The Number Thirty

Day 433

I've got the next two days off and I really don't want to spend them playing Final Fantasy XIV nonstop. I really burned myself out on it by rushing to level 30 dragoon as fast as possible. I'd rather play for shorter periods of time from now on, especially since my co-op partner will only be getting on in the afternoons. I'll probably just play a few hours a day. It might be a good idea to finish up the Persona 3 storyline in P4 Arena Ultimax as well as get a little bit further in Lufia 2. I did finish Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call last night, so at least there's that. That makes 30 games for the year. I'm not trying to hit any specific goals at this point, but the fact remains that I don't want to overwhelm myself with too much Realm Reborn.

If I manage to finish up Lufia 2 soon, I might even reach into my backlog and pull out something else I haven't finished. It's still definitely my long term goal to clear that thing out even if I am currently prioritizing new games. I have plans to purchase three games that come out next month, but if I'm not mistaken, they all come out in the latter half of that month. That gives me a lot of time to finish up what I'm playing now and maybe start working on something else. After Lufia's done, I'll need another game to play on my phone at work--or possibly just a game to play on my 3DS. I haven't gotten into the habit of bringing it to work just yet but I suppose it wouldn't be a big deal to do so. I've considered for a long time that I'd finish up Dragon Quest III since it's the only remaining SNES game in my backlog right now. I don't feel particularly excited to play it, but it's an interesting enough game in its own right.

As for true handheld games, I'm actually doing really well on that front after having cleared out my entire PSP backlog over the past couple of months. The only games remaining at this point (after having just finished Theatrhythm) are Bravely Default for 3DS and Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis for GBA. Both (particularly the former) are time consuming games, though, and the latter is just slow-paced in general. They'll get done, but only if I find myself without other things to play. Now that I'm thinking about it, though, there are a few games for the original DS that I haven't finished up yet. I own a lot of games for that system though, so that shouldn't be surprising. Backloggery tells me I've finished a whopping 27 DS games but 3 are still left unfinished.

These games are Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, a game in a series of Mario RPGs that I really like. I remember stalling out on it just because I wasn't digging it as much as the two previous games in the series, but it was still pretty solid. I see no reason I wouldn't finish this, but for some reason I just haven't been in the mood! There's also The World Ends With You, a Square-Enix RPG with an incredibly innovative and frankly confusing and frequently annoying battle system that I never quite got the hang of. I'm often ambivalent about games that make heavy use of the touch screen. Even games that are acclaimed for their touch screen controls often don't sit quite right with me. Kirby Canvas Curse, for instance, is one of the series' most well received titles but I didn't particularly care for it, especially in comparison to games like Kirby Super Star or even Kirby's Return to Dreamland, admittedly both of which are on actual consoles.

Finally, there's Advance Wars: Dual Strike. I really like this series--I do. But I'm not good at them, and the lack of leveling and progression somewhat kill the fun for me. Intelligent Systems is responsible for developing Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, the latter of which is one of my absolute favorites series. The two games are sort of two sides of the same coin, but I find I like Fire Emblem's take on strategy a lot more, particularly because heavy emphasis on characters both in terms of strategy and development.