Well, that was quick (and I expected it)

Some recent events around these parts have a lot of people up in arms.  A rally took place, expressing a rather disliked opinion, and people who disagree with that opinion held a protest in response.  In the USA, the First Amendment to our Constitution grants all citizens, among other things, something called Freedom of Speech.  This allows individuals and groups on all sides of any issue to express their opinion.

I don't generally voice my opinion on issues because I'd rather maintain fun and lighthearted relationships with friends and acquaintances, but I was getting swamped with tweets and retweets about it and expressed my opinion out of frustration.  I should also mention that I basically spent the past several months trying to phrase this opinion in a non-inflammatory manner, and that me expressing it was inevitable.

The following is a full explanation of what I've experienced, explained in the most generalized and least ambiguous way possible, complete with a glossary of terms for the one term it uses.  I like my technical writing principles.

Glossary:
SJW: (noun) Social Justice Warrior.  Typically younger people who are new to activism.  Their hearts are in the right place even though their minds aren't.

Now, here's the explanation.  Consider this scenario:

	Person A	Person B	Person C
SJW?	Yes	No	???
Position on issue	For	For	Against

In this scenario, even though Person A and Person B both disagree with Person C, Person A not only thinks Person C has no right to express their opinion, they also don't think Person B has the right to say that Person C has the right to express their opinion.  In fact, Person A will go as far as implying or even outright asserting that Person B wholly endorses Person C's opinion.

Who's who in this scenario?  Person A shall remain nameless, because I have the mental maturity to protect the identity of someone I no longer wish to associate with.  I find myself taking the role of Person B.  Person C represents the group conducting the rally.

Am I sad about the loss of acquaintance with Person A?  Not really.  Person A, as all SJWs do, lives a double life.  They just finally allowed their true self to show through the façade, that's all.  If anything, I'm relieved that I no longer have to deal with Person A.  In fact, in addition to blocking Person A (who has also blocked me), I blocked three other people who could have just as easily taken the place of Person A, and I'm just as relieved to no longer have to deal with them.

I did make a few more relevant tweets during and after the blocking process, which in retrospect may have been ill-advised, but I'm not going to delete them.  One was basically calling out Person A on their logical fallacy (I'm unsure of the specific type of logical fallacy, but I do believe their statements qualify as one), and the others were a series where I first bragged about having blocked people, then expressed a small amount of additional related frustration.  Person A may have already blocked me before I sent the tweet calling them out.

For other unrelated reasons, this situation closes a chapter of my life.  The timing just paired well.

Final Fantasy 4 Dropped

It's sickening how much of a free ride Final Fantasy games get these days, given how shit most of them are.

They all suffer from the same critical issues:

• Random encounters
• Physical attacks alone are not enough, you have to use magic
• Spells cost too much
• MP recovery items are ridiculously rare
• MP recovery items don't recover enough MP
• If they can be found in shops at all, MP recovery items are ridiculously expensive
• Inns gradually cost more and more as you progress through the game

However, there are some other issues that I'm only 100% sure apply to Final Fantasy 4, so here's a separate bulleted list:

• Can't tell what items do when looking at them in the items menu (I have all these things like UniHorn and HrGlass1, but what do they do?)
• Can't tell what the stats are on a piece of equipment, whether it's in your inventory or if you're looking at it in a shop
• Many menu sequences are cumbersome and unintuitive, such as when using a Potion, first there's the opportunity to move it around in your inventory, and then you use it, but if you want to use another one straight away you have to re-select it again
• I've only ever gotten one Remedy, and I used it (I haven't seen it in any of the shops I have access to)
• Potions and the Cure line of spells have different recovery values seemingly per-use, but also in-battle vs. out-of-battle
• I reached a "Training Room" that gave me basic instructions on how to play the game only after having played the game for several hours, most of the things it told me about I'd already figured out on my own by feeling around in the dark
• Said "feeling around in the dark" was the only way I was able to figure out how to "sheathe my sword" during a fight where it was apparently required to not fail horribly (by "sheathe", they mean "unequip", and there's a hidden menu where you can change your weapons during battle)
• Randomly dropping money when running from a fight
• Enemies can often take three or four actions each before you get a turn
• Actions all have different activation times, but the game never explicitly tells you this
• Edward is a pussy and runs away when you're trying to heal him
• Items and MP are consumed even when their target becomes invalid during the activation time (i.e. I was trying to heal Edward but he hid like a coward during Cure2's activation time, Tellah still loses the MP for Cure2)
• Cecil, for story reasons, gives up being a dark knight and becomes a paladin, only to deal far less damage even once you level him back up to where he was to begin with, and then he gets subpar white magic because "lol paladin"
• The writing feels very stiff and robotic, even if the story is somewhat decent
• Trying to make me care about certain completely obnoxious characters when they heroically sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the party
• Constantly cycling who's in my party so I can't just go level up somewhere and reduce the game's crap-factor through grinding
• A certain boss has a weakness to metallic weapons, so he casts a spell on the cave he takes up residence in to make anyone with metallic items equipped be unable to move, so basically I have to equip total shit equipment in order to do anything in the cave, except I can't do anything because I can't deal damage worth shit
• The effect that gets put on a character with metal equipment is Paralysis, but unlike normal Paralysis, it can't be Esuna'd away (though oddly it goes away if the character dies and is revived)
• Tellah says "don't worry, with my magic, we're invincible", yet the effect still persists
• Said boss also deals 9999 damage per hit when I have maybe a tenth of that as max HP, and wipes my party before I can deal any damage whatsoever thanks to the activation times on everything

If you need a reason why I'm dropping Final Fantasy 4, just read all the bullet points.  It's a shit game, and if you like it, you have shit taste in video games.

Chrono Cross

Finally able to check this one off.  Despite having a fair number of flaws, most of which are regressions from Chrono Trigger, it's by no means a bad game.  Anyone who overlooks it is doing themselves a disservice.

I get the feeling that a lot of the hate this game gets is because it isn't exactly like Chrono Trigger, but with a new story.  The battle system is different, character progression is different, and the way equipment and skills are handled is also different.  The thing is, the battle system is actually pretty neat.

I like the Stamina system, it works a lot better than a traditional ATB system and works with the element grid to open up a lot of strategy that Chrono Trigger never had.  The move from the traditional experience point-based level-up system to a story-based level-up system reduces grind and keeps you moving forward in the story.  You can still grind money and drops, of course, but that's at your own discretion.

Equipment being mostly crafted rather than straight-up purchased is an interesting move, but it's not handled poorly.  There aren't extreme shortages of a critical material or anything.  The final tier of equipment requires you to put in some effort and use the summoning mechanic that you might otherwise ignore, which may very well get you to use summons on a more regular basis if you end up liking that sort of play style.  Skills being split into regular "Elements" and the more traditional techs is interesting, since you can allocate elements at will, regardless of color.

As for the final boss battle, well, there's two ways that it can play out.  This is even hinted at with the Cryosphinx fight.  You can do it the traditional way, by dealing enough damage that the final boss dies, or you can do it the right way.  Just prior to the fight, the game goes to great lengths to suggest that each of the elemental colors have an associated tone, and that producing these tones in the proper order results in an "elemental melody".  It also hints that you should follow up this sequence with the Chrono Cross.  Doing this will instantly defeat the final boss, regardless of HP, and net you the best ending.

If you're like me and want to see both the bad and good ending, then don't be like me.  I stupidly saved my clear save over my "just before the end" save, so if I want to see the bad ending, I have to go all the way through the game again.  Unfortunately, the game doesn't let you continue a clear save, it forces you to select New Game + or Continue +, neither of which will let you hop back in where you were.  If you save to a different slot on your memory card, you can just reload your save and do the fight again.

Despite logging a number of personal complaints about the game, I still largely enjoyed my play time and will definitely come back later for some New Game + action.

Everything after the break will be talking about final boss strategy, so... don't click "Read More" if you don't want to read more.  If you came directly to this post from a search result or something, you may wish to stop scrolling down.

Music Playlist Updated

After over a year of neglecting my YouTube music playlist, I've gone back to it and fixed it up.

What all needed changing?  Well, two videos were completely gone from the playlist.  Dunno where they went, but I found replacements.  The second one eluded me until the final sanity check.

Four more videos were either deleted or blocked by various copyright holders.  So I went and found replacements for them.

One had the end of the song cut off.  I'd known about this, but when I added that video to the playlist, it was basically the only option.  Now that some time has passed, there are other options for the complete song, so I did a little switcheroo.

And finally, the reason this bit of maintenance happened at all: I added a new video.

This kind of stuff is why I keep a master list of everything in the playlist.  It makes it dead simple to tell what got deleted or made private or whatever, so I can go find a replacement.

Anyway, link's over on the right just like always, enjoy.

I Am Setsuna

I found out about this game from a post on /r/chronotrigger.  The game is completely separate from Chrono Trigger, but happens to take a fair amount of inspiration from it, hence it caught the subreddit's eye.

What's the story?  Spoiler-free, of course.  Well, a very wintry world is under constant threat from monsters.  To keep them at bay, every ten years, a sacrificial pilgrimage is done.  A powerful magic user journeys to a place called the Last Lands, protected by a guard.  Once in the Last Lands, the sacrificial rites must be performed for the monsters to be appeased.  This game follows the story of the currently chosen sacrifice, a girl named Setsuna, as she and the members of her guard undertake the sacrificial pilgrimage.

How exactly does the whole "inspired by Chrono Trigger" figure into it?  Most of the similarities are graphical in nature, but there are also tech names and late-game weapons that reference it.

I'm not counting the save system because so many other JRPGs work in the exact same manner.  You know the drill: you can save whenever on the world map, but in an actual explorable area where there's enemies and possibly bosses, you have to find a save point.  It lacks the auto-save of newer RPGs, which might catch some people off-guard, but it's not too big of a deal given that you can save anywhere on the world map.

It's very blatantly not a Chrono Trigger clone, though.  It contains extra mechanics that allow you to formulate completely different types of strategies.  Rather than gaining tech points and unlocking new techs every so often, you simply gain another slot where you can put a tech, and you can customize what your tech list looks like to suit your strategy.  You can also customize those techs slightly with the game's Flux system.  I'm not going to delve too much further into it here, since this is a review, not a tutorial.  The bottom line is: if you try to play this game as you would Chrono Trigger, you're doing it wrong.

I find the Flux system to be very interesting, because it addresses an issue that Chrono Trigger and a lot of other JRPGs have: generally speaking, you want to save your MP for boss fights and go through regular fights with just your regular attacks.  However, here, you actually want to be constantly using techs in order to get Fluxes to occur so you can power up.

One thing that the game very notably lacks: inns.  This is unusual, even for a JRPG.  You basically just have to use a Tent on the world map instead.  NPC dialogue in one town mentions that there used to be an inn there, but due to monster attacks the number of travellers decreased and it went out of business; perhaps this is the reason behind the worldwide inn shortage.

As much as I love the game's beautiful art style, I would really love to see a climate other than "constant snow" done in this same style.  That said, the snow in explorable areas is handled with a reasonable amount of attention to detail.  Namely, as you (and the enemies) move around, you leave a path of trampled snow behind you.  Since the game is constantly rendering snowfall, if you venture away from an area and back, you'll find your tracks have been covered by more snowfall.  It works.

The game's music is rather interesting: the soundtrack is almost entirely piano.  This is a neat stylistic choice that I feel complements the game's setting and story very well.  The piano is capable of expressing a wide range of different emotions, and the soundtrack handles that perfectly.

Enemies move around their "home" areas, and you can use this to your advantage: sneak up behind them and you start with full ATB meter.  If you're strong enough, you can easily use this to finish things in one turn while taking minimal damage and quickly move through an area.

Positioning of the enemies and your party matters greatly, and the game affords you have a fair number of options for adjusting positioning.  One example is the tech Demi, which pulls enemies closer together while dealing damage to them.  Another example is Cyclone, which knocks enemies back a fair distance while dealing damage to them.  Many techs will also reposition your characters in a reasonably intuitive manner: healing techs often have the character run away from enemies for a set distance before the actual casting animation happens, whereas offensive techs could leave a character surrounded if used improperly, or leave them too far away to take advantage of anything that affects close-by party members.

My end-game strategy just sort of fell into place.  I was using Flare, with a support item that restores some of the casting character's MP when they kill things, and then I got Luminaire.  With it, the Luminaire+Flare dual tech, Supernova, opened up.  Combined with a weapon for the character using Luminaire that restores some of their MP when they hit things, and the fact that most battles are against three or four things that Supernova can easily one-shot, and I was moving through areas spamming Supernova, one-shotting everything, and having the characters' MP get completely refilled in the process.  The remaining character was really only necessary for the occasional heal or use of a tech in case Supernova didn't actually kill something.

Overall, the game is really good and I would definitely recommend it.

The Finer Points of Cheating

I recently obtained about the worst device ever to let me use cheat codes on my SNES: a Super UFO Pro 8.  I bought it for other reasons, and there's a post incoming about the device itself.  This post is about some interesting logic I noticed with the combination of cheat device and Chrono Trigger, while cheating my ass off.  It's applicable to basically any game when using a cheat device, though.

You can follow along in an emulator if you have a ROM of Chrono Trigger.  The cheat codes used in this post are RAM codes (address and value, not encoded in any manner), which also happens to be the format used by emulators, as well as both the X-Terminator and Pro Action Replay cheat devices.  If you have the ability to follow along on console, give it a shot.  That's what this post is written for, anyway.  If all you have is a Game Genie or Goldfinger, you won't be able to use it to follow along.  The Game Genie and Goldfinger use ROM codes.  You could still find codes that would work for these devices, but they would be very different.

First, load up the game with the following cheats, start a new game, get to the world map, enable the codes, and save your game.  If you're doing this on console and your cheat device doesn't let you enter all six at once, you'll have to split them up and do multiple saves.  For best results, enter them in pairs, based on the last digit of the address.

Address	Value	Effect
7E2401	CD	One Power Tab in inventory slot 2
7E2501	01
7E2402	CE	One Magic Tab in inventory slot 3
7E2502	01
7E2403	CF	One Speed Tab in inventory slot 4
7E2503	01

Note that inventory slot 1 is left empty, this is because the next code uses that slot.  If you haven't done so already, save your game.  Reset the SNES (power-cycling if necessary to get back to the code entry).  If using an emulator, just remove or disable the previously-entered codes, no need to reset or reload your ROM.  Enter the following cheat, load your save, and enable cheats.

Address	Value	Effect
7E2500	63	Inventory slot 1's quantity is always 99

You may not notice this code's effect right away, since the first three codes purposefully didn't put anything into the first inventory slot.  When moving items around your inventory, this code will let you duplicate them.  Go ahead and try it with the Tabs you got from the previous codes.  This is why those codes only give you one of each Tab.

Now, these items are of course meant to be used to increase your stats, so let's do that.  If you just use them, though, the quantity will decrease according to the number of them you use.  To stop that from happening, move the one you're using into the first inventory slot, which has its quantity set to 99 by the cheat we currently have active.  Now, when you use whichever Tabs you moved to this slot, you won't run out of them.

While using the tabs, though, you may notice something interesting: the displayed quantity decreases to 98 and stays there while you use them, as opposed to staying at 99.  Why is this?  Well, that's the subject of this post.

The reason behind this is due to how these cheat devices work: given an address and a value, they detect that the game is reading that specific memory address, and respond with the specified value instead of whatever value is actually at that address.  However, if you think I'd be satisfied leaving you with that explanation, you obviously haven't read very much of this blog.  We gonna get detailed, yo.  Well, not too detailed.  Everything is abstracted away from the fiddly technical specifics, to make it easier to follow.

In this first example, the game is running without a cheat device.

Given the following:

• We're using Power Tabs on Crono
• stored_quantity is the number of Power Tabs in our inventory
• displayed_quantity is the number of Power Tabs that gets shown on screen
• crono_power is Crono's power stat

This (or something functionally identical) will happen every time we use a Power Tab on Crono:

1. SET displayed_quantity TO stored_quantity
2. DECREMENT displayed_quantity BY ONE
3. SET stored_quantity TO displayed_quantity
4. INCREMENT crono_power BY ONE
5. UPDATE DISPLAY

Let's run through that, shall we?  Let's say we have 10 Power Tabs.  When we use one on Crono, stored_quantity is read into displayed_quantity.  displayed_quantity is then decremented by one.  The result, 9, is stored back to stored_quantity.  crono_power goes up by one, and the display updates (using displayed_quantity to provide the quantity) to show that we now have 9 Power Tabs.  Using another Power Tab will start this over again and result in that 9 being decremented to 8, as you might expect.

When we're using a cheat device, though, something different happens.

Given the following:

• We're using Power Tabs on Crono
• stored_quantity is the number of Power Tabs in our inventory
• displayed_quantity is the number of Power Tabs that gets shown on screen
• crono_power is Crono's power stat
• We have a cheat device that tells the game that stored_quantity is 99 whenever the game asks for its value

The same process as before will happen every time we use a Power Tab on Crono:

1. SET displayed_quantity TO stored_quantity
2. DECREMENT displayed_quantity BY ONE
3. SET stored_quantity TO displayed_quantity
4. INCREMENT crono_power BY ONE
5. UPDATE DISPLAY

Let's run through it again.  When the process starts, it reads the number of Power Tabs, just like normal.  The cheat device, being configured to provide the value 99 when stored_quantity is read, does its thing, resulting in displayed_quantity becoming 99.  The game decrements displayed_quantity by one, resulting in displayed_quantity being 98.  It stores displayed_quantity back to stored_quantity and crono_power goes up by one.  Finally, the display is updated (using displayed_quantity to provide the quantity) to say there are 98 Power Tabs.

However, the displayed_quantity doesn't immediately go back up to 99, even though our cheat device will tell the game we have 99 of the item in this slot if it asks.  This is because the game believes it already knows the quantity of this item, and hasn't asked for it again.  This means that game doesn't continually re-read the necessary data to show you what you're currently looking at in the inventory.  You can observe this if you make a change in an emulator, scroll the inventory down far enough that the slot is offscreen, then scroll back up.  The game will then re-read the value, and by doing so, it will show the updated value.

Let's go through the process again, so that what's happening becomes apparent.  The game is currently showing us that there are 98 Power Tabs in our inventory.  However, it reads the value again, which means the cheat device once again provides it with the value 99.  This 99 is decremented to 98 and the display is updated.  As far as the displayed values are concerned, we still have 98 Power Tabs.

"Aha!" you say.  Yeah, you understand now.  It's no longer "for some reason it goes down to 98 and stays there", it's "the cheat device always provides it with a 99 that gets decremented and then displayed".

Summer of RPGs 2017

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I have an RPG backlog that I need to get through.  So basically, this summer, I'm gonna do just that.

The plan is to get through as many of the games as possible.  To make this a bit easier, I'm not counting games that I want to buy, but haven't yet.  The list is thus pared down to the following:

• I Am Setsuna (PC)
• Chrono Cross (PS1)
• Final Fantasy 4 (PS1)
• Dark Cloud 1 (PS2)
• Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
• Etrian Odyssey 4 (3DS)

Currently, I'm playing through I Am Setsuna, and plan to proceed down that list from top to bottom.

To make things go faster, I'm trying very hard to not be my usual self.  This means saving my typical completionism and as much other grindy activity as possible for later.  I already know that Chrono Cross will be made a lot harder by not grinding, due to how it hands out random stat boosts periodically in lieu of traditional level-ups.

Some of the titles in that list are in the situation where I started playing them a long time ago, but forget the story, where I was, and where I was going; thus in those games I'll be starting over from the beginning.

The more observant of you may notice that this gaming project also involves finishing two of my most procrastinated gaming projects: Chrono Fever and Project 'Bout Fuckin' Time.  Gotta get it done.

Unlike what I did with Rogue Galaxy, there won't be session posts for these games.  In fact, if I post anything, it's generally going to be a tweet or two.  I do plan on doing overarching summary posts, though, so stay tuned for those.

Also, the end of the summer doesn't necessarily mean I'm just going to stop playing.  I'll likely still continue, the whole "Summer of RPGs" label is just a nice way for me to try and remain focused on the task at hand.

Because I've gotten a fair distance into I Am Setsuna, there will probably be one of those "overarching summary posts" coming up soon, so stay tuned.