Showing posts with label strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strategy. Show all posts
on Saturday, February 8, 2014
The past few weeks have been hectic, or maybe even then it would be a crude understatement. As of late, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and come up with a decent blog entry. So now that a weekend has come, I thought I'd take some time to come up with something, at least to get things back in order.

So much of the reason why things have been hectic lately has much to do with work. It's only been two months into the new year, and I find myself swamped with quite a number of responsibilities. Nothing new, but a bit of a comforting feeling to know that they find me a valuable asset to the company.

At present, I'm juggling quite a bit on my plate, having to take on multiple roles, sometimes all at once that I'm not sure if I'll burn myself out. I still do QA for a small project or two, have director tasks, internally produce/manage an ongoing project (go play it! just search Manila Rush on the Play Store and App Store)  and manage a beta community forum to boot (hence me reviving a bit of forum moderation experience I racked up back in 2004-2008). It'll be a miracle to find time to squeeze all the things I need to do for each role in 8 hours a day for a week. Not to mention all the other things I have to attend to aside from all that.

When I started out in the company, I always wonders what people in the managerial level do. Now that I'm so immersed in it, I sometimes wished it was a bit easier. To balance everything out, I just tell myself: "Hey, you're the youngest director around here. They wouldn't give you these tasks if they didn't think you could handle it. Your performance has been great, so keep at it! Yudan sezu ni ikou (Let's go and not get careless)!" A mouthful and not exactly verbatim every single time, but it helps keep me motivated. :)

These succeeding weeks will be a challenge, but a welcome one (I think). It'll be an uphill battle, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things will be for the better.

on Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Over time, I think the longer games take to get from start to end, the more I get immersed and enticed by the story and gameplay to effectively enjoy it. Needless to say, I still have much to expose myself to, but the experience I take away from coming across such titles and playing them has not been such a waste of gaming time (at least in my opinion).

This post will give you an overview of the titles that I've managed to have the privilege of playing over the years, and maybe when time permits me, I'll come back to this topic every now and again to talk about them more in detail. We'll see.

RPG-Strategy games always give me the best thrill, since it puts your skill and tactical sense (at least in the sense of decision-making) to the test whenever you make a particular action or move to advance. Grinding levels and coming up with effective strategies to win are the kind of stuff I humbly enjoy indulging myself with. It keeps my brain active, so to speak.


1. Pokemon (Nintendo - GB, GBA, DS)


I've been a fan of the series for the longest time, and I always made it a point to take the effort of playing several versions whenever I could just to re-live the experience of at least pretending to be a Pokemon Trainer, catch and train Pokemon and rise through the ranks.

Found on your left is a little collage of the titles I've personally played through. You'll notice I haven't even touched on the 5th generation titles (Black and White), but maybe someday I'll get to that. Someday.

This spread of titles should give you a rough idea how young I started playing games too actually! I remember playing Pokemon Blue on a Pink Gameboy Pocket, Pokemon Yellow on a Yellow Gameboy Advance, Pokemon Sapphire on a Gameboy Advance SP, and Pokemon Diamond, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Platinum and Pokemon Soul Silver on a Blue Nintendo DS Lite.


 2. Suikoden II (Sony - PS1)

For the longest time, my family owned a little Playstation 1 console. I think I was in 6th grade or so when we had our parents buy this game for us. I tried it out and found myself hooked.

The story, collecting the Stars of Destiny, it was a fantastic RPG-Strategy that I believe to be the best in its series, even outclassing its successors Suikoden III-V.

Funny tidbit about this game though. The long cutscene with the credits that comes a little after the Hero and Jowy jump off the cliff together made me think the game was done. How silly was I as a kid?

 3. Breath of Fire IV (Sony - PS1)

This was another title that seemed to have been gathering dust in our little pile of games before I pulled it out and set the CD into the console. Not really aware of the previous titles before it, I played it blindly, as I did most every game.

This one, however, I got some help from my cousin Dabz. He and I were both playing it at the same time and he took the liberty of printing out (yes, printing out an entire booklet) the walkthrough. Oh the thickness of that.

But all the same, this gave me the same awesome sense of uber awesomeness that Suikoden II had, and the many possibilities the story held was something I wasn't ever gonna forget anytime soon.

4. Fire Emblem Awakening (Nintendo - 3DS)

My latest fix. To be completely honest, I never followed the Fire Emblem series until now (then again if you consider the previous two games, I seem to be charting my own course of loving sequels to beginnings). So when I tried out the Game Demo on my 3DS I just knew I had to get it once it was released.

Currently I'm well into playing the game, and at this point in time I find it worth every cent of the price I paid for it. The graphics are stunning, the story is epic, the tactical gameplay is a breath of fresh air and the grinding is always so fun!

So that wraps up my post of RPG-Strategy Games brought to you by yours truly. Maybe someday I'll go into more detail about them and give my reviews. :) Who knows?