What I Played Today: August 7

Talisman, Dominion, Final Fantasy XIII

Got together for the game of Talisman that I seem to play every five years like clockwork. It was the first major board game I’ve ever played, at a local convention, and I played again in college with some teacher that I never saw before, and never saw again. I may even have dreamed that encounter with Talisman, for all the evidence I have of it.

However, a new edition of Talisman has been released since I last played, so it looks a lot prettier now. Well...mildly prettier. Still, it looks good, and it means it’s still getting played, so there we go. The game is mostly chance, in which you roll a die, make a trivial decision to go either left or right, and then you draw a number of cards based on your location and stuff happens to you. Everyone else was having poor luck, getting pushed around by dragons and such, while I took advantage of my character’s ability to roll twice for pretty much every encounter (I got to roll twice for movement, and twice for combat. The character was kinda broken.) Eventually I got my character powered up enough and charged into the dungeon, and with one well-placed spell that doubled my characters strength to about 22, and kicked the crap out of the Dungeon’s boss, who, as a reward, teleported me to the center of the board and allowed me to toss the Ice Queen to the ground. It was a quick, decisive win.

There was also a quick game of Dominion because we had some time. We played with the Stash, which is interesting, but nothing of real note. The game did end in a three-way tie, which I was part of, so that was kinda cool.

I also dug up Final Fantasy XIII for some reason, and realized that I don’t actually like the game. I mean, the combat system is a bit ridiculous and off-the-cuff, the story continues to be stupid, and the level design in the section I’m currently trapped is bad. I was stuck on a very obvious big boss, and it took me three tries to take him out. I took advantage of the combat system’s flaw, being that if you can break their defense, you can destroy an enemy’s hit points in no time, making even bosses trivial if you just concentrate on doing that. So, after I take him out, what happens? Another half-hour of aimlessly walking around this complex. I fought the boss! This section is over! Let me get to the goddamn game already!