Dreamlands (Day 317)

I was thinking I might finish Lunar 2 tonight, but I forgot that the LCS started today. I'll probably still play a bit, but I feel like prioritizing the LCS. I think I only have one dungeon left to go, but there's also a ton of postgame content to tackle if I felt like doing so. I don't usually go out of my way to complete optional content in RPGs, but I'm considering it in this case just because the main game is reasonably short. There's still a fairly decent chance that I'll choose to forego that content and move on to Front Mission 3 in the interest of clearing out my backlog.

Now that I think about it, there are probably better games to pick up on if I'm interested in completing as many games as quickly as possible. Front Mission 3 is probably not nearly as long as the game that followed it in the series, but it's still a relatively slow-paced strategy RPG. I'm pretty sure the only reason I didn't finish it in the first place was because of how long it was taking to finish. At the time, I did not feel as motivated to finish every game I played so I frequently got distracted and moved on to other things.

I've already made quite a bit of progress on Vagrant Story and I do like the game a lot. To be honest, I"m not really sure why I stopped playing it in the first place. I don't remember writing about it very much if at all, but it has interesting gameplay and excellent dialogue. The graphics can be a little painful to look at, but I can at least appreciate the style they were attempting to go for. The game is difficult and can be punishing if you don't properly maintain your gear. Come to think of it, that's probably what made me lose interest. It was important to keep a good stock of weapons tailored to fight specific enemies or you might find yourself dealing 1 damage per hit or missing every single time.

According to HowLongtoBeat.com, Vandal Hearts should only take me about 17 hours to finish. Maybe I should try that? It's a really fun game marred only by hideously awful graphics. I'm a big fan of 2D sprite graphics, but in this case, they were really just terrible in quality and art direction. I have nothing good to say about them other than how funny the blood gushing animations are. Despite this, I recall that the gameplay and class promotion system were really engaging.

The only other PS1 game I still need to finish is Tales of Destiny, which I've discussed on this blog before. It's a solid game, but it's really an average entry into the series. If not for it being a part of the main Tales series, I probably wouldn't make it a priority to finish, but I've spent a lot of time on it already and I'd like to follow through. Still, it's a Tales game and as a general rule these games are unforgivably long. If I still have my original save data from when I was playing the game alone, I might be able to power through the rest of it.