Not too long ago we had a couple extra days off from work and I found myself bored, stuck at home with nothing to do. So I went on PSN to see if there might be any interesting RPGs that I could download a trial version. I got two games: Ragnarok Online (I think...!) and SOL TRIGGER. I first played a bit of ST and liked it quite a bit, then gave the other game a try. I quickly got bored with the latter and went back to ST, which I progressed quickly through the trial version. Unfortunately, the trial abruptly ends after you beat the first boss. I wanted to go ahead and purchase the full version of the game, but by that time it was too late to go out and buy prepaid card for PSN. So, I sat alone in my house, being bored, and leveled up my characters and gained access to all special attacks. Little did I know that when I finally got the full version, there would be no way to import the trial game save to the full version. :(

ANYWAY, long story short, I really grew to love this game, quickly. First off, Farel is one of the "children of light" people who have the ability to utilize their soul energy, something not very different from the ancient myths of magic. Unfortunately for these peoples, those without this special power living in the inner city have been suffering from an assortment of things. Which great suffering comes a greater need to believe in a power that can save you, to heal your wounds, and something to hope for. This became the Machine God. The people worshiped this being and in return were spared. But little do the common folk know that this God and the Church that support it had been capturing the Children of Light and using them as batteries to fuel their army of machines.

The Church of Machines imprison a great majority of the entire population of the Children of Light until one of their ranks stepped forward to break the oppression: Wyle & his small band of Sol Trigger fighters. Eventually in a major strike against the Church, Wyle succeeds in destroying a gigantic Airship but inevitably goes down with the ship, leaving the Sol Triggers without a leader for a bit until Farel, who was pre-appointed as successor, takes up the role of leader.

What I really like about this game, especially the first half, is the tremendous feeling of desperation and hopelessness throughout the story. All the characters are in an assortment of black uniforms, they live in a secluded hideout and are often on the run. Plus, I really enjoyed the character of Farel. I guess you could say he's the typical heroic leader in RPGs, but you get to see a decent progression with his character... and through the very end of the game, it gets quite emotional. It could just be me, but there were parts in this story where it really got me teary-eyed. :p

ANYWAY, enough about that for now... next I'd like to offer you guys a little treat. There is no full-length soundtrack for this game, which is quite surprising, giving the quality of the music. There is, however, a mini-soundtrack of 7 tracks coupled with 4 tracks of a Drama CD available; unfortunately, they didn't really pick the best themes to be on this CD. :p So in my boredom & emotionally frayed state after finishing the game, I set up a small Fan Site for the game. As I was playing through to the end of the 2nd half of the game, I recorded a bunch of the music to serve as an unofficial soundtrack. The files aren't the greatest but the themes are amazing!! If anyone is interested in hearing some awesome tunes from this game, you can find these tracks on my site, here: http://sol.firesanctuary.com

Just to let you know, though, I will not post the tracks from the officially released mini-soundtrack/drama CD, and should they release an official, full-length soundtrack, I will remove these files.

So, I am due to move out of my apartment tomorrow, have everything packed up by the end of today and what do I do? Play games. Perfect.

I don't know what time I started playing Xenoblade again last night; it must have been around 9:00 or 9:30 because I needed to get my cat more food and litter, but once I started I didn't have much awareness for the time. Before I knew it, it was going on 3am. Woops. And then I just had to post half of the videos to YouTube before I went to sleep. By that time it was about 4:30. So sorry to the gas man who just came to disconnect my gas stove at 9:30 in the morning while I'm suffering from my usual wicked sinus attacks. They are absolutely wicked.

Anyway, I recorded a bunch of really bad quality videos on my iPhone as I was playing last night if anyone is interested. Let me warn you, though. I am at the end of the game. ^^; I recorded the ending. So these are mostly for YOU, spoiler whores! You know who you are! I'm a bad one myself. But please, if you don't want to be spoiled about the ending or even who's on your team at the ending, please don't watch. You have been warned, so don't cry to me later when you realize that maybe you should have heeded my warning!! HAHAHA *evilness*

The first two videos are not spoilerish, although it may indirectly spoil something for a given character. If you don't mind, however, they are some pretty good boss fights. And I may swear. Sorry. ^^;

The rest are in the "Ending" sequence of videos that I took. Unfortunately, though, I guess I recorded them too long for YouTube to accept so I had to crop them down, which is why there are so many freaking parts. Sorry about that.

I've put all the videos in one, handy playlist. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL297ED375F22C93C6

And, this may be the last time I can post anything until after my move to Yokohama. I should have Internet reinstalled by Sunday night. *crosses fingers*

Since I live in Japan, Xenoblade was on my top priorities of things to do when it came out last year. Unfortunately, life happened and left me with a crippled heart and (gasp!) no Wii! I had to purchase my own Wii to even begin playing the game again. *sigh*

Suffice it to say, I've been playing this game on and off, sometimes do to emotional instability and also frustration over high level monsters in comparison to my own characters. I often get bored or dislike leveling up for leveling up's sake. If I can go and explore and gain EXP that way, I'll be happy. Thankfully, in Xenoblade, you can do just that! Discover new areas, and you'll often be rewarded with a TON of EXP! Crap, I guess I should try and do some more quests... I've missed out on a bunch of quests because I prefer to advance further into the story than take a look at the list of quests that need to be completed before moving forward. Woops.

Right now I'm towards the end of the game; my characters are on Lv. 77/78 and it's difficult finding monsters on the same level or slightly above. Any monster that's on a slightly higher level than me will almost certainly kill me, every time. That's what's so frustrating. The second you gain one level, you'll be fine. (>_<) Patience, I know!! But I am not made of patience!! It is kinda fun seeing if you can successfully run away from a group of Lv. 95 monsters, though. heh ^^;

But even given the times away from the game, I always come back and I'm very happy to do so. I've always been a major fan of Monolithsoft and by the looks of things, I doubt that will ever change. <3

So how about this completely random, sporadic post, eh? Maybe I ought to sleep and think of something more intelligent to say next time. haha