Yes, Oregon Trail II. One of the best “educational” games of all time and still a hilarious way to kill your friends with gold rush era diseases!

Upon being able to play it again, I set to work immediately.

After the teens the ages only go in multiples of 5, so some of them are poorly represented.
As an English major, I decided to choose one of the poorest possible occupations of journalist, woo! Surely nothing can go wrong.

(P.S. I should really try lighter wagons sometimes)

Pictured: the amount of food supplies bought before I realized I didn’t have enough oxen to haul all the other junk I had, and also only had $5. Those biscuits were traded for oxen.

I also had to dump a lot of random stuff. So just picture us unceremoniously dumping 20 pounds of celery in the middle of town.

Oh yeah, and the 10 pounds of tea are for Roahm.

INTENSE DECISION MAKING

And so the brave travelers set out onto the trail to Oregon; the trail to prosperity; the trail to a fresh new beginning-

Oh god dang it.

You know a game of Oregon Trail is going well when you immediately fall into a river and things happen. The huge wagon, I think, is more likely to tip and/or be swamped in rivers, fall on hills, break, etc. At least that’s what I’m using as an excuse.

Hunting.

Because of my EXPERTISE on the subject of Oregon Trail, I know well that the easiest way to hit things in the air or at a distance is directly above them.

Hunting is also hilarious because you can get messages like “You collected 1289 pounds of game but could only carry 179 back to the wagon.” And hunting is fun and surely, definitely, absolutely has no consequences! Right?

Upon reaching the next river I decide to approach with caution and see what the friendly NPCs think of the situation. This nice lady seems to think it isn’t that deep-

*facepalm*

Roahm:   HER FLUFF SHOULD PROTECT HER FROM THAT, THE GAME IS OBVIOUSLY GLITCHED

I think there’s been at least one time when a bad cold took several wrong turns for the worse and ended up killing someone in this game. Not this time. INCREASE FLUID INTAKE BY 200%!

Causing the extinction of buffalo is the best meat source, even if you can never carry all of it.

Oh hey, a river that’s 2 feet deep. It’s like the shallow end of the pool, right?

*FACEPALM*

Okay, who’s shoving the wagon over? Seriously which of you was it, I want answers-

…

Raiden. That river was two feet deep. How in the hell?

Well I guess maybe she was under the wagon or something.

But really, LEARN TO SWIM.

DO NOT MESS WITH THE TWO FOOT DEEP RIVER OR ELSE.

Shagg:TIPPED WAGON
I‘m now imagining us attempting to move the wagon over a puddle and it tipping

Roahm: XD

Eventually, we came upon a hill that I didn’t take a screenshot of. An NPC suggested anchoring the wagon and

I bet you expected more of that, huh? Give yourself a pat on the back.

I guess Kit enjoys living on the edge and rides inside the wagon whenever we do something dangerous? Or maybe it constantly crushes him? Or maybe he’s just really clumsy and the wagon has nothing to do with it. Actually come to think of it, it would be funny if things like that could happen in this game. “Shagg tripped on a rock. Shagg has taken a turn for the worse. Shagg has died.”

But who cares about that knee? It’s Independence Day!

HELL YEAH THREE CHEERS FOR SPRAINS

I don’t think this chance happening has ever caused anything bad to happen. Actually, I think sometimes they’re thieves that take stuff if you go close?

Oh boy, this means we have to get ripped off in a trade.

Yay. So now we’re down to one rifle; Presumably one was lost in… one of the many incidents above.

Oh well! A rifle is but a trifle! Ha ha ha!

Least helpful advice.

Do you truly reckon that, sir? Well let’s see how your reckoning plays out.

Nobody is surprised. But…

Apparently “various other items” means “your last rifle, also you have no meat.”

“And also, you must become nudists if you want another gun. Fight for the last set of clothing! HAHAHAHA.”

And then, surprisingly, a totally random event which had nothing to do with tipping wagons.

A passing anachronism asked Roahm if he would play Mega Man X, and Roahm promptly found the nearest rock and started bashing his head against it. See people, this is what happens.

The viewers are less than sympathetic. And terrible dressers.

Nothing needs to be said.

Hey, good job Roahm! Your drowning in a river that was no doubt shallow is justifiable due to the disorientation and dizziness resulting from a concussion. Or maybe you still wanted to escape from the Megaman X demands.

So! At this point, we needed to address the concern of having little meat. Let’s see what my travel log here says.

August 31, 1853

Terrible fog during the early part of the day. We chose to continue as usual.

The other wagons are churning up thick dust. We’re going to continue as usual.

September 1, 1853

The eternal dust of the wagons ahead of us is most troublesome. We will continue as usual.

September 2, 1853

The dust from other wagons has gotten bad.  We decided to continue as usual.

The wagon train got caught in duststorm, and I decided to continue as usual.

September 3, 1853

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 203 pounds of meat.

September 4, 1853

Shagg died.

Whelp. There’s the biggest RNG screw you the game can throw out. So, we’re done here!

SURVIVORS: EVERYONE BUT SHAGG

A PARTIAL VICTORY HAS BEEN ACHIEVED

Below, the full saved diary:

April 30, 1853

Here begins the journal of Shagg, formerly a journalist. Tomorrow we leave Independence behind to begin our journey west to Oregon City.  We must still purchase the supplies that our Conestoga wagon will hold to sustain us during our long trek.

May 1, 1853

Decided not to buy a package deal. I can do better on my own!

Purchased 5 pairs of boots, 5 hats, 5 pairs of long underwear, 5 pairs of mittens, 5 sets of clothing, 5 winter coats, 5 winter scarves.

Purchased 5 8-oz. bottles of alum, 5 16-oz. bottles of ammonia, 175 pounds of bacon, 5 6-oz. bottles of basil, 50 5-lb. tins of biscuits, 5 16-oz. boxes of borax, 5 16-oz. bottles of brandy, 3 pounds of butter, 5 8-oz. bottles of camomile, 5 4-oz. bottles of camphor, 6 canteens, 5 16-oz. bottles of castor oil, 75 pounds of celery, 5 6-oz. bottles of cinnamon, 25 pounds of coffee beans, 2 coffee pots, 5 8-oz. jars of dandelion, 5 8-oz. boxes of Dover’s Powder, 125 5-lb. sacks of dried fruit, 125 5-lb. sacks of dried vegetables, 5 8-oz. bottles of Duffy’s Elixir, 5 12-oz. bottles of epsom salts, 1 fishing net, 1 fishing pole, 1 frying pan, 5 6-oz. bottles of ginger, 2 hunting knives, 5 4-oz. bottles of iodine, 5 16-oz. bottles of isopropyl alcohol, 5 4-oz. boxes of James Fever Powder, 2 lanterns, 5 8-oz. bottles of linseed oil, 4 6-oz. bottles of nutmeg, 5 16-oz. bottles of olive oil, 35 10-lb. sacks of onions, 4 oxen, 5 8-oz. bottles of pepper, 5 4-oz. bottles of peppermint, 3 25-lb. kegs of pickles, 1 pocket watch, 1 pot, 5 20-lb. sacks of potatoes, 8 8-oz. jars of preserves, 22 30-foot lengths of rope, 3 10-lb. sacks of salt, 50 pounds of salt pork, 5 4-oz. bottles of sarsaparilla, 5 6-oz. bottles of sassafras, 2 sets of cooking utensils, 5 sets of eating utensils, 1 skillet, 5 4-oz. bottles of spearmint, 3 10-lb. sacks of sugar, 10 pounds of tea, 5 tin cups, 5 tin plates, 5 16-oz. bottles of turpentine, 1 washboard, 7 water kegs, 5 gallon jugs of whiskey, 5 8-oz. bottles of witch hazel.

Purchased 35 boxes of 20 bullets, 30 25-lb. kegs of gunpowder, 3 rifles.

Traded 26 5-lb. tins of biscuits for 2 oxen.

We saw a small party of coyotes today, just a mile or so west of Blue River.

Fording the river looks to be our best option.

May 2, 1853

We swamped the wagon in the river and lost   1 hat; 1 pair of long underwear; 1 set of clothing; 1 winter coat; 1 8-oz. bottle of alum; and various other items.

Kit has internal injuries. We plan to make patient comfortable.

Our expectations of reaching Westport were fulfilled this day.

Purchased 2 pairs of pants, 2 shirts.

May 3, 1853

Saw New Santa Fe, sight is most reassuring.

May 5, 1853

Today we saw Lone Elm. How sublime it appears by moonlight.

May 6, 1853

There was a wedding in camp today not far from Blue Mound. A joyous occasion in the wilderness!

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 104 pounds of meat.

May 10, 1853

Today we saw Kansas River. How sublime it appears by moonlight.

Caulk the wagon and float it across, that is the way to go.

May 11, 1853

Today we have traveled 100 miles.

May 12, 1853

Passed Saint Mary’s Mission.

May 13, 1853

From our guidebook, estimated we would reach Red Vermillion River today, and sure enough, there it was!

Decided to ford the river.

We tipped the wagon and lost   1 pound of bacon; 2 5-lb. tins of biscuits; 1 16-oz. box of borax; 3 pounds of celery; 1 pound of coffee beans; and various other items.

May 14, 1853

A thick fog rolled in today. Looks like we’ll wait for conditions to improve.

May 15, 1853

The other wagons are churning up thick dust. We’re going to continue as usual.

Today we saw Scott Spring. What a sight!

May 17, 1853

The eternal dust of the wagons ahead of us is most troublesome. We will continue as usual.

May 18, 1853

We hope for some rain to settle the dust. For the time being, we’ll continue as usual.

As expected, we made it to Alcove Spring today.

May 19, 1853

We’re nearly choking on the dust of the trail. We’ve decided to continue as usual.

Arrived at Big Blue River today.

May 21, 1853

A delay prevented us from crossing at Big Blue River. We’re going to wait our turn to cross.

Decided to caulk the wagon and float it across.

May 22, 1853

Made an early start this morning; passed St. Joseph Road Junction.

May 23, 1853

Dreadful thunderstorm today. I figured it was best to continue as usual.

May 27, 1853

The weather turned mighty hot, so we’re planning to wait for conditions to improve.

May 28, 1853

The weather turned mighty hot, so we’re planning to wait for conditions to improve.

May 29, 1853

It’s mighty hot today. We’re going to wait for conditions to improve.

June 2, 1853

Misplaced my guidebook at The Narrows today. Luckily we found it before leaving.

June 5, 1853

Pink came down with a bad cold, and I decided to increase fluid intake.

Nooned at “The Coast of Nebraska”.

June 7, 1853

A mighty severe thunderstorm came up. We’re going to continue as usual.

Arrived at Fort Kearny.

June 12, 1853

Our expectations of reaching Plum Creek were fulfilled this day.

June 18, 1853

Arrived at O’Fallon’s Bluffs, despite some “help” from Nicholas J. Tillman.

June 20, 1853

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 25 pounds of meat.

June 22, 1853

Heard news of a murder and hanging last night near South Platte River. Enough to send shivers down one’s spine.

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 213 pounds of meat.

Decided to ford the river.

June 23, 1853

Our wagon tipped over. We lost   1 pair of boots; 2 winter scarves; 1 4-oz. bottle of camphor; 1 canteen; 2 pounds of coffee beans; and various other items.

June 25, 1853

Raiden gave us a good scare by coming close to drowning. I decided to rest here awhile.

June 26, 1853

Passed the five hundred mile mark today.

June 27, 1853

We tipped the wagon and lost   1 pair of boots; 1 canteen; 1 pound of coffee beans; 1 5-lb. sack of dried fruit; 1 5-lb. sack of dried vegetables; and various other items.

Kit suffered a sprain. We’ll soak in warm epsom saltwater.

Made it to Ash Hollow.

June 28, 1853

We were inconvenienced by a serious thunderstorm. We chose to continue as usual.

July 3, 1853

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 201 pounds of meat.

Today we saw Courthouse and Jail Rocks. How sublime it appears by moonlight.

July 4, 1853

It is Independence Day and we’re going to continue.

Passed Chimney Rock about noon.

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 170 pounds of meat.

July 6, 1853

Another step on the trail; today we reached Scotts Bluff.

After much travail, we came to Mitchell Pass.

July 9, 1853

Spotted a group of strangers. We decided to continue at a distance.

For a time today we feared we were lost. We were much relieved to find ourselves at an identifiable location, Laramie River.

Caulk the wagon and float it across, that is the way to go.

Saw eagles today near Fort Laramie. What majestic creatures!

July 10, 1853

Today we drove our wagons and teams past Register Cliff.

July 12, 1853

Traded 1 rifle for 1 spare wagon axle.

July 13, 1853

One of our wagon axles broke, and I decided to trade for a replacement.

July 16, 1853

Spotted a group of strangers. We decided to continue at a distance.

July 17, 1853

Happened upon a fresh grave near Ayers Natural Bridge. A reminder of the hazards we all face on the this journey.

July 20, 1853

Encamped a while near North Platte River.

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 207 pounds of meat.

Fording the river looks to be our best option.

Enjoyed some good fiddle music today during our nooning near Mormon Ferry Trading Post.

July 21, 1853

Made it to Emigrant Gap.

Saw a mountain lion not far from Willow Springs.

July 23, 1853

Another step on the trail; today we reached Independence Rock.

Nooned near Devil’s Gate.

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 218 pounds of meat.

July 25, 1853

Felt somewhat weary today. Passed Split Rock.

July 26, 1853

Rested the animals near Three Crossings.

Arrived at Sweetwater River, despite some “help” from Nicholas J. Tillman.

Fording the river looks to be our best option.

Our wagon tipped over. We lost   1 hat; 1 pair of mittens; 1 16-oz. box of borax; 1 6-oz. bottle of cinnamon; 11 5-lb. sacks of dried fruit; and various other items.

July 28, 1853

Our expectations of reaching Ice Spring Slough were fulfilled this day.

August 1, 1853

Our wagon tipped over. We lost   1 pair of boots; 1 hat; 1 pair of long underwear; 1 set of clothing; 1 16-oz. bottle of brandy; and various other items.

Our wagon tipped over. We lost   1 pair of mittens; 1 8-oz. bottle of alum; 1 16-oz. bottle of brandy; 1 8-oz. bottle of camomile; and various other items.

August 3, 1853

Traveled past Final Sweetwater River Crossing this afternoon.

Decided to ford the river.

August 4, 1853

The wagon got stuck in the mud. Had to double-team the animals.

Enjoyed a cup of coffee with Mr. Lumare today at noon near South Pass.

Passed Pacific Springs.

August 5, 1853

The weather turned mighty hot, so we’re planning to wait for conditions to improve.

August 6, 1853

It’s mighty hot today. We’re going to wait for conditions to improve.

August 8, 1853

Rested the animals near Dry Sandy.

Traded 2 sets of clothing for 1 rifle.

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 126 pounds of meat.

August 9, 1853

We have been traveling for 100 days, today.

The mosquitoes are driving us crazy, keeping us awake at night. We must continue.

Mr. Lumare figured we would reach “Parting of the Ways” today, and he was right.

August 10, 1853

Had a bit of a run-in with another wagon party today near Haystack Butte, but we patched up our differences before nightfall.

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 79 pounds of meat.

August 13, 1853

Roahm suffered a concussion. We’re trying to slow down.

Played cards with Mr. Tillman today while nooning near Green River. I suspect he cheats.

Decided to caulk the wagon and float it across.

August 15, 1853

Passed the thousand mile mark today!

The eternal dust of the wagons ahead of us is most troublesome. We will continue as usual.

Had a bit of a run-in with another wagon party today near Branley Pass, but we patched up our differences before nightfall.

August 16, 1853

We’re nearly choking on the dust of the trail. We’ve decided to continue as usual.

Today I saw Emigrant Spring.

August 17, 1853

We’re nearly choking on the dust of the trail. We’ve decided to continue as usual.

August 18, 1853

The dust from other wagons has gotten bad.  We decided to continue as usual.

Got as far as West End of the Sublette Cutoff today.

August 19, 1853

The dust from other wagons has gotten bad.  We decided to continue as usual.

Today I saw Thomas Fork.

August 20, 1853

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 173 pounds of meat.

Caulk the wagon and float it across, that is the way to go.

August 21, 1853

We tipped the wagon and lost   1 winter scarf; 1 6-oz. bottle of basil; 4 5-lb. sacks of dried vegetables; 1 8-oz. bottle of Duffy’s Elixir; and various other items.

August 23, 1853

Roahm gave us a good scare by coming close to drowning. I decided to rest here awhile.

August 24, 1853

Made our way past Smith’s Trading Post Site late today. Trail could be better.

August 26, 1853

Reached Soda Springs about noon–about time!

August 27, 1853

Much grumbling today about Nick Tillman near Hudspeth Cutoff at Sheep Rock.

August 28, 1853

The animals are exhausted and can’t continue. I’ve decided to stop and rest awhile.

August 31, 1853

Terrible fog during the early part of the day. We chose to continue as usual.

The other wagons are churning up thick dust. We’re going to continue as usual.

September 1, 1853

The eternal dust of the wagons ahead of us is most troublesome. We will continue as usual.

September 2, 1853

The dust from other wagons has gotten bad.  We decided to continue as usual.

The wagon train got caught in duststorm, and I decided to continue as usual.

September 3, 1853

We stopped along the trail to hunt.  We obtained 203 pounds of meat.

September 4, 1853

Shagg died.

I cannot promise you that this post will be organized in any way. So let’s throw some pictures at you!

Did you ever think that more MMOs needed escort missions? FFXIV might just be the game for you!

This is part of the beta’s story questline for the port city. Thankfully, the only threats you have to protect Sisipu from are… four or five “ankle biter” bugs that die in one axe swing. Yay?
For what it’s worth, the story questline was pretty cool until it cut off at the end (presumably because of the whole beta thing). Especially fun is the fact that 90% of NPCs react to adventurer types with scorn, especially the Musketeer’s Guild which is sort of the army/government of the place. I can never get enough of tiny people threatening to fill my back with lead.

Rather than buying armor and weapons, all of my equipment gains so far have been quest rewards. Actually, none of them have weapons. Pictured here is the glorious reward of pants, replacing the… not pants that I was wearing before. Pants are grand.

On an extremely unrelated note, character creation can do a few very silly things.

BOTANY QUEST

After a while as a person specializing in the use of an axe to hit monsters, I decided to try using a smaller axe to hit trees. For in FFXIV, botanists are lumberjacks! (They can also use scythes to harvest other things)

As a botanist, you gain the ability to sense the direction and distance of the nearest harvest-able tree. “Arbor Call” they call it. It’s kind of silly. Once you reach the tree, you engage it in combat- er, play a sort of minigame.

You have to pick a point on a bar for where you swing at the tree, and then pick an angle. It will tell you how close you are to hitting the mark and you go for a while until you get stuff, then repeat the process until you can’t harvest anymore. For some reason, I found this very tedious-sounding process fun. What’s the deal?

Scythes have no minigame. They just… cut to the chase.

Apparently I was not the only one who enjoyed lumberjacking- er, botany, and not even the only catgirl who was interested in the profession. Or the same tree, even. I really should not be surprised by the large number of mithra- er, miqo’te I’ve seen so far.

As a side note, my botanist rank leveled up much, much faster than my marauder skill rank did. You can still gain physical levels as a gathering or crafting stats and get the stats too. I can’t wait to watch people grind trees for EXP.

Another curiosity in the world of FFXIV is the random chest of insignificant gil amounts in the middle of the road far away from any important places. Especially since this is the only one I’ve seen. I wonder if random chests can ever have anything actually useful in them? Nah, that would be ridiculous.

SCREW YOU BATS!

Let’s talk a bit about my other combat abilities. I did figure out how to equip more (hint: you have to actually select the weapon you’re using from a drop down menu, it’s crazy) so…

Broad swing: As you can see, it lets you use a basic attack against multiple enemies, I think the damage is a little lower, but who knows.

Trunksplitter: LUMBERJACKING! This one costs 1000 TP; that isn’t actually too much. If an enemy lasts for more than a few hits you will have generated about that amount. It’s a strong attack that’s super effective on plant enemies, of which I have only seen one. Wooooo.

Brandish: I haven’t really used this but I think it’s either a super wide swing or a spin attack of some kind.

Aside: Botanists, and presumably other non-combat classes, do get one combat ability: Throwing a rock. AMAZING!

For defeating the BATS I acquired a robe of sorts. This means that my character is currently a female character- a catgirl– who is exposing a phenomenally low amount of skin! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the likes of this before. Of course this means that high end armor will be see-through chainmail bikinis. Don’t ask me how that works.

The robe even accommodates for the cat lady’s tail. Pretty nice!

After a while, I struck out to explore the map in search of more story quests.

I didn’t find any.

HOWEVER! It did lead to some interesting discoveries.

D’aww that sheep is so adorable. :3
(Wether is a term for a male sheep, by the way, which shows up more frequently in old British literature than in the common parlance.)

Let’s get a close-up on that thing!

:3
It’s worth noting the the adorable sheep are not much of a challenge in a fight, and I have not yet seen a quest to kill them. But if you think that means they’re safe then you’re wrong!

D: ! Jeez lady why did you need to rupture that sheep’s FACE? Ouch…

Speaking of rupturing faces

THIS guy was just kind of hanging around in the same area as all these sheep. Big, giant funny looking dude with trees growing on his back. I was standing around next to him and he wasn’t moving much or attacking anyone.

But apparently he doesn’t like been looked at in the eyes. He did about six times the amount of HP I have in damage. Lesson learned!

And now we exit with what is either a ridiculously large weapon or a failure to scale a weapon to size.

Hey everyone, this is Shagg. And yesterday I spent the whole day preparing to journey into the mystical land of Eorza on a mission to see if FFXIV was as completely awful as FFXI was.

Most of the preparing was downloading it and getting it to run properly.

I did, however, get to play it for a while, explore, kill stuff, and go to bed not hating it yet, so I will recount the experiences of my first day of Final Fantasy XIV here. Let’s start from the beginning!

—

The first thing I noticed was that getting into the game didn’t require the use of that PlayOnline system, which looked something like this:

Basically, to play FFXI you had to launch PlayOnline, go through the menus there and launch FFXI from PlayOnline. It was a pointless hassle and I doubt there were any redeeming qualities. Actually, while we’re on the subject of PlayOnline, let’s go on a little tangent about their first American outing:

This is the strategy guide for Final Fantasy IX. While Final Fantasy IX was/is a great game, the stategy guide… Well, this is how it worked. The guide basically told you very little about the sort of thing you’d need a guide for, for example boss strategies. Instead it would have something like “Need help? Then go type this code in on our website for a more detailed explanation.”

STUPID

Anyway, back to FFXIV.

The first thing is, of course, character creation. Also of course, I spent several hours fiddling with that alone.
The playable races are the same as the ones that were in FFXI, except they all have dumber names:

Humans, or Humes or whatever they were called, are now HYUR.
HYUUURRRR DURRR HYURPADERP.

Elvaans are now Elezen. I guess they can’t just call them elves?
It’s also worth noting that I don’t think they have bizarrely elongated necks anymore. Seriously, that was unsettling.

Tarutarus are now Lalafell. Mithras are now Miqo’te (gotta have at least one race with an apostrophe y’know!) and Galkas are now Roegadyn.

There’s a good chance that one of their meetings involved hitting random keys on the keyboard.

Anyway, the character creation allows for more detail than FFXI’s did and doesn’t have the characters prancing about doing stupid things. I’d compare the level of customization to Monster Hunter Tri; there are more options than there are in that game, except when color is involved.

Oh, and naturally they don’t have a proportion slider, only a menu to select heights (shortest, short, average, tall, tallest). What makes this truly bizarre is that breast size ends up being connected to the face you choose.
And only HYURRR and Elezen females can actually have varying sizes. Why is this? It’s a secret to everybody.

Anyway, me being me, the race I would end up choosing is pretty obvious!

Aww, she’s so cute! :3

Shagg:	Haha aww
Shagg:	When I picked a set of classes my mithra girl jumped startled and started looking at the clothes
Pink:	*rubs forehead a bit* JAPAAAAAN! XD
Shagg:	It was cute though
Shagg:	HYURRRs just nod
Shagg:	Because humans are boring
Pink:	I know, but they are giving Mithra the stereotypical cutesy cat-girl personality. XD
Shagg:	Better than the slutty one from FFXI?
Pink:	…Suppose it is an upgrade, yes. XD

Pink:	I have to say this, though…
Pink:	PAAAAAAANTS! XD

Another thing: Within races, there are two subraces. They have slightly different stats and appearances and that’s basically all there is to say about them. (Of course, one of the elf subraces is basically drow.)

Speaking of stats, before I forget, the starting stats of the various races seem more balanced overall. At a glance, I don’t think you would be immediately screwed over by any race/class combination you chose.

Which means we move on to classes!

There are four categories for classes which are essentially fighters, mages, gatherers and crafters; the latter two are non-combat classes. Classes can be changed at any time by switching equipment around, but you’ll have to get the money to do that kind of thing as your starting class.

Fighter classes: Gladiator (swords), Marauder (greataxes), Pugilist (punching skeletons YEAH), Archer (bows) and Lancer (lances). Besides weapons, the differences are not immediately apparent.

Mage classes: Thaumaturge and Conjurer. The differences are not immediately apparent.

Gatherers: Fisher, botanist, and miner.

Crafters: carpenter, blacksmith, armorer, goldsmith, leatherworker, weaver, alchemist and culinarian.

The problems here are that it’s difficult to figure out exactly what the role of each class is, with the exception of non-combat classes; for them, it’s difficult to know how difficult their roles are. I think it would be weird, for instance, if goldsmiths had a lot to do early on.

The class I chose for my character was Marauder.

Pink:	…They call THAT a GREAT Axe? I am disappointed! XD
Pink:	And yeah… those are no longer pants… Those are hot pants with stockings barely clinging to them.

Pink has noticed something plaguing MMORPG character designs: Lack of pants for females. (You may also notice that the marauder has at least 4 belts. No zippers, though.)
However!

Shagg:	Archers have those too
Shagg:	Lancers seem to have leggings
Shagg:	Glaiators and pugilists have legit pants
Shagg:	Thaumaturge has robes, conjurer has pants
Shagg:	Fisher is stockings, botanist and miner are pants
Shagg:	And only 3 of the “disciples of the hand” have non-standard pants
Shagg:	All in all, the amount of pants is surprisingly large
Pink:	I cuncur. XD

Pants aside, character creation after this point asks you questions that, again, have no apparent purpose.
The first is your nameday and the moon you were born under (in other words, day and month of your birthday.) Under this system, my birthdate is THE 9TH SUN OF THE 6TH ASTRAL MOON.
The moon you were born under also corresponds to a “Guardian”, in my case NOPHICA, THE MATRON a.k.a. a fertility goddess. You are free to choose other ones, and they have no apparent benefits at this point so I just stuck with the one I was given for my birthdate. The differences are in the flavor text, here.

After this point you select your home city. The choices are a port city with a lot of pirates, a forest city, and a desert city. Not too different from the FFXI ones: Windhurst, and… whatever the other two were, I don’t care.

SALUTE THE WALL OF TEXT!

Incidentally, the Marauder class happens to be pirates. So my guild hall is on a swanky pirate ship. It’s pretty cool but I didn’t take any pictures of it so there.

The last choice is what world you want to play on.

Hang on, let me reiterate that:

A CHOICE of WHAT WORLD you PLAY ON. None of that random worlds or linkpearlshellthings nonsense from FFXI, where you had to have a friend blow their gil on something to let you play on the same server.
Now you just pick one. Also they are all named after towns from previous final fantasy games:

Fabul, Melmond, Bodhum, Rabanstre, Saronia, Kashuan, Trabia, Gysahl, Istory, Palamecia, Wutai, Besaid, Selbina, Mysidia, Figaro, Cornelia and Lindblum.

If you know which game all of those are from you win a prize! I sure don’t know. Fabul is from 4, Melmond is from 1, Kashuan might be from 5, Gyshal is related to Gyshal Greens, Istory sounds kinda familiar, Palamecia was from 2 since that was the emperor’s thing, Wutai is from 7 (stop stealing my materia Yuffie), Mysidia is also from 4, Cornelia is from 1 and Lindblum is from 9.

And then there’s Figaro which is from 6, so obviously I chose that one.

Something else I forgot to mention: Your character has to have a first and last name. Because of this I have yet to see any terrible usernames floating above peoples’ heads, except for one guy who’s name was Epic Fail.

ANYWAY, ACTUAL GAMEPLAY TIME!?

NO! INTRO CUTSCENE

“Buh?”

A voice in my character’s head tells her “HEAR… FEEL… THINK…” and she wakes up from her little cat nap on the boat headed to the port town. The importance of this voice has not yet been brought up again. I’m assuming the intros for the other starting cities are different, since sailing to the desert might be kind of silly.

The game doesn’t do much as far as tutorials go. It just throws you into a ship where you walk around and talk to npcs, fiddle with your menu and then exit the game to lower your graphics settings so the thing will actually run.

Gamepad controls do work pretty well, by the way.

This door is extremely ominous by the way. It hints that you are about to actually do some kind of gamepla-
STORY CUTSCENE GO

The ship is under attack by mutant jellyfish or something I don’t know, let’s just hit them with an axe.

The game actually does have small tutorial windows popping up at this point to tell you how to engage active mode, wherein you can initiate combat. Combat seems more active than FFXI or the standard point and click WoW clone, as there’s a stamina meter which determines which of your attacks you can use. I only have “light swing” at this point; after the tutorial fighting here I think I learned something called Treesplitter but I could never find it on menus.

For more detailed tutorials on the game, you have to find the crystal in towns or other areas which also act as warp points (they added fast travel) and view it from there. This is both good and bad: If you know what you’re doing you don’t have to play an unskippable tutorial section, but if you don’t…

From the crystals I learned that there are some attacks that require TP, which is built up as you attack and get hit. I think this was in FFXI, but the swings in that were painfully slow and in this you can do several in quick succession.

There’s also stuff about hitting from the rear and partially parrying and whatnot that makes this battle system at least seem more dynamic than FFXI’s. We’ll have to see. You can lock on and strafe around enemies, so maybe that has a point too.

After those two enemies, I gained a level both in raw character level and class rank. In FFXI I remember it taking an hour to reach level 2; in this, it took me under 10 minutes, and later on as soon as I did another quest and finally killed stuff again killing four rats got me to level 3. Signs point to less grind, and this is good!

Gaining a level allows you to put stat points and element points into your strength/vitality/dexterity/intelligence/mind/piety and elemental resistances/attack power, respectively. The game gives no indication of what these stats mean; you have to go read the crystal manual for that. (The stats are physical attack, defense, physical accuracy, magic power, magic defense, and magic accuracy, incidentally. I pumped everything into strength and fire this first level and hoped for the best.)

The abilities menu did not seem to show anything new, and I still don’t know if I actually learned something or if I was hallucinating.
Anyway after that, PLOT PLOT PLOT and a mysteriously obviously important character uses magic to protect herself and you (and none of the other crew members) from even more jellyfish and there’s a giant thing that almost destroys the boat and oh look, we’re in town!

Immediately we see a ton of players who have also just arrived from their individual copies of the same boat where the same things presumably happened. Because of the mob of players it took me a while to find the NPC I had to talk to, and from there I was shuffled into the pub and given a quest by the head of the Adventurer’s Guild; He gives you a link thing which lets you talk to him from anywhere, and sends you to a camp to activate a crystal which, as mentioned, is the fast travel and manual. The crystals also allow you to initiate levequests, timed missions (in this case, kill 3 rats (the fourth one I killed was the first enemy I had seen in a while so I needed to kill something)) which give rewards when completed and even restore your health and MP. Quests have difficulty levels to choose from too, for people like me who play by themselves in  massively multiplayer online games with monthly fees.

That was essentially my first day experience with FFXIV, as well as exploring the town for a long time and enjoying the awesome music (Uematsu composed it, after all). So far I don’t hate it, and I’ll be playing it more when I have time. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?

On the subject of Monster Rancher, instead of LPing Monster Rancher 3 or any other Monster Rancher I have played Monster Rancher DS for my own enjoyment.
Monster Rancher DS is pretty easy and ridiculous.
That is all.
(P.S. taking pictures of a DS with a DSi is silly. The monster pictured is Fritz the hengar/hengar. I wish I could find some wifi opponents to beat up because I don’t know what to do now.)

Dear readers of this blog (all [low number] of you),

I have decided that Harvest Moon 64 is kind of boring as a screenshot LP of the sort it is being right now.

HOWEVER!

Rather than completely abandon it, I think I will try a few updates of screenshot LPs of different games to see which is the best.

In other words, Shagg Tries Stuff Screenshot LP Edition or something. You know by now how much I love making you guys vote on everything.

As for what I try first, well there’s a series I’ve wanted to LP a game from for a long time. Let me give you a hint:

I HOPE THE HINT ISN’T TOO OBVIOUS

When we last saw our hero, Shep, nothing terribly exciting was happening.  And it continued to happen for several days, until this day.

a balloon and sow seeds.”

A festival! Jubilation! This is exactly what we need to spice up our farm life.

And if that wasn’t enough excitement, we also got MAIL! The carpenters are going to be very important later. If we bring them enough money and lumber they will expand our house.

The way to make money with my insane sheep plan is to harvest the wild berries and herbs of the wilderness every day.

Everything found out here makes a good gift for befriending a random townsperson too. You can also fish but it’s kind of dumb.

Into the cave!

Every Harvest Moon game seems to have a convenient system of caves somewhere with easily accessed items that can be sold for profit and which regrow every day.

I wonder if any of this stuff could be converted into a fuel source.

I also wonder when this hole in the wall will be open for business. What do holes sell anyway?

The wilderness offers us another secluded area to explore.

A nice little pond surrounded by flowers and a few more herbs and berries.  Surely this area has no significance whatsoever despite its unique music.

But I think that’s enough of the wilderness for today. Let’s head over to the village and into the town square.

We are greeted with an abundance of balloons!

hard masters.”

Well, Potion Shop Guy, if you didn’rt want to do it you shouldn’t have entered the contest. What is the contest anyway? Is it a raffle? Well you shouldn’t have won a raffle by chance, then!

assistant? ”

And they’re off. Maybe someday Shep can be the king, riding in the balloon with the girl of his dreams, flying around and throwing seeds everywhere in some sort of symbolic gesture.

But today is not that day. That day will be whenever the next bizarre Harvest Moon year cycle happens.

before this one.”

If I can’t be the king, I can t least be the best at launching balloons.

Go forth, balloon, and free these lands of plague and pestilence!  May your roots grow deep and your fruits grow large, large enough to feed generations!

Okay, that may have been a bit too much.

But you’ve got to have fun at festivals, right?

good sleep.”

————————————

This is still mostly an experimental LP since I’ve never done screenshots before, but I don’t know how long it will last because I don’t know if I can keep Harvest Moon 64 interesting.

See you next time.

Harvest Moon 64 stuff recorded, will be made into screenshots and update sometime.

I just played about an hour of harvest moon 64 without remembering to press the record button so I could take screenshots.

Any sort of update will be delayed until I feel like replaying the part I played.

This game’s winner is: Jet Force Gemini!

I ended it because no more votes were coming in and it’s been almost a week.

Since JFG is so long and I’m still in the middle of things, I don’t know when it will be edited/posted. It might be a while.



Vote now, and the results will be found in about a week!

http://poll.pollcode.com/XUJp

The choices: