What I Played Today: March 29

Mega Man ZX Advent, Pokemon Diamond

I was on a plane for a good six hours today, so I played some handheld games to kill the time. I picked the latest Pokemon incarnation I’ve had on my shelf to give it a try, and I started over because I couldn’t even begin to remember where I was. I suddenly realized that starting over was a horrible idea, because the first five hours of Pokemon is unbearable. You have nothing to work with, you are almost immediately thrown into the mines, filled with rock creatures that are immune to about 80% of all possible attacks you have, and you have to spent a lot of time just leveling your damn pets to get them the right abilities.

So yeah, glad that I didn’t get so enthralled by the Pokewalker that I bought the more recent incarnation, because I likely won’t play Pokemon anymore. I did realize that my favorite RPG, Persona 3 & 4, shares a lot of elements with this damn series; the collection of creatures that you use to fight. The thing that makes Persona a lot better is that each of the creatures you’re collecting are mythical creatures rather than ugly pseudo-animals, and you can actually do stuff with obsoleted creatures, using them to get better creatures rather than leaving them to rot in your computer. That alone saves the series so much that I rarely actually see the connection. (Should be noted that the Shin Megami Tensei mechanic of recruiting enemies to fight with you is older than Pokemon itself, if only to point out who’s “ripping off” who.)

Also wanted to try one of the newer Mega Mans, so I picked up Mega Man ZX Advent, which is a hell of a title, and doesn’t appear to actually have anything to do with the original Mega Man anymore. I played for a bit, but I am stuck at the first true boss, which comes after 5 minutes of cutscenes and a small platforming leveling. This boss is a real dick, jumping around and able to take me out in about six or seven hits, while I’ve got to take out two whole bars of life. This is just terrible when he’s sitting as a huge block preventing me from playing the rest of the game. At least in other MegaMen I could go somewhere else when I was stuck and get a weakness or something. Here, I’ve just got to perfect my reflexes and recognize his patterns in order to see the rest of the game. This is bad game design.