What Am I Doing?

Yeah, I still have yet to finish any of the games I listed in my last post.  I won't even list all the games I bought, though.  In my defense, they were all ultra-cheap.  Maybe I should take drastic measures for 2011, like limiting myself to buying one game a month, or buying everything I want now (no restrictions) and then closing the wallet 100% for 2011.  That would be tough.

Well, maybe my current system will work.  I've eased the cutoff price up to $20 because I was tired of debating whether or not to spend completion tokens on $13 or $15 games. I figure once a current-gen console game hits $20, it won't go much lower unless it's a real turd or mega-bomb.  Take for instance a by all accounts good game, Darksiders.  That game has been $30 and then $20 for a while now, but I've yet to see it get near $10, whereas some supposedly big releases this year that flopped I've seen on sale in the $5-$10 range, and I don't even mean on Steam!

So, I don't really know what I'm ultimately going to do with this whole game buying/playing balancing act, but for now I'll say 2 completions earn 1 purchase for games over $20, I guess.  I started at 1 for 1 above $10, but this may be a better balance as far as inflow and outflow.

Enough of that--games! I've been busy playing a whole host of stuff in the last few weeks, and that's what counts.  I got a new big-screen TV to game on, and that's caused me to mix things up some, as well.
I had a slight Monster Hunter resurgence on the Wii, playing a bunch more online and encountering several new big monsters I'd never fought before.  It's a great game, and a lot of fun.  Why the hell is it shackled to portables and hobbled, barely-online enabled systems.  Why bother with huge fail bucket projects like Lost Planet 2 when an HD Monster Hunter would be a sure fire success in Japan at the very least, and could crack the west wide open for Capcom?

I also returned to Bayonetta one night last week, to pick up where I left off a few months back.  I was pretty confused, having forgotten a lot of how the combat system flows and how to handle different enemy types.  Mixing up the weapons I used helped some.  I only went through one chapter, though, and I'll be needing to see to that again soon, to continue on and hopefully finish the game up before New Year's.  Bayo is a really fun game, but I just have so much else I'm more interested in that it's hard to get around to.  Yeah, life is tough in these hard times.

I've been playing a lot of Fallout, also.  I'm more acclimated to it now, and I've made some good progress.  I actually completed the first major quest, which is to find a new water chip to replace the one in the main character's home vault.  You're given a deadline of 150 in-game days in which to accomplish this, or the water runs out in your vault, everyone dies, and it's game over.  In my travels to find a replacement, though, I started to wonder if living underground in vaults is the best thing for survivors in the wasteland.  There is definitely life above ground, dangerous as it is up there.  I half expected the water chip quest to be the entirety of the main quest line of the game, and after finishing that up the rest of the world just being there to run around in and do as you will, but no, there is more to it than that.  I guess this was before the days of open world games as we know them, now.  No, my next task is to hunt down whoever or whatever is behind the too-rapid growth in the super-mutant population, and stop whatever they are doing.  I believe I ran into some of this faction in my search for the water chip, but when I return to where I met them now, circumstances have changed, and I'm attacked on sight, so I'm thinking about going to someone else for help, perhaps the Brotherhood of Steel.  I'm definitely getting into this game.

Another game I've been playing a big chunk of is Dawn of War II.  I have no way of really knowing how far into the game I am, but I'm estimating maybe halfway.  I keep performing well enough on missions to deploy an extra time each day, which as far as I can work out, is allowing me to pursue optional objectives in addition to playing out the main campaign.  My squads of Space Marines are all around levels 12-14, currently, and Wargear drops are plentiful on each sortie. This game is a ton of fun to play, but the mission structure makes it a little too easy to stop playing.  The missions can get pretty intense when you are essentially controlling 4 individual Diablo characters at once against hordes of enemies and boss encounters.  It's too easy to just walk away after one or two quick missions, especially playing near bed-time, when I don't want to get too amped up.  I really, really like this game, though.  I already own the first expansion, Chaos Rising, and the next, Retribution, is a sure purchase next year.

The recent announcement of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim made me really want to go back and play some more Oblivion (TES IV), so I found myself re-installing it this past Sunday.  I still have all of the Shivering Isles content unplayed, and it may remain that way, because now that I've played the total conversion mod Nehrim, I don't think I want to go back to the vanilla game.  The Nehrim designers, who also made total conversions for TES III: Morrowind, I'm given to understand, have taken Oblivion, broken it down into its constituent parts, and reassembled from them an entirely new world with its own mythology, creating an almost all-new RPG.  Sure, all of the building blocks are familiar, but entire systems have been overhauled to address some of the more common complaints players of Oblivion had, and the result is a game that I feel comfortable in saying is just better, mechanically.

Oblivion featured some odd, almost experimental design decisions.  Everywhere you went, monsters and loot were basically level-synched to your character, which allowed for total freedom in exploring the world, but meant that you would never really find anything all that exciting when you did.  You never found a super bad ass sword that made you entirely overpowered, you only found the sword that was balanced to be pretty decent vs the enemies who were balanced to put up not too much of a fight.  This all meant that leveling up in general felt pretty meaningless.  If you leveled, so did everyone else.  You would run into situations where random bandits on the roads would be wearing the same high level armor that you were.  Gaining new abilities never seemed to make you more powerful, only give you more variety in what you could do.

Nehrim fixes this by just going back to a more conventional setup where enemies are assigned static levels, and areas are populated with enemies and loot of a certain range of levels.  All of the sudden, combat and exploration are both more exciting, making for a better game, overall.  It doesn't stop there, though, they have overhauled the inventory and standard UI, also, making them more functional and PC-friendly.  Oblivion was basically a console port, and the inventory, UI, and FOV really reflect that. Nehrim helps out in those areas.  The map in the original game was a real pain to use, and the guys behind this mod have done a lot to improve on that, too.  You can still definitely see Oblivion's flaws poking out, but Nehrim tries it's best to smooth them over.

So that's what Nehrim is mechanically, but how does it play, you ask?  Well, it's of course a first person RPG, like Oblivion, focused on melee/ranged/magic combat and character growth featuring an open world and a ton of quests, all optional after the first couple of hours.  The plot is that you are a monk who has grown up in an abbey, and you receive a mysterious letter telling you that your life is in danger unless you show up to meet the sender at an old abandoned mine, and to come alone and tell no one. Upon arrival, you are attacked by trolls living in the mine, fall through some floor boards to the lower levels, and have to find your way out again, encountering other recipients of the same mysterious letter, most already killed by the trolls.  When you finally find your way back to the entrance of the mine, you are alone, and arrive to find a powerful mage torching a pack of trolls.  This mage explains that he was the one who asked you there, along with several other candidates, but of course did not expect the trolls or for all the other candidates to be killed.  Turns out, a secret brotherhood of mages (secret to avoid persecution in the magic-fearing kingdom) have been watching you and these other candidates for some time, and have decided you are fit of character and natural ability to join them.  It's literally an offer you can't refuse; they'll kill you if you do.  You are given a forged letter announcing your conscription into the army of the kingdom for some far-off war, and told to give it to the head of the monks at your abbey, and then to meet with the mage again in a nearby village.  The mage disappears, leaving you to your own devices.  This is basically where the game opens up.  You'll have to do a few little quests before you can leave the encampment surrounding the mine, which is under attack by a rogue group of mages (different from the group that has just recruited you, by their robes), but after that you're free to go out and explore the world and do as you will.

I'm following the main quest line so far, with a few diversions into caves and ruins I've discovered, and random side quests to uncover more about my character's past pre-Abbey.  I've been playing for about 5 hours, so far, and really enjoying Nehrim so far.  If you have a copy of the PC version of Oblivion (retail or Steam, either way), and you want to breathe some new life into it, definitely check out this total conversion, which basically amounts to a whole new 50+ hour RPG, and completely free, of course!

Killer, Crusader, Revolutionary

I was up until 6 a.m. over this past Saturday night, binging on Oblivion.

I followed the Dark Brotherhood quest line to its inexorable conclusion, with no shortage of surprises along the way. Just as I was starting to question the point of moving from one dead-drop to another for another parcel of gold and another mark, the whole thing got turned on its head in a crazy and amazing way. No one should play Oblivion and skip over this 'faction.'

Right after finishing that, I started on the first expansionary quest line, Knights of the Nine. I had previously thought to just create a new character for each faction, and had for a few, but here I just decided to continue on with my Rogue I had been using as an assassin. It's easier to fast travel around the world if you've been around a bunch of places before. So I took my remorseless death dealer on a pilgrimage around the world to the shrines of the nine divines, gathered the sanctified relics of a holy knight, restored an ancient order of crusaders, and led them to combat an evil from beyond the realm of mortals. It only took about 4 and a half hours.

Now the only major things left in Oblivion are the Arena (no plans to do this) and the larger Shivering Isles expansion, which I'll come back for sometime later. My copy of Red Faction arrived yesterday afternoon.

I got about three hours with the game last night; long enough to liberate the first of six Martian sectors. It's pretty awesome so far. This GeoMod 2.0 tech is tons of fun. If you've ever wanted to plant charges around the circumference of a giant smokestack and blow them all at once, this is your game. You can demolish bridges as your enemy is crossing them, or just bring down their base on top of their heads. The game has a GTA-like open world mission-based structure to it, but gives you even more freedom to go about your objectives, simply because if you don't like where the entrance or exit to a building is, you can create your own in seconds.

I've been on a number of different mission types so far, ranging from defending rebel camps to extracting hostages, destroying important enemy facilities, and puzzle-like destruction challenges that give you time and weapon/ammo limits. It's great fun so far, and I'm excited to explore more of Mars and blow more stuff up for fun and profit. The multiplayer has been getting a ton of praise from RL friends of mine and lots of people on forums and podcasts, too, so I'll need to check that out soon.

E3 2009 and Oblivion

Not much in the way of a play report this week, just a little Peggle, TF2, and Phoenix Wright, aside from jumping back into Oblivion and doing a bunch of the Dark Brotherhood stuff.  That's where my focus has been, mainly.  It has been a series of pretty interesting quests so far, probably some of the most inventive I've seen in the game, and I've already been through the main story, the fighters', mages', and theives' guilds plus the whole vampirism and finding a cure thing and a whole bunch of other random quests.  There was one where I was locked in a house with 5 treasure hunters and had to off them all one by one without anyone suspecting it was me, and there was a big WTF moment when I had to go kill X group of people.  Oblivion is an awesome game.

I have been so tempted to rush out and pick up Red Faction: Guerilla.  That demo on XBL (the single-player one) is insane fun.  I am definitely going to buy this game at some point.  I hope I can find a good deal on it somewhere soon.  I did pick up the Freedom Force games in the Steam sale last week, based solely on recommendations and Irrational's (later) pedigree, including BioShock.  I only messed around with the demo for Freedom Force Vs. The Third Reich before buying, but it seemed cool (and complicated at first), and both games were only $6.74 together.  I absolutely love Steam.

This past week was probably the biggest news week for gaming that will happen all year.  Certainly, it was.  It was E3, and not the lame E3 from the past couple of years, but a full-on assault of megaton announcements.  Some of what I'm most looking forward to, in no particular order:

Metroid: Other M

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Crackdown 2

Left 4 Dead 2

Final Fantasy XIV

PSP Go (price drop lol)

Metal Gear Solid: Rising

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

So much new stuff came to light that I'm probably forgetting stuff, and there are a few things I think are cool that I'm not even going to bother to mention.  I'm skepical of Microsoft's "Project Natal" motion stuff, and I think Peter Molyneaux's Milo thing is outright bullshit.  Nintendo's fingertip pulse thing is a giant WTF and Sony's motion stuff actually looks the most interesting.

It's a great time to be a gamer.

PC is finally here!

That's right, it finally arrived.  My long overdue entry into PC gaming is manifest.  To celebrate, the first thing I did after all the preliminary setup was to go and download Steam, and promptly pick up the Half-Life series, specifically the Source engine remake of the original, and The Orange Box, which of course has the sequel and all of it's....quasi-sequels.

Interestingly enough, on the PC the box comes with a couple of things not in the console versions: Lost Coast, another add-on to HL2, and Peggle Extreme, a Valve-themed version of the popular Pop Cap game.  And so the first game I played on my new machine was Peggle.  The second was Portal; I just played through the whole thing again (for the fourth time, if I remember right) before writing this.  I figured it was a good "training session" to get me re-acclimated to the first-person mouse & keyboard scheme.

I can never get enough Oblivion, so I picked up the full box version, featuring both expansions, as well.  And this is just the beginning.  I've got a lot of catching up to do!

Before the arrival of my new machine, and in the post-Killzone interim, I want back to GTA IV.  I'm somewhere in the middle of the game, and apparently doing things backwards, somewhat.  Most accounts I've heard of people playing the game, they've gotten to the point where they have to choose to kill either Playboy X or Dwayne and then later gone on to do the big bank robbery straight-out-of-the-movie-Heat mission.  Either way, I've past both of those now and have finally opened up the last island.

When I first started playing these games, with GTA III, I used to ignore the missions and such for hours and just go blow stuff up and see how long I could survive with a full wanted level.  That's not where GTA IV shines, though.  If I want to do that I'll go play Crackdown.  I find GTA IV is best when I'm moving swiftly from mission to mission, and not just the main plotline ones, but including the side activities like helping the random people around the city or stealing rare cars for Brucie, or just doing the social activities with Niko's friends and girlfriends (though these get tiresome).

Lastly, Necovia/Lonesteban and I finished up Gears of War on Hardcore last night, getting the A Dish Best Served Cold achivement to unlock RAAM in Gears 2.  That was a lot of fun, and I think it's really telling that the parts we had the most trouble with in the game were the parts where we were forced to go separate ways and couldn't watch each other's back so well.  Still a great game, though.  Gears 2 Horde Mode soon!

For The Horde!

I can recognize the signs of MMO addiction setting in, having been through this once before. There's something about making those numbers go up and making those bars fill, especially in the midst of a huge world with a rich lore. It's a would-be, all-encompassing obsession, an undertow overcome only by clinging to the floating debris of limited free time. As long as the most I can ever devote is a few hours at a time, I should be able to keep my head above the water line. I'm almost to level 16, woot!

Last weekend I plowed through all of the Thieves' guild quest line in Oblivion, leaving only The Dark Brotherhood line that I plan to do sometime later. If you add up all the time on each of my characters, I probably have 130 hours into that game, but oddly, it doesn't feel like I've played it that much. Maybe because that's been over a year and a half or so, but by the time I had 100 hours into FFXII and DQVIII, I felt it. Again, it's amazing how well the world of Cyrodiil is put together. There have been some really cool moments in the quests in the main guild series. I'm expecting great things from Fallout 3 when I get around to that game.

I've been playing Gears of War 2 this week, as well, and I've been blown away. I've made it through the first two of five acts, and I've been continually impressed by the variety of environments I've been through, the set-piece scenarios, and the awesome firefights. There are some caves you are dropped into at the beginning of act two that look absolutely amazing, they're possibly the most gorgeous graphics I've ever seen in a game--it's unreal. Your AI-controlled squadmates seem much more reliable this time around, and maybe it's just my imagination, but even the signature Gears cover mechanic seems improved and not so cumbersome as it was for me before.

It's been a long time since I played the original Gears (I sold my copy a while back), but that game never quite won me over entirely. I sort of went through the whole thing with one eyebrow raised. I can't put my finger on any one thing that they've improved for Gears 2 that has wiped away my skepticism, but there you have it. I can even give myself over to the cheesy '80s action movie dialogue and mid-battle banter, immortal exchanges like this one between rookie gear Carmine and grizzled main character Marcus Fenix:

"Sarge, I heard there are a shitload of locust there."

"More like ten shitloads, rook."

Maybe Gears 2 just hit me at the right time, rubbed me the right way, and I just wasn't as receptive to the original. Now, strangely OCD as I am, I feel like I have to go back and give that game another chance sometime. I'd like get someone to jump into a game of Gears 2 with me (or vice versa) and play the campaign co-op, and I also need to check out the multiplayer some, especially the new Horde mode. So far I only played one of the tutorial matches with bots, which was cool. I had never played anything with bots before.

I levels mah dudes

I've been doing a lot of leveling up lately. I took a character all the way through the Mages' guild quest line in Oblivion, getting him up to level 7 in the process. That doesn't sound like much, but I spent around 14 hours total with the guy working my way up to Arch-Mage of the guild. I don't know what it is about Oblivion, because the game is kind of badly put together and dumb in a lot of respects, but the world they've built there is pretty awesome.

It's cool to see how all the little stories you get from random quests and the main quest lines interweave. Take for example the Count of Skingraad, whom we know from another quest is a vampire. He plays some part in the Mages' guild quest line, too. Then there are the plans by the Necromancers (the antagonists of the Mages' guild quest line) to learn to summon Daedra from Oblivion, which you learn of by seeing books on Daedra and encountering stunted, weakling Daedra in one of your final raids on a Necromancer stronghold. That whole idea dovetails nicely with the plot of the main quest line in the game, about the cult Mythic Dawn which opens all of the Oblivion gates, letting Daedra into the world to herald the coming of Mehrunes Dagon, lord of that plane.

I've created another character to take through the Thieves' guild quest line, he's a Khajit Acrobat. I want to see how a stealth class plays in this game. I might then take him through the Dark Brotherhood line, or create an Assassin for that. That will leave the Arena line, which I'm not really interested in, and the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles quest lines, both of which require expansions. I think I'll hold off on those and get the PC version sometime for them.

The other night I felt like playing some more Diablo, so I jumped back into Lord of Desctruction, and fought through the middle third of that the fifth act of Diablo II. My Assassin is level 32 now, and I still don't have all of the skills unlocked. I think I've taken too scattershot of an approach with her. If I were to do it again, I'd focus more on one or two aspects of the skill tree rather than all three.

The last RPG I've been playing is WoW. I've got my Warrior up to level 10 now. I don't know what they consider zones in this game, but I'm at the third quest hub, which to me appears to be in the same big zone as the last two, which is called Durotar, and is where all Orcs start out. I've played solo the entire way so far, and only chatted with a couple of people, incidentally. At this point it might as well be an offline RPG, for how I've been playing it. I hear the game can be soloed all the way up to 80 now, but I wonder about the raids that start at around 60 or whatever. Do people still do them? I guess if I get that far I'll find out.

In comparison to FFXI, I'd say WoW is much more of a PC-centric game. Not a surprise since it was a) native to PC, and b) created in the West. The interface is well done, and of course the mouse and keyboard combination is integral to that. FFXI was much more built around a PS2 controller and keyboard combination. WoW is also much more user friendly, due to Blizzard apparently actually listening to their playerbase from time to time. There are handy keyboard shortcuts, lots of options to tweak, etcetera. And you can swim.

I played a little Halo online with some friends this week. We went 5-0 in a Social Slayer playlist, which was pretty remarkable. That's what good communication can do for a team. And finally, I downloaded SSFIITHDR, as I'm calling it. I suck at Street Fighter! I hop on to the online quick match matchmaker, and nine out of ten fights my opponent is Ken. No shit. the remaining 10% of the time is about half Ryu, and an equal distribution of the rest of the cast for the final 5%. I play Chun Li, having mastered Ryu and Ken many years ago, on the SNES. I've won maybe 2 matches online out of the 15 or 20 I've played. This game looks sweet in HD, though. It's too bad they couldn't add in more frames of animation, but that would have totally thrown off the gameplay, which at this point is more familiar to gamers than their mothers' faces.

WoW, NXE, Oblivion, and Fusion

My brother-in-law is a huge WoW player with like 6 or 8 level 70 characters. He's to the point now where he pays Indonesian players around $100 (a small fortune to them) to get a character to 70 for him so that he can use it to raid with. It's a different world out there. So anyway, I got to catch up with him quite a bit during my trip to Japan, and he's long been trying to get me to play WoW. Now, I'm actually ready to. In fact, Jeff actually gave me a set of WoW discs, one of his own numerous sets, and he's going to be letting me use one of his multiple accounts to play with, as well. So I'll effectively be able to level to 60 without paying a dime. I may even be able to get Burning Crusade and level 70 from that account, too.

Jeff had just gotten Wrath of the Lich King when I was at his place, and I got to play for about an hour. I created a Tauren death knight and dove right into main attraction, working directly for the Lich King to spread his evil influence across the land. I rolled through about 5 quests, and it seemed pretty cool. Previously I have played a Human warrior and Night Elf hunter each for a few hours. I think once I get my account info from Jeff, I'm going to go Horde and create an Orc warrior for my first real WoW character.

Yesterday was the rollout of the "New Xbox Experience," otherwise known as a firmware refresh for the 360. The biggest update yet, almost a complete overhaul, but still just a firmware revision. The big things here are Netflix streaming, which is crazy awesome amazing (for those of us in the U.S.), the party system (not sure if this is relevant to me at all yet), HDD game installation, and most importantly, the ability to delete game trials from your played game history. I played around with the new dashboard some last night. I created an avatar, an Xbox Mii, essentially, and installed Oblivion to my hard disk. I also played the Tomb Raider Underworld demo. It sucks.

Oblivion plays pretty well from the hard drive, with a good bit less time spent at loading screens (though still more than you'd like), and less pauses for loading while walking around the overworld. I finished up the Fighter's guild quest line last night. To this point, through the main quest and Fighter's guild, I've only been using my one character, who is now a level 27 Redguard Warrior. I think I'm going to roll new characters for the Mage's guild, Thieves' Guild, and Dark Brotherhood quest lines. If I'm not entirely burnt out with the game after those and want to do the Arena stuff, I might go back to my Warrior for that. This is all just the base game stuff, I haven't even bought Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles. Maybe I'll play that stuff on PC someday, although I've still got Morrowind for PC I bought years ago and which never really ran well on the computer I had at the time. I want to play that, too.

On the flight back from Japan, I restarted my Metroid Fusion game. I had gotten stuck somewhere and decided just to toss out that entire save, which was only about 2 hours into the game. I've already gotten back up to speed and past the spot where I had been stuck, in the 3rd or 4th sector of the game. Not a whole lot to say about this now, but it plays pretty well. I just wish it was a DS game instead of a GBA game. Using L and R for functions that ought to be on face buttons sucks.

Oblivion is so broken.

So I'm getting near the end of the main quest line, and I have to escort the new emperor across the city (fuck escort missions). Oblivion likes to autosave every time you rest or go through a door. So I'm going through a door with the emperor in tow, I get through, and get a message that the emperor has died and now all hope is lost... AUTOSAVING. Way to fucking go!

There's no resurrecting the emperor, either. The only choice is to go back to my closest manual save, about an hour back. EXCELLENT DESIGN CHOICE. Why don't we lull the player into a false sense of security by saving every 5 minutes and then fuck them right over with dead end scenarios like your escortee not going through the door at the same time as you (wtf?) and being able to straight up die, forever, when the other dumbass npc with us just keeps getting "knocked unconscious" time and time again, only to rise 3 seconds later?

This is, of course, not to mention the game's larger issues, such as game-breaking monster leveling issues necessitating cranking the difficulty down all the way to play a character that focuses on anything other than brute strength and combat, a wholly worthless third person perspective, clunky combat, and the longest load times since, well, ever. Really, this game is good despite its myriad of attempts at self-sabotage. I hope Fallout 3 was left in the oven a little longer, figuratively speaking.

Edit: Went back and finished the main questline. All it took was getting through the door without a glitch! I'm counting this as beating the game. I want to go and finish all of the guild quest lines as well, though.

I suck at StarCraft

It took me an hour and a half the other night to beat one of the missions of the Terran campaign. I'm only on the 6th or 7th one, but the game is still pretty tough. I'm starting to learn the hotkeys for stuff, and that's helping some, but I am still a total noob.

I'm on this mission now where I have to send some guys to rescue some other guys who are surrounded by a freakin' ton of Zerg. I can't seem to win anytime I throw my guys at the Zerg encampments along the way to where I need to go. I don't think I'm taking enough guys or something. I'll typically send 8 or so marines and/or firebats along with 2 to 4 each of the vultures and wraiths. Looks like I need to amass a larger force before sending them out to kill a bunch of Zergs and Zerg buildings.

I popped in Oblivion the other night, for the first time in forever. I've decided to try and at least get through the main quest of the game, and then maybe later go and do all the guilds and factions and stuff. I still can't see myself burning through enough of the game to necessitate buying Shivering Isles, the expansion pack. During this session, I did a couple of legs of the main campaign, and picked up a couple more pieces of the Daedric armor set, which I think is best in the game, though I could be mistaken. I'm beginning to agree with what seems to be the popular consensus--that this game is broken. Specifically, the bit about monsters leveling up just as you do. I saw a sage bit of advice online, though, which for the most part fixes the problems this causes: set the difficulty slider all the way down.

Also, I've been playing a lot more of Crisis Core: FFVII at home and on my commute. Good game, though in places I've thought the encounter rate was too high. I'm just at the part where Zack has met Cloud for the first time. The narrative so far is better than I'd thought it would be, but that's not really saying a lot. My favorite character is probably Angeal, followed by Zack himself, and then Sephiroth, who seems surprisingly more normal and level-headed here than he becomes in FFVII proper.