ria_oaks | Update, Christmas, etc

I haven't updated since my birthday, have I? Okay, here's a rundown of my last week and Christmas Day, with pictures...

- got my hair cut & dyed on my birthday. Have blond highlights now!

Look, I'm blond! Kinda.

- got FFXII for my birthday, and have been playing it since. Not too far yet; I'm in Nalbina Dungeon right now. Having a good time so far; the battle system's fun and much better than many of us were worried about.
- Worked 2 shifts at the video store, fun fun. But it's fine as a temporary job to get some money over the holiday. Hopefully after this I'll be done there forever. -_-
- very little, really. heh. Hung out on Bowen, came down to town briefly a couple of times. Went to Metrotown with

rainbowpegacorn, did last minute shopping and whatnot.
- saw "Happy Feet" on my birthday. Very little to say about it. There were lots of dancing penguins. XD Pretty good, though the plot kinda dragged. OotP trailer looked good on the big screen.
- speaking of HP - freaked out when the 7th book title was announced. Did research on what Hallows are. Debated the title with my cousin. Am still a bit shocked that we actually know it at last. o.o
- watched a lot of TV, including several more episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, some Farscape commentaries (rented the DVDs from the library for the extras), a few episodes of Oz (finally broke out my copy of season 4 and re-watched some eps, plus one of the commentaries), and the most recent episodes of Torchwood. Also caught up on House and am sad at the ramifications for House/Wilson. :(
- made a Chris Keller doll. No, I'm not kidding. XD It's really a Chris Meloni doll, since he can be Stabler whenever I'm watching SVU... I embroidered his Christ tattoo on and everything. He's very cute for a convicted murderer. ;p I'm working on a Toby now so he won't be lonely.

Meet Chris!Doll:

Close-up of his face (he didn't have a shirt yet at this point):

Me, Chris, and the tree:

What I didn't do:
- work on my Christmas cards. Yeah, yeah, I know... sorry guys. You may or may not get them. I still have a lot of drawings left to outline/colour, and several to draw. I spent most of last week working on Chris!Doll instead.
- see enough of everyone! Need to make more plans for the coming 1 and a half weeks before I leave (on Jan 6th).
- upload the Farscape picspam. It's all compiled, I just need to upload the pictures and make the post. ^^ Laazy.

The tree, before the presents (because it's the best shot I have of it where you can see more of the room. Plus I love that painting of Dad's.)

And with the presents (and Chris)...

The Loot:

- Rygel!

Isn't he cute? ^__^ He's smaller than I thought he'd be, but still awesome. Looks better than in the original pictures I saw. Mom's stopped asking many questions when I ask her for various media-inspired plushies, ie. tonberry last year and puppet!Angel the year before. Hah.

- new graphics tablet (my old one broke)
- Firefly Official Companion vol. 1
- OotP softcover, at last. ^^ The only one I didn't have in softcover, yet the hardest to read in hardcover because it's so damned big.
- obligatory new clothes
- a number of other random things that aren't particularly interesting and which I'm too lazy to list

All in all, good haul this year. XD Very happy with Rygel and the tablet, not to mention FFXII from my b-day. Was playing it a few hours ago and got killed by a stupid Bomb which exploded. :( Was too tired to go back and re-do the dungeon, so I'll do it tomorrow or sometime. Going to be down in North Van tomorrow, then back up to work for Thurs/Fri, then down again for the weekend. Don't know about after that.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your hair looks good; doesn't seem to be any shorter though? Was it supposed to be shorter? :o

"Was playing it a few hours ago and got killed by a stupid Bomb which exploded. :("

I got crippled by that fucker. The Mark Hunts in the last 10-20 hours of the game are fun. They absolutely love casting Paling on themselves (Immune to all damage for 2 minutes) while shearing through your 6 characters for 5000+ damage (when you only have 3000-6000 health) really quickly.

At least you've already met the awesomeness that is Balthier, though.

"the battle system's fun and much better than many of us were worried about."

It's a shame there's no variety, though. There's nothing that differentiates characters. While their base stats are somewhat geared toward certain roles in battle, those stat differences are insignificant in the long-run. Everyone is good at.. Everything. That's my one major gripe about the battle system.

Since you're coming home for the weekend, want to go see Casino Royal?

Thanks. :) Yeah, it's quite a bit shorter... easier to see IRL. I love the cut of it - it was getting really limp before. ^^

I killed one bomb no problem, then left the room, then when I came back through the same room there were 2 bombs and I figured it'd be easy enough, but one exploded before I knew what had happened and killed everyone. :(

How far are you in the game, then? Have you finished? I can't seem to play that fast anymore, in part because I get headaches from the 3D motion. -_- Makes me seasick. XD

It's true that there's no differentation. I'd like for the characters to have a couple of things that differentiated them, at least, like limit breaks or something (whatever happened to those?). I liked how in FFX everyone had a particular role for a large part of the game, but you were also free to move them in any direction towards the end of the game. Course, FFVII and VIII there was very little or not differentation either, just limit breaks (and stats in FFVII). I'm going to try to differentiate them, but in the end they'll probably end up fairly similar. *sigh* There are certain staples that I want everyone to have (Cure), but I'll try to at least have different weapons. Sticking with swords for Vaan, because I'm traditional about these things and like my main character to use a sword. ;p But I like than Fran and Balthier have long-range weapons so they don't have to get too close to enemies.

Anyway, it's fun so far overall. Getting the hang of the battle system, though the camera still bugs me sometimes (usually it's me bungling the camera angles that makes me seasick ^^;). Don't particularly relish the prospect of re-doing that dungeon, though, although it's wasn't particularly hard. Just irritating to have to re-do it.

On another note, I was so happy to start up the game and hear Prelude (the pre-FFVI version, too, I think!) followed by the FF theme... somehow hearing those quelled all fears about this not being an FF, silly as that may be. Nice versions of both, too. I tend to linger at the loading screen to listen to the FF theme. ;p I thought I'd heard that the music was completely different, since it's not Uematsu, so I was worried that the classic FF themes wouldn't be there - nice to hear them (plus the traditional victory music when you beat bosses, it seems). The FF theme always makes me teary. :)

Sure, that'd be cool. Not sure when at the moment, but we'll work something out.

Started watching FS yet? XD

And how was your Christmas?

I'm at the second to last dungeon, I think. I can't play that fast either, but I've been at it for about a month now though..

By the end you'll have enough License Points to get everything on that board unless you control yourself. :p Every member in my party has different weapons too for variety. Limit Breaks are still around, but now they're known as 'Quickenings.' There are 18 on the License Board and each character can have 3. They look different for each character but they're all just flashy explosions. When a character gets 2 his or her MP doubles, when a character gets 3 it triples. That's really all they're good for. You can't really throw them around like in other games because they drain the MP of the participants to 0, which will get you killed if you use them at the wrong time.

That and the other Uematsu song are the best tracks in the game. :/ Not sure that I want to tell you which (the better) one it is because it might be more fun if it's a surprise, but then again you'll never hear it if you don't do the Mark Hunts. D:

I got really drunk on Christmas Eve and felt sick all the way until yesterday. I got a few shirts, a tie, a manicure kit, and a wallet. I didn't really ask for anything..

Hmm, but the Quickenings still aren't character-specific, right, since you can give any of them to any character. Too bad they're kinda useless and not character-specific; that'd at least make the characters a bit different.

Music's fairly eh, I agree. It's decent, but no stand out tracks yet. Pity, because Sakimoto did a great job in FFT. I've heard 3 of the classic FF/Uematsu themes... there aren't many others, are there? Prelude, FF theme, victory music, and chocobo theme. Is the latter one in it?

Heh, hungover on Christmas Day, that sucks. XD

Each character has their own set of 3 Quickenings, and they look different from all the rest. They aren't character specific on the License Board; it just says "Quickening." If I have Vaan buy a Quickening License Square he'll learn his Red Spiral and that License Square would then disappear off all the other characters' License Boards. If I had Fran buy that particular License Square instead, she'd learn her Feral Strike.

They're only useful if you need that extra push to finish off a boss or mark. If you get a boss into critical and he starts wailing on you and you have a least one character with a full bar of MP, you can pull off a Quickening, hoping that you can chain 15 of them together and get like 60k+ damage or something to finish the boss off.

Oh yeah, I forgot about those. The Uematsu tracks are FF theme, Prelude, Victory theme, Chocobo theme, and the one I was talking about it, which I dunno if you want me to tell you what it is or not. :o

We celebrate on Christmas Eve so Christmas Day is like, 'meh.' ;p

Update, Christmas, etc

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