Through Time (Day 332)

Now that I've delved into a series of mazelike dungeons in Tales of Destiny's latter half, I'm starting to sour on it a bit. It's important for me to maintain motivation at this stage because otherwise my frustration might prevent me from ever finishing it. The battle system is still entertaining and that's what's carrying me through. I'd also like to someday play Tales of Eternia, but not now. There'll be time for that once I've cleared out more of my backlog.

I've also just purchased a really expensive video card, so assuming I don't starve due to extreme poverty over the next two weeks, I'll have a whole new world of games opened up to me, including some that I haven't played for some time. These include such games as Amnesia, Torchlight II, Borderlands 2, StarCraft 2, and hey, maybe I'll even revisit Rift. I'm curious what the game looks like on maximum settings and I wouldn't mind getting to max level either. I would go ahead and count that as a finished game if I did that.

I'm also getting two free games with the video card purchase, none of which I'm particularly interested in. Still, maybe I'll be more satisfied than I imagined I might be with my purchases and I'll have some more to talk about there. Despite all this, the video card isn't going to be here until Wednesday at the very earliest--which is unfortunate, because that's my first day back at work after a 3-day weekend. Nothing I can do about it, but it's certainly disappointing. At the same time though, it theoretically gives me more than enough time to finish Tales of Destiny. Depending on when that happens, I'll have to make a decision on what direction I want to take next.

I'll only have Front Mission 3 left in my backlog as far as PlayStation games go, but I'd also really like to play Front Mission 2, for which a fan translation exists. I feel like playing that would significantly reduce the likelihood that I almost complete Front Mission 3 because I have historically gotten burned out when attempting to play games from a series in sequential order like that--and I think this would be especially true for a series like Front Mission where the games tend to run so long. After all, I originally attempted to play Tales of Destiny after finishing Phantasia and that absolutely did not work out.

Still, ignoring FM2 and just moving on to the next game in the series is similarly worrisome to me. I guess I might just have to settle with playing Front Mission 2 for now and trying to figure it out from there. With that video card coming in, it feels unlikely I'll maintain the same level of patience with these retro games when I have so many more options opened up to me, including much easier PS2 emulation.

I just need to concentrate on finishing Tales of Destiny for now. I really just want to get this one out of the way.