Knives Out (Day 195)

According to my my Backloggery, I purchased Final Fantasy XIII-2 a little over a year ago. I don't remember the circumstances surrounding that purchase, but I recorded the purchase on Christmas Day in 2012. If I recall correctly, I had only recently returned from Austin, Texas and most likely didn't have very much money at all. It's possible I got some money for Christmas, but I really don't remember. Regardless, I didn't take it out of the plastic until last night. 

I think I bought the game originally while I was still playing through FFXIII. Although for the most part the game was very linear, it was still a relatively lengthy game. I enjoyed a lot about it and considered it a worthy entry to the series, although its worth to me had very little to do with its plot and characters. Once I completed it, I probably wasn't ready to jump into anything that had very similar gameplay and I assumed (correctly) that FFXIII-2 would have a very similar playstyle.

Upon further inspection, it appears I was completely wrong about the date on the FFXIII-2 purchase. Either I read the date on the description wrong or I made a typo all that time ago. Instead of purchasing the game in December of that year, I'd purchased it in February instead, which would mean that I'd bought it way back when I was still working at Walmart. In fact, I bought Final Fantasy X and its sequel on the same day, about one month before I quit. Exactly one month later, I finished Final Fantasy XIII. I was now unemployed and felt like I had a ton of time to finish up some games.

Instead of moving directly onto FFXIII-2 as originally planned, I started playing Disgaea 2, a game I'd originally abandoned most likely because I had been burnt out directly after finishing the original Disgaea. I'd been playing it off and on for a long time but for some reason I'd never really become absorbed in it. I finally summoned up the motivation and forced myself through it. Then, in an uncharacteristic move, I started and finished Disgaea 3 right after that in a relatively timely fashion. This was a game I'd borrowed from a friend of mine along with Disgaea 4 and I still have both of them. I should give them back!

Of course, at that point I was burned out on Disgaea again and I wanted to try something completely different. What if I played something that focused much less on the actual gameplay and was entirely focused on the plot? I settled on The Secret of Monkey Island, which I purchased on Steam. I don't remember how I paid for it, but it's possible I was working for Sitel at the time. I was going to play Monkey Island 2 directly after that but unfortunately Diablo III happened to come out at just about that time. I still haven't gotten back to it.

I played through Diablo III a few times until I got bored with it and eventually so did my friends. It was this point that I decided to tackle the monumental task of trimming my backlog. I looked through some of the games I hadn't finished and decided to start with Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. At the very beginning of that year I had embarked on a similar exercise and managed to beat Superstar Saga, the first game of that series. The final boss had been particularly tough but I enjoyed the game a lot. Partners in Time was similarly amusing, but I think I enjoyed the first game a bit better. Unfortunately, I lost interest in Bowser's Inside Story about halfway through and I've been stalled out on that series ever since.

I was originally going to talk a little bit about my initial impressions of Final Fantasy XIII-2 in this blog entry, but I think I've stumbled across something else I want to talk about. It's interesting to go through my gaming history for the last couple of years, especially since I've had to get a little creative in figure out what I should play with very limited funds. More on this to follow.