Day 7 - Favorite game couple.
I was doing this thread consistently every day and then this prompt happened and I froze and couldn't decide what to answer because I have a LOT OF OTPS... so now I'm behind. :(
Right now my OTP of all OTPs is Alvin/Jude from Tales of Xillia. I love their chemistry but a lot of my favourite parts about it are not healthy and hit up guilty pleasure territory so I'm hesitant to talk about them loool. So instead I will talk about two other Tales OTPs! My other faves are
Asbel/Richard from Tales of Graces and
Rita/Estelle from Tales of Vesperia.
So Asbel/Richard started out as a joke because pretty much the day they meet, Richard gives Asbel an ornate ring and I started joking with my roommates "haha gay" as we played and then they seriously upped the ante to the point where other party members were telling them to knock it off. The game chickened out (of course) and forced an awkward, dull pairing instead of leaving it ambiguous or just letting them be gay sooooo that kind of sucked but it's not like I end up shipping canon pairings very often so I'm used to it.
With Ristelle (actual word spoken by the protagonist to refer to the two of them when they were off in their own little world together), I just think they're adorable. Even without the romantic element, they were pretty much each other's first close friend and you can easily see Rita's long-standing barriers break down for Estelle as the game progresses. In the PS3 version, there's even a skit where the two of them find a baby and take care of it for the night before they can find the parents/bring it to someone who can do that and ugggggh IT'S SO STUPIDLY CUTE. They're both so obviously enamoured with each other and Estelle even says if they can't find the parents, they should raise it themselves because they already work so well together as parents or... something along those lines. Even the original voice actors (and every voice actor from that game, I think) ship it. I love it a lot.
For non-romantic pairings, I think I will go with Jade and Anise from Tales of the Abyss. (Yeah, I love Tales for the characters and the CHARACTER INTERACTIONS are even better. So all my favourite pairings/whatever tend to be from Tales.) I looove how they troll the rest of the party and they work really well together, even if there's a huge age gap. They're great friends and I think it's sweet how you can actually see Jade softening up and sort of acting a father figure for her because her parents are so terrible. But mostly they're just good partners in crime.
SEE? I wrote a lot for this. :(
Day 8 - Best soundtrack.
....I THOUGHT THE PREVIOUS QUESTION WAS THE HARDEST ONE BUT I THINK THIS ONE IS. AUGH. Okay, going with multiple answers again.
Although I don't even really remember much of the game, I think
Bastion is probably one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard
period. The music is just so good. I feel a little bad that I didn't like the game itself more and it would've been really forgettable if it weren't for how phenomenal the soundtrack is. (I also really like Transistor's soundtrack, but I haven't heard it as much because it took me so long to give in and listen to it even if I haven't played the game yet.)
But like... if I had to pick one video game OST to listen to for the rest of my life and I couldn't listen to anything else, I think I would go with
Chrono Trigger. I don't know what it is about that game, but the music just blew me away. I never had an SNES (or a PS1, since I think it got re-released there?) so the first time I played the game was with the DS version quite a few years ago. I remember sooo many times, I'd just put my DS down to listen to the music when I'd first arrive somewhere. The soundtrack felt so nostalgic and peaceful for me even though I knew I'd never played the game before. I still feel the same way, although now it feels nostalgic for real. I love so many tracks on it and there aren't really any that I dislike. It's just... it's such a beautiful soundtrack. It stands well on its own, but unlike Bastion, I feel it's best heard while actually playing the game because every track just fits every dungeon/town/event so well. It's amazing.
*******EDIT: HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT
NIER??? Its soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous and it's one of those games where people kept trying to get me to play it and I'd go "ehhhh I have too much to play" but then someone linked me to its music and the very next day I went out and purchased it. I love the music so, so, so, so much. Please listen to the soundtrack. It's excellent.
Day 9 - Saddest game scene.
The ending of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. No other game has destroyed me like that. The day after I beat the game, I had a doctor's appointment and while I was sitting in the waiting room with my mom, I burst into tears because I thought about the game too much. I wasn't okay for
days and I still tear up or actually cry just hearing the music from the game or seeing snippets of the ending.
I've talked about this better in previous threads on PC and it's like 3am right now and it's been years since I played Crisis Core so this is probably the worst thing I've ever written about it but... man, I just can't even convey how many feelings I get from Crisis Core. I cry pretty easily with games and there are other games that make me cry just thinking about them, hearing music from them, seeing scenes over again (Tales of Xillia 2, Final Fantasy X, and so on), but... god, Crisis Core? It did it so perfectly.
Day 10 - Best gameplay.
Hmmmm... there are a lot of games with gameplay that I love and appreciate! I could just list my favourites, but there are always fatal flaws that make me think "okay, I don't feel like I can say this is the
best". Like, KH Birth by Sleep is my favourite game of all time and I still think it has the best battle system out of all the Kingdom Hearts games, but it suffers a bit from pacing and it gets kind of lonely splitting the characters up to do their separate stories. Then Tales of Graces f has my favourite battle system out of all the Tales games, but it has godawful dungeons that make me hesitant to replay it.
So I'm going to go with
The World Ends With You. I honestly think it's just about perfect as far as gameplay goes, with the only problems coming from some pin requirements having to do with something similar to Streetpassing and so on. But on the whole, it's just such a phenomenal game.
Ignoring story and characters (which are amazing, for the record) because I don't feel they tie into actual
gameplay as much, it's a very interesting game. It gives you a lot of flexibility, so people of all gaming ability can really get into it and experience it however they want. It uses pretty much every single feature of the DS (including microphone!), and battles concentrate especially on using both screens at once (although if that's too hard, you can set an AI to take over for you on the top screen if you get too distracted). Pins govern how your main character fights and there are hundreds of them, so there are sooo many ways to play the game depending on your tastes. The stats and equipment are hilarious and very well-thought out and just... man, I could go on forever. It's such a well-designed game.
I've never played the mobile port (Android/iDevices) but I kind of want to just to see how they could adapt it from such heavy emphasis on dual-screen to a single screen.
Day 11 - Gaming system of choice.
I'm gonna say
Nintendo DS. I would give the crown to 3DS because it can technically play DS games, but I don't like the resolution of them and I'm still angry at Nintendo about the region lock on 3DS, so I can't give it my vote.
I'm picking DS because it has the best library of any system, even to this day, imo. There's such a wide variety of games to play on it but it does puzzle and RPGs really well, which happen to be my favourite genres. :) Even action RPGs had a lot of good games on the system, and it inspired so many devs to be really creative because of all the neat features it had. (See previous day's question.) I've played more DS games than any other console and there are still so many I've missed out on.
oh my god i'm sorry this post is so long......... i'll never skip days again sOB
