On: My To-Do List

 I’ve been chugging along through Chrono Trigger the past… few weeks I suppose. I haven’t been keeping up as well as I should. Especially considering I now have a pile of things to do. Finish Chrono Trigger, replay Ocarina of Time, read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and now play FFCC: My Life as a King. So I’ll touch on each subject today, even the book.

Chrono Trigger is amazing. I haven’t gotten very far, and I’m already in love. The battle style is incredible. It combines the timed waiting system with a paused menu system. Basically, you can’t move until your movement bar is filled. Monsters also have the same system, though the bars may fill faster or slower than yours, and they can attack as many times as their bar fills before yours ever does, as is the case when I was hit with Slow four times on one character. But once you pull up the “Attack” or “Combo” menu, it pauses everyone else’s bars, including your other party members. This is a good system. It lets you scroll through your options without being too rushed, but makes you quick on your feet for when the bars are filling. The story so far is simple, though complex. I’ve travelled in time twice. And I’ve had my actions judged before, well, a judge and jury. I’ve realized I’m not quite an asshole, though I’m well on my way. Seems pretty accurate.

Currently, roswell73 is beginning a journey into my passion, the Zelda series. He had plenty of trouble playing Link to the Past, we figured that we might as well let him move on to Ocarina of Time, which is significantly easier for him. To help him prepare for the more difficult parts, and to help him find the more obscure points, I’m playing through to refresh my memory of the finer details. So far, he’s finished the Forest Temple, and only gotten confused or lost once. Can anyone say Water Temple? I’m making a list of things for him to do or find before he enters that Temple. Along the lines of getting every bottle and filling them with magic potion, getting Din’s Fire, etc. I’m sure we know what that’s for.

The movie for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is coming out soon, and I’ve been told to read the book before they all drag me to see it. So far, it’s interesting to say the least. Written in the fashion of a history book, detailing his life as known from common fact and the diaries the narrator was given. Written by a fictional man, he gave an account of how he came upon the diaries and information before beginning this history of the “greatest vampire hunter of all time”. I don’t have a clear recommendation yet, as I’ve barely begun the novel, but I’m certainly interested.

Now, I’ve played Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, and I loved it to death. Fun game, I highly urge anyone who hasn’t already played to go ahead and try. Based on this, I played FFCC: The Crystal Bearers. It had some interesting gameplay, a story I found myself just barely involved with, plenty of extra things to do, people to knock over, monsters to search out, and items to hunt down. It left me wanting just ever so slightly for a sequel to that particular game. There are other FFCC titles, and I found FFCC: My Life as a King on the Wii shopping channel. I was hoping for a fighting game of sorts. I got a city builder. As Little King Leo, I had to rebuild a city with magic, and then commission the willing sons and daughters of the citizens to find more supplies to build more buildings. It had a clever little way of the adventurers doing the things they were told to. This is hard to get from these kinds of games. However after a point, the solo adventurers just wouldn’t cut it. So eventually, when I gained the ability to make a tavern, they could team up. You can’t imagine my excitement when they all got together into parties and did as they were told, and they weren’t overpowered by enemies anymore. And the new adventurers wouldn’t even try to go out by themselves. They stay in the city and train. This is actually exciting to me for some reason. Considering this is a stupid game, I’m way too involved in their success.

On: The Kokiri

   Something that’s always bothered me in Ocarina of Time are the Kokiri. A race of children created by the Great Deku Tree, they live out their lives in the fashion that regular children would in such a setting. You have the leader, who seems like a bully, that merely takes that stance as a father figure, or perhaps an older brother to his fellow Kokiri. The mother, or older sister, figure, who protects her friends and keeps watch over their home. These things would be the natural flow in any society of children. However they’re still a mystery to me.

   These children seem to be curious, they seem to seek the unknown. The Know-it-All brothers are a testament to that. They sought knowledge, and they found it. Children, when interested, are insatiable in their curiosity and capacity for searching. But they won’t leave the forest. They say that they will die if they leave the forest. But come on. In every group of children is the one that wouldn’t care. That would be so curious, he was just pulled in and had to find out. Would he really die? Or would he merely age. Every time they leave the forest do they begin to age ever so slightly? Was it once that a child left the forest, and became so entranced by the outside world that he spent long enough to hit a growth spurt? Maybe the Great Deku Tree used to allow them out of his anti-aging magic, but as adults they were no more than the average Hylian? Was it him who kept a mental barrier on the children, keeping them within his protective gaze? One could argue That Link himself is the embodiment of curiosity in this group. But he’s meant to be the purest form of courage in the whole of Hyrule. So why would he be something different to the Kokiri? Then you could imagine that Fado, the little girl with the poufy blonde hair at the end of the trail of bridges over Kokiri forest, is the embodiment of curiosity. Later in the game, if you enter the Lost Woods and turn immediately left, you find her standing in the lit clearing. She tells you that anyone who gets lost in the Lost Woods gets turned into a Stalfos. Return, and you find a Stalfos in her place. Was she the curious one, who instead turned to the corners of the Lost Woods, only to lose herself and be trapped as a monster?

   That certainly would stifle the curiosity in any of the others.