Greetings. I am Stebloke, and I am a bit strange. This website contains my blog, where you can read about the things I create, the games I play, and any other things I get involved in.

I make this blog mostly because I like to look back on the things I do and feel nostalgic, but also because it keeps me motivated to keep pushing on with my backlog of nerdy little projects and tasks.

The "Filters & Pages" button in the top right will give you more control over what blog entries will be displayed, or the following quick links can be used:

News Computer Games Wargaming Board Gaming Old Stuff

Stebloke's Website ©2008-2026

Over the last few weeks, I've been putting every spare shred of free time into actually getting another computer game ticked off the list.

This time, due to the fact that the game is now 25 years old, it was Final Fantasy X's time to be in the spotlight.

Other than a couple of very short, sub 1 hour efforts at this game back in the PS2 era, I'd never actually played it. So in a way, it's been the first "new to me" classic FF since FF6 back in 2014.

Not gonna lie, after starting this one again, I quickly learned why I didn't stick with it back in the day. The first few hours of this game are super rough. Things are just so slapdash, and all over the place. You (as Tidus) get dragged all over the place, between lots of different locations, and though you meet a few different groups of people, you end up spending a lot of time alone. I just had no idea what was going on.

A lot of time is also spent underwater. This is true at small parts throughout the rest of the game, but in the opening sections, you are underwater a lot. Seriously, do these people not need to breathe?

And then there were the technical difficulties. Not only did some cutscenes not display, instead just slapping a solid green screen in my face, at several times the game also just dipped out entirely and sent me back to the desktop.
Nice.

Luckily, the 4GB patch turned out to be the solution, and so I was able to get these issues to go away and bother me no more.

I can't say I'd been enjoying the game that much, and things were about to get even worse when I arrived at the mandatory Blitzball game.
Oh boy.

Even after watching three different guides on Youtube, it was not until my 6th attempt that I actually managed to win. And yes I was well aware that I didn't need to win in order to continue the story, but something just made me feel like I needed to smash those big-headed idiots.

The game where I finally won was a really weird one, too. It was 0-0 at half time, and it was the only game I played where Tidus had his Jecht Shot blocked, because there were so many defenders in front of him. I managed to get another shot off right before Wakka came in, but the cutscene interrupted the shot, so I did not think I'd scored. I thoroughly panicked for the rest of the game, until I managed to score with Wakka with just 2 seconds left. It was only in the cutscene, when the scoreboard ticked over to 2-0, that I realised it must have registered the first goal. Very weird.

I also found it strange that, immediately after the game, a load of enemies attack and Tidus has his sword. Where was he keeping that?

Thankfully, after those first few pretty terrible hours, I found myself enjoying the game a lot more.

While there were a few drawbacks with it, the best thing about the game is undoubtedly the combat. I really like that you can switch characters in and out of the active party on the fly, though I found myself wishing that unused characters would still level up like they do in other FF games.

Speaking of levelling up, I wasn't a huge fan of this either. I'd been led to believe that the sphere grid was a good way of doing character stat development, but I found it very annoying and limiting. For example, if I wanted someone to have a cure spell, or a haste spell, I would have to find a way to get them over to that section of the sphere grid, or use very rare items to unlock those abilities. Just didn't seem like the best way of doing things in my opinion.

It also sucks that this game started the trend of having very linear world design. It's essentially just corridor after corridor, with no explorable world map. Nowhere was this more evident than when, after fighting the Spherimorph, it was recommended that I run all the way back to the start of the game to find all the Jecht Spheres. Very boring level design indeed. It's really not what I want from a classic Final Fantasy game.

While the story and characters are not my favourites from the series, they are certainly far from the worst, and I was quite onboard with the majority of the game in these regards.

And I know this was the first voice acted Final Fantasy, but sheesh some of the acting was very cringey. The worst offender was definitely Seymour, and I'm not sure why anyone would think that voice was a good idea.

So after a few very long and gruelling efforts to beat the final boss, I'm finally done with just my third completed game this year. I can't say that I'll ever want to play this again, but as I've also recently bought both FF12 and FF15, and still have lots of FF7 action to look forward too, there'll still be a lot of Final Fantasy on my itinerary going forward.

It's a shame that I probably won't be able to get to 12 and 15 this year, as both games also have anniversaries at 20 and 10 years old respectively.

Oh well. I'll get there.

There's been a little rumble of activity on the tabletop these last couple of weeks.

Up first was another game of Sheriff Of Nottingham. After my disastrous effort earlier this year, I decided to be a good little boy this time, and declined to smuggle any naughty things into market. Of course, I got checked a lot, so got paid a lot.

Thankfully, the only time I smuggled in some illicit goods I was not checked.

This led to me getting the joint top score with 146, a much better showing. However, I was still beaten into second place, as Gareth, who had also scored 146, had managed to get more goods to market and so won the tie break.

This was then followed up by a game of Codenames, which we'd not played in quite some time.

---

After playing the first adventure in my Unlock! box a few years back, I'd been waiting eagerly for the chance to get back to it.

Nobody at the time really liked that first adventure, as it was all kinds of loopy, and was very awkward to understand, especially as it was our first attempt at this game. But I'd read online that the other two that came in this box were much better.

A few nights back, I popped round Scoob's, and we gave those other two adventures a bash to see if the online discourse was true.

Well, a mixed bag is the only way to describe our evening.

I think we liked the Animal-O-Matic scenario, as it was cool to jump into the bodies of different animals to get different abilities. So while we certainly didn't do very well, it was at least enjoyable.

The last adventure, Around The World In 80 Minutes, had us gnashing our teeth in frustration, much like the very first one we tried a few years ago. I wouldn't say it was as bad as that first one, but it certainly had its share of weird, logic-breaking puzzles that just made us look at each other and ask "What the...?"

---

It's been nearly three years now since I renovated my old Super Cup Football game.

I recently found out that the grease I'd used on it, lithium grease, was really not supposed to be used on plastic, and could indeed damage it over time.

To remedy this, I got some silicone grease instead.

Cleaning off the old and replacing it with the new was not a stupendously fun task, but it's done now nonetheless.

There have been a few more battles waged across our available boards.

Up first, Gareth challenged me to another game of Epic, which saw us each choosing a 6000pt army.

G took command of the Chaos forces, and selected a smaller, tougher, more elite army, while I went with quite a lot of smaller Eldar units.

Things were pretty even in the first turn, but in the second, one of my detachments got completely minced as the Chaos army charged into close combat.

My long range shooting ended up being largely ineffective, and I couldn't quite take the last wound from several enemy units which would have ended up breaking them.

The game ended after 3 turns, with the score 3999 to G and 2598 to me. Even though the VP target was 4000, it was pretty obvious at that point who the victors were.

---

The first of our two most recent 40K games saw a bit of a Tyranid civil war. Scoob went full on Nidz, while my little bugs mind-frelled some Imperial Guard and brought them along for the ride.

The first turn was pretty good for me, and I made some good rolls. But on the second turn, Scoob did his signature deep strike invasion, and was able to get many charges off. In addition, my rolling luck started to turn sour.

Dropping my own deep striking units for the start of the third turn backfired, when Scoob again got the initiative and was able to intercept my reinforcements. My rolls started to get even worse, such as when 10 Genestealers and the Broodlord attacked Scoob's Psychophage, which at the time only had a single wound remaining, and they somehow couldn't kill it.

This game saw us running out of time, so I had to withdraw. Though it was unlikely I could have clawed my way back into this one, at the end I only needed one wound to wipe the Psychophage, one wound to break the Hive Tyrant, and one wound to break the Norn Emissary, so may have got some good points.

But as it was, it ended 1351 to 1006 in Scoob's favour.

My man of the match was my Officer John Guyman, who Power-Fisted both the Neurolictor and the flying Tyranid Prime out of existence.

And our latest game saw some strange allegiances, when I took my Marines and Eldar to face off against Scoob's Space Wolves and Chaos.

In probably our fastest game yet for death and destruction, we both ended up with very little left after four turns.

T'was a shame then that I ended up with the most beat up of the two very beat up armies.

Highlights included yet another successful deep strike by Scoob's Bloodletters, that dropped in to annihilate my Assault Marines and Captain in one stroke. And one of my Dreadnoughts that exploded and took out several of the Blood Claws that had just wrecked it.

Most useless units in the game were my other Dreadnought, that ran backwards and forwards trying to find a suitable target, and Canis Wolfborn, who skulked down the flank and was unable to find any combat.

The game ended 2380 to Scoob and 1923 to me.

So, the final part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series has been announced.

If, for some bizarre reason, you wish to read about my initial thoughts, click the following button:

Show / hide FF7 ramblings