Blog Timeline 2020

Yep, still going to do these autobiographical blog posts at the end of each year. Even though this is only the second-to-last day for this year, I may not be able to finish the next Wizardry installment before New Years Day nor do I have anything else planned at the moment. Also because of adding a few things, this is just a blog timeline instead of an RPG timeline now.

So first off, I've been invested heavily in Doom since freakin' middle school, and one of the things I promised when I created this more-or-less crummy blog had to be Doom Musings. I wanted to talk about things that I always found interesting in Doom, whether they were in custom mods or otherwise. As a result, each month of the year I ended up with two blog posts of Doom Musings, one at the start of a month and the other at the halfway part. Needless to say this will continue into 2021, so expect 24 more of these kinds of posts. On the subject of stuff I reviewed, I made a thread on Christmas day documenting each review I made for wads in 2019 and 2020; this is mostly because the beta downloads page on Doomworld hasn't been updated since November 2018. And I went through a lot of mods, most of which were Cacoward winners or were made by otherwise noteworthy authors. As far as I know, Newstuff Chronicles (which usually does this kind of review that I do) is dead, but me and several others are reviewing stuff consistently and that's always a thing.

As for non-game related stuff, what can I say. 2020 is the year of the shitshow, and well that's something that can be interpreted in many different ways. I surprisingly didn't lose my job and got paid-time off for the remaining school year, and even for the next school year I was given a golden opportunity to work virtually. Things are more complicated when students don't participate in virtual group activities though. I managed to complete an online class for teaching disabled students as an added plus. I also got a second job at a different learning site, this one I actually go to in person and wear a mask and social distance and all that. Fairly quaint, but that's going to be good experience and I even get a few rewards on the holiday occasions. One major tragedy was the loss of a great feline friend in late April. Also something I found out with my desktop computer, the USB ports were utterly compromised. There was even one instance in June where I had consistent BSODs over something I have no idea about. But seriously, the USB trouble is far and wide the most annoying thing I've dealt with and it seemed to occur every month after a new Windows Update*. Nowadays I game on my laptop unless I really need better specs.

The lockdown that occurred in March was all I needed to restart on playing of Pokemon ROM hacks. I had kept my save from Light Platinum confidential at that time, which was neat, so I finished that up. Afterwards when it came to selecting a new rom hack, I just sort of went by random pick and by things that could interest me. So Flora Sky was next, then Victory Fire, and from there I paid attention to Wind's hacks and plan to get to Mega Power when I can (still haven't done yet). Played through a few (in)famous hacks in AshGray, Snakewood, two Dark Rising games, as well as a semi-obscure one called Grass Jewel and a double-pack known as Altair and Sirius. Not to forget Resolute as well. So my 5th rom hack to my 14th this year. Well done I'd say on my end. Even better, I have decided to become a member of PokeCommunity as well, creating walkthroughs for some of the ones I played that don't have written walkthroughs yet (Victory Fire, Resolute, AshGray, Dark Rising 2, Grass Jewel, Snakewood, Altair and Sirius).

Best ROM hack I played this year: Pokemon Gaia

Funny enough, I still haven't completed it yet, so I haven't made a review. However, this has the largest mon selection available, the graphics work well (even though not super-substantial), and the story and evil team are quite interesting. Even better is that it's not one of those rom hacks that goes the uber-hard route. I may end up completing it next year, but I'm seriously impressed with the entire thing.

Alright time to reminisce on the RPGs I played this year. First up, I was still with Dragon Quest VI and only managed to finish it at the midpoint of January. Yes, these games are getting longer. I surprisingly went through La Pucelle Tactics pretty fast too, despite it being a Nippon Ichi title. Two NES Silva Saga games followed, then Seiken Densetsu 3, all finished in the month of February. March saw 5 RPGs tackled, all of which were more or less small titles like the Ranma 1/2 RPG, Silva Saga 2, Ys III, Deep Dungeon 4 (finishing a franchise), and Bahamut Lagoon. Princess Crown was finished at the beginning of April, but Dragon Quest VII, the epicly long adventure Dragon Quest, took the entire month. My goal was to finish it before the end though, and I succeeded. Usually I tend to take breaks between RPGs, so May was more or less a breather month, having taken week long breaks, but the next two RPGs I finished, which was Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, were quickly done away with.

June saw absolutely NO RPGs finished, but on the 4th of July, I finally managed to complete Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, after spending more than a month grinding and checking out post-game content. Following that was the peculiar PS2 game Orphen: Scion of Sorcery along with another SaGa game, both were surprisingly quick to deal with. This was also the segment where I played a lot of sequels I never got to. Much of August was spent raging at Grandia III, which sucked, but at least that's another franchise down. And the latter half of August and beginning days of September was done with another bad sequel in Wild Arms 4. I then rethreaded through Final Fantasy II but on a remake of the game before spending the rest of the month and the first bits of October with Tales of Eternia. Mystic Ark was also completed that month. As my next game was a Dragon Quest game, I invested more time in it to ensure I would beat it fast enough, which had me postponing my Pokemon Altair and Sirius rom hack playthrough just so I wouldn't waste the entire month on a Dragon Quest game. Gotta say that's impressive, having to go through three of the longest Dragon Quest titles like that.

Oddly, I spent way more time on Lufia: The Ruins of Lore than I did Dragon Quest VIII, probably because I was losing steam, but I managed to beat it on December 1. My goal for December was to finish a long-awaited game, Super Mario RPG, before Christmas. I overplayed that hand, having beating it in a single week. With that, I considered the year a successful endeavor in RPG reviewing, but I surely wasn't done. Although the Wizardry series is going to be grinding, I stayed my hand with them and got at least two games done. With that in mind, the total number of RPGs played this year was a whopping 27. This is two above the previous year's number of 25. Quarantine does sure make me play a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?

Best RPG played in 2020: Bahamut Lagoon
Honorable mentions: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Honestly I fell in love with Bahamut Lagoon. It was a perfect treasure of a Japan-only strategy RPG and proved to be better than Final Fantasy Tactics. It falls just short of my Top 10 RPGs on my countdown, but it was fantastic. I spent a lot of time with Disgaea and loved much of it too, and it's just under Bahamut Lagoon for similar reasons. And yeah, I enjoyed The Thousand Yaer Door, even though the Mario RPGs end up the easiest and some of the most simple, this storyline was worthwhile.

Let's hope that 2021 is a much better year, both in productivity and in general.

*Hey Microsoft, quit rushing your damn updates onto users. This is how you lose your respect when things go wrong.