salinea | Entries tagged with medium: video games

I finished playing Dragon Age Veilguard yesterday. Enjoyed the game overall, especially the ending. But I have mixed feelings about the game though.

Alright, so for a lengthy review with specific spoilers so be careful.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

I finished writing a full fledged fanfic for the first time in... forever (2008? Around that. I wrote a few very short pieces in between but very slap dash). It's for a minor fandom and a secondary cast of character, so unsurprisingly it didn't exactly draw a lot of attention. I don't a lot of people who read this (amongst the people who still read their lj/dw flist in the first place) are familiar with it, but for my own piece of mind, I like posting it here as well:

Green and Golden (5748 words) by Salinea
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, Fire Emblem Series
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Naesala/Leanne, Naesala/Reyson
Characters: Naesala (Fire Emblem), Reyson (Fire Emblem), Leanne (Fire Emblem), Nealuchi (Fire Emblem)
Additional Tags: Dramatic Irony, Irony, Puppy Love, Coming of Age, Pre-Canon, Fantastic Racism, Fluff and Angst
Summary: I trust you remember that when you and your sister were young, it was I, and not Tibarn, who watched over you?

The shift to Ao3 does mean a lot less comments, I hadn't quite realised how disheartening that (I mostly leave kudos over comments when I read fics myself). Not that I dislike kudos - I'm always happy receiving them ^^ - but when you have the expectation of a newly posted fic, it does feel a bit... lacking in interaction, I guess. It doesn't help that in the first place the shift to tumblr means much less in-depth fannish interaction. *sighs* Such in the stuff.

So yeah, I haven't written on DW/LJ myself in forever. I always want to post reviews of books I'm reading or such, but I can't summon the motivation for it. Fandom wise, obviously I'm still very much in the fire emblem fandom (mostly Tellius, but also Jugdral remains on my mind. I'm liking the Elibe games but not so much in a fannish way) and I've actually been reading a whole lot of final fantasy 7 fanfics (as my pinboard can attest). Not reading much comics anymore (I vaguely follow and want to get back in it, but also lack the motivation for it) and haven't felt like reading MCU fanfics lately either. Can't say I'm much excited for Age of Apocalypse either given how disappointing i found DoFP.

Crossposts: http://etrangere.livejournal.com/443591.html

So my adventures in video games have continued with me trying to play FE 7 (the first Fire Emblem I played on my own instead of with

runespoor, although she still provided imput for support advices in particular XD) and I've been documenting my playthrough on tumblr: http://demoiselledefortune.tumblr.com/tagged/dem-plays-fe7/chrono

I finished the game this week end. It’s a pretty awesome game.

My favourite part was the three lords, who are all great in term of characterisations and have awesome interaction with one another. Of the FE I’ve played so far, they are my fave set of lords!

On of the other hand, of the FE I’ve played so far, Nergal is probably my least favourite villain >_>; Also all the narrative around Ninian was pretty awfully sexist :(

Anyway, there were a lot of other awesome, loveable characters, and some which I would not call loveable but who were interesting. A short list of my favourite would be Nino, Erk, Serra, Legault, Mathew, Rebecca, Sain, Canas, Fiora, Pent and Louise, Guy, Rath... and I'll keep it at that because I said it was a SHORT list. XD

The overall story is… I’d say serviceable without being great (certainly no worse than Path of Radiance). The most interesting part of it was the Bern shenanigans, the Black Fang as tragic villains and Nino.

I found the motif of bad and exploitative parenthood unfolded in a very interesting way (and especially as a commentary of Nergal as a would be transcendent immortal vampire), as was the motif of found family. (well tragic family shenanigans is one of my fave things ^^).

So I will want to play FE7 again on Hector mode; and I will also want to play FE6. I’m not actually sure in what order I should do that so do you guys have suggestions?

Crossposts: http://etrangere.livejournal.com/443364.html

I thought it would be interesting to look at characters’ affinities and see what it tells us about them and about the writers’ intention about them. While Affinities have a direct effect on gameplay via the support bonus and some of them are probably picked based on game balance (see the amount of Earth Affinity people in the Dawn’s Brigade), nevertheless the concept of Elements conveys a rich imagery which often seems at least partially relevant.

( elemental musings under the cut )

Crossposts: http://etrangere.livejournal.com/443109.html

So yeah, I finished playing Tales of Xillia the other day.

I was playing with runespoor who’d finished the Milla version of the game just before, so we were doing the Jude version of the game.

I mostly liked it a lot, at least I very much enjoyed the characters and ambiance and gameplay. I have a bit more mixed feelings about the plot and themes.

( Read more... )

Next game I’m playing with Runespoor is Fire Emblem 4. :3

Crossposts: http://etrangere.livejournal.com/441149.html

So remember how runespoor had me play Tales of Symphonia?

Well next she made me play Fire Emblem 9/10.

Actually we played Path of Radiance... I think in the spring? I don't actually remember, but I remember we spent the summer with FF9 and Kingdom Heart 2 and fall with FF7 (the final fantasies, I was the one who had already played with them though I hadn't finished either up till then) and I think PoR was before, so.

And in the last few weeks we did Radiant Dawn (there was a big gap because of technical difficulties with the data transfer and all sorts of stuff).

Anyway PoR didn't make that much of an impression on me... it's a fairly nice, but fairly straightforward story. I'm really not much into strategy game, and most of the time "playing" meant moving the characters where runespoor was telling me to. I also found the way that the characters we use in the game to fight the battles and the characters who have the most storytime focus are somewhat... not quite the same a bit hard in term of emotional involvement. Still, I didn't dislike it, by a far mile, I was enjoying the game and found quite a few characters to like. I latched very quickly on Soren and he remained by favorite through the game; also Jill has a most awesome character journey and I also found the birds interaction very entertaining and Ranulf pretty great.

Radiant Dawn worked on another level for me still. Part of it may have been being more used to the gameplay & storytelling style; but also because it's a story that works in a much more interesting and multi layered way. I love the way that each part somewhat deconstructs what has gone before XD I found the way we shifted PoV from sides was brilliant. Part 3 was my favorite, and also liked part 4 a lot (although I wish they had had more discussions addressing the awkwardness of it - likewise the last part and ending doesn't have enough discussions addressing reveals for my taste). ( hitherby spoilers )

Crossposts: http://etrangere.livejournal.com/440290.html

in which vejigante what thoughts I had about Tales of Symphonia and what I thought of the main characters:

well, I loved it. Pretty awesome story. Pretty awesome characters. Pretty awesome themes & stuff. Pretty cool gameplay too in so far as I can judge (not exactly a video game expert ^^). Very much hit me in the feels.

I just love the depth that all the main characters have. Nobody’s just an archetype/trope; they are really well layered and thought out psychologically speaking (and also very appealing!!!). There’s also a lot of random cool minor characters like Chocolate and Kate and Linart and so on, which are very well realised as characters. Obviously the villains (at least the big ones, the Desian Cardinals are pretty threadthin) are also extremely well characterised and multi-layered. I do love how much the antagonists spend their time plotting & scheming against one in the background while the protagonists do their stuff XD (there were several moments where I was like: “should I draw a diagram or relationship map of the Desian&Cruxis&Renegate politicking?”) And how much the story overall had twists & betrayals & double agenting. Bet on rewatch there’s a lot of hilarious moments of “you know that I know that you know and meanwhile we’re pretending for everyone else”.

Thematically, I love a lot of the subtleties and nuances although I think they are also weakened by the flaws of world building (I don’t think the discrimination of Half-Elves is well established as part of the setting on Sylvarant; and you keep butting on the weirdness of the discrimination against Half Elves being THE thing while there’s barely any Elves around so you wonder where they come from…) but from the very beginning with the situation in Isolia and the Human Ranch they set up things as pretty complicated and nuanced as well as completely appalling. And they typically don’t take the easy way out in term of calling out any characters on the mistakes or over simplification they may do, I like that.

Idk, does that answer your questions and do you want answers to something else? I definitly don’t mind talking about ToS right now ^^

( thoughts on the main characters, pretty long )

Crossposts: http://etrangere.livejournal.com/438921.html

runespoor is an enabler. She made me play Tales of Symphonia.

Okay, first she made me play Batten Kaitos, which was also good and also swallowed my life. But TALES OF SYMPHONIA OMG THAT STUPID GAME THOSE STUPID CHARACTERS ZEFOHZFOFHZIEUGREIBYHCFYUIFHEIUR

CUTEST GAME EVER

And by "CUTEST" I mean in the way that CLAMP does cute and I am not speaking of Card Captor Sakura, okay? OKAY.

some reaction shots as I remember them, spoilered:

( probably won't make any sense to anyone but me and runespoor but maybe someone else would like to read it idk )