Currently Playing: Dragon Warrior

So! Nobody is actually reading this so I might as well just continue with it. I thought that my first entry should be about a videogame (what? I like videogames a lot, don't judge me!). I wont be doing a review or something like it, I'm not a videogame reviewer nor do I have the same talent as  this guy, but I will tell you my opinion of this particular game, my experience playing it and wether you should try it out or leave it aside (but again, I'm not reviewing it).

Anyway, as you can tell from the title, I'm currently playing a game that is considered by many (myself included) as the very first JRPG to ever grace existence. Let's see a little bit of hystory about this game first. Dragon Warrior was released in 1986 for the Famicom (or Family Computer, the japanese name of the NES). It also received a port for the MSX (noup, never played on one of those), and was later released (much later) in North America in 1989. Several remakes were made including one for the SNES(or rather the Super Famicom, as it stayed in Japan) and other for the Game Boy Color wich did make it to this side of the Pacific as "Dragon Warrior I & II", both versions with several improvements over the original including updated grafics, new translation on the GBC (prefer the original myself) and it tooked a lot less grinding to level up and get more money more quickly. There is supposed to be an Android version in development but I'm still waiting for it.

The game was inspired by other RPGs such as Wizardry and Ultima, wich were released before for PCs. So Enix created the game, got Akira Toriyama from Dragon Ball to draw the characters and enemies and BOOM! The game was a mayor succes in Japan and inspire itself the creation of other JRPGs, such as Phantasy Star, Mother (my favourite saga) and, of course it's main rival and competitor, Final Fantasy.

So if you were born in the mid 90's as myself you might be questioning "If it is so important and inspire blah blah, why haven't I heard from it before? ". Well I forgot to mention (or did I?) that Dragon Warrior was the name from it's north american localization, and the original title in Japan was Dragon Quest. The series continued with this name until the seventh installment on the PSOne. Dragon Quest VIII was released for the PS2 in 2005 (I think) with the original name of the saga in all territories as have every later game since .

And if you're an actual veteran in the videogaming ambit you might be questioning "What is this snot from 1995 talking about a game released 6 or 9 years before he was even born?! " Well, I'm actually very fond of classic games and love to playing them every time I have the chance to do it (read: if I find a nice emulator).I'm jocking, my cousin used to have a NES and a SNES back in 1999-2003, so I spent an important part of my childhood playing these games. Incredibly enough he also owned a PSOne back in the day but, there were very few games that I liked from it.

Anyway, I started playing this game almost a week ago. I already knew how clumsy it was and all the "press A, select talk, door, stairs" stuff, so I initially tought that after 10 minutes of playing I would be bored and would never touch it again. How wrong was I.

The game just got me. Yeah, it feels weird the first time you make yor character walk. Yes, is annoying to select every single action you do. Yes, leveling up is fucking hard, especially when the enemies you encounter give just 1 or 2 experience points, and the same amount of gold, but dammit the game is fun. I don't know what it was; maybe I had very low expectations of the game... no, it wasn't that, I really wanted to play the game even with the stuff that I already knew. The battle mechanics, being the very first JRPG, are simple as hell: you walk around on the world map, you get into random encounters, you hit the enemy 1 point at a time (at the beginning), you win, you get exp. point(s) and gold from it. If you loose you're taken back to the castle, but with half the gold you had at the moment of loosing. When you gain enough experience you level up and gain a little bit more strength, you may also learn a new spell, be it offensive or deffensive. With enough gold you can buy new and better equipment, wich will give a little boost to your strength and defense. That's it. Seriously.

The story is fairly simple, go rescue princess Gwaelin from the Dragon Lord's lair (wich is visible from the first time you step into the world map). Although I can't really judge this game because it's story, since the game was more focused on delivering a unique experience rather than an amazing story. Same goes with the music, the game does have some pretty catchy tunes, but since it came out originally in 1986 it sounds very blipping-blopping, but I can't really give it less points because of it.

So if someone came to ask me what do I love about this game, the only answer that comes to my mind (and only valid one, really) would be exactly because of that, it's simplicity.

I haven't make much advancement in the game itself, my character is at level 12, and have only visited 3 towns, counting the very first one, but so far, it has really make a good impression on myself. I'm also playing Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones along with it, and although FE takes more of my time, I always play a good 30 minutes of Dragon Warrior when I have the time, and it doesn't feel clumsy, antique, obsolete or any of those things anymore. I might even be enjoying more my first playthrough of this game, that I did with Final Fantasy one year ago and that is a lot to say, because everything that is annoying about Dragon Warrior was scraped from Final Fantasy for it to be a better game (and objetively, it is) and still, my experience playing Dragon Warrior, it's been one of the best of any 80's RPG I have played, including Mother and Final Fantasy I & III. Which one is the best? That's a tough question, since it all really depends on anyones personal tastes, so to finish this...

My opinion of this game... Well it is incredibly fun, and is really deserving of all the praises it has received along this years; being pretty much the starting point of a whole genre (or sub-genre) I think it did pretty well, and the fact  that after it have come amazing franchises, or even later installment of the saga with improved mechanics and a much better interface doesn't take any merit from it, even after all these years.

Would I recommend this game? Well, it depends. If you played the first Final Fantasy and couldn't stand it and went with the GBA version, then no, I wouldn't recommend this game to you. But, if you love RPGs and want to see how the japanese scene began, then go for it.

But I might be wrong. The best desition is yours when you give a few minutes to it and see wether is what you were looking for or not. So I guess the final word would be: give it a try anyway, that is when you will know. And if you have played the game: what is your opinnion about it? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Why? Tell me in the comments ;P

Again, if anyone took the time to read that, then thanks a lot and if you have any idea on what should I write about (since I have no clue) tell me in the comments, it can be a book, a song, an album, a music artist, another videogame, a TV show or a movie, I will gladly considerate your suggestion and give my thoughts on it!

Well, now that I'm here...

Hi. My name is Randy Valdivia López. I live in Costa Rica. I am currently 18 years old and have no idea what compels me to do this.
My english level is no very high, so you can expect a lot of gramatical errors, mispelled words, etc.
I'm not a good writer either (well, I think), the only wrintings I have ever done were a couple of stories (they were more kind of short tales) that I wrote when I was 8 to 12 years old. I used to believe that when I grew up I would retake them, make the story the hell of a lot more interesting, give it a proper ending and see if I could make something out of it.
Back in 2010, when I was 15, I told to myself "You know... I think I should at least give it a go and try to finish it"
I did retake it. The original writings were still somewhere around and so I begin. Longstory short: I wrote aproximately 10-15 chapters, and quit. The new version would be pretty big and I thought of making 7 books out of it. The notes with the characters names,backgrounds, the order of the events and stuff like that are lost to this day since almost a year ago. I'm not really good with names, so I took a look to the ever-trusted internet and look for them (in latin or something), and the main character's name was going to be Cervus, wich has to do something with the color red.
The other writing was an essay that I did for my last high-school year (read: 2013), I HAD to do it, because if I did'nt I would be doing 5th grade spanish this year all over again. So, they gave us 5 different subjects that were affecting the society of my country. The first thing that came to my mind was "Goverment Corruption". In Costa Rica, at least 5 times a week you see something about it in the news. That is, if you do watch the news. "See? That what happens when you stay in your room playing Chrono Trigger or haging out with your friends you stupid asshole, now pay for it!" I told to myself. Of course, being the lucky bastard that I am 50% of the time, one of the subjects in the test had the title "Bullying in the children of our society". I got the highest grade of all of my generation, but of course I did not get any kind of recognition because I did not got one-fucking-hundred, like other students got in biology, math, etc.
Anyway, this blog (if I ever continue with it) is not going to be related to any of the above mentioned things (well, if I retake Cervus' story I'll told you about it), rather, I'll talk about the things that I like, be it videogames ( well I did metion a videogame above), books that I'm currently or have already read and music that I like (or do not like) to hear.
If something get to happen in my life (not that anybody cares about it) I would write some of it here. Also, you should know that I'm doing all of this from my cellphone (not the greatest piece of tecnology) so most likely my posts won't have images, and if they do have it will be two images tops, so almost all of what you get to read here will be simple, boring text (that is if you don't like to read).
So if anybody took the time to read all that, thanks a lot and I hope you come back regularly to see new entries (again, if I actually get to do them).