eighthphase | Entries tagged with star ocean

I have lost track of how many cups of tea I've had to drink today. It's somewhere between five and seven, but other than that I have no idea. I've also consumed about a quarter of a bottle of honey with all that tea... but at least my throat isn't sore any more.

Played even more Star Ocean! I think Nel was actually 76 or 77 when I went to advance the plot... well, when I went to refine me some Boots of Prowess, and then go advance the plot. At which point I learned that either my memory is really poor, or this game is horrible.

See, to get to the penultimate dungeon, you have to go through another one from earlier in the game. When you get to the final room, you fight a boss, and two new doors open. The eastern one, which the boss came out from, takes you into an underground area full of water. This area is lit solely by floating enemies, so you can barely see. You're supposed to stumble around blindly until you find a turtle you can ride through the water (but only certain bits of it!) and then feel your way around to a specific area where you fight another boss, which lowers the water level, at which point you can continue to wander around blindly until you find some pillars you can disintegrate with your Ring of Disintegration, behind which is a faintly glowing crystal embedded in the ground. You find one of the floating light monsters and lure it over to the crystal, which unlocks a door behind which is a boss fight against not one, but three of the most annoying boss ever (actually three different bosses, only one of which you've fought before, but the other two are exactly the same except with different elements). This then leads you to a room containing a cutscene that opens the penultimate dungeon.

Or you can go through the western door, behind which is a cutscene that opens the penultimate dungeon.

I figured this out by looking at a guide online, after ten minutes of trying to lure the damn light monster to the stupid crystal, which I did after half an hour of "I hate this game. I hate this game. I hate this game." I honestly cannot say I regret it! Even if I passed up the opportunity for a couple of battle trophies, I didn't get the trophies for the stupid boss the first time around, so I doubt I'd get them against three of it.

In other news, I have half the main body of a katamari! Now I just need to crochet the other half and then fourteen little nubby bits. I don't have any magnets, but then maybe this first one should just be stuffed anyway. (: I also learned how to do a magic circle and how to finish off a crochet piece, since whenever I ask mum to show me how she just kind of does it for me, which is nice, but defeats the purpose of asking. /: But now I can do it myself, so I don't need to ask.

I am not drinking any more tea today. I have had so much tea. I'm probably going to crochet more, though.

Current Mood: content

Yesterday surprised me on two counts: firstly, that I was actually able to stay up all night to watch the eclipse, and secondly, that I was actually able to sleep soundly. (Although the Benadryl I took around midnight probably had a lot to do with the second one.)

Today I am still sick! I don't feel particularly achy or feverish, though; just congested and sleepy with a sore throat. I've been offered both Nyquil and Dayquil, but I turned them both down, because I'd rather be awake right now and both medicines will knock me out. I can breathe fine, so I'll just take tea with entirely more honey than is proper.

To keep myself awake, I'm playing more Star Ocean! I'm trying to get Nel to level 75 (which will put Fayt around 77 and Maria around 76), at which point I'll go do more IC and then go through the Ruins of Mosel. It's kind of annoying, actually, because I can't seem to keep a bonus battle going; I had a 32 chain but it broke, and I haven't been able to keep one up past five. My chains always start with increased healing after battle, which is fairly predictable given my strategy (control Maria, spam Scatter Beam cancel combos, kill enemy, repeat) but annoying because I'm really going after triple experience. I forget what the last move has to be to start with triple exp, but since I never ever start with it it's probably symbology or minor attack or something that even the AI doesn't use (not entirely true; the AI-controlled Fayt and Nel love using symbology. To the point where I had to turn off Fayt's Explosion spell so he didn't keep MP-killing himself with it).

I have a loaf of bread stuffed with cheese, pepperoni, and Italian sausage in the oven. I hope it's delicious, because if it isn't then that's an entire hour wasted and I'll still have to find something to eat. It's probably going to be delicious, though. (Unless it's missing plastic flavour, which I doubt - the directions said to leave the plastic packaging on, but plastic has this nasty tendency of melting when introduced to heat, so yeah, no plastic film in my toaster oven.)

Anyway, back to grinding and tea and cats that are sitting entirely too close for comfort.

I have feasted, and it was good. Now I must lounge it off /mellow~ So much food, haha.

I've spent the last three days laying around and playing Star Ocean, basically, and it's been really nice. It is so nice knowing that I don't have to go to school for the next two weeks. I can sleep, and play video games, and read, and hang out with friends, and chill with my brother (when he's home, anyway), and just generally unwind. I do have a little bit of homework right now, but it's almost entirely reading.

Also, tea parties in class are pretty awesome. Even though I'm pretty sure the reason my right wrist is messed up is because I had to carry the box with my electric kettle to and from school, it was totally worth it. Two cups of tea first block, a third during fourth block, and just the feeling of coziness from everyone gathered around drinking tea (except for the people who weren't, of course. I even brought hot chocolate for the twins, like I said I would, but they didn't bring mugs, so that was pointless). Even though we still had to watch presentations... it really wasn't that bad, because I had tea.

And then three days of Star Ocean turn out to be fairly productive. And by fairly productive I mean getting Nel back into my active party, refining weapons (Fayt's to +2500, Nel's to +2000, and Maria's to +3000), adding some DEF to said weapons, breezing through Styx and Arkives and Sphere and the Shrine of Kaddan, picking up new inventors, spending half an hour trying to make the Philosopher's Stone (and then, after using it to recruit Ansala, trying to make another one because I forgot to patent the first one), grinding ridiculous amounts of Fol only to end up spending them on synthesis, running out of Alchemy Materials, and getting the battle party up to ~62.

I also painted my nails. I borrowed some black polish from Mez, but it ended up chipping super quick, so then I bought some polish that I thought was black (and with a colour name like 'nocturnal' I think I was justified) but turned out to be super dark blue that just looks black most of the time. It's pretty nice, I guess.

Currently watching The Big Lebowski, since it was on TV. I might start playing Star Ocean again, though, since I'm so ridiculously close to the end. (Just the Ruins of Mosel, then Firewall, then the Spiral Tower, and then I fight Luther! And hopefully win this time; I remember on my last file I tried fighting him like five times and lost every time. And usually he'd shout "Wallow in despair!" when the game over screen turned up. It was, like, "Thanks, Luther, I already am." But then I didn't use IC and synthesis in that file, really, so maybe that'll make the difference.)

And then my physics teacher remembered about the test, so I really did have to take it. Which is just as well, because it turns out that without it my grade was about 32%. I don't know what it is now but I'm pretty sure it's a passing one. Also, I have a physics test tomorrow, too! So I spent the last hour doing physics homework. At least it was all really easy, unlike the electrostatics homework that I did a page and a half of. I also finished grading the essays for class; that took me about an hour and a half.

Then, before that, I spent two hours wandering around Moonbase! Sophia's at level 24, Peppita at level 17, and Fayt and Maria are in the early forties. I wasn't trying to grind, honest! I just got lost and was too lazy to look through the guide. I did end up with more than enough fol to create another Orichalcum, refine it, and synthesise it to a Laser Weapon for Albel, though, so now my entire battle party is a deathtrain. It's pretty epic.

Tomorrow I have a possible tea party, a possible regular party, and a possible pizza party. I don't know for sure about any of them, though! (We're supposed to have the tea party, but the presentations started going long, so I don't think we're going to finish.) I don't have a Christmas party, though; originally it was on Saturday, then people tried to move it to Friday except that didn't work, and then it got moved to Sunday, which works for everyone but me. So I guess everyone but me is going, and I really couldn't care less.

Also, I really hate the new header.

And then my physics teacher wasn't there for the first fifty minutes of class, so I "conveniently" forgot about making up the test yesterday. With luck he won't bring it up again!

Got further in SO3; I'm about to go to Moonbase. I forgot about how contrived that one plotline death was... e_e; Still, drama as the plot demands it, or something like that.

I was listening to the news for the weather, before I started making this Christmas card that I completely forgot I had to do until like 9:30 last night, and I saw along the ticker at the bottom, "Newark High football star stabbed to death at--" and all I could think was Not Kennedy, not Kennedy, please not Kennedy... and then I breathed a sigh of relief when it finished with, "--East Bay bus stop." I mean, I know I shouldn't be happy that somebody got stabbed to death, and I'm not, really; I'm just glad it wasn't near my school. Because my school has a bad reputation that we didn't create and don't deserve, because people from other schools in the district decide to go shoot and stab people from their other schools at my school. So then in the paper the next day you'll read about how somebody was shot/stabbed/killed at Kennedy, and it never really clarifies that the aggressor wasn't a Kennedy student and that the victim wasn't, either, and people go around talking about how Kennedy is such a dangerous school, man I'd sure be nervous if I had to go there. And we're all, "...it had absolutely nothing to do with us, actually, and the school is perfectly safe," but nobody actually listens.

Also, speaking of Christmas cards I made in twenty minutes this morning! That's actually kind of a lie, since I wrote the text in about twenty minutes last night. But today I drew and coloured the front and wrote the text inside. (In English we all drew names from a box and had to make a holiday card for the person whose name we drew with certain literary devices in it.) Fortunately my person gave permission to do a Christmas card, so she gets a Christmas card with a cute little Santa on the front. ♥

Finally, last night I started writing something that might end up awesome and spacey and scifi, assuming I ever finish it. I guess that's what happens when Panic! At the Disco and Star Ocean 3 cross paths in my head! (Speaking of Panic!, they're supposed to have a new album out in March. I'll have to give the singles a listen before I buy it! But I'll probably end up buying it anyway.)

And then my physics teacher realised I didn't take that physics test last week! So I actually do have to make it up. (I figured, "Hey, it's physics, nobody cares," but I failed to realise that maybe the physics teacher cares. Oops.) I'm annoyed only because I know he's going to send me into the adjacent classroom to take it, which is... basically absolutely pointless. I mean, I get sending someone to the library or something, because that's at least a vaguely similar environment to the original test-taking environment, but sending a student to the nearby classroom (and its class) to take a test is absolutely nothing like that. It would seriously be less ridiculous to just have me stay in the classroom during the lecture, or to have me make it up during some time that isn't actual class time.

In other news, I finally got to disc two of SO3. I'm that much closer to where I was before! (I used to have a save of 120 hours right before the final boss, but then the memory card died.)

...of course, I also feel rather like throwing up. This is lovely! I would stay home and just go to soc class, but I was absent last Wednesday, as well, so... yeah. /: I'm probably not actually going to throw up, which is both good and bad: good because I hate throwing up, bad because if I don't, it obviously means that I'm not ill and am totally just faking it.

But enough about that! Today I have too much homework and later I can maybe sleep. That's always nice.

Today I danced around like an idiot, delivered an airheaded line, voiced over a commercial, joined five other people in the eating of an entire package of bacon, and played some Star Ocean 3! I actually wanted to play Final Fantasy X, but I don't know where my copy is.

Also, arguably most important, I got my very first wireless controller working again. It's this tiny little MadCatz thing that's absolutely perfect for me, and out of all the wireless controllers I've had, it's worked the best (and the longest. even longer than the official Sony one!) Except that it just stopped working one day, years ago. I still had it, though, and today I was so driven to play something that I decided I should see if I couldn't get it working again. So I dug out the controller and the receiver, cleaned them off, pried the old batteries out of the controller, took all the screws out and popped them open, removed the cat hair that had inexplicably found its way inside the controller, put everything back together, put in new batteries, and plugged it in. And it worked!

(I didn't manage to get it put together quite properly; the R2 button ended up a bit stiff. In my defence, controllers are complicated! It took me like fifteen minutes just to get it to the point where I could put all the screws back in. And anyway, R2 isn't an important button anyway.)

So yeah, hurray for SO3. I'm still on disc one, but I went from "Let's go talk to Crosell!" to... "Let's go talk to Crosell!" I also fought two bosses and the O button, won four battle trophies, went on a fetch quest, recruited a new inventor, tried and failed at item creation, got a spiffy new key item, and was about to go break the game with IC and synthesis when my mum decided she wanted to watch TV. Still, not bad for four hours. Tomorrow I'll get to disc two! Or at least fight Crosell, which is practically the end of disc one. (Actually, getting to the Aquaelie is the end of disc one. Still, you fight Crosell, watch a bunch of cutscenes, go to the Diplo, watch more cutscenes, go to the Kirlsa Training Facility, more cutscenes, boss fight, even more cutscenes, and then you're on the Aquaelie. So that shouldn't take too long.)

I also taped the pages that were falling out of my SO3 guide back in. There were more pages falling out than I originally thought. The guide awkwardly opens somewhere between Sphere 211 and Firewall now, but at least I'm not in danger of losing pages anymore.

Current Mood: content

Been playing lots of P3P lately x: It's September 22, and I should be going in Tartarus to grab the next Old Document, grab some missing people, and grind, because I've been neglecting that for a bit and Tziah is just a little bit difficult for me now, even with my attack dog and my battle robot /: Also I know that the October full moon boss is a pain in the ass, so I'd like to be overlevelled for that. (I've just about reached the point where I stopped playing P3F, actually; I was at the October full moon, and Fortune and Strength were kicking my ass because the rest of my party was underlevelled, because I'd been using Ken and Shinjiro almost exclusively, and they're both unavailable for that fight. I'd like to not have a repeat of that, lol!) Also, Shinjiro's s.link is adorable and I can't wait to finish it. But first, more Tartarus! D:

I was feeling Tartarus-ed out today, so I switched to Second Evolution to advance the plot. (At first I was thinking, "but wait, I haven't done the thing with the Luxurious equipment yet, when is that supposed to happen?" but then I remembered that that's in First Departure, lol.) So I went off to Lacour, only to get dragged in to taking Leon along to the ruins, which I wanted to do anyway because that's where you pick up Ernest, and then I grabbed Welch before heading off to Hilton... and then I remembered that I forgot to do the scene in Arlia that's required to get Ernest, but since I already had Leon I couldn't sail back to Krosse. So I had to reload, go do the scene in Arlia, sit through the entire thing in Lacour, go through Welch's recruitment again, and then head off to the ruins and pick up Ernest.

Did I mention that in Second Evolution, you can't skip voiced dialogue? You have to wait for whoever's finished to finish speaking before you can click forward to the next person's speech. Which takes a while, if there's a lot of talking going on. Did I mention that both Leon's recruitment and Welch's recruitment have a lot of talking? Did I mention that they're both voiced? Yeah, sitting through them again was painful.

I feel like drawing right now, but I don't really know why. Though it's not as if I don't already have a million half-Photoshopped drawings on my computer to work on, haha. I have a meeting later, and I have to cook snack for it (well, it's not really cooking; I just have to heat up the corn dogs, though they take like twenty minutes per batch), but I don't have to start until like five, so I've still got some time to kill. ...maybe I'll do an OC meme or something...

Current Mood: bored

One day of P3P later, I'm three hours in, level 7 (though I think Junpei and Yukari might be level 6 still), ten floors into Tartarus, and a member of the tennis club. I actually spent a lot more time playing Star Ocean: Second Evolution today than I did playing P3P, but that's mostly because I didn't pick up P3P until like five in the evening, while I had the entire rest of the day to play Star Ocean. (Yes, I did switch from one to two. Mostly because I found my Second Evolution guide after half an hour of moving boxes around, digging through boxes, finding several things that should not have been buries in boxes, and then moving all the boxes back... only to find the guide sitting in plain sight, where it had been the entire time. Started a Claude playthrough: Claude, Rena, Opera, and now Bowman; I'm going to pick up Welch next, then Leon and Ernest. You know. When I ~~never~~ eventually get back to it.)

I've decided that I'm going to go see The Next Airbender next week, but only - only! - if I can talk Melissa into going with me. (I'd try this week but I don't have any money, I spent it all on P3P. Okay, and preordering Birth By Sleep ~~and the guide~~.) I imagine it won't be fun, and it won't be pretty, but if I go with Melissa at least we can sit in the back and snark it the entire time. That way, at least I won't be inclined to start yelling at the screen... or to storm out of the theatre and spend the ~~hour and a half~~ rest of the time left playing DDR. On a Supernova machine, no less, and as everyone knows, I hate Supernova machines.

Also, I started rereading Bloodhound. Crime-solving fantasy with a kick-ass female protagonist who hears dead people. Awesome. Too bad the last of the trilogy doesn't come out until next year. I kind of wish Tamora Pierce were a more prolific author, because even though she's got like twenty-five books out I've read every one of them like a million times, and the summaries of the books she plans on writing (through 2014) sound so interesting omg I wish she'd write faster. I totally want to read about Tris at Lightsbridge. I totally want to read about Numair's past. I totally want to read about Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn in Yanjing. But I can't, because those books haven't been written yet. :C

Current Mood: sleepy

P3P tomorrow ahhhh~

So of course, when there's a new PSP game lurking, I just have to get sucked back into an older one. Mum was on the computer all day today, so I spent the day playing Star Ocean: First Departure instead of... internetting. /: Nearly ten hours, and I'm not any farther in the plot than I was before, but I did pick up my eighth party member, figure out what team I wanted to use, and then proceed to use them to break the game.

...well, I didn't really break the game. I'm too far in the plot for it to count as that. But my main team is now ~20 levels above the other four characters (though I'm waffling between Ioshua and Erys; they're both healers and I was using Ioshua more, so his level is higher, but Erys has more attack spells. But then I really don't need three girls in a four-person party, and Erys's voice sounds almost exactly like Welch's... so maybe I should switch back to Ioshua) and has way better equipment. Well... Welch and Ioshua have way better equipment; Ilia needs better armour and could have a better weapon, and I've been ignoring Ronyx's equipment because I was too busy maxing out his Alchemy skill to teach him Customisation. (Well, someone's got to make all those Moonrocks and Mithrils and Philosopher's Stones I was using.)

So basically I spent all day grinding. And I actually had fun.

As an aside, my guide keeps suggesting, for all bosses, that the player's party consists of Roddick, Ronyx, Millie, and Cyuss/Ashlay. I fought exactly one boss in those ten hours (optional, though according to the guide it was mandatory) with Welch, Ilia, Ronyx, and Erys, and it was a total cakewalk. For the rest of the game, I'm going to swap Ioshua for Erys and then I'm never going to change my party again.