Incoherent Thoughts

I finally remembered I bought Folklore, too. =D So to get everything out of it on one playthrough, I went and bought the rest of the expansion packs for it, cost me almost 10€ in total. Yes, micro transactions are indeed the bane of this new gen.. D: I don't mind having to download the free ones, but those are the ones with not much content. And it feels a bit weird complaining about expansion packs that cost 1,95 for one, but they do add up in time. I dread to think of what'll happen to FF13 and Versus 13.

...after all that downloading (five expansion packs + one free one) I was too lazy to actually boot up the game. And started reading Le Serment des Étoiles, instead. I did finish reading Le Chant de la Tempête yesterday, so...
Well, at least I finally remembered to buy and install the expansion packs. Been meaning to do that for a long time now. Now all that remains is actually playing the damn game.

There's something else that I've been meaning to do for a while now, but I can never remember what it is...

Weird day. I fell asleep sometime after noon. Even though I'd woken up just five hours earlier. And then didn't wake up until an hour ago. My Battery got frozen, I'd meant to cool it a bit only but it was in the freezer when I fell asleep, so.. =D; Also left an anime on pause, half-way through an episode. I don't get this.
(now I'm really, really thirsty and my Battery's a chunk of flavored ice)

Oh, was re-watching Clannad. The art is simply too beautiful in it...of course, the story itself isn't bad either, the characters are wonderful, and the music amazing. Can't help it. =D

Come to think of it, I have two books lined up to read. And I was in the middle of re-reading American Gods. Hmm... you know, one bad thing about ebooks is that you can't really take them to the kitchen and read while eating. Not unless you buy an expensive gadget for it, anyway.

Spent the whole day reading manga. =D But now I have something else to occupy my time with for a little while. I couldn't restrain myself from leafing through them before, but I hardly read any of them in the process. My FF4 Official Complete Guide and FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1 finally arrived today! I was already expecting them on Friday, but they didn't make it by then... should know better than order stuff on a Sunday or early Monday. Makes the wait longer.

As has been mentioned before at many places, there's a picture of Kain's face in FF4 OCG, without his ever-present helmet. =DD Does any place have it scanned yet? I would rather not do it myself if I can avoid it. But I will, if it's not yet available. (heh...it has a couple words scribbled next to it. Roughly it goes "He's the pretty type. Because it's an FF" xD) There's also some nice production sketches and pictures, including some of the summons and the emblems of the countries (and Red Wings) from FF4 DS. I was hoping they'd include those, they were so prominent in the game...

Oh, and there's also this really clear drawing of Rosa's jewelry (parts of it are naturally obscured by her hair usually) and the design of the sleeves. Awesome. =D

And then there's the 20th Anniversary Character Ultimania. It's almost as thick as the FF9 Ultimania. xD; Lots of picture material, most of the characters have Amano art, a CG shot (if available) and in-game screenshots. And basic info of course. All in a compact book for easy reading. The index is huge. xDD
Naturally, not all characters that all that detailed a part for them. Those I described above are for main characters, and take up two pages (unless it's Luneth, Arc, Refia or Ingus, in which case there is only one page of each. The original Light Warriors of FF3 get two pages, though). Characters with smaller parts but that still matter to the story have about half a page each, and bit-part (named and some more important unnamed) characters have a couple lines, and only one picture. FF7 has two pages of those. FF8 has three. FF9 has 16. =D And what's the biggest section, in total? Well, that's gotta be either FF9 or FF11. Both are a bit longer than the other PS-era FFs, and much longer than the earlier ones.

Besides the character introductions, there are short features sprinkled between each game's section. An evolution of chocobos and moogles, lists of what character(s) in FFs fulfill a certain stereotype (guys that constantly try to pick up girls: 8 entries, cool people who don't talk much: 9 entries...) Those lists naturally mostly include main charas, but have some bit-part charas mixed in.
At the end, there's an interview with Yoshitaka Amano. Haven't read that yet, but it should be interesting.

One disappointment, though, is that Crystal Chronicles and Tactics games don't get proper sections. They get only briefly mentioned with the FF7 Compilation, Kingdom Hearts, and other games with FF characters. Such a shame...they even gave FF10-2 a proper section, but none of the Compilation, CC or Tactics games.

I'm not sure if I'm going to get File 2: Scenario. It's simply impossible to cram too much detail of all the main-series FF stories into just one book. Will have to see. Maybe just for completion's sake, if for nothing else...

I think I'd just reached the moon when I last wrote anything about FF4...
Now, I've beaten the Giant of Babel and cleared Bahamut's Cave. And naturally taken care of every sidequest I could think of that I could complete with little to no difficulty (that obviously doesn't include the Rainbow Pudding or the Onion gear)
I'm actually rather surprised I managed to deal with Bahamut. I'd run out of MP two Behemoths ago, and had to resort to Ethers to get through the last one. Not that MP would've done me much good at the Bahamut battle, he had Reflect up and had a Reflect-counter to magic attacks. Including Dispel. Managed to kill both Cecil and Rydia with my own attacks before I discovered those nice little facts. >.> (how? Well, Rydia went first and activated the first Reflect (didn't notice it was on counter). After which Rosa's queued spells were cast, and killed Cecil. Next time, I figured I'd just Dispel it first...proceeded to do just that, Dispel activated the counter-Reflect, and Rydia's second Flare was reflected back at herself. Nice) And even though I Hasted right at the start of the battle, he got down to 1 in the countdown before I managed to take him down. That one got rather close...
Not sure what I'm going to do next, maybe train at Bahamut's Cave a bit more (level 64-70). Or head forward in the story and train on the way. It's not likely my MP would last until a save point the first time I venture deep into the moon, anyway.
(I can sense my end-of-game reluctance to play creeping up on me. Boo. Must conquer this)

Didn't do any playing yesterday, since I remembered that I had one ebook queued up to read, so I did just that. It was Old Man's War by John Scalzi. You know, the current free ebook by Tor. Just letting you know of the offer, in case you're interested and didn't know about it, I think I forgot to advertise it when I signed up myself. The first free one was Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. This whole thing is a limited time offer (I think to advertise their ebook service?), so sign up quickly.
Come to think of it, the next ebook should be sent on the 29th...

It must be because I'm nearing the end in FF4, but I keep wanting to continue FFT finally. Might not be such a bad idea, but I should put more weight in beating the five games (FF1 PSP, FF4 DS, FF8, FF12RW, FFTA) where I'm at the final dungeon/mission or very close to it... how long has it been since I've touched FF8, one and a half years or thereabouts? Already? D:

I'm really tired...but hey, at least I finished reading L'Épée du Guardien. And made a page for it at waff. Damn, I'm proud of myself. One of the few actually finished pages at waff! =D; (...if you're actually going to go read the page, do ignore all the broken links. I haven't had time to do everything, you know. And okay, so the page looks a bit rough, I know..but the content at least is all there)
I need to read the first three parts again. So I can write a 'summary' for them, too. (err...just look at the page to get what I mean. I totally fail at summarizing things)

Was shocked earlier today to notice how long the series actually is (in its original Japanese version). It's 24 parts as of December! The 25th is coming out in February! o.o; The French translations are never going to keep up, you know. Five months between releasing the fourth and fifth volume is no good when the series gets a new volume every one to three months. (it's been doing that since 2002)
Provides me with a slight problem. Should I trust Fleuve Noir to keep translating the series? I really want to read it in French, it's one of the few opportunities I have to practice my French. But...if they won't keep it up until the end of it (or keep unreasonably long pauses like five months between volumes), how am I ever supposed to get to read all of them? .___.

I got L'Épée du Gardien 1 today! =D It's the fourth part of Miyabi Hasegawa's Final Fantasy XI novel series, only available in Japanese, French and German. I've been following the French releases since the first part, this latest came out in December, I think.

( Introduction to the series, plus first impressions of the fourth book )

I've read about a quarter of the book now, and already I'm lamenting the fact that the next part won't come out until April. Boo. D: