Tag: fire emblem

Day and night time, rain and sunshine
I seek my dream everywhere
Day and night time, rain and sunshine
I seek my dream everywhere

I can’t get enough of that Chage & Aska 🙂

What I can and have gotten enough of is that stupid Fire Emblem DS. Okay, it’s not stupid. But it’s annoying. I’m on chapter 15, just a few steps left between me and the boss, and I’ve been stuck there for the past 2 weeks.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Somebody ALWAYS dies. Usually due to my carelessness, but we’ll gloss over that for now. Bartz has died, Gordon has died, Alan has died… it’s like they’re taking turns!

So finally I said, screw it all. No matter who dies next we’re moving on. Then I moved Oguma up to put the finishing touches on the boss –remind me again why I shouldn’t take a swordsman up against a general wielding a killer lance — and, as expected, CRITICAL. Instant death. And the criticals in the game are ugly and boring anyway, so I didn’t even get any pleasure out of watching that. And I was so angry I even forgot to swear in Japanese. GOSHDANGIT, YOU STUPID LITTLE PIECE OF —-ahem!

Anyway, there’s no way I could let Oguma stay dead. I mean, he’s Ogu-freaking-ma! So, reset #15. I’ll try again later tonight, when I’ve gotten over being pissed off at myself and at the game. And that’s all for today.

So I’ve been playing this new Fire Emblem game that came out for Nintendo DS a few weeks ago and I’m already up to chapter 15. Goshdangit, Garnef, why didn’t you tell me you were planning to move? Bloody desert stages *grumble mumble grumble* Normal Mode is shockingly easy, though. The AI is really, really bad; they almost never attack .

I’m enjoying it, but more importantly I’m getting quite a lot out of it in the Japanese department. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like interrupting my gaming sessions to write out sentences or look up kanji. What I’m doing for Fire Emblem Shin Ankoku blah blah (later known as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon in the West), then, is reading all the dialogue out loud as I play. Being a remake of a NES game there isn’t that much dialogue to read anyway, but I try to sort of role play every single line, especially the bad guys parts and sort of get into the script, you know?

And what I’ve realized from this is, my pronunciation SUCKS! I can’t even hear myself properly but I can tell it sucks because it sounds all flat and monotone, and then I mean so say something but then it comes out completely differently… yah. It’s harder than it sounds. I think I’ll give a little more respect to voice actors now ^_^;;.

But what am I going to do about this sucky pronunciation? Getting more audio input definitely helps. I found it was easier to read stuff like “hatashite dou naru deshou ka” correctly because I’d heard that line so many times before. But I also think I should work more on output at the same time. You know how you talk to little babies, tell them to say “Papa” and then they babble and burble and finally come out with “Papa”? Yeah, like that, but not quite as cute. I need to find some audio to speak and repeat and to read out loud while checking my pronunciation. I already found this site with links to audio books and corresponding texts and am merrily downloading away even as I type. When I (eventually) get around to buying that mp3 player I started talking about 3 months ago, I’ll make sure it has a voice-recording option so I can tape myself as well. That’s my resolution for next week, by which time I should hopefully be done with Fire Emblem.

And that’s all for today.