Hair length in RPGs

Four months since the last one of these, I return with this series. If it isn't obvious, two games are currently taking up a lot of my time, which really has hampered any sort of writing drive I have. But I'm gonna take a bit of time off to describe something that is not just common for RPGs, but anime as a whole.

Also known as the Cloud rule, "the more outrageous his hairstyle, the more important a male character is to the story". Which is easy to correlate for the character mentioned in question, but also Sephiroth as well. Animes clearly love to make a hairstyle unique for a main character, because unique stands out.  Notice how it also says male characters, as most female hairstyles tend to not be outrageous in any way since there's so many options, while males usually have short bowl-cuts or other short, boring styles.

But then again, this is more of an anime cliche rather than an RPG cliche, and even then, there are still few examples. Not every man is gonna be sporting iconic Naruto spiky hair or the even spikier Yu-gi-oh do, which in many ways is already genetically impossible. Many males in anime generally have messy spiky hair or otherwise normal cuts, and the same holds true for most RPG protagonists (Ark from Terranigma, the guy from Robotrek). There's bound to be the long haired pretty boy villain (which is a different cliche altogether actually) like Sephiroth, Kuja, or Ghaleon, or the pony-tailed heroes like Fei from Xenogears, Justin from Grandia, or Ramza from FFT, but none of these hairstyles really are major stickouts. Fei's comes the closest out of those three, but even then, it's not a "high" style. Other examples would be blue-haired protagonists like Ryu from the Breath of Fire series or Vahn from Legend of Legaia, both of which have generally abnormal hair colors, though not necessarily as outrageous, just messy and in a weird color.

Bottom line is, messy or spiky hair will definitely stick out for many characters, but it's not truly the most important thing that should really define a character.

Villain or Dick? Part 2

Continuing my Villain or Dick series, yay.

Villain: Zeikfried - Wild ARMs
Known for: A demon leader along with Harken, Alhazad, and Berserk, later Boomerang, wants to awaken Mother.
Verdict: Villain
Explanation: Well when you have ambitions to awaken a demon mother, well it should be obvious that you should know what your demon mother originally wanted. Where you want conquest, your mother wants total destruction. So then he turns on his demon mother in an ambitious way and rallies the main heroes against her so that he and his demon faction can conquer. Good, villainous villain here.

Villain: Odessa - Wild ARMs 2
Known for: An organization who wishes to rule Filgaia
Verdict: Judecca is a dick, but the rest are villains for many different reasons.
Explanation: Judecca is an assassin for the group, but has barely any regard for humans, as evidence by him killing a prison warden without much in reason. He basically doesn't have much going for him in villainy. Vinsfeld, the leader, is a textbook ambitious conquerer, with at least two other Cocytus members in love with him (although Antenora of these two is a vastly different villain for a different reason), while his other general Ptolomea is more of an actual general who looks after his men. So it stands reason that these members are mostly villains.

Villain: Prophets - Wild ARMs 3
Known for: Attempting to reshape Filgaia in their own image with help from metal demons.
Verdict: Dicks
Explanation: The problem with their ambitions is that they obviously don't care who suffers. Being corrupted because of Beatrice's actions causing the explosion that killed most of the Council of Seven actually may be the real reason they're dicks though. It's sad that this game is good, but we see too much dickery in the villains here, even Siegfried.

Villain: Composer - The World Ends With You
Known for: Being the all-powerful being that runs Shibuya, the setting of the game, alongside the Conductor
Verdict: Dick
Explanation: Not gonna spoil who the composer is in this game, but there is a stark difference between the Composer's goals and the Conductors. At least the Conductor, despite brainwashing nearly all of Shibuya, wants to preserve it, while the Composer wants to outright destroy it. Different ambitions, destruction is worse than conquest though.

Villain: Oersted - Live-A-Live
Known for: Shining knight who you play as in the second-to-last chapter and watch his story unfurl.
Verdict: Villain
Explanation: I mean come on. You play as this guy and his companions, watch as a companion dies and another separated, come home, watch him accidentally kill a king, then ousted as a demon, then set off to find that girl for some redemption, betrayed by the best friend AND the girl. Sure, he destroys the medieval land, but in his case he just watched his heroism crumble and it's completely justifiable for any action he does.

Villain: Bishop Ladja - Dragon Quest V
Known for: Originally known as Gema, he is a notorious follower of Nimzo
Verdict: Dick
Explanation: Bear in mind I'm basing this off of Ladja, not Gema. Still though, with many of DQ5's signature scenes showing huge problems for the hero, no one can forget when he uses the protagonist as a shield to prevent Pankraz from attacking Ladja, then setting his corpse ablaze. What a dick.

Villain: Luc - Suikoden III
Known for: Wielder of True Wind Rune, playable character in first three games.
Verdict: Villain
Explanation: This is a guy who you play as with minimal plot relevance for the most part in the first two games, but you get to understand his goals in the third. Although it would take the entire game with all stars recruited to really get the picture, this is a guy who's looking to prevent some sort of ultimate balance that would leave the planet lifeless. His plan of course comes into conflict with other true rune bearers, and he takes those runes as well, but his extremism had hope spots.

Villain: Graham Cray - Suikoden IV
Known for: Being the "Merchant of Death", former bearer of the Rune of Punishment who cut his hand off to escape it.
Verdict: Villain
Explanation: The only explanation for him attempting to get the rune back is to reunite with his already dead son. Having to incite wars and conquer places was a part of his plan, but he wasn't entirely as hellbent as some dicks.

A look back at: Secret of the Stars

Haha, no.

The first time I played this, I played it for an hour, then I read some reviews and decided nah, it's just not worth playing. Fast-forward five or so years later and I just decided to return to it, because despite bad reviews, some people were willing to give it the benefit of a doubt. I decided to be that way as well, but then I still was disappointed in the end. Very standard RPG with double the grinding because you have to maintain two separate parties, slow overall navigations, a random encounter rate that just cannot ultimately decide just when to give you an encounter, and a plot that is just basic, and blows a few chunks just to make it seem worse.

There are some things I credit, like Decatas which is a well done town, plus a few other gimmick places like Sleepers full of sleeping idiots, Box Town which has a boxing place, and Amaboss the female-only place where you have to sneak in with bunny girl outfits. Decatas in particular is segmented into four distinct parts, separating rich and poor, and it's cool. Old Hill, the town you create, is also nice as it grows, gets destroyed, and grows again. The theater is of no use, but the other places are better. Once I figured out combination magic, I couldn't hesitate to try it out, and it made random encounters more fun.

Too bad the game's encounters are already monotonous. I mentioned earlier that there are two separate parties, and they get used to get through some places cooperatively, although those dungeons are quite sparse. Specifically a few early-game dungeons where the Kustera simply find items while the Aqutallions pursue the main plot, and one point where only the Kustera can access a place to get "iums". There's the final stretch of dungeons, to get through four mazes, with frequent switching of parties to open specific doors and go through party-specific places until you get to each of the four bosses, sadly this is annoying thanks to the encounter rate. Then you get to the big bad through a long and annoying spiral slog, get into an unwinnable fight, leave for a plot item and come back through that same spiral, god just end the game already!

But perhaps I can tolerate this stuff if it weren't for such bad, bad translation. I mean just look at this crap. "The Laboratory has been explored!" Uh duh, you obviously meant exploded. There's others that are bad. "Adults Town" "I'm Full Ben" just get outta here. The enemy names are just facepalm-inducing. Badbad, Badman (should be mafia guy or something), Bohr (boar), Clarken (kraken), Galuda (garuda), Gas Slag (gas slug), two forms of Ghost that are different, Grizley (grizzly), Lace (lich), Oga (ogre), Pump King (pumpkin), Sourseris (sorceress), Specter (spectre), Talanchula (tarantula), Trool (troll), Val Eagle (possibly bald eagle), Vegelisk (basilisk), and Wyte (wight). Just, no. These guys needed a proper translator before they released this.

A look back at: Rijon Adventures

Mods for games either fall into one of two categories in my opinion. There are those that are simply new levels with marginally new gameplay, and then there are full-fledged mods that make things significantly different from the base game. In the case of Rijon Adventures, to me it felt like the former. Being already familiar with the landscape in Pokemon Brown is one caveat, but at least Brown was able to give much more than its Gen-1 stuff, making it a pretty superior ROM hack for Red. For this Fire Red ROM hack, we're treated to the same Rijon setting done Gen-3 style, new trainers, Pokemon up to Gen-3, yeah pretty nice.

I should probably expect that sort of thing for the "new level only" ROM hack to be honest, but what really makes me like the previous two ROM hacks were the post-game content. Especially in Prism. Here, there was plans for South Rijon to be explored, but not only is the National Pass you get at the end invalid, it's also a meaning that the South Rijon area can't be reached legitimately. Another location off? Hardnook Cave, where you can supposedly get Mewtwo but the entrance to the cave ain't anywhere in particular. It really sucks that some particular things were blocked off behind the post-game barrier, most notably getting the Togepi Egg and the Super Rod. That's quite disappointing.

And yeah, I did use the Walk Through Walls Gameshark code to explore these areas I never could reach. Notably the area behind the Seneca Cavefront has loads of trainers, all with around level 20 Pokemon, but that's all it has and you can't enter any buildings (the cave itself being blocked). There's some people in the northern half of Goldenrod City which is inaccessible but that's about all there is to that area. Finally the entire South Rijon area has names and trainers, but they are all taken from Sevii Islands trainers and they haven't been designed, so it's quite obvious there's a lot of work to do for this, assuming it will ever get worked on I suppose. Also Trainer Tower? Exactly the same as in FR/LG. EXACTLY.

I guess the last thing to take note of is the discrepancy that you are the son/daughter of the previous protagonist, Brown. Except he's referred to as Red, sadly. Green is also not only male, but the rival of Brown/Red here, when canonically in Brown he was always Mura. At least Professor Tim is here, and a neat sub-plot could be done regarding him. I mean, it's all okay, there's some cute things here and there like having both Brendan and May from R/S/E and all, but it's just not really as exciting as I hoped.