BoM/TWS Message Forum

It's been a while indeed.

Writing-wise, I decided to start writing stuff for the "Skins"  interactive, mostly to keep my writing skills active, but also because I wanted to do some stories on it. I started with "To the David goes the Spoils"  and have written enough chapters for a month and more. It's been interesting since I've developed some continuity that I've managed to tie somewhat to other chapters in the same interactive. I still plan to write for it for the time being, maybe delving into other parts of the story, and definitely trying to make at least one branch be the longest there is.

Otherwise, I've been playing a lot of games to try to beat the backlog - though it's still growing. Played the first Contra game in the Contra: Anniversary Collection, finished The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Grand Theft Auto III and Trials of Mana, as well as an indie game called Vengeful Guardian Moonrider (a mix between Mega Man, Strider and The Ninjawarriors, where you control a rogue ninja Guardian called Moonrider against the tyrannical dictatorship he was created to uphold).

That said, I've also decided to play some mods for Final Fantasy games, as well as finish one game I played a long time ago. For starters, that last game I finished was Eye of the Beholder for the Super Nintendo, which is a port of the first game in the trilogy. I also played Final Fantasy IV Ultima edition, which is a hack for the US version of FFIV that revamps all characters, lets you choose your ending party from some of the other characters (except Cid and FuSoYa), breaks the damage limit of your PCs and adds a ton of hard bosses, plus adds a Bestiary, lets you access the Fat Chocobo anywhere and even lets you switch between Paladin and Dark Knight at a certain point. Furthermore, I decided to make a good attempt at finishing Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3 (Insane Difficulty), which is a notorious mod that revamps most of the game's mechanics but makes the game stupidly hard. (I feel it's an achievement that I managed to reach the battle against Dycedarg, but I got burned a bit playing it because I can't seem to access Beowulf, Reis, Worker 8 or Cloud. Right now, I'm playing Final Fantasy VI T-Edition, which does to FFVI what Ultima edition does to FFIV.

However, one game I played a lot, to the extent I'm actively participating on its Discord channel, is Final Fantasy Renaissance. Basically, it's the Final Fantasy I game remade entirely from scratch on Unity, which makes it native to PCs. Though the game takes quite a lot of RAM at first, once it's fully loaded you can see the detail its developer has gone with. Though it keeps a lot of the original feel of the game (most of the original sprites and design), it has a LOT of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements (your names can now be 6 characters long, killing an enemy lets you attack the next one in sequence instead of making you lose your turn, and more). However, most importantly, the game adds several new classes beyond the base six, with more coming in: Dark Knight/Deathknight, Bard/Troubadour, Green Mage/Green Wizard, Lancer/Dragoon, Damcer/Rhythmist, Blue Mage/Blue Wizard, Trainer/Beastmaster, Evoker/Summoner, Time Mage/Time Wizard, and the most recent pair, Spellblade/Rune Knight and Archer/Ranger. Each new class has its own sprite, taking cues from previous examples in other Final Fantasy NES games (and even some SNES ones!), as well as an updated sprite and their own unique mechanics. More than that, even the old classes got a nice revamp, gaining skills they can use in combat (Warrior/Paladin gets War Cry and eventually Cover, Thief/Ninja gets Mug and eventually Throw, etc.), passives that boost their abilities, as well as world skills that trigger on the overworld or dungeon map (Warriors get Shout to move people and bats away, Thief lets you move at twice the speed and find hidden objects), and the upgrades for all classes get Limit Breaks that are usable 1/rest but are pretty powerful. This is in addition to new spells, some new enemies (not too many, usually tied to some of the new classes), quests for every class to improve them further, as well as different dialogue depending on which character you have visible on the map. (And also, because of the Evoker, the existence of an Astral Plane where you fight summonable monsters, including classics such as Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh and even Bahamut!) That said, compared to the hacks like FFIV Ultima and FFVI T-Edition, a lot has been done to keep the original feel of the game, including keeping the same mechanics, maps, soundtrack and others, so it's not a story revamp and there aren't superbosses or post-game content. (There is New Game+ which lets you play with the upgraded classes from level 1, though.)

As for personal life... Still unemployed, hope this changes soon but I feel I gotta do some visits to a psychologist to deal with a couple things. And also, trying to work on my personal project which has reached the incredible amount of 100 chapters and has yet to finish, as well as prepping the first book for an eventual attempt to publish it.

In any case, if you're interested on seeing what I've been doing here in WdC, feel free to check, comment and even tip. Not gonna use this space to discuss, but if you want you can always drop a note and I'll follow from there.