Recordkeeping: Romancing SaGa 2 ONGOING

This isn't exactly a new recordkeeping tag. I've marked things "ONGOING" before, but often that's gameplay mods or MMOs, things it would be infeasible to actually mark COMPLETE or INCOMPLETE. Most games don't have the scope for that. There's no ambiguity, I know if I put in the time and effort and patience I am capable of either beating them or deciding they aren't for me.

SaGa isn't like that.

This is a modern-day port of a 20+ year old JRPG that's so complex and cryptic I'm scraping random tidbits of data off ancient GameFAQs threads and new reddit posts and stuff just to survive. "Oh by the way", a guy called Dickelheimer Jones posted eight years ago, "If your archers are wearing gloves their accuracy massively drops." I read this and I gawk and facepalm because of course that makes sense, of course, and I unequip the giant heavy gauntlets off my archer and she starts nailing shots again.

The entire game is like this but in long-form. It's like Ultima or Phantasie or The Magic Candle, the really old-school RPG series that were actively player-hostile as a paean to the twin gods of Discovery and Sadism. You're dropped into a large and unforgiving world and, after a bit of setup, simply left to go discover what your purpose in it is.

For guidance you have the knowledge that you rule an Empire and can bring other countries into it by solving their problems, and you have a list of names you want dead, Kill Bill style. The names on your list are the Seven Heroes of legend, who once saved the world in a time of need but returned different and wrong. They need to die, and you need to figure out how you kill legends with hit-all attacks that can wipe your entire party in a single round, or mind control powers, or just the power of being a JRPG Swordsman At Level 99.

It's cool though. Death is not the end. As the Emperor, your noble line is strong and you can use the magic of Inheritance to pass everything you've learned down to the next schlub in line. Will that be a fighter, mage, thief? An amazon warrior? How about a moleman from the earth's core, or a lowly shepard? While you can work through the Empire's stockpile of potential heirs with relative carelessness if you need to (because adventurers are disposable as long as the Empire itself thrives) you WILL someday reach the Final Emperor/Empress and it will be time for the final confrontations. Hope you leveled correctly.

Because, this being a SaGa game, it is entirely possible to reach that point and be literally incapable of defeating the last boss. (Happily, the new port includes a new game plus usable anytime. Throw your godlike equipment back into the past for a second try.)

It sounds like I'm describing a bad game, but it's not. It's a sadistic and twisted game, it requires dedication in a way games don't anymore. The SaGa series has always been like this, because its director (Akitoshi Kawazu) makes video games for exactly one person (Akitoshi Kawazu) and he likes his games hard and simulationist and extremely plot-lean. He makes these frustrating choices on purpose and every one of them is planned and thought out to its conclusion.

To me that's not bad game design so much as MEAN game design. I respect the hell out of it, though. And I'm enough of a masochist to be in here, plugging away.

That said, if I do nothing but play Romancing SaGa 2 for the next month (and I could, in fact, do nothing but play RS2 for the next month) I will go bugfuck crazy and start eating the curtains and drawing boss strategies on the walls in black marker. I gotta divert and play other things to give my brain a bit of decompression time.

So it's not abandoned and it's not complete, hell it may never be complete because I am NOT good with character builds and RS2 allegedly has one of the hardest end boss battles in all JRPGdom.

Ongoing seems the right tag for Romancing SaGa 2.

Official End Of 2017 Wrap-Up Post

If 2016 was a year that didn't have the courtesy to just go away, 2017 was a year that grabbed us by the arm and dragged us through a whirlwind tour of everything bad it could do to us, the scenery blasting past while 2017 laughed and howled like a homicidal maniac. It was all a blur of tears and disorienting speed and a relentless sensory assault of wrongness.

It's December and I still feel like it's August or something. Did we actually lose autumn? I think we lost autumn.

Everyone check under your seat for autumn please?

... Eh on second thought let's just leave it behind.

I personally dealt with the chaotic fatigue of this year by huddling up and becoming even more of a hermit. 2017 is the year I abandoned Twitter because I disliked what it was doing to me mentally. I abandoned Twitch because it was creating psychological blocks around what was "worth" playing to show off and these blocks persisted even in offline mode, ruining my play habits a bit. I dropped Livejournal to post full-time on Dreamwidth because of LJ's TOS.

I closed off more than ever this year, and I'm wondering if that was a bad life choice or the correct reaction. Maybe it was both, I'm not great at doing stuff.

I made a few efforts to break out of my isolation and make new friends here and elsewhere but for the most part I huddled down and played games and tried to avoid the world outside my door. The stuff that leaked in under the frame smelled terrible, and my little cluster of loved ones talked about that sometimes, but mostly we huddled up.

My first of three resolutions for next year involves taking that even further to aid my mental health. Aside from a sparse few sites (here, Metafilter, one or two forums that are heavily moderated, a couple other blogs) I want to stop reading the comments anywhere on the internet.

(I find that Comments to Cats is very helpful. If you're not a cat person perhaps there is a puppy edition somewhere. If there isn't, there really should be.)

No more glancing at what people have to say about news or gaming or whatever video I just got linked on Youtube. No more tolerance for whiny, angry dead weight. I try to enjoy things first and foremost and right now the internet atmosphere is frequently hostile to that approach, so I'm finished with it.

I'm tired of letting anyone from anywhere come into my metaphorical house and crap on my metaphorical rug. I don't need these people and I don't need their bitter, edgy opinions. I'm fine with cutting that out of my life entirely, because it is not my job to wring joy out of a bricklike heart.

Every minute you spend on someone else's godawful but non-life-threatening opinions is less time you can spend thinking about how great whatever you actually enjoy is.

That applies to me as much as anyone else, though. If you hate what I have to say here, I thus release you: You are free. Go, find something you can love, and be troubled by me no more.

Now, cutting out comments and discussion threads does mean I would get even more isolated and limited, so my second resolution involves reaching out to people more. I know a fair number of people I just don't talk to as much as I should. I need to open up more, figure out who belongs in my life and who doesn't. I want to be accessible and genuine with people I like and part from those I do not.

People fall in and out of each other's lives all the time, for any number of reasons. With the collapse of most of the big-name instant messengers over the last few years, I know for a fact that there are people I loved that I will never be able to speak to again. They've moved along in their lives and left no way of contacting them. I want to hold on to those that stuck around.

If you take one thing away from this, please: Find the people that matter to you and tell them how you feel. It really is an important thing.

As to last year's Big Moment, genderwise I've slid into "being female online" really easily. Like, I declared that's what I want to be, it's what I am, it has taken no effort to just DO it. I'm still working on what that means and how far to take it, offline. I've never liked HAVING a body, I don't know if I feel a need to modify it, when I would rather it just be GONE.

Plus there's just plain... going for gender neutrality, which is ALSO a nice feeling.

The expense is painful to consider too.

I just don't know. Research and thought. There's also the terrible concerns that I'm a living stereotype as someone who loves pink and girlish things and...

Mmh. It's all very complicated. No bombshells this year, just gratitude that things are working out mostly okay.

I'm terrified every day of my life, y'know? So much could be going wrong, or IS going wrong. I try to hold on to what's right.

Aside from that, I feel like I've been a good (or good-enough) person and supportive to friends and loved ones over the last year, but I can always get better there too. There's never a reason to stop reaching for higher standards.

Next year is... I'm not gonna lie, it's probably gonna suck really hard, but maybe ...

I dunno.

Maybe it'll be different.

Maybe we'll be surprised in a good way.

We have hope, right?

All we can do is hope that this dark cloud has a silver lining. On that note, and with a little music to play us out, I formally declare...

2017 IS OVER
2017 IS OVER
2017 IS OVER