Thanks to one of my Kombo friends, I picked up Muramasa: The Demon Blade a couple of weeks ago (and the guide), and have had some nice diversions from the Square Enix world with it. As much as I love Squenix, playing a KH game and a FF game at the same time can be overwhelming. I haven’t played much of it, because like FFX, Muramasa has been dubbed a weekender game. After playing for two weekends at about 90 minutes at a time, I’m already halfway through the game with one character. I haven’t decided if I’m going to play the other character as well, even though I could get more swords and see additional endings because the game is fun but repetitive.

I’ve only played for an hour at a time because that’s pretty much all I can take. The graphics are gorgeous, the story is interesting, but the scenery is all the same no matter what town in feudal Japan you visit. The combat is all action-arcade style, and I’ve never been able to play those type of games for very long. I can honestly see this as a game that I pick up every now and then to progress a little further, put down, and move on to something else. It may become my filler game while I’m waiting for other releases. Hehehe.

I do highly recommend this game, though, for fans of action-RPGs and anime/manga fans. I’m looking at you, Laura and Mike. It’s the closest I’ve been to playing an anime game without actually playing a real anime game such as the many iterations of Inuyasha, Naruto, and Bleach games.

Breaking in really quickly to tell anyone who cares that I was able to get past that one boss fight today. I only needed to use one of the suggestions from GameFAQs, and that one suggestion was an absolute gem. Hardly any of my party got injured, no one died (except for the boss and his minions), and even though it made the fight go a little long, I didn’t care because it also made it so easy. My husband’s adage of, “It’s always something stupid,” was never more true in this case.

I had a friend in town this week, so tomorrow I will get back to the reviewing schedule. I’ve found a few other guides for Scribblenauts outside of GameFAQs, and those are just itching for my scrutinizing eye.

When I’m not getting frustrated by Final Fantasy X (grumble, grumble) I’m playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. And I’m not loving it.

The game is obviously only for Kingdom Hearts fans, as the story assumes that one has played through at least two of the Kingdom Hearts games if not all three. That doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’m delighted that it honors us in that way.

But the game is so damn boring!

It’s set up eerily like Crisis Core, in that all Roxas does is go out on missions. If he dies in the mission, he keeps all of his loot, returns to Castle Oblivion, and has the opportunity to try again. The missions here have a bit more variety than they do in Crisis Core, where the goal is ALWAYS to find some boss and kill it, and that’s refreshing, but it doesn’t detract that it’s still repetitive and boring.

And I hate the leveling up/ability system. One of the developers from Chain of Memories was definitely behind that idea. And in another way, this panel system of Roxas’ is a lot like Zack’s ability system in Crisis Core in that you will have to constantly reshuffle what Roxas has in order to successfully complete the mission. I admit I haven’t done it as much as I should, because I’m freaking lazy. It hit me today that I’m playing two games with funky leveling systems (HATE THE SPHERE GRID IN FFX). Maybe I’m punishing myself.

At least there isn’t the DMW slot machine thingy. I might have gone over the edge if I saw that make an appearance as well.

I read IGN and Gamespot’s reviews today and they just raved about it, so maybe things will come together later down the line. Hopefully it won’t be too much later as I’m already well over a third of the way through. But then again, both game sites loved Dissidia and I was not that impressed. Maybe it’s really me. Maybe I don’t love Square Enix as much as I think I do.

But going back to FFX, a few people now have encouraged me to continue, no matter what I have to do. I have some more thoughts on how to beat this boss, so come this weekend, we’ll see how that all works out. If you hear sobbing in the wind, it’s because I gave up and went back to an old save point for level grinding.

Thanks to the strategy guide, I’ve had very little difficulty getting through the Final Fantasy X epic, which I’m loving because I love this story so much. I see the game as more of a beautiful story with some turn-based play in the middle. However, I can’t look at the game like that for too long or I get bored.

But anyway…

This past weekend, I ran into my first real snag. This one boss fight is a doozy with about four or five different bosses to fight at once. First I have to defeat two guards. Then I have to defeat this monstrosity of a summoning. When I’m finally able to do that, the main boss rains down a multi-spell and wipes out two of my party members. I can rez one, but then the one I rezzed and my lone survivor will get wiped out in the next turn. The most frustrating thing is not the fact that I failed three times in a row in practically the exact same way, even though I changed up my strategy each time, but that it takes 15-20 minutes to get to the killing point.

It’s such a beating, and it’s the biggest reason why I prefer action-RPGs over traditional turn-based games. I dug up some new strategy ideas from GameFAQs on Sunday night, and I’ll give myself a few more times to try to implement the strategies correctly before I restart at a really, really, really old save point and try the leveling up track. I really, really, really don’t want to do that, because I think my last save point was over 7 hours ago. That’s a lot of game time to repeat.

Whether I have to back track or not, I’m definitely taking this experience into account and incorporating a new saving plan.

So frustrating. The ending better sooooo be worth it.