I've been on a bit of a walk down memory lane with old Final Fantasies these last few years, and that journey has continued with another playthrough of Final Fantasy 9.

My one and only run of this game was using Scoob's original PS1 version all the way back in 2002, and it took me so long to start enjoying the game that I needed over a year to get through it.

It took me until 2013 to actually buy my own copy, which was the PSOne Classic version that I downloaded onto my PS3. However, though I bought and played FF6 at the same time, this game continued to be ignored. I guess my subconscious was reminding me that I didn't really like it that much when I first played it.

Then in 2019 I made the decision that I should play it again, and I started looking at my options. Simply put, I really didn't want to use my PS3 again, and strongly favoured the idea of emulating it so that I could get screenshots. Scoob kindly gave me a loan of his original game again so I could make this happen. However, thinking I should play it didn't necessarily mean I really wanted to play it. And so once again the game went ignored.

It's highly likely I would never have played it again, but several things have aligned to finally make it happen.

First, as stated earlier, I've been on a bit of a Final Fantasy road trip the last few years. This has been driven by the FF7 Remake games, but also because I've been watching streamers and Youtubers play through some of the classics for their first times.

In addition, all of these 25 year anniversaries have been ticking over. And if there's something that gets me motivated these days, it's anniversaries.

The first challenge in getting this back to my monitors was the decision of which emulator to use. The initial PS1 emulation I tried was with RetroArch, which was pretty crappy when compared with something like PCSX2. Late in 2019, I successfully got Dead Or Alive working in ePSXe, after RetroArch totally failed. It seemed logical to try that again, but when I looked into it, that emulator doesn't seem to be developed any more.

Instead, most people recommend DuckStation, so I went with that. I know this is only after one game, but so far, this emulator is sweet.

Not a single problem has troubled me. I was able to crank up the resolution and speed up the gameplay with no issues. There's even a nice little enhancement called PGXP, which looks to correct errors with the way the PS1 displayed 3D models to the screen. It works at trying to correct the jitteriness, and how the textures are applied, and works really quite well, especially on faces. When I played FF8 last year it could have done with something similar.

So with the game all set up I entered into my first PS1 gameplay for over 6 years, which has led to my first PS1 game completion since Final Fantasy 6 back in 2014.

Unfortunately, much like how I felt about the game back in 2002, I really haven't enjoyed this slog of an experience. The problem here is primarily the combat. It's just so sluggish and unresponsive. Because the ATB bar continues to fill while characters are acting, and it takes so long for animations to trigger, and then so long for many animations to play out, that my team spent most of their time waiting to use their queued actions.

Even other unrelated things, like saving, required the need to watch slow animations of Moogles opening books, or running up to you from off screen, before you could actually do what you wanted to do.

And heaven forbid if you want to change your party members. There's no freely swapping them out on the world map like in other Final Fantasy games of the era.

The entire game was like this. Seemingly just designed to waste your time.

Sluggishness was not the only thing wrong with the combat. Buffs were also pretty much useless. In other Final Fantasy games I've played, if you cast something like shell, or regen, or haste, then these things last a good while and are a good investment. In this game, they run out very quickly, and because of the slow combat, can run out after just one or two turns. This makes any buffs like this completely useless, especially as they are all quite high in MP cost.

And there were yet more problems, like potions only working fully during combat and not in the field. And tents not fully recovering all of your health and MP when you use one, so you have to use multiple and watch yet more slow animations. Everything was time consuming it seems.

A lot of "chaff" enemies in this game are also a bit harder than they are in the other games I've played. Luckily, I read about a bit of a shortcut to get a few levels fairly early in the game, which really helped out. This involved using one of Quina's abilities, and a whole load of emulator save-scumming, to take out some dragons that were way too high level for me. After a bunch of attempts to get just two kills, most of my team went up from around level 13 into the early 20s.

Steiner and Dagger were missing during the dragon level up scam, but then when we got Dagger back, Steiner remained missing for a huge chunk of disk 2. When we finally got him back again he was still level 13. Even Dagger at this point was lvl 27, and had pretty much caught up to the other characters who were all 28-30. It was a very strange choice for the writers to keep him out of the story for so long.

Speaking of the story, this is another area of the game that's not exactly what I'd call stellar.

While I have no problem with most of the characters in this game, and indeed consider the cast far superior to the boring FF8 group, or the irritating as hell FF13 group, they are unfortunately made to suffer this monotonous plot just as much as I was.

It makes so much sense that I couldn't remember huge chunks of the game, even though I saw Preach play a lot of it about three years ago. Not only is it a story that's easy to forget, but a lot of the better stuff doesn't actually start happening until disc 3, with the first two discs being very dull indeed. It's like they crammed all of their ideas into this part of the game.

According to DuckStation, this is how long I spent playing each disc:

1. 13 hours
2. 12 hours
3. 21 hours
4. 5 hours

Yes, there was an hour or two of grinding abilities on disc 3, but even accounting for that, you can see how much more stuff happens on that disc compared to the others.

There were a few other minor things that bothered me about the game.

One was how late we get the airship, which was ridiculous and really hampered movement and exploration throughout the majority of the play time.

Also, I always remembered Beatrix quite fondly. But playing through this, I see that she spends 90% of her time acting like a bitch. Even at the end, when she's "on our side" she's still treating the Knights Of Pluto with great disrespect.

I also really don't like that Vivi never found out that Zidane survived, and that Zidane never gets the chance to wonder or talk about what happened to Vivi. This all adds to the very bittersweet ending.

And finally, one of the most disappointing things for me about this game was the music. I can still easily remember loads of music from other Final Fantasy games I've played, even songs from FF6. But this game's music does not come into my head at all, and I've only just played it. If I try thinking about the battle theme for instance, I just keep getting Don't Be Afraid from FF8.

The soundtrack also seems quite lazy, with the same two themes being present in slightly different forms all the way through the game, with even the main menu music being present in two different towns. Sheesh.

Well, at least it didn't take me a year to play through it this time. There is that.

I've finally sat down and trudged through a task I've been quite hesitant to tackle for over 18 months now.

And "trudged" is a very apt word, for though Resident Evil 0 is a comparatively short game, the play time is artificially lengthened by the sheer need to ferry items back and forth throughout the map.

It wasn't like I wasn't prepared for it either. My map was already 90% complete, so I knew certain things like when to pick up the different chemicals, and which enemies were coming up. This saved a lot of backtracking and reloading, but even with this knowledge things were still a bit silly. I would say it actually feels like a much shorter game than the other early Resident Evil games I've played. What I mean by that is I think there are less keys and puzzles in this one, and less objectives. It's only the running back and forth managing items that makes the game so long.

Though it helped me in my playthrough, making another map was probably a mistake, and has amplified my time spent with the game by factors unknown. I love them when they're done, but map creation is a tedious experience. Still, it's probably the last map for this series I will ever make, so I wanted to at least make it a good one.

And speaking of the map, here it is:

It's strange how my enjoyment of this series had changed over the years. I thought the original game was pretty good, and I ended up really liking the second one. The different characters and the A & B scenarios were a cool idea. RE3 dipped off a bit because I didn't like Nemesis being the boss fight nearly every time. Code: Veronica didn't do anything for me at all, but then the remake of the original was really good, and is my second fave behind RE2.

This one was just an absolute chore. Just a very unfun experience. If there was a gun to my head and I had to play this one or Code: Veronica again, I'm really not sure which one I would choose. Both games seem to be designed to waste your time.

It's not like it makes much sense in terms of where it fits into the franchise anyway. There's so little story here it may as well not be there. And we're talking about a Resident Evil game here. It's not like they're known for having incredible narratives.

What's worse is that it doesn't even fit in with the original game, with Rebecca making no comment to Chris about the torrid time she has had during this game's events. Weird plot holes happen often when prequels are created, but they had a glorious opportunity to remedy this in the original's remake, but for some reason refused.

Geographically, things also fall apart.

We know from the start of RE1 that Bravo Team's chopper crashed somewhere near the mansion in order for the team members to find it. We also know from the start of RE0 that the chopper crashed somewhere near the train tracks.
But then the train moves, at some speed, for quite a while until it crashes into the training facility. So at this point, we should be a considerable distance away from the mansion.
Then we take an underground cable car for an unknown distance to the factory which gives us access to the elevator which both takes us down to the treatment plant, and back up to the training facility.
Then when the treatment plant explodes, we find that we are not too far from the mansion.
So what the hell is going on with this place? The only thing I can think of is that the training facility was a long way from the treatment plant, and that the elevator somehow has special powers. That or Rebecca smoked something and hallucinated the entire thing. I mean, she's good with the herbs, after all.

To be honest, I felt like I needed some medication after playing this...

My ramblings have been a bit lacking of late, so I thought it was about time to have a damn good waffle on about about a game that is very dear to me, Final Fantasy VII. Specifically, the remake games, concerns I have, and where I think things may be going.

I guess the main question I've got to ask is "why?" Why have they done things this way? Why construct the story the way they have?

I'm still of the absolute belief that the best thing they could have done in the remakes would have been to simply remake the original's story, but with all of the improved character dialog and voice acting. In addition, they should have completely ignored all of the old compilation stuff, so any new expanded content could have been vastly reworked and made much better. Or better yet, simply have no expanded content. Surely a trilogy is plenty enough?

As we didn't get that, the second game should have followed through on promises made in the first game, and actually changed the plot. Instead, here we are after two games, and the boundless freedom from fate we were promised at the end of Remake has not yet materialised. The situation is pretty much exactly the same as it was during the original. Only this time we've experienced all this extra multiverse, fate, future knowledge and Whisper craziness, as well as get confirmation that all of the old expanded content is still very much canon.

It's such a mess.

And if you want to read a very long and pointless post about why I think it's such a mess, then press the following button:

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These last few years, I've had a bit of a thing for nostalgic anniversaries, and this interest only seems to be getting stronger.

And weirder.

See, ten years ago, I encountered the only game since 2012 that I've played through but didn't write about on this blog. This was because, at the time, I thought the game's contents were a little inappropriate.

But here I am, a decade later, playing that game's sequel and slapping its content all up and down the page.

Because these days, I really don't give a shit.

The game in question is the token-matching, insanity-laden, slapper-dating chaos called HuniePop 2: Double Date.

In the original, the seemingly cute but actually very vulgar Love Fairy, Kyu, pops up in your home one day to help you get dates and get laid through the power of puzzle solving. Yes, like I said, these games are insane.

You work your way through a whole town's worth of partners before Kyu, a stranded alien hotty, and even the Goddess of Love herself all get in on the action.

Here, in the sequel, set a few years later, Kyu has learned that two powerful and insanely horny space nymphos are about to awaken from their slumber. And if there's not someone there to satisfy them adequately, they will go total bitch mode and destroy the entire galaxy.

So Kyu has again sought you out, this time to train you how to handle two partners at a time, so that you can be ready to handle the needs of these lusty, demonic spirits. Again, by using your amazing puzzle solving skills.

Whatever floats their boat, I guess.

The setting for the game this time is an island, where there are twelve potential partners. From these ladies, you have to get 24 different couple combos to become attracted to each other, and then become lovers. So a minimum of 48 successful dates is required to even get to the end battle. This was indeed a bit of a drag. No sane person needs that many match 3 puzzles.

I don't remember many of the characters in the first one being very interesting or appealing. Indeed, my two favourites were Kyu herself, and the blue-skinned alien, Celeste. This is perhaps a little telling on my part that my two faves were the two non-humans.

The human characters just aren't all that great here either. There were only two I even partially liked, being Ashley, who had a great sense of humour, and Lailani who was real cute and actually had some modesty. What she was doing in this game though I'm not sure, being surrounded as she was by raging nymphomaniacs and total weirdos.

As for Kyu, she is still fucking hilarious, but is no longer a dating option. Celeste however does not appear at all, other than a cameo on a booby mouse pad. Shame.

I didn't realise until this write up, that the voice of Lola in both games is actually the same actress who voices 2B in Nier: Automata. That's like the same slap in the face I got when I learned that the actress who voices Aiba in the Somnium Files is the same one who voices fucking Kyrie in the new FF7 games. Like, what?!?!

Before playing, I read some buzz online that implied this game was actually far less challenging than the first one. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I don't think I started to struggle with the original game until getting quite far into it. Here, on just my fifth or sixth date, I completely failed. Then a couple of dates after, I struggled like mad and just about made it with one move left.

I really had to spend ages going around, talking to the different characters, levelling skills, and purchasing items, to make things easier. Even then, it wasn't all smooth sailing.

My most embarassing loss was a failure of epic proportions on my part. I was in a very difficult date and I was running out of moves. But I wasn't worried, as I had a plan that I'd been building up to the entire time.

I was going to hit a big joy token wombo combo, turning all of the broken heart tokens into joy tokens, then using another gift to consume all of those tokens, which would have given me 9 extra moves, and probably enough time to succeed in the date. However, I completely failed to remember that the character's "active baggage" at the time was to remove moves instead of adding them whenever I matched joy tokens. I certainly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in that one.

Speaking of the gifts, which are items you can use during dates to give yourself some kind of bonus, it took me a while to realise that they didn't get consumed when you use them. Took me even longer to realise I could gather them back up after a date so I could use them with different characters.

Of course, this didn't mean that I always remembered to do this. In fact there were a bunch of times I left good date gifts behind, or forgot to set any up at all, and had to just wing the date with no help. I'm not the smartest.

After an absolute slog of a playthrough, I ended up going into the final date at last. But when I saw how it was set up, I immediately wanted to stop playing.

The "end boss battle" in this game is a non-stop 4-phase date, where you don't even go up against the two demons. Instead, they seem to mind control random members of the rest of the cast, each of whom has a random kind of baggage, or special rule, active.

This means that you can not plan for the date at all like you can for all of the others. Or at least, not in the same way, and not with any great accuracy.

In addition, I was hoping to do what I had done for a while, and take my most effective gifts with me to use on the date. This is not possible however, as the only gifts you will have available are ones that have been given to the other characters beforehand. But with no knowledge of which of the twelve characters are going to be chosen, or which special rules they were going to be using, a great deal of preparation was going to be required.

I backed straight out of the attempt, and had to purchase a whole clutch of other gifts, to make sure each character was full.

I even decided to make notes about the different characters, their weird rules, and how best to set them up with the gifts I had available. This much work just shouldn't be required for a silly little game like this.

But all of the effort paid off, and I was able to succeed at the first attempt. Gotta say, I was utterly underwhelmed by the end of the game, and all of my time and effort hardly seemed worth it. I mean, I'd waited the entire game to go up against these two ragingly horny space demons, and the final date's not really even with them? Pfft.

At least the devs have got a sense of humour, and don't seem to be too fussed about being a bit vulgar and politically incorrect. If it wasn't for all the silliness and horniness, there's no way a game like this would be playable for me.

Maybe now it's done I can get that pissing intro music out of my head at last. It's been in there for days, and hopefully won't stick around much longer.