Posts Tagged ‘snes’

Hello fellow gamers! When I last posted to you all, I was deep in the throws of an obsession with Stardew Valley. I managed to make it through one complete play through, reaching the 3 years of game time where your grandfather’s ghost returns to tell you how well you did (or didn’t do). I did quite well and made my little farm quite successful.

Shortly after completing that, my wonderful Xbox Game Pass suggested I play a game called “My Time at Portia” and it has now become my obsession. Why has Portia now become so time consuming? Well, it is VERY similar to Stardew Valley but with far better graphics. If you have played modern games, you likely have heard of the smash hit “Animal Crossing.” Although the company that wrote Portia is not the same as Animal Crossing, the art style is very similar which means the world and its inhabitants are beautifully rendered in a light and almost pastel world.

So what makes the game different? Well, instead of being a farmer as you are in Stardew Valley, MTAP focuses on your character being a ‘builder’ in the town. You are called upon to take over your father’s old workshop (sound similar?) and take your place as one of the town’s foremost builders. People start out by requesting simple things such as fishing rods and tables but eventually become as complicated as an entire lighthouse, a series of wind turbines, and many other intricate things.

There are some other similarities that are worth noting. First, you don’t escape the ‘mining’ aspect of Stardew because the world of MTAP features several ‘ruins’ that open up as you play the game more. The first ruins are basically dirt pits that you use your trusty pickaxe to break through and try to find ‘artifacts’ (which are basically things from our modern world that have been lost to time) as well as some unusual materials for building things such as engines, pipes, valves, and springs. Some of these ruins feature monsters you must battle to make your way through.

Also, you can choose any of a number of eligible bachelorettes/bachelors from the town to court. But instead of showering them with gifts (as is the practice in Stardew), you actually can have ‘dates’ that start out as play dates and eventually grow into actual dates. The more time you spend with the people you are interested in, the more special quests show up that adds some character development to the potentials. Much like in Stardew, your partner will eventually move into your house (if you court them long enough) and you will see them every day. Some of them will help you with your work, provide you food or gifts, or just talk to you in the morning.

There are some notable frustrations with MTAP such as the lack of character appearance changes (they will literally wear their daily clothes to the wedding and so will their partner), limited capacity for your own character’s growth (outside of completing the quests in the game to learn more about your place in the world), and a sense of repetition. Yes, you get to build specialized things to complete the main game (and some side) quests but beyond that, most of what you are asked to build is mind-numbingly repetitive (Oh great, the school needs a new bookcase! I’ve only made 40 of them already for the school).

At this point, I am almost done with the end game quests so you can safely say I will “beat” it soon. However, much like Stardew, once the main quest line is over, I can still continue to work on projects for the townspeople and have some post-end quests to finish. So if you don’t hear from me for a bit, it’s likely because I am elsewhere engrossed in a game.

Although I DID have a creative flourish recently and used it to (among other things) remix a few favorite video game tracks from my youth. If you’d like to see them, you can follow the links below:

  • Corridors – Remix of a famous track from Chrono Trigger.
  • Luna’s Passage – Remix of “Lunar Whale” (or “Big Whale”) airship from my favorite game of all time – Final Fantasy IV

I still don’t like leaving anything undone, so after I got back in the habit of streaming, I completed another episode of the play-through of Final Fantasy 4. I was about ready to go after the last boss before I realized that I still didn’t have the Crystal Sword and that my curative items were much lower than I expected. I got all the way to the threshold of the last boss and then turned back around. I finally made my party leave the Lunar Subtrane to pick up some healing items before I went back in. I made it all the way to the second-to-last floor before I was brutally destroyed by some enemies. The next episode should be the last one. For now, check this out!

After the crazy issues I had with No Man’s Sky, I decided that my next stream should be a game I was certain I could play without technical difficulty. That, combined with my internal desire to work towards completing things, I decided to stream the 8th episode of “Let’s Play Final Fantasy 4.” In this episode, I finished off the Giant of Bab-Il, got the Excalibur sword, beat Bahamut (to get the most powerful summon in the game), and began the endgame content.

For part of this stream, I did have to do some cheat-fueled leveling up and it’s a good thing I did because I had several tough battles once I started doing the work on the moon. Despite this, I was able to build up enough levels in a fast enough time to take on the endgame. Once I got inside the Lunar Subtrane, I spent a lot of time collecting the ultimate weapons/armor for the team and generally being shocked about how intense the enemies were. Depending on how much time I devote to it, I may be able to finish the play through in one or two more episodes so stay tuned!

Here is episode 8:

I had to take about a week off from streaming because I had a sore throat and couldn’t use my voice. Now, my voice is not 100% yet, but I had enough to narrate through another big chunk of the material just before we hit the end-game section. Unfortunately, the audio started out VERY hot so I apologize for that.

In this stream, we went through the entire Land of the Summoned Monsters quest to get the Asura and Leviathan summons. We also beat Odin (on the second attempt) and added him to our summoned monsters list. When we completed these quests, the next thing was the FAMOUS Lunar Whale Airship summoning and visiting the moon for the first time! Now that we have FuSoYa on our team, we returned to earth and faced off with the Giant of Bab-Il. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish it on stream because of the serious amount of damage my party took when battling the Four Fiends.

I hope you enjoy this episode of Final Fantasy 4! Check out the YouTube link below:

Please join me live on my stream sometime! http://twitch.tv/the_retrogamerboy

Hello everyone! I got even further into Final Fantasy 4 on a recent stream. In episode 6, we took care of the Sealed Cave, watched the Tower-of Bab-il get energized and beat the Sylph cave to get the Sylph to summon. Please enjoy!

Please watch my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/the_retrogamerboy) to see my streams live!

Last night, I got a great opportunity to spend some time making my way through another episode of “Let’s Play Final Fantasy 4.” I took a little break to play some other games on my stream, but I returned to the game to play more. This time, I went through the first climb of the Tower of Bab-Il, the work through Eblan, and finally the second Tower of Bab-Il climb. I am now about 3/4 of the way through the game.

Please see the YouTube video here:

Once again, I played Final Fantasy 4 on my Twitch stream and got a fourth episode ready to go. In this episode, we went through the Toroia storyline, the Tower of Zot, and getting into the first part of the Underground map. It was a fun time!

Check out the YouTube video here:

Once again, I streamed playing Final Fantasy 4 on Twitch and got some viewers that enjoyed it. I have been backing the streams up daily to YouTube so you should be able to watch them whenever! I plan to keep streaming this (though I might switch up games some days) until I beat the game, but I will try to post each episode here.

I have streamed Final Fantasy 4 for three consecutive Twitch streams and they are usually well attended. I hope you guys are enjoying this material. Here is the link for the episode from Saturday and I will post the link to the one on Sunday as well.

I promised some retro content so here it is! Last night I streamed the first little bit of Final Fantasy 4 (FF2 in SNES America) on Twitch. I plan on doing a series of episodes on this to get from the beginning to the end but it may take a while to go all the way through it. Enjoy!