I’ve received some more cards from trades lately. I received a Montador autograph and some Hot Prospects rookies /1999 for some 2005-06 Upper Deck inserts. I also traded my Jeremy Williams Hot Prospects Auto Patch for this:
A Noah Welch two colour Hot Prospects patch. It’s awesome I have the only Panther in the set. Even if he’s in a Penguins uniform. I have some more cards to send out for some Young Guns and Hot Prospects rookies I need.
It seems like the Tribe has turned things around. They beat Minnesota for the second night in a row and with Detroit losing they are now 3.5 games up in the division. The Indians starters have been pitching much better lately and Hafner hitting a HR is a good sign. Borowski is still a little bit of a roller coaster out there but I can live with it. It’s just about getting to the playoffs. After that, anything can happen.
Awesome news for the Panthers. Weiss signs a 6 year deal for $3.1 million a year. That’s a little less than Mikko Koivu and Weiss is a better player and is already a leader on this team. So the nucleus is set. Weiss, Horton, Olesz etc. have to raise their game to another level and the Panthers should make the playoffs. I can’t wait for the season to begin.
Here’s what I have been playing the last couple of weeks:
Suikoden (PSOne): I beat this on the weekend with all of the 108 Stars of Destiny. So this game is done. It’s a good game. I don’t think I would change my review after finishing it the second time.
Suikoden 2 (PSOne): I have played a little over an hour of this game and this game is more polished and the graphics are a little better than the original Suikoden. I love how you don’t need a certain rune to sprint anywhere. I will have more thoughts on this game as I play it more.
NCAA Football 2005 (PS2): I am sticking with my “Monday Night Football” routine where I play a football game every Monday night. I have spent a couple of Mondays in practice mode and playing 3 minute quarter games to improve on offense. I resumed my dynasty the other night and as Ohio State I beat Cincinatti 16-13. It was a typical ugly game from me. I play fine on defense but my offense was not good. But I won so that’s good. The next games are my Peterborough Beavers against North Texas and Ohio St. against Marshall.
Guitar Hero 2 (PS2): I have been taking a little time off but when I play this game it’s usually just practicing Freebird. I have gotten to 74% complete but that’s it. The one thing I don’t like about this song is actually having to practice it. I feel like if I’m practicing I might as well be playing a real guitar. Oh well, I’ll get through it eventually.
Final Fantasy 2 (GBA): I have never beaten this game and I’m around halfway through. It’s okay. The story is better than the original but the gameplay is not. The levelling system is a good idea but it isn’t as good in practice. I just want to get through this game and the special bonus stage added to the GBA cart.
So that is what I have been playing. Comments are welcome.
So some cards have come in the last week or so. My Staal Upper Deck Young Gun rookie arrived the same day as my box of 06-07 Hot Prospects.
The “Hits” from the Hot Prospects were as follows:
Jersey cards: Billy Thompson, Loui Erikkson and Joffrey Lupul /100
I got two auto patch cards. The first was a Filip Novak / 599. The other one was a great hit of a Guillaume Latendresse auto patch out of 25. I’m putting the Latendresse on EBay in the next couple of weeks. The Latendresse is here:
I have also made some trades where I’m trading some insert cards for some Hot Prospects rookies and a Steve Montador autographed card in a Panthers jersey. I am trading my Jeremy Williams auto patch for a Noah Welch auto patch because I’m not sure if I’m doing the patch set and I wanted to make sure I have a Welch since he is now a Panther. I’m going to really take my time on this set. My third trade was some basketball singles for some Bowman basketball singles I need to complete the set.
I will start saving for new cards starting in September. My next box purchase will probably be the new Bowman basketball since I want to get Oden and Durant rookies pretty quickly. And I’m hoping to grab one cheap Hot Prospects auto patch a month. I can then whittle the set down a little bit since I have 3 out of the 42 cards.
Other than that I’m going to keep trying to make trades.
So the Indians have lost two in a row to the Yankees. Thank God Detroit has played horribly lately. It’s the only way the Indians still have a playoff spot. The Indians have to play better to keep their division lead. They are 5-6 in August. That’s not good enough. They have to salvage a game against the Yankees tomorrow.
I have won a couple of auctions on EBay this past week. I just won a hobby box of 06-07 Fleer Hot Prospects tonight. I got it for just under $80 Cdn delivered so that’s a good deal. On Sunday I picked up a Jordan Staal Young Gun rookie for around $43 Cdn delivered which was lower than other auctions for this card. The Staal is the most expensive of the 06-07 Upper Deck Series 1 Young Guns so it’s good to have that card out of the way.
I have some Bowman Chrome basketball rookie autos up for sale on EBay right now.
I can’t wait for the Hot Prospects hobby box to arrive! This bring my base set close to completion and will give me one more rookie autographed patch for my collection. I’m hoping in the next year that the price of the common auto patches drop. I don’t see the prices of the “big 3″ (Staal, Malkin and Kessel) will go down in price any time soon.
The Indians are up 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth in Chicago right now. Borowski struck out the first batter but there was a passed ball on Martinez and the Sox now have a runner on first with no outs. I’m hoping a 2-hitter through 8 innings from Westbrook isn’t wasted. Owens was sacrificed to second. Thome is up now with a man on second with one out.
The Yankees beat the Blue Jays 9-3 and Detroit beat Tampa Bay 9-6 so the Indians have to win to keep pace.
Thome flys out to right on a 3-2 count and Owens tags to third. Martinez and Garko just messed up a Konerko foul pop by the Indians dugout on the first base side. So that’s two plays that Victor Martinez should have made. Naturally Tom Hamilton (the Indians play by play announcer) keeps saying how the game should already be over. He’s the best. A 3-2 pitch is fouled off by Konerko. The next pitch is a ball low so Konerko walks. How does that help? Now it’s Pierzynski. He hits a soft liner to Barfield at second and the Indians win! Why can’t this team win some games 8-3 sometimes? But it’s good that the Indians won. I just don’t need the heart attacks.
Suikoden Mini-Review!
I’m levelling and hoping to recruit the pirates in Suikoden but since I have around half of the 108 stars recruited and it is my second playthrough so I think I have played the game enough to review it.
Story
Suikoden isn’t ground breaking by any means since it uses the “rebel against the evil empire” storyline. There aren’t too many twists or turns in the story but I like that. Current games tend to be too busy trying to trick the gamer than actually telling you what the game is supposed to be about. The main character is a teenager/young man who is the son of a great general and is joining the Empire’s army. He is accompanied by his protectors and the people who have raised him. Their first adventures show how corrupt the Empire has become and then due to some circumstances beyond his control, the young man joins and becomes the leader of the Liberation Army. The story then follows how the character unites the lands against the Empire and liberates the world territory by territory. The dialog is done well enough and you don’t think “why am I doing this again?” too often. There’s a couple of points in the story where you end up doing “fetch quests” which are a little tedious as always. This is not a long story. I beat the game the first time through in under 17 hours. Recruiting all of the characters will take me 20-25 hours I think.
Story: 6.5 out of 10.
Gameplay and Control:
Suikoden is played mostly like any other traditional Japanese RPG. Explore the world in towns, a world map and dungeons with random encounters stopping you every few steps. There are 6 members in your party with two rows of three characters. Each character is given a range on their attack (short, medium, long). Short characters can only attack from the front row and hit enemies in the front row. Medium characters can attack from either row but do not have as powerful an attack from the back row. Long range characters can hit enemies in any row and can attack from the back row. Each character has a weapon that they start with. New weapons are not purchased but are taken to a Blacksmith and sharpened. As the weapons are sharpened they increase in power and when they gain enough power they will be called by a new name. Armor is purchased from shops and equipped. The magic system is done through “runes”. You can find or purchase runes and then have to go to a runemaster in a shop or in your castle to attach runes to a character. Some runes give attack or healing spells to the equipped character while other runes will give abilities to dash in town or caves or increase the chances of critical hits. There are also “Unite” attacks between characters that have connections in the story line that can deal greater damage. My favourite aspect of the battle system is that the experience points gained depend on the difference between your level and the strength of the enemies. So a gamer can’t “power level” without taking an extraordinary amount of time because once you are a level or two to high for the enemies in an area you will only gain 1-10 experience points per battle and you level up every 1,000 points. I do not like being forced to power level. I like advancing the story line. There is also an “Auto” command where the characters will perform normal attacks on the enemies of their choice. This can save time if you are not going to use a Rune or a Unite attack so you don’t have to cycle through the 6 character selecting “attack”.
The 108 Stars of Destiny are scattered throughout the story. Most will join you automatically as you progress through the story and depending on what you are trying to accomplish you are forced to take 2 or 3 characters with you. The remaining slots can be filled by any of the Stars that you have already recruited. Due to the levelling system it is easy to bring a lower levelled character up to the level of your other characters. Some Stars will join you after fetch quests, others will join you if you have reached a certain level while there are a few others where a walkthrough might be needed to recruit.
There are two additional modes in the game. The first is major battles. This is when your whole army will be in a battle with the Imperials. There is a paper/rock/scissors aspect of infantry charge, bow attack and magic attack. There are also special abilities like strategists boosting charge attack and ninjas figuring out what the opponent is going to do next. Each attack is led by a “team” of up to 3 of the Stars. If a Star is killed during a major battle then they are lost for the rest of the game. This leads the gamer to be cautious, especially the ones trying to collect all 108 Stars so they can carry forward the data to gain bonuses and extra characters in Suikoden 2.
The second additional mode is the one on one battle. This usually pits the main character against one of the Empire’s great generals. This is again done through a rock/paper/scissors format with attack, defend and desperate attack options. The enemy will say something before each round to give you a clue on what they can do.
The game is not difficult and as long as weapons are reasonably sharpened and armour is updated regularly the random encounters will keep the characters level high enough to deal with most boss fights. Making money by defeating enemies can be tedious though as sharpening and purchasing armour gets expensive in a hurry.
The controls are solid, as they are for most JRPG’s. Everything is self explanatory and no quick reflexes are needed during the game.
Gameplay/Control: 7 out of 10
Graphics:
This was one of the first RPG’s released on the PSOne and it shows. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Super Nintendo could handle Suikoden’s graphics. The sprites are large on towns etc. but are not especially detailed and none of the characters make too many different animations as the story goes along. The world map, towns and dungeons don’t push the PSOne’s graphics at all and the spell effects are mediocre.
Graphics: 4 out of 10
Sound:
The soundtrack is well done. There is nothing that I would listen too outside of the game but it does it’s job well enough that I don’t play with the mute button on except when I’m gathering money. The score matches the mood of the story whether someone dies or the army is successful. The sound effects are mediocre at best and don’t really add anything to the playing experience.
Sound: 6 out of 10
Miscellaneous:
Having 108 Stars to collect is fun from a “gotta catch em all” perspective. You can replay this game a few times to use different members but this wears thin after a while since most of the time you are forced to take 2 or 3 characters with you for certain sections of the story. There are a couple of mini-games that can let you earn some money a little quicker but they are a little too chance based for me.
Miscellaneous: 5 out of 10
Final score (an average) = 28.5/50 or 5.7/10.
If you want to play a traditional SNES type RPG on a Playstation system and you can find this game for cheap then this game is for you. I did enjoy playing the game but it probably wouldn’t fit on an all time favourites list of mine. If a friend owns this an you don’t have much of a backlog then by all means borrow this game and play it through. I don’t think you will regret the time spent but it isn’t like playing Disgaea or Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne where you look back on the game and think about how you enjoyed playing it.
That was fun! I haven’t actually posted a review before and I’ve always wanted to. Thanks for reading and feedback is appreciated.
I was in Ottawa from Friday to Sunday with my wife’s family for a get together. I received 3 more cards for my 06-07 Bowman and Bowman Chrome sets so they are inching closer to completion. I made a big purchase last night (for me anyways) and won an auction for a Jordan Staal young gun rookie. I paid with shipping around $43 Cdn. That’s around $7-10 less then this card usually sells for. It’s book value is around $60 so I’m happy with the purchase. It’s the card to get for 06-07 Upper Deck Series 1. With the $40 spent though I’m not getting a box of Hot Prospects now. That will have to wait. I’m going to pick up a box of 06-07 Upper Deck Series 1 and try to complete the base set and get 6 more young guns. Hopefully I pull a second Staal and either sell it on EBay or use it as trade. I put some of my 06-07 Bowman Chrome basketball rookie autographs on sale at EBay. I’m hoping to make a little bit to go back into the card fund. I also have put some cards on sale for my Dad on EBay as he runs a small card shop and this is the next step for him. I want things to go well for him.
As you can see I’m having some problems actually figuring out a schedule or a focus for this. I think it will come eventually. I just want to make posts and hopefully people will read and I can get feedback on how I can write a little better.
Thanks for reading.
