forgets about all these little interesting aspects though, and they might be accidents that I read too much into. I mean you spend 20 hours with characters and they've got to say more than the stock lines of their stereotypes, even if it isn't SUPPOSED to mean anything, it still kind of does.

I'm not defending the game at all, I'm just mumbling about some things.

the characters in final fantasy 13 are weird. all of them are various kinds of STOCK IDIOTIC, but there are a lot of things other characters say about them that make it pretty clear that the writers were aware of how idiotic they all are. it's never the sort of situation where you're really supposed to buy it. nobody in the game is fooled by snow's bullshit, but he keeps saying it all anyway. lightning's obnoxious machismo is over the top and exaggerated, but even SHE comes out and acknowledges this. everyone kinda rolls their eyes when vanille is unable to get her mind around a situation. i remember they did a little bit of this in final fantasy 12 with vaan where he spent the first part of the game as IMPORTANT CHARACTER and after a while the other characters got sick of him and told him to just stand at the back of the group, where he stayed for pretty much the rest of the game outside of just an obligatory interjection here and there. and now in final fantasy 13 they've got a LOT of that. like pretty much every character.

i guess it might just be RENEGADE TRANSLATORS or something, but it's to the point where square's thing is to just create deliberately annoying characters that everyone in an earshot quickly learns to dislike. might just be me, but i think it's possible to develop personality traits and flaws without having to make the character annoying and generally unlikeable.

all that said, i don't really think the characters in this game are really especially bad or anything. they're all fairly empty stereotypes, but that can be said about damn near every game. if nothing else, i appreciate that they made a half-hearted effort in forming some conflicts and relationships between the characters. in every goddamn game the protagonists join the party and automatically lose all identity and become mindless followers of LEADER. even the good games do this. i have wanted to see games stop doing this, and i'm a little surprised to see final fantasy 13, of all things, do it. i don't think they do it particularly well, but i appreciate the effort.

i think the problem is that the story itself is absolutely awful and uninteresting. i still don't really know all the differences between fal'cie, l'cie, cie'th, fuck'cie, and cie'nigger. and i don't really care. the world could end, leaving the main characters alive but trapped in an empty lifeless void and the story would actually be no less interesting. actually i would really prefer this. the loading times would be much better.


i'm a little afraid that i've grown into the IT'S NOT SO BAD PHASE that jaime has gone through. after what i read about this game, and after playing the first few hours, i was really convinced i would quickly despise this game. i was expecting the absolute worst, and i haven't really gotten it so far. this is a reasonably long way away from being the worst final fantasy game. i'm generally in the mood for an rpg like this at the moment, and i can tolerate this one so far.

would you agree with me that the most annoying character in the game is fucking Vanille?

eh, not really. i find people with bubbly personalities annoying, but i don't necessarily think that makes vanille annoying as a character. where i am in the game, there's nothing she's said that has really gotten under my skin any more than that sort of person would. she's just that kind of person, and thus far they haven't pushed that to the point where i couldn't accept it.

i'm a little afraid that i've grown into the IT'S NOT SO BAD PHASE that jaime has gone through. after what i read about this game, and after playing the first few hours, i was really convinced i would quickly despise this game. i was expecting the absolute worst, and i haven't really gotten it so far. this is a reasonably long way away from being the worst final fantasy game. i'm generally in the mood for an rpg like this at the moment, and i can tolerate this one so far.

I'm pretty sure you are at the middle stage where I was around when I made my post about liking the game because for a while it really does look like it's gonna shape up. The characters of the game being WEIRD and kind of interesting is most apparent at this point, I think, and it kind of recedes and the story just works towards wrapping itself up, and since it isn't an interesting story at all then the game just gets so fucking empty and boring. I couldn't have cared less about the outcome by the end of it, and around the Palumpolum I was kind of getting invested in the characters. Are you at Palumpolum, or in the run up to it? Because I think these 4-5 hours of the game are the best point. It's the only time when the incessant melodrama kind of drew me in, which I wrote about. For a little while I cared about the characters getting together and being happy, even if their whole quest/fugitive thing was boring.

Man, I've been on the last chapter of Final Fantasy 13 for a few weeks now. Chapter 11 or whatever one it was that was incredibly free roaming transformed the game into something really, really incredibly fun. After spending a dozen or so hours on that chapter and then going back to the same "run down linear corridors for hours" shit in the following chapter, I felt a little bummed out. I "think" that I left off in the final dungeon, and if it really is the end of the game, then it's an incredibly bland place to hold the climactic final battle and such.

The final dungeon and the encounters in it have pretty much killed my interest in finishing the game, but I'm pretty sure I'll drag myself through it on some random weekend just to finish the story.


Also I wish that JRPGs would go back to plain text dialogue sequences. I sit here and think back to old SNES/PS1 RPGs and I can remember the dialogue sequences really well, possibly because I had to absorb them into my brain manually by, well, reading them. I'm definitely a visual learner. The newer RPGs, which all seem to be voice acted, don't stay with me as long and I can't even remember a damn thing said by the characters in Final Fantasy 13 except maybe a few key things. I just find that there's no staying power anymore since we have voices being shoved down our throats. I can't wait on dialogue windows anymore or imagine a character with a voice of my choosing anymore, unless I want to mute the TV or something. Oh well.

jrpgs became pretty intolerable to me as a genre (for the most part) when they started becoming hugely based on anime.