My blogpost is late this week because I was trying to get into Final Fantasy Dissidia NT and participate in a tournament. Had this worked, my content for the week was going to be my first ESL footage and I was really excited about that, but I pulled a major noob mistake by not knowing how to get on a team. I will now be spending the next three weeks trying to find a team to join or recruit someone to my team. Let me know if you want to join my team or if I can join your team, my PSN tag is Hidariude7 and I play as Kefka.
For those not familiar with Dissidia, it's a fighting game featuring the major characters from the Final Fantasy series. This seems like a good idea, but Square Enix took it a step too far by reinventing the wheel and trying to make a new system that is different from all other fighting gams. Whereas most games simply use combos to reduce health, in Dissidia there is also bravery, represented by a number above your health bar that represents all of your other combat stats such as defense and attack power. Most attacks are meant to take your opponents bravery and add it to your own, and when bravery drops to zero, the next bravery attack leads to break status during which time the broken character is vulnerable to HP attacks. The system can be very complicated, but once you figure it out it is basically just beating up your enemies and putting on a good show, which can be entertaining to watch as well as participate in. What makes NT more complicated than the original is that you now go three on three, which can make it very difficult to figure out who is who and what is going on. Oh and then there is the summon system, which FF players love, in theory at least; in practice it is a nightmare because now there is yet another character on the field obscuring your vision and randomly doing a lot of crap you have no control of and you feel like you have even less control of your own character. Despite the complications, the more I play it the more I get how it works and with a little more practice, I think I'll be a contender.
While I try to get the hang of NT and provide more comprehensive information, let me also provide a review of Game of You from Sandman. This volume focuses less on the Sandman himself and more on a part of his world involving some characters that have a past with the Sandman. The primary character is Barbie, who appeared in an earlier volume and has since been having dreamless sleep and getting by after a bad break up from Ken. Then, a giant dog appears, Martin Tenbones from The Land, a place in Barbie's dreams back when she did dream, only now the dog is in the real world to provide Barbie wiht a dreamstone that she uses to return to The Land in her dreams. Barbie herself is pretty one-dimensional, relatable in the sense that she is so underdeveloped, she cold be any of us. And yet, she is the cnter of the story because The Land is threatened by a nightmare known as the Cuckoo who is effectively Barbie's childhood that she left behind in her dreams and now wants to be free to become something else on it's own, but must kill Barbie to sever the connection that keeps it bound to the Land. The Land is currently shaped by Barbie's subconcious, eventually revealed that her friends native to the dream were inspired by her dreams. And yet the Land is not truly her world, it was created for someone known as Alianora, but when she didn't accept the mantle of ruling The Land, it began passing through many wannabe princesses until it fell on Barbie, although it is unclear why after so long and so many, the Cuckoo manifested for Barbie alone. Far more interesting are the characters from the waking world, Thessaly the witch, Foxglove and Hazel the lesbians, Wanda the transgender formerly known as Alvin, and George who is used by the Cuckoo until he gets killed and used by Thessaly. LGBT issues are brought up by these characters that are both dated back to the early '90s and yet horrifyingly current by showing that we have more linguistic comprehension on the subject, and yet little more understanding from the more narrow-minded people out there. Hazel in particular is not only a lesbian, but seems to be mentally challenged, she'd clearly be lost without her lover Foxglove. Foxglove is interesting because her ex was one of the victims of Doctor Dee at the 24 hour diner from Volume 1. Thessaly turns out to be interesting because she is a witch capable of necromancy and travel to the Dreaming and shows her hand when the Cuckoo uses George to attack the dreams of the tenants of the building but underestimated the witch who would bring an end to that little scheme. Thessaly starts out seeming to be a hero, but eventually turns out to be more of an anti-hero who simply wants revenge on the Cuckoo for disturbing her sleep and doesn't really care about any of the others she drags into her vendetta. Another particularly interesting thing to note is the recurrence of the theme of the Crone, the Mother, and the Maiden, with Thessaly being the Crone, Hazel who accidentally got herself knocked up because she's the kind of lesbian who never learned male anatomy because it wasn't relevant to her life until the one time that it was, which leaves Foxglove as the Maiden by default. Of the three volumes I've read so far, this trio has been referenced in one way or another every time, and clearly, Gaiman considers them to be as important as the Endless. The irrelevance of everyone involved becomes painfully clear when Morpheus finally catches up and absorbs The Land and brings it to an end, and then speaks with the protagonists with supreme indifference, particularly Thessaly who thinks she's above it all until he remids her that no matter how long she has lived, she's still just another mortal who will be gone in the blink of an eye compared to Dream and his kind. Thessaly has plenty of spunk as if she is something special, and she is compared to everyone else, but then Morpheus just puts her in her place and she acts like she's still better than the rest, but we know she got pwned.
So my next reading project is Brief Lives from Sandman, and I'll still be workign on Dissidia NT, but the really big deal is Flower City Comic Con in two weeks, where I'll be working, selling my books, and this will be my first time at his particular con. Stay tuned and stay gold!
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