Chrono Trigger DS: Spoiler-Filled Post About the New Ending

As both my previous post and the title of this post suggest, spoilers ahead.  There is one non-spoiler that I can put here, though.

The method of accessing this ending is via the bucket in the End of Time.  Once you've completed all three Dimensional Vortices, using the bucket will show a menu allowing you to go to The Day of Lavos, as well as the new boss fight, called "Time's Eclipse".

I'll give you a jump break to hide the spoilers.  'Cause I'm nice.

Year in Review

Uh, so.  My 2014 kinda sucked.  MAGFest, and then buying a 3DS and Bravely Default were literally the only things that kept me going.  I'm going to have to exert some effort on the "getting a job" front in 2015, methinks.  The story of why 2014 sucked actually starts at the end of 2013, so here we go.

I mean, my contract at Silverchair ended abruptly, five minutes before close-of-business, on the week of my birthday in 2013.  I was basically just shoved out the door, not even given a chance to say goodbye to the team members I'd spent the majority of the year working with.

Then I got myself a health insurance plan from yonder healthcare.gov and had to cope with their extremely clunky website and insistence on having a credit report for "identity verification".  Having no credit card and no desire or need for one, I don't have a credit report.  As it turns out, there's an alternate method of "identity verification" that's far easier, you just photocopy a valid photo ID (say, your drivers' license) and mail it to a specific address.  So whatever, all that headache was over with.

I trusted my dad.  I did.  But he let me down.  He was handling the selection of the plan and the subsidy amount, and didn't give me the full subsidy.  He claims "it's better that way because you can get a tax credit the next time you file taxes", but...  I dunno about you, but I'd rather spend less money now than pay more now and get refunded later.

Anyway, MAGFest happened, where I went crazy and bought a SNES and some games, including Chrono Trigger.  A few months later came the 3DS and Bravely Default, which as I previously mentioned, would carry me through the majority of the year.  This entire time I was feeling pretty horrible because of shenanigans with roommates, specifically a roommate's girlfriend who may very well have not had a place of her own and as far as I'm aware, wasn't paying a share of our rent.  She probably should have, given the amount of time she spent in our apartment.  Then the lease ended and another headache began.

That headache would be convincing my parents to let me move back into their house.  They've got this horrible habit of trying to completely dismiss me when I'm asking a tough question.  In this case, the tough question was "would you rather have me be homeless than move back in with you?"  They refused to answer.  Not even kidding.  If someone's accusing you of preferring your son to be homeless over having him move back in with you and you don't immediately say you'd do what it takes to prevent him from being homeless, you're a bad person.

Anyway, so I've been back here at my parents' place feeling incredibly weird ever since about mid-August.  I went to a job fair where nobody was taking resumes and defeating the point by telling everyone to apply online.  I'm going through the healthcare.gov headache again too.  I wanted to apply for a different plan in 2015, to see if I could get a lower premium since I don't have any fucking money, but their site said "lol I see this perfectly good 2015 application that you've fully finished filling out, but I'm going to insist you haven't finished it and extend your 2014 plan instead".  So basically, this death trap of a website is going to cost me a lot of money having to basically wait until February to be able to pay a lower premium.

I don't even know how I'm going to afford parking at MAGFest.  Maybe I can try to reactivate my NEET gene and get ~$100 from my mom to cover parking and hopefully some small amount of merchandise.

Speaking of MAGFest, that's another headache that I haven't ever really brought up before now.  For the last several years, I've worked teardown.  The internal system that keeps track of everything, including staffing hours, goes down a few hours after closing ceremonies, during which I've always been hard at work helping pack shit up and get it to trucks at the loading dock.  So I never got to turn in my shift sheet until after the system had been taken down so that it too could be packed into a truck.  Operating solely on the promise of someone in registration that my shifts would get entered, I've always thought I'd been good at that point.

Except I've never been good at that point.  The person who promises they'll enter my shifts never does, and thus I have to bash some heads to get back into the system every year.  This year, I'm finally tired of it.  Not only have I not signed up for teardown, but if I don't end up in the system for 2016's MAGFest, I'm completely done with MAGFest.  Not even going as an attendee.  Staffing Operations knows this, because I emailed the department head directly.  As a staffer doing at least 30 weighted hours, I get a comped hotel room to share with three other staffers.  Also part of the deal is that I also qualify for the staff food room thanks to an earlier weighted hours goal.  If I'm not on staff, I can't afford the hotel room, much less the food I'd need to keep myself alive while I'm there.  Parking is also expensive, and I've only been able to cover that in previous years because staffers get a discount.

Christmas 2014

So, usual "loot" post.

My aunt and uncle always give me a variety of food.  In the bag this year was two different mustards (cranberry mustard and sweet hot mustard), three cheeses (cheddar, a smoked cheddar/swiss blend, and a jalapeño cheddar), two summer sausages (one beef, one turkey), and some crackers.  Also in the bag were a few of those strawberry candies with the wrapping that looks like a strawberry.

Up next, my mom got me a shirt with some geeky stuff on it (not posting a picture, you'll have to see me wearing it in real life to see what it says!) and a couple volumes of manga (UQ Holder and World War Blue).

My dad got me two different kinds of jerky.  One was a sweet chipotle beef jerky, and the other was a basil citrus turkey jerkey.  They didn't make it past noon.

And finally, the grandparents pretty much always get me gift cards, and this year was no exception.  I now have a gift card for Buffalo Wild Wings, and a gift card for Wal-Mart.

Overall, pretty good stuff.  I never ask for a lot, anyway.

Tomorrow is the annual gathering to eat lots of wings and drink lots of beer, this time taking place at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Chrono Trigger DS: 2300AD Dimensional Vortex

Same thing as before.  Dimensional Vortex already sufficiently covered in a general manner, so we'll break on through to the specifics.

Ha ha.  "Break".  And I'm using a jump break.  Ooooookay.

Chrono Trigger DS: 1000AD Dimensional Vortex

I feel like I summarized the Dimensional Vortex areas pretty well in my last post,  so in this one I'm just going to jump straight to explaining what you get out of this Vortex.

Did I say "jump"?  Tee hee...

Chrono Trigger DS: 12000BC Dimensional Vortex

The three Dimensional Vortex areas open up once you beat the game the first time.  You don't actually have to start a New Game + and get back to the end-game to get to them, however, you can just reload your save and have at it.  Two of the three locations require the upgraded Epoch to reach them anyway.

The Dimensional Vortices take you through a few random areas when you first go in.  Most of the areas you go through are recognizable locations from around the game, but included in the mix are completely new areas that have hidden chests with some new loot.  Once you get through this random sequence, you get to that vortex's area proper, and can run around fighting things and looting chests until you've done everything it has to offer.

Each Vortex also has an end area where you fight a boss, and the game will force certain characters into your party for these fights.  After beating that boss, the character that was forced into your party will get permanent stat boosts to Speed, Hit (Ted Woolsey translation master race), and Stamina.

After completing all three Vortices, you can go to The End of Time and select the bucket to trigger the new final boss battle and see the new ending.  It pops up a menu, so you can still go to The Day of Lavos if you so desire.

More details after the break.

Dungeon Siege Singleplayer Annoyances

So for a long time, all I'd ever played of the original Dungeon Siege was its multiplayer.  It was fun playing it with friends, or even soloing, and so my impression of the game was based off of that.

However, it's got a perfectly good singleplayer campaign sitting right there asking to be played, and I'm currently partway through it.  The party system is unlike anything else I've ever used, and carries a number of annoyances within, which I will attempt to enumerate here.

1. Switching weapons and spells is awkward.  This is because you press 1, 2, 3, or 4 to select melee, ranged, and your two spells, respectively.  However, pressing those keys switches everybody, even if you only wanted to change one character's selection.
2. In battle, the characters you have selected matter.  Only the characters you've selected will attack or perform whatever action you've set forth, and in the heat of battle, changing your selection to order individuals around and then selecting the group for later group orders is incredibly awkward.  The ability to select party members by clicking on their character models also means you'll be accidentally switching your selection around all the time.
3. You can't dump aggro, or really modify it in any way.  This is especially annoying when everything decides to aggro on your backline instead of the melee guys who can actually take a hit.  This is compounded by this next issue.
4. You have to distribute health potions (and mana potions) to everyone who needs them, in advance.  It's tough to know how much you're going to need to heal during battle, and some characters naturally need more potions than others.  I'd use healing spells more regularly, but...
5. You have to manually switch each spell caster between their two spells.  You also have to shuffle spells around their spell book(s) to make sure you can select what you want.  In addition, when you change spells, it stops them from acting for a brief but tense moment.  When I toggle to my healing spell, I want it casted now, not three seconds from now.
6. There's no AI for your party.  You have to control everyone yourself.  Considering that you can have up to eight party members, this gets very complicated, very quickly.  A mage with a damage spell in one slot and a healing spell in the other won't do anything other than what they're currently set to do.
7. Characters automatically equip items they pick up if there's an empty slot for it.  This means, as you're using the auto-loot key to grab everything that's dropped, you have to manually go through and remove all the bows off of your melee characters and casters.  This is all so you can press 2 and have only your ranged characters pull out their bows.
8. The resurrection spells require you to level up their respective spell types first.  To hold you over until then, there are one-time-use scrolls of resurrection that anyone can use, but what if you don't have any?  You're screwed.  This alone makes it very important to keep a spell book full of resurrection scrolls in all your characters' inventories.
9. Merchants are few and far between.  I have a mod installed that doubles the size of my characters' inventories, and I'm still running low on inventory space, annoyingly far away from town.  There are zero random merchants in designated "safe spots" around the game.  Especially considering everyone in the second town is dead, except for one recruitable guy, and he's not a merchant.  This means if you run out of space in the second dungeon, you have to run all the way back to the first town.  And there's no fast travel, town portal scroll, etc. to speed things up.
10. Having multiple party members actually makes the game harder.  You'd think it would make it easier, since more characters = more sources of damage.  However, due to how the game hands out experience, per-character-per-hit rather than per-kill for the entire party, a character that gets in more hits is going to get more experience.  If you're only playing one character, that character then gets all the experience and levels up much faster than if they had anyone fighting alongside them.
11. Having packmules doesn't completely alleviate inventory space issues.  Again, I have a mod that doubles my characters' inventory space.  I also have both of the packmules that you can purchase from the first town, and I'm still running low on space uncomfortably far away from a merchant.  Also, in battle, if you don't set the packmules correctly, they'll run around and aggro more stuff onto your party.
12. Inventory space issues are further compounded by the fact that items can take up multiple inventory slots.  I've never liked this in an inventory system (see: Diablo, Diablo 2), because you quite easily run into a situation where you have enough open slots for the item, but because they're not the right shape or orientation, you can't put the item into your inventory.  These types of systems hardly ever have a way to re-orient an item to fit it into your inventory, but there is at least one mainstream example of being able to re-orient an item (see: Deus Ex: Human Revolution).
13. Enemies will chase you ridiculously far from where you originally encountered them.  This hurts a lot, especially given how the game likes to throw huge battles at you and the aforementioned fact that you have to micromanage each individual character in your party during battle.  I've had to lead an obnoxiously large group of spiders a very long distance away from where we were fighting so that I could juke them and get back to the area to revive my dead party member.
14. Reviving an unconscious party member doesn't heal them enough.  This makes mid-battle revivings almost impossible, as enemies will beat on an unconscious party member with the hopes of killing them, so you heal them and they begin to get up, then they get hit and fall over again.  It's not fun.
15. The singleplayer is basically the multiplayer, but with only one player.  You have to manage all the characters in the party yourself.  Due to everything above, this task is vastly different from other games where you have multiple party members in singleplayer.  It's even different from dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder and Legend of Grimrock.

It's still a good game, but I still recommend the multiplayer over the singleplayer.  It just makes more sense.  Heck, you can even play the singleplayer campaign in multiplayer.  Multiplayer does forfeit a lot of things, like the cutscenes, voice acting, and ability to hire party members and packmules, but it's still the way to go as far as Dungeon Siege is concerned.