Tales of Vesperia - Finished

I've just managed to complete my first goal; finishing Tales of Vesperia.

The story:

It start's out quite normal. You're a guy living in the Lower Quarter of a city, but unfortunately the Aqua Blastia that's supposed to keep the fountain running and thus, provide the Lower Quarter with water, got stolen.

Your goal is to repair the fountain by getting the blastia back.

But, somehow along the way it gets much, much more complicated and you end up saving the whole world.

Blastia's are quite important: They're stones with magic-like properties that keep stuff running. For example, aqua blastia affect water and bodhi blastia are used to fight with: They are needed to use Artes.

I really enjoyed the story. As most Tales of.. games it starts out pretty straight forward but keeps on getting more complicated along the way and once you think you're almost done, it manages to add even more depth.

The characters are pretty likeable too. As with all the Tales of.. games, you get to know more random stuff about the characters by watching so-called 'sketches', basically optional conversations/jokes the characters have with eachother.

They are quite fun, but also provide a lot of background knowledge.

Gameplay

It's pretty similar to most Tales games. You run around on a HUGE world map with monsters that you can either fight or try to avoid.

You can enter cities/caves and stuff on the map by pressing A.

Later in the game it gets easier to travel along the map due to being able to fly instead of walk.

The fighting system is also similar to most Tales of.. Games. The battles pop up in a new arenalike screen and the fighting is in real time. 

You can have 4 party members on the field but you're only able to really control 1. The others behaviour depends on the strategy you've set.

Difficulty:

As with most Tales of.. games you can switch the difficulty between easy - medium - hard whenever the heck you want, for example if you get frustrated being stuck on a boss or if you just want to run around enjoying the story while being tired of all the random battles.

Cooking/crafting

There's also a cooking system in place: You can learn recipes along the way and cook dishes after battle to temporarily gain stats, restore HP or TP.

I barely used it, mainly because I just wanted to finish the story and couln't be bothere to get into it... 

Same with the crafting (Synthesizing) system: It's forever since I completed the tutorial and simply didn't remember how it worked and well, seeing I got along fine with the stuff I found on the way I just skipped it... But then again, I rarely bother with crafting/cooking in other games than MMORPGs,

All in all, I loved this game, and am glad I got through the story in about 41 hours.

Games: Backlog (Grouvee list)

So, I remembered I tried to tackle my backlog once before by using a website to help me keep track of the games I have, the ones I'm playing and the ones I've completed.

After searching my mailbox for a while I found my profile back (Grouvee profile) and figured I'd try to update it as much as possible by manually entering the games I've got - or at least the ones that show up on my truetrophies and true achievements profile... And, damn, it's much worse than I imagined it was!

The sad part is; it's probably bigger but the true.. websites don't seem to register games until you actually get an achievement/trophy in them. *sigh*

After that I figured I was typing anyway, so I decided to add the nintendo ds and psp games I own, too.

And, damn... A backlog of 232 games, of which 40 games are flagged as 'playing' is so much worse than I imagined it was! Especially seeing there are only 28 games flagged as 'played' (As in, finished.)

Well, to be fair, a part of it was free due to psplus/games with gold, but still... 

This definately shows I need to learn to actually finish stuff before buying more, or at least giving it an x-amount of time before deciding I don't like it and moving on to the next; it's clear that what I've been doing so far is not working, at all.

Tales of Vesperia (Xbox 360)

One of the games I'm currently playing is Tales of Vesperia.

Ever since I got my classic PSP I'm in love with the Tales of... series, seeing as Tales of Eternia was my first (And best) game on the platform.

Anyway, due to that I've collected a bunch of Tales of games on my to do list
(Vesperia, Graces F and Symphonia Chronicles)

For some reason I just can't get into Tales of Graces F but I fell in love with Vesperia, even though I've got a talent for getting horribly lost in those kind of games.

So, back to Vesperia. It's going to take a while to finish, but I like the story so far, I like the battle system, and now I'm just rambling, haha.

Introduction to the Plan

As a lot of people, especially gamers, will probably know it's to damned easy to obtain a huge 'backlog'.

The definition of 'Backlog', at least to me, is: 'A collection of games, books and/or DVD's owned but never actually used.'

So, in my case: Ever since I'm a teenager I have this habit of buying books, dvd's and games, especially when I'm feeling down, to cheer myself up.

Right now I've got a really shocking/ridiculous amount of untouched (digital) games, unread books and a few unwatched DVD's I've got for months, or in some cases even up to  years(!)

Goal
The goal of this blog is to help me tackle my backlog by actually playing/reading/watching the stuff I've had on my 'to do list' for like, forever.

Plan
The plan is to write about the stuff I'm reading/watching/playing to help me actually stick to the plan, and at least try not to buy any more stuff until I'm done.

• In order to figure out if I really dislike  a game or simply can't get into it, the idea is to at least spent 90 minutes on each game, and if I still don't feel like playing after that amount of time, I can discard the game and move on to something else.
• I'm free to move between platforms and bought and 'free' games (Things like psplus, games with gold) but bought games do have a higher priority.
• To avoid increasing instead of decreasing, I'm not allowed to buy any new games/books/movies, unless I've finished at least 5 or so for every new game.
• I'm free to continue using Netflix and catching up on series I'm watching, but those also somewhat coun as a backlog :-)

So, from now on it's time to Battle the evil Backlog!