Final Fantasy Tactics A2

In keeping with the spirit of having fun in Japanese, I’ve been playing more and more games in Japanese. I recently finished Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for Nintendo DS, the sequel to the somewhat-okay Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I wasn’t too great a fan of its predecessor, but I really liked Final Fantasy Tactics, so I decided to give it a shot.

Was it fun? Heck yeah. I made it all the way to the last boss then turned around and went right back into town so I could keep doing missions and having fun. When I got tired of that, I took my overlevelled self back and whupped the pathetic little boss into submission. Power Up 4 + MP Turbo + Grimoire Fragment + Nu Mou Illusionist + 2 Jugglers spamming Smile = Sayonara, boss.

If I had to find fault with FFTA2, it would be with two things. Firstly, the story is really trivial and unimportant. Boy gets tossed into strange world and the only way to go back home is to have lots of adventures. Boy takes to task like a fish to water, and spends 10+ years wandering around world having fun. There’s a bit of story in there with evil organizations and sealed monsters and stuff, but they’re obviously there out of obligation. No sense of urgency and no sense of purpose makes this game a bit on the “meh” side when all is said and done. Secondly the battles are too, too slow. Moving, turning, choosing an attack, executing the attack, your opponent doing the same, it all takes way too long. A simple 5 on 5 encounter can take upwards of 15 minutes if you’re not careful.

Lastly, did I learn any Japanese from it? Haha, I’ve long stopped evaluating material by that standard. If it’s fun, it’s fun, whether I learned something from it or not. But I don’t recall seeing any particularly unusual kanji or phrases I didn’t know. The language – and the whole game, in fact – appears to be tailored towards a slightly younger crowd, so it’s easy to understand, and they repeat themselves a lot to make sure you get it.

All in all it was a good experience, and now you know what I’ve been up to in all the weeks I haven’t been posting. 🙂 That’s all for today.

Guin Saga Episode 1

After much hesitation, I finally sat down and watched the first episode of Guin Saga.
I say hesitation because I heard the original novels the anime is based on has been running since the seventies for hundreds of volumes, and I hate starting things that have no end. Either the anime runs on for a long time with no resolution or the writers make up their own, usually-unsatisfying anime-only ending and calls it a day.

Still I had the episode sitting on my computer for a while and eventually I ran out of things to watch, so I gave it a go. It’s not half bad at all. It seems to be moving very quickly, which is always a plus for long-running series. The animation is clean and crisp, and while the characters look a bit squat and chubby, they move very fluidly. The action scenes were over the top, but this is a series about a man with a leopard head and a princess with psychic powers, so I don’t think anyone’s looking for realism here.

The story hasn’t broken new territory yet: royal twins, kingdom sacked, parents dead, all alone, rescued by mysterious man, chased by the bad guys…or are they, etc. etc. It’s only one episode so it could go any way. Indeed the ending sequence featured some other characters we haven’t met yet, so I’m looking forward to finding out more soon. Until then!

The Richest Man in Babylon (2)

Seeing as it’s such a short book, it didn’t take me long to finish The Richest Man in Babylon. The very last chapter was a short history of the Babylonian kingdom. Nothing you couldn’t look up on Wikipedia in five seconds, but extremely interesting nonetheless.

I also liked the debt reduction plan Clason introduced in later chapter: devote 10% of your earnings to savings, 20% to paying back your debts and 70% to profit-making investments. Of course the nature of your debt determines whether this is feasible or not, e.g. if your house is on the verge of foreclosure I’m not sure the bank would go along with this plan. But for someone with a reasonable amount of debt, it’s a feasible method that should pay off in the long-term.

The Richest Man in Babylon (1) book review

I’ve made it my goal recently to read a few self-improvement books every month. Today I picked up an old copy of The Richest Man in Babylon lying around the house and dug in. It’s very short, less than 150 pages, and packed with common sense advice. On one hand this is all stuff any finance-savvy person would know, seeing as the ideas in it appear in just about every wealth-making book to date. On the other hand, this book was published in 1926, so it’s likely they all copied The Richest Man in Babylon.

I’m only about halfway in so far, so this is just the first part of the review. The writing style is interesting, if archaic, and all the ideas are simply and lucidly presented. The major ones: save 10% of your income, invest only in sound opportunities, only take financial (and other) advice from people in the know, own your own home (easier said than done) and improve yourself so you can earn more. All sound, solid advice. So far, so good.

So boring

Remember last years Kohaku that I complained about a few posts ago? I rewatched a bit of it just now and I couldn’t remember half of the acts. It was that boring. Geez. Luckily I’ve got a lot of other things lined up to watch now. Toradora! is finally finished, so I can sink my teeth into it all at once. I even found a low-spec torrent of all the episodes raw, which should save me a lot of time downloading. I hear the light novel series is complete too, more things for me to work on.