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I know that I said at one point that I have this incessant need to finish any game I start. And not just finish it, but also complete all the side quests, get all the special weapons, get all the characters, etc. That being said, it usually stands that if I start a game, I'm almost always going to finish it. It takes a lot of frustration, bad gameplay, and, on my part, indifference, for me to drop a game, particularly a RPG. But there have been RPGs that end up in my video game graveyard (again, it's that bureau in my room. But it sounds grim, doesn't it?).
Ephemeral Fantasia comes to mind first and foremost. It seemed promising when I started it. You play a musician named Mouse who has been commissioned to write a song for a royal wedding celebration. So you sail to an island along with your loose-lipped talking guitar, only to become trapped and forced to relive the same five days over and over again (Mask of Majora, anyone?). There're tons of characters to recruit, and it had a guitar playing element that I really enjoyed. Since it's been a good long while since I played it, the one thing I remember is how I usually had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Am I supposed to go and get the bandit leader to join my group now, or wait until later? If I don't get it done by day four, I'll have missed my chance and have to start all over again on day one. Shoot, I missed the chance to recruit the cute little inn girl on the second day, and I missed my five minute window in the morning to grab the busty chick for my party. There was just too much to do and not enough time to do it in. I would have been happier with just throwing out the RPG aspect entirely and focusing on the guitar playing instead. The songs were really challenging and quite catchy.
The only reason I ended up playing Unlimited SaGa was because I was interested in hearing the voice acting. I played the SaGa Frontier games for the PlayStation, and found them decent enough (though part of SaGa Frontier 2 is absolutely impossible to beat unless you have insanely good luck. Like a thousand to one luck). I still baulk at how the game developers thought this was going to be a good game. Towns are nothing but still shots of the main square, the tavern, and the two shops you may find. The fields where you can fight monsters are little more than glorified game boards, and your character is a moving game piece (I would have preferred to be the thimble). You're literally hopping around the board. Weapons have specific skills hooked to them, but if you equip a new weapon, you have to relearn skills all over again. And you can't keep using the good weapons for long, because they'll break if you use them for too long. Half the optional missions are too difficult because the monsters outclass you. But you can't level up your characters, because once you go to an area or finish a mission, you can't go back. And you can't gain experience until you finish with the entire mission. And, just to make things more difficult, you actually have limited amount of moves in each field. Meaning if you run out before you finish, you have to start ALL OVER AGAIN. You could be two steps away from your goal, but oops, you're done! No experience for fighting all those monsters, sucker! I once heard a guy say he thought Unlimited SaGa was delightfully challenging. I looked at him like he was insane.
As of now, Okage and Grandia Extreme are looking to be added to this short list. I never really minded when I was still in high school if the game I was playing wasn't great, or was mediocre at best. But I'm getting older and, sadly, have less and less time to devote to 50 plus hours worth of gameplay. Particularly if the game isn't really worth my time. I imagine that I will continue to amass a steadily growing collection of unfinished games, to either gather dust in a drawer, or to be traded in for a buck. If I'm lucky enough to even get that much.
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