Thanks! Been a hell of a long road, but I'm finally here! GOG's probably gonna be a real bitch on wheels, but I'm ready for it. The avatar's hair color is actually fairly close to my own... minus all the grays, of course, but imagine I'm a teenager; I've been going gray since at least my mid-20s.

Thanks! I was actually aware of it this time! ...even if I didn't really play any games, but I worked on some new avatars, so that almost counts.

Thanks! Looks like everyone noticed, but me...

Apparently, the dude composed EVERYTHING for SEGA, and did a lot of work for Nihon Falcom, and that's a damn respectable pedigree! As for Ms. Shimomura, she composed that song that goes with everything, so her cred is solid; I don't even hold Kingdom Hearts against her.

Thanks! Despite the fact that my page looks like a fucking ghost town, I was spending it with video games. Those 200+ soundtracks (yeah, so I found some FM versions of SMS soundtracks, and I remembered that they're neat to listen to in the Winter) that I panic-grabbed was something I worked on quite a bit, knocking out all 7 of my Game Gear soundtracks. Ninja Gaiden and Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible were total busts, but I have a nice selection from Aleste 1 & 2, Shinobi 1 & 2, and Sylvan Tale. The Alestes sound almost like something Kemco would've put out on the NES, but after mountains of cocaine, and while listening to the Shinobis, I had this moment of, "Sounds kinda like Legacy of the Wizard... Wait... Is this composed by Yuzo fucking Koshiro!?" And sure enough, it was. I'm really starting to gain an appreciation for his work lately; his and Yoko Shimomura's.

That and I did a dumb thing. So, if you've been stalking me on Steam, you might've noticed that I very briefly played something called World of Islands. It's a really neat premise: explore different islands searching for treasure in a JRPG setting. It's like a dream come true! ...aaaand it was really unfinished. So uh... I uh... kinda... offeredmyservicesasawriterandheaccepted. So, I did the thing, and now, I'm writing a script for it. I'm excited for what it could be, and I hope that it gets off the ground.

Wow, we've been doing this for 8 years already? What the heck?

People get so pissy about voice acting, too; I guess it's just because I'm a dinosaur that cut my teeth on the likes of Dragon Warrior that had A SEPARATE FUCKING COMMAND FOR GOING UP AND DOWN STAIRS MY FUCKING GOD WHY. Reading is no big deal to me. Granted, I'm a video game player; don't turn my experience into a fucking visual novel or I'd buy an actual novel and print out some anime titties to use as a bookmark. Well yeah, but I didn't expect them to actually acknowledge it; I just thought that was something that fans joked about... shit, those are the same thing these days, aren't they?

I was thorough, too, but sometimes, you have to just leap into the fucking aether to find a gem or something (the volcanic area comes to mind), so I didn't always get every single thing my first try, or I didn't grind up to buy better shit before taking on a quest, and that often screwed me over. Dulan was basically always a pain in the ass, and Garland was a real cocksucker until I gained a few more levels. And you know me: I'm not one to run from a fight, so I shouldn't have been underleveled, especially after how damn much time I spent grinding in the Eldam Mountains. Even then, after the grind of just a level or 2, it was like someone flipped the switch into a different difficulty mode altogether, but I checked, and I was still playing on Normal. Cool; I have you marked down.

Well, that's good to know that it isn't just me. I mean, it doesn't really matter; I can take or leave voice acting in damn near anything, especially if I'm just playing by myself. When I play with my lady, I read all of the dialogue aloud, and if the cast is too large, sometimes, I can't even remember what the fuck voice I gave any given character. I mean, if it were Ys, Dogi would always have the Kool-Aid Man's voice - that's a given - but some of the more generic characters tend to get lost in the shuffle. I love how they played that up in Oath in Felghana, too; in the ending, he even says, "Hey, you're bustin' my walls!" Guess I'm not the only one who made that joke that that's all he ever does.

Yeah, he's the final boss; Garland and Gildas were bigger dicks, I though. Oh, and Dulan; Dulan sucked, too. Most of the others were "FUCK; this is IMPOSSIBLE" *finds a sword she missed* "Fuck; this is easy." I imagine I'll like the others; I might even like them more, because I don't have an original to which to compare them. It's probably going to be quite some time until I get to my GOG stockpile, unless they turn up in one of my lightning rounds.

It's really only the bosses, and most of them are okay, if you have everything that you possibly can up to that point. Well, or reasonably can; you can technically have the banded shit before you fight Dulan the first time, but you'd have to be crazier than I am to grind that much. I'm not sure which version you played, but the GOG version doesn't give you the ability to change the soundtrack. Not sure which version the top reviewer on GOG played, either, since s/he talks about the voice acting, which doesn't even exist. I've scoured the configuration files about 5 times, and I couldn't find options for either of those things. I can change Elena's outfit, though. That said, every song is in a folder named Music in .ogg format, so all I'd have to do is rip the remainder of whichever soundtracks I wanted, reformat them to .ogg, loop them properly, and toss them in there, and I could do the same thing - even mix and match soundtracks - and I could probably bang that out in a single afternoon, if I felt so inclined.

I did enjoy it overall, even if Galbalan was nothing more than a series of progressively louder "Oh COME on!"s; that final phase was ridiculous. I started with that one, because I've played Ys 3 on the SNES so damn many times that while playing Oath in Felghana, I consciously remembered things like, "Oh, this line was translated just a little differently." I wasn't sure I'd like any of them, so I stuck with familiarity, so I knew very approximately what I was getting myself into. I'll get to them sooner or later.

Well, I didn't expect to like it much going in, because I'd only seen the PSP version, which has a total polygon count of, like 2; damn thing looks like it stumbled half-drunk out of an N64 or something. Didn't really like the game much, and almost just stopped fucking playing altogether while I was fighting Dulan. Once I got to the Ilvern Ruins, I started to enjoy myself. It's really damn unforgiving as far as missing things; miss one thing and you're FUCKED, but find that thing and impossible boss fights turn into an absolute joke. Visually, it isn't as good as the original, and the music... *sigh* It's not as "shred master on cocaine" as some of the Ys remakes I've heard, but it does get a little silly in some of the tracks, like how Eldam Mountains is a 1980s Monster Ballad, for some reason.

All that said, the combat is solid and not as loose as in the original. They got rid of those stupid rings and put in some useful magic, too, so that's a plus. Though apocryphal as all hell, the story is fleshed out in a way that doesn't feel out of place. Overall, I like it so far, even if the boss fights can be absolutely torturous with some of the shit they pull. They did also do a good job of conveying how fucking weird the monster design was in the original; that's not always easy to convey in 3 dimensions. Oh! And I love how the characters and enemies are low-grade rendered sprites, like they just fell out of SaGa Frontier; maybe not cutting edge, but I love that aesthetic, but I do also adore SaGa Frontier. The environments are nice, too; Ilvern Ruins is drop-dead gorgeous, even if it's completely different from the original. I do also have Ys Origin and... whatever Ys 6 was (Ark of Napishtim or something?), so I'll play those at some point, too.