Damn my lack of caffeine tolerance! Damn the Vanilla Coke that is now gone! Damn!

Damning aside, I am now the proud and happy owner of Star Ocean 2 and Final Fantasy Saga Frontier 2. Nope, never played the first one of either. I was hoping to find a copy of some form of Suikoden, but that's not likely to happen, ever. *sigh* Unfortunate, really- it seems like a fascinating series. Still. I now have Star Ocean, and I have wasted ridiculous amounts of time on it. (This is mostly the brother's fault, mind you. If he had just stayed away from that damn town for three more minutes, I wouldn't have had to start over from the beginning.) My main reason for playing the game was Ashton, of course. I mean, the guy gets possessed by a slapstick duo of dragons, and spends the rest of the game a) bemoaning his fate, b) kicking ass, c) acting cute and vaguely girly, and d) obsessing over barrels. That's it. That's enough. I'm done.

The translation is only about half a shade of awful- doesn't compare to Tactics or even parts of the English version of FFIV. Occasionally the dialogue feels a little too literal, or the characters will mix up their pronouns, or contractions will be few and far between...but it's comprehensible, and at times highly amusing. Doesn't compare to Lunar's localization, though, which is disappointing.The beginning is a little slow and stilted (especially Claude's scenario- my god, was that an hour of pure dialogue?) but it picks up after a little while. The battle system is fairly fun, once you master it (targeting is a minor bitch, and switching between characters can be annoying, but it isn't often necessary, so it balances) and the item creation thing- I think I've blown at least five hours total doing nothing but cook. How many games let you cook things, and make jewelry, and other fun and silly things like that? It's ridiculous.

I do love it dearly, though, even if I'm annoyed that I have to choose between characters...I don't get Opera or Ernest with Ashton, and I can't get Bowman if I get Precis- not that I want Precis, mind you, but Bowman is useless in battle, no matter how cool he may be outside of battle. Though I don't know that cool is the right word to describe Bowman...*snorkle* Yes, I sense many, many hours of my life sacrificed to this game. Many hours indeed.