SoA: Wrapped up the moonfish sidequest. Attempt to redeem Ramirez through backstory = failed. Beat final Piastol, completed the crew and found all discoveries, then headed to Soltis to stomp Ramirez. Not difficult in any way, but that describes most of the game, right there. The optional bosses put up a good fight, at least. (Note: I didn't bother with air pirate Vigoro. The requirements for that are just insane. I'd have to grind until I'd killed another five hundred or so enemies just to unlock him. Like hell I'm doing that for just one fight. So yeah, that form's illegal on grounds of obscurity, as far as I'm concerned. He can take his plot form and hang out in Heavy with Decus.) Amusingly, David Bowie's "Be My Wife" came on right when the ending of the game hit the Enrique+Moegi part (followed by "A New Career in a New Town" for the credits run-down of where the characters went after the game!) I'd thrown a bunch of CDs in the stereo before playing, just a funny coincidence that Low was going that time.
Fun game. It's fluff, but it knows that it's fluff and it is determined to be the best mindless diversion that it possibly can be. I could gripe about getting bogged down by randoms when looking for discoveries, or some balance issues like item-casting making magic mostly not worth using, but meh. The aesthetics of the world are great and made exploring just for the sake of seeing what's out there fun in its own right. I can overlook some minor flaws for the sake of the game having so much personality. 7-8/10 quality, I think? Somewhere around there.
Ramirez is totally gay for Galcian.
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Crisis Core: Oh yeah, I finished this too. Not much to say, really. Strikes me as very average on every front. There's nothing especially bad about it, it just...failed to capture my imagination in any way. Nothing clicked. FFVII just didn't have a sufficiently vivid setting to support all these side stories. Genesis in particular was underwhelming--every time he showed up, he'd be spouting poetry, and Square's writers just don't have the chops to make that sound decent. I just wanted him to shut up. The ending was handled about as well as could be expected, I'll give it that much.
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So yeah, PSP/Gamecube need to be returned now. It'd be awesome if someone was passing by my area on the way to/from DLcon and could just pick them up, but it doesn't sound like that's the case.