Wednesday, January 16, 2008

First Entry - In the beginning,

Welcome to the House of Zon. Great name, I know.

First off, where does Zon come from? Why does Zon need a house?

1) Zon is short for the Amazon class from Diablo II. I have used 'zon' in some form or another in various games since then because I like the sound of it. ReZon was my first Zon. Pay attention, there may be a quiz later.

2) House of Zon was first used while I was playing Guild Wars. My main character was (slash is I suppose, though I don't play hardly ever anymore) Re Zon, and with the rest of my characters I decided they would become part of her house - each with a nice little back story with my main character. While these back stories were barely touched upon (where I regularly posted on the GWOnline.net forums), I've always liked the name.

What else? Well, as the intro at the top of the page says, I just want a place to voice some thoughts on random things.

I'm a fan of Nintendo, immensely enjoying the Nintendo DS and the Wii - so you'll probably be hearing more about both of those, and the games I like. I'm also a big fan of older games, especially SNES-era RPGs, and other 8 and 16 bit classics.

I also enjoy reading, but rather than talking about actual books I've read lately, I'll probably just voice some thoughts on Marvel Comics and the events going on there.

Okay, so that's me - or at least the me I'm going to be while posting on my blog. Now... onto to my first story:

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

FFXII:RW is a RTS (real time strategy) game, the first under the Final Fantasy name. It takes place directly after the events of Final Fantasy XII. Having not actually played FFXII, I just read the story overview on Wikipedia and then started playing.

My buddy duB gave me this for Christmas, and while I have been swamped knee-deep in video gaming since then, I have put about 14 hours into it, and I can usually get an hour in a day. I'll try to avoid story elements as to not spoil it if you're planning on playing it.

So it was pretty simple up until around 50% through the game - read some story, play a few battles - no big stress. Tons of fun, but not super-challenging. A great casual gamer's game.

Then Lo and Behold, a battle. No, not just any battle, this was an EPIC battle. Or at least I declared it to be after approximately two dozen attempts. I don't recall the length of the battle, but I'm sure it was around 10 minutes, though it may have been longer (it definitely felt longer).

Quick Overview - there are 3 types of units, Melee, Ranged, and Flying. There are 6 types of said unit, 4 relating to the elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air), one healing , and one neutral that has no elemental strength or weakness. Within these types there are three tiers, with tier three being the strongest. You may have only one tier three unit in your party.

The objective was to beat a boss, who would be surrounded by healers by the time I got there and a tier three unit, AND protect another character not in my party who is conveniently positioned very close to the boss.

My first several attempts were completely offensive. I had the tier 2 healers, and all the rest were fire and neutral type units. After many failures, I began to think it was going to require me to go and grind some levels or something.

So I go and complete the two side quests I hadn't done yet, and one of them gives me access to the tier 3 healing unit, Ultima. As it turns out, Ultima is the ultimate healer, and also has a devastating offensive area attack. I then return to the battle with Ultima as my tier 3, and after about 8 more tries, I finally succeed.

My success revolved around me keeping my army brimming with healing units, and just a few attackers, along with my party leaders, 4 of the 5 which died continuously. The battle lasted so long because of the small number of offensive units I had, and I was forced to slowly wear down my opponent. Interestingly, Ultima never died.

Immediately after the boss was felled, another objective popped up, and I thought 'Ah crap!' because if I lost the second objective after trying so many times on the first, I most likely would have been done for the night. I was going to jokingly say I would have put it down for good, but this game really is just so much fun, that that won't happen until I have beaten it. The second objective turned out to be a piece of cake by the way.

I probably could have written a lot more on this subject, but I mostly just wanted hit the high points to keep it simple.

That's it for now...

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