Moving Box by Box

Hello dear reader, the blog you have come to enjoy is no longer here. As of today Going Box by Box will continue over at WordPress. The new address is http://goboxbox.wordpress.com. I'm making the move to take advantage of WordPress' various features, and because it's a more powerful community platform.

That's not to say that Blogger hasn't been good to me. It's hosted this blog from its beginning and given me a place to put my writing. Without that people like you would never have read any of it. And, because of you this blog reached over 15,000 views. Thanks!

Now. For the foreseeable future, this blog will continue to exist on Blogger. However, it will only be an archive of past entries. For everything new (and old) for Going Box by Box, come check out http://goboxbox.wordpress.com.

Thanks again!
-Nicholas

Pandora's Tower is finished, time for final thoughts (spoilers below)

Pandora's Tower came to North America thanks largely to Operation Rainfall. This fan initiative also helped to encourage Nintendo to bring The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles to North America. These last two games are dyed in the wool J-RPGs (with some variations).

But Pandora's Tower is the odd one out.

It's more of an RPG in the same way that Zelda games are sometimes considered RPGs.

You're given a big world (or a lot of dungeons) and get to explore, upgrade equipment, find new items, and mostly have bits of the story revealed as you do those first three things.

A stronger case can be made for Pandora's Tower being an RPG since it also involves an experience and levelling system, as well as character stats that determine the player's defence, attack, and stamina/health.

But Pandora's Tower also brings something else from the genre of the J-RPG into an action game framework.

The amount of HP of the game's final boss.

Seriously, with the boss' six weak spots each having their own screen-wide health bar, this battle can take a very long time. Since I didn't have any power-ups with me, it took me approximately 35 minutes to finish off the final Master, Zeron.

As such, it's definitely fair to say that the final battle is more a test of endurance than of skill. And that's fine, except that the quality of your ending isn't really based on your skill. 

It doesn't matter if you've finished the game without dying, or if you've somehow 100%-ed the game on your first play through. Instead, which of the game's endings you get depends on your affinity with Elena. Unless your relationship is ranked between eight and ten on a ten point scale, the ending is a let down in one way or another.

If your relationship is fairly strong (between six and eight on said scale) both Elena and Aeron hop off the top of the towers to rid the world of the bit of Zeron that lives inside of her. Also, the the Scar (a massive chasm over which the Towers are perched) is sealed.

If your relationship is middling on the game's scale, then only Elena jumps. Once again, in this ending, the Scar is sealed.

If your relationship is just okay, then Elena winds up trapped in the monster Zeron and Aeron uses her to bring a swift end to the world's ongoing war.

And, if your relationship is poor, then you wind up having to kill Elena.

Alternately, the game's best ending sees the curse lifted from Elena, the Scar healed, and the two living happily ever after in her village while the war comes to a close. But you only see that if you nurse your affinity with Elena to the full.

I suppose this affinity mechanic also links Pandora's Tower more strongly to J-RPGs, since there are a few that lock their best endings behind seemingly superficial sidequests.

All of this business of bosses and endings aside, I put 36.5 hours into this game. But it feels like I put in far more.

I think I'm left with this feeling because each play session engrossed me. Partially because Pandora's Tower is overtly darker than most of the games I play and because there's nothing to the game except the game.

There are no characters to interact with aside from Mavda and Elena. There are no oversized fields to roam in which things are cleverly hidden. There aren't even mini-games, unless you count inventory/equipment management and relationship tending.

So, what's my conclusion about Pandora's Tower, having finished it?

That it's an intense game. I always had a sense that every fight was for high stakes (because of the ever shortening curse gauge, and because monsters could often send you sprawling and sometimes surround you). The Masters offer some epic battles. The game's generally drab colour palette sets a remorseful, Gothic atmosphere. And the game's operatic score makes everything in it seem larger than life.

A final boss with six, full-length HP bars, as cumbersome a fight as it can be, is right at home here and to be expected.

Though making the entire game this intense would be too much, the Zelda development team working away on Zelda Wii U could definitely learn a thing or two from Pandora's Tower. (Just so long as it's not that the best ending should reflect the players' skill in only one of the game's mechanics/aspects.)

Nearing the end of 'The Madness of Crowds'' alchemists

Mackay makes it sound as if alchemists were more successful as time went on. Either because people's hopes were raised to a fever pitch, or the art of deception became so refined. 

Stories about people like Jean Delisle, a French alchemist from seventeenth century Provence, are a great example of both possibilities in action. 

Having already detailed alchemists' use of false-bottomed crucibles or wands filled with gold and stopped up with wax or butter, Mackay suggests that these were Delisle's tools of choice. And he insists that the man who was quite famous in his own day (having allegedly transmuted base metals into gold and silver hundreds of times in public places) was nothing more than a master of sleight of hand.

This stance makes a great deal of sense since Delisle refused to perform his transmutation before the king thrice. In fact, Delisle had to be drug to Paris. Even then he never performed before the king based on the excuse that he couldn't in fact make the Philosopher's Stone, but an Italian had given him what he had used before and had exhausted his reserves of it during his years in Provence.

Of course, being from a period of time closer to Mackay's, it's no surprise that so much more information about Delisle is available to him and thus he treats him with much more nuance than the earlier practitioners of alchemy.

It's also to be expected that being alive in the midst of the Victorian era, with its legions of genre writers (then largely called "hacks") and poets, Mackay points out the literary debt owed to the Rosicrucians' benevolent spirits (sylphs, undines, gnomes, salamanders) from their emergence in the seventeenth century up to his own day. Such creatures remain a steady inspiration even to today's fantasy writers and figure largely into the mythos of the incredible Tales of series of JRPGs. 

Pokemon Double Battle disappointment

I've just made my way through Eterna Forest in Pokemon Diamond. So, for the first time, I've experienced the Pokemon games' Double Battles. To be honest, I'm not that impressed. 

A Pokemon battle that's two versus two is more interesting than the usual one-on-one. But it still feels very much like a single battle since you only control your own Pokemon. The result is a battle that's reminiscent of the fights in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, even  while you have two party members: restrictive.

Being able to control only one member of a two member team just seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

What if two Pokemon of related types could combine techniques?

Or what if doing two techniques in a certain order unleashed some sort of hidden skill?

No doubt the later generations of Pokemon games get into this sort of thing. Though if they don't, then things like Double Battles aren't nearly as innovative as they could be.

Nonetheless, Double Battles do hold some potential for new ways to develop the game's plot since they mean that you temporarily team up with another trainer. 

Disappointingly, though, my partner in the Eterna Forest, Cheryl, looks like she'll be just a one-off character. But, there are another seven gyms to get through, and likely a whole lot of plot to develop. At this point I know almost nothing about Pokemon Diamond's Team Galactic after all. 

Zelazny's crystal telephones

Things are starting to come together in The Changing Land. Semirama, the ancient Queen that Jelerak revived to speak with the mad elder god Tualua within Castle Timeless, has sent for Dilvish. It's been confirmed that the Weleand of Murcave who has started towards the Castle isn't who he says he is. And Baran is plotting gain control of both Semirama and Tualua.

But what has me most interested is the use of crystals in the book so far. I'm not one who's versed in the lore or use of crystals in current pagan belief, but Zelazny's use of them is fascinating. In no small part because they figure into my own fantasy writing.

Though, I can't help but think that I needlessly complicate their use.

Zelazny's crystals on the other hand, are basically telephones. The wizard seeking contact with another brings him or her to mind, stares into the crystal and then the one they seek appears (so long as they're available). Zelazny's use of communication crystals is just so simple despite Zelazny's giving absolutely no explanation of how these crystals work. But he doesn't need to, and that's the rub.

It makes me really wonder if Zelazny himself knew how they worked, or if his crystals really were just stand-ins for telephones. Putting the familiar into the strange makes it all the easier for people to understand. Perhaps someday such a process will replace our own crude dialling method.

Two Masters, two bits of Flesh, heading to one ending (spoilers below)

My heart is still racing. The battle against the final two Masters was about as intense as I expected, but delivered in a much different way.

First Aeron gets a free attack on each of them. These attacks pull them out of the wall they were attached to and leads to its crumbling. Bringing down this wall opens the room up to the size of the game's usual boss chambers and also joins the Dawn Tower to the Dusk Tower (or vice-versa). But then the real fight begins.

Each Master has its own attack (a light beam for the one of Dawn and a homing shadow ball for the one of Dusk) along with a secondary attack that leaves a sword-like thing sticking out of the ground.

So long as Aeron steps out of that secondary attack's way.

Dodging isn't particularly difficult, though at times one or the other of the Masters will trap Aeron in the luminescent moss that's all over the interior of these two Towers.

To get them to expose their succulent Master Flesh Aeron needs to grab one of the swords with  the chain and then throw it at the opposite Master. Light swords go to the Dusk Tower's Master and shadow swords go to the Dawn Tower's Master. It's pretty simple.

Now, I had been forewarned in the guide I was following to get through these last two Towers that these Masters need to be finished off at relatively the same time. Otherwise the one that Aeron vanquishes first might revive while he deals with the other. So I winnowed each one's health down fairly consistently. But I was not expecting the little cutscene that followed the fight in which Aeron goes for the Master Flesh but both Masters also chase down their essential bits.

Luckily, after having wielded it for so long, Aeron's proficient enough with the chain to snag both chunks of Flesh and pin them to a pillar, well out of reach.

It's a very engrossing boss fight. And all the more so when your sensor bar is at just the right distance to pick up your Wiimote's signal. Whenever one of the Master's Flesh was exposed but the pointer for the chain disappeared I waggled all the harder until it came back on the screen.

Also from that guide that I had used I learned that if you're bound for the worst ending, the final boss is fought on the lawn of The Observatory.

Having stepped outside after Elena ate the Flesh, had her vision (which I think confirmed that the couple that's starred in them all were the last two Masters or are the game's final boss), and then rested up, I can say with confidence that I did not get the worst ending.

Since I cultivated a decent relationship with Elena, I'll probably get the game's standard ending. But I'm not expecting the "best" one, whatever that might entail. Though I won't know for sure until my next session.

Mackay lets some alchemists slip through

It seems as though I need to reign in my criticism of Mackay. He remains entirely skeptical, but he's starting to admit that some of what alchemists have done is actually good either outright or simply through omission.

First, a case of his seeming to let an alchemist by simply through omission. In his coverage of Sendivogius (at work in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries) he never calls the man out as a charlatan or fake. Mackay's finishing this entry with a quick variation of "need I say more?" definitely implies that he believes this to be the case. He also indirectly jabs at Sendivogius when he notes that tales of this alchemist's greatest deeds can be found in the work that his attendant wrote about him.

Mackay has worked through implication and omission before, sure. But what makes the case of Sendivogius stand out is that, according the the stories told about him, he actually possessed the Philosopher's Stone and regularly transmuted quicksilver into gold, though he covered his wealth with a show of poverty and infirmity. I suppose at this point in his miscellany of human error Mackay simply suspects that any discerning reader will read the fantastic story of Sendivogius and conclude for themselves that he was nothing but a fraud.

I guess I'm just not that discerning, in the end.

The other point that I've come across in which Mackay seems to soften in his treatment of alchemists is when he outright says that for all of their bluster and visionary nonsense, the seventeenth century Rosicrucians did some good. For, according to Mackay, they were the ones that changed alchemy into more of a spiritual exercise and they helped to do away with old superstitions about demons and imps being everywhere and at the root of all human ills. Interestingly, Mackay makes almost nothing of their replacing these superstitions with new ones about benevolent spirits being everywhere and eager to serve humanity.

There's just no popular madness like a seventeenth century popular madness.

Pulled back into Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon Diamond holds a special place among RPGs. It's just got this power to draw me in after only a few minutes of play. I think a lot of it has to do with the game's variety. 

Most RPGs allow players to customize their party members, but the Pokemon games actively encourage you to get as many party members as possible. But, unlike RPGs with huge playable casts like Chrono Cross, party members in Pokemon Diamond have no backstory and are invested with only as much personality as players give them. 

Whether you give your Shinx a nickname or not, it'll always be your Shinx and it's quite easy to build an impression about its personality from how it fares in battle. Not to mention the traits and skills mechanics that the third generation games introduced make each Pokemon just a little bit more unique, leaving players even more to work with when it comes to building their party members' personalities. Though, aside from players projecting personality onto their Pokemon, these mechanics have just a minor impact on the core game.

Anyway, there's enough to do in Pokemon Diamond to make it interesting. And it's refreshingly different from the Red and Blue versions that I'm so much more familiar with. I haven't even gotten to the underground part of the game yet. 

Though I have more or less built up the party that I'll keep until the end of the game: A Machop, a Buizel, a Magikarp (eventually a Gyrados), a Shinx, a Monferno, and a Staravia. The Buizel might get switched out for a ghost, dragon, dark, or psychic type Pokemon, but whether or not that happens will depend on what the game throws at me. En route to badge number two, it just seems that my party is merely under-levelled and not at all unbalanced.

Zelazny as character builder

Well, I've just read through the scene depicted on the pulpy cover of my edition of The Changing Land. The one where Dilvish and his metal horse Black are depicted riding over a multitude of grasping violet hands. It was definitely as epic as the cover suggests.

But what's more enthralling about this section of the book is its character development. We see Dilvish and Black working together and get a strong sense of their history as partners. By chapter's end, it feels like they've been through countless adventures and seen many wondrous things before they even came to challenge Castle Timeless and the sorcerer Jelerak. Giving readers that sense of such a strong bond definitely shows Zelazny's skill.

Doing so also makes the chapter's end a real nail-biter.

In fact, though Zelazny litters Dilvish and Black's path with a host of obstacles that would be right at home in a fiendish D&D campaign, it's that character building that's much more enduring.

The trouble with invisible portals

Maybe I've been working at this, Pandora's Tower's final major dungeon, for too long, or playing with the lights off increased my focus on the screen, but tonight's session was really immersive. Powering down my Wii and switching to my netbook to write this post made me feel as if I were coming back from some place far away.

But while in that place I broke the last of the Dawn and Dusk Towers' chains.

In the end, I did have to use a guide, but it was worth it. Since the game had resorted to invisible portals near the Towers' end I would've taken even longer to finish them without any sort of assistance. But that's not what bothers me. Pandora's Tower involves a great deal of lore that's learned through the various books that you find and texts that Elena translates.

However, in the single book about the Dawn and Dusk Towers and their portals that I've come across there's no mention of or hint towards any sort of invisible portals.

There are very subtle clues about such portals near the top of each of the Towers, sure. But to me these clues come across more as puzzles than clues And the sort of puzzles you try to solve, fail to solve, walk away from frustrated, and then return to and almost immediately realize the answer to rather than a more direct hint. An additional clue about the existence of these invisible portals in one of the game's many books would have been much appreciated.

I suppose that every adventure game's last proper dungeon does need to have some ultimate challenge, though. Hopefully those invisible portals (and not the Towers' twin Masters) are just that.

Mackay's skepticism goes too far

As if it weren't already obvious, Mackay is a pure skeptic when it comes to alchemists. Though he's not deaf to their stories. In fact, he extracts Denis Zachaire's entire story from his own autobiography, a story that ends with Zachaire's reformation.

After a lengthy search for the Philosopher's stone Zachaire isolated himself to studying the alchemical classics rather than following the trends of his day. Then, as the climax of his story, he transmutes gold on Easter Sunday, thanking god before he decides to sell all he owns and disappears.

Now, transmuting gold on the most sacred day in the Christian calendar does seem very convenient. His solitary study leading up to and solitude during his transmutation also sounds like an embellishment. All of these details suggest that his success was the reward for some sort of increase in holiness.

Though, more than its being full of such embellishments, I think that Zachaire's story signals a shift in the culture of alchemy.

Around Zachaire's time the spiritual dimension of alchemy was picking up, and so Zachaire's story makes sense. Plus, if there is a moral to the man's tale, it's that alchemy can only come to a true end if an alchemist practices without greedy intentions. When Zachaire was working up to his final transmutation he wasn't doing it for gold or any sort of gain - it was just to prove to himself that it could be done.

Mackay, in his blind skepticism, misses this. He obviously has made himself an observer of crowds' madnesses by making himself insensitive to them. His dismissing them all as ridiculous and the worst kind of folly. It may be a fine way to go about writing such a book as his, but being so skeptical is as bad as being entirely credulous.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy finished (spoilers below)

The last section of Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy is strange. It's sort of like a boss rush but with a few screens of enemies and a puzzle scattered throughout it. Also, what I mentioned as a worry in my last entry on the game wasn't too far off the mark. The game's final boss was easier than those who came immediately before. Sort of.

After reaching the very last stretch of the game Ed faces off against Dante. However, this fight is easier than you might expect since it hearkens back to the game's very first fight. Yes, just as in the battle against Cornello, you just need to guide Ed through the obstacles and enemies that Dante conjures up. The difference being that two of the things she conjures (a series of falling rocks and a wave of fire) are very difficult to avoid unless you keep to the middle of the arena. These obstacles provide some frustrating moments, but otherwise Ed just has to outlast Dante. There's no context-sensitive alchemy, no impregnable defense, nothing. Just outlasting her.

Thematically, this is great. Cornello and Dante both wield a form of the Philosopher's Stone so it makes sense that these fights share a process. However, the game's final fight (if you can even call it that) is an experiment that fails.

Instead of running the game's story while the game's gameplay is on hold, the final fight against Envy involves a steady stream of dialogue that takes the place of Ed's alchemy on the Touch Screen. Envy's only attack is a simple jab, but because the dialogue is on the lower Touch Screen and the fight is on the upper screen it's difficult to follow both simultaneously.

If the game had done more that required you to pay active attention to both screens simultaneously (since the dialogue scrolls by quickly), I don't think this final fight/character building would be a problem. But as it is, it's too clunky to be effective (especially when Ed's down to a sliver of health and you're in no mood to test to see if you're invulnerable for the sake of the scene). Watching for context-sensitive alchemy works, however, because it's something that you can flick your gaze from screen to screen to do. The areas in which such alchemy is activated are fairly obvious after all.

All of that said, the game's final cutscenes reminded me of watching the series. In fact, even though these cutscenes involve nothing but a series of images, they were quite engaging. As the credits rolled, I definitely felt satisfied.

So then I peeked into the game's "Character Mode." Apparently you can play through the story mode's levels as a number of characters from the show. Though there are no cutscenes (aside from the opening) in this game mode. No doubt finishing it with all the available characters unlocks another.

But the game's content doesn't end there. Keeping true to this game's implicit m.o. of frequently using the Touch Pad, there're a bunch of mini games that are entirely Touch Pad based. They're fun little distractions, too.

So, having seen a fair chunk of Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy think that it's more than a beat 'em up usually is because of the Touch Screen. Though it is, by no means, a classic of the genre. Fights can be reduced to speed button pressing if you corner most enemies, and more often than not enemy attacks are easily avoided unless they're alchemical in nature. My playthrough was in "Normal Mode," though.

Overall, Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy is definitely a game to check out for fans of the series and for fans of the DS' Touch Screen. Beat 'em up lovers should look elsewhere.

On sorcerers and alchemists

From Mackay's collection of biographies it sounds like alchemists took a turn for the worst in the Late Middle Ages. From the late fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries in particular, the alchemists that he describes are truly deserving of his scorn. Specifically the child-murdering Gilles de Rais and coin debaser Jacques Cœur. 

Their crimes aren't exactly on par with each other, but both are terrible reprobates that hid their wrong doings behind a screen of being alchemists searching for the philosopher's stone. 

And this apparent state of things makes me wonder.

In the case of Roger Bacon, his grand intellect drew claims and accusations of sorcery. His contemporaries (and many later generations) regarded such claims as a great blow to his reputation. Currently though, and even in Mackay's day, people are much more able to regard Bacon's discoveries as quietly revolutionary, at least in so far as they ran far ahead of what science was doing in his time.

Now, turning to the groups of alchemists motivated by greed and a lust for power, covering themselves with the name "alchemist" (or, more accurately, "alchymist"), it's interesting how the same thing happened.

Most modern readers and Victorian skeptics like Mackay aren't fooled by such titles. Instead, they're able to see past them and to the bearer's crimes. Yet, it's not that the label "alchemist" has many negative connotations, it's that it has hardly any now. At least in the sense that anyone claiming to be an alchemist these days is likely to be dismissed out of hand (and the same could be said for someone claiming to be a "sorcerer").

And that's just what happened in both cases.

The negative label didn't turn into a positive one. Rather, it lost its adhesion and just fell off, revealing the terrible stain that it had been covering over.

When stories and difficulty curves alike are linear

I'd played Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy before, but I'd never gotten quite this far.

Since the game's keeping pace with the show, the best way to put my current position is thusly: I'm right in the middle of episode 36. (Spoilers: so at this point in the game, Ed and Al's dad has returned only to leave again, Al's armour is currently the Philosopher's Stone, and Ed has vowed to destroy the homunculi).

Needless to say, there've been a lot of cutscenes in the last 40 minutes of the game. That's definitely one drawback to making a game with so much story into a beat 'em up. Text becomes the only way to really convey it. Also, because beat 'em ups are a very linear genre, the storytelling becomes the same. And viewers of the show will know that Fullmetal Alchemist is a series that follows more than the adventures of Ed and Al Elric.

Nonetheless, the parts of the story driven by their father will likely get put into the next part of the game. I'm also guessing that that will be the final section.

Both because the game's story is only a few episodes away from finishing off the anime series and because the difficulty has increased substantially. Not so much in the sections where you're beating up troops of enemies, but more so when it comes to bosses.

For the most part, up until the fight with Greed, you'd do fine if you watched for a context-sensitive technique to come up or discovered which of your basic techniques is most effective. But from the fight with the diamond-shielded Greed onward, bosses get tougher. At first because you need to wait for the context-sensitive alchemy to show up rather than simply move to where it is, and then later (in the fight with Wrath, for example) you need to survive long enough to get through the boss's defenses often enough to lower their health to 0.

I can't help but feel worried, though. With the final boss just around the corner will that be the roughest battle yet, or will it feel all the easier after the tough fights that precede it?

Our hero (?): Dilvish

The introduction of Dilvish in The Changing Land is pretty incredible. He leaves an impression and Zelazny manages to maintain the air of mystery about him despite his origins being spoiled on the back of the book.

We readers might know that he's escaped from Hell, but exactly how isn't just left unanswered, based on what information we're given about Dilvish, it's also left sounding a little ridiculous.

Though Dilvish appears to be completely comfortable being out of place.

One of the elements of my first impression of Dilvish is that he's barely even aware that he's escaped from Hell. Dilvish's dedication to hunting down the sorcerer Jelerak seems so complete that nothing else matters - aside from remaining inconspicuous.

For all of his powers, there's definitely some element of self-consciousness that comes across when Meliash points out that his counter-greeting is out of date, as well as his referring to "the Society" as the more sexist "the Brotherhood."

Thus, Dilvish hardly seems the marauding badass type. Though there's a ton of potential for that to change.

Stepping into The Changing Land

Roger Zelazny is credited as a master of fantasy and science fiction. Though he wrote when the genres were still very new things. The Changing Land makes this quite evident (in its first chapter).

His characters read like they're building on templates made by Tolkien (elves, scheming magic-users, etc.). His setting gets little description.

Since the plot is being trickled out, there's no heavy exposition as of yet. Another weirdly modern note is the apparent lack of dialogue tags. I've not yet come across a single "[character x] [word for spoke+past tense modifier]."

Though those latter two qualities are the mark of good writing in any genre. And from any point in time.

Yet, Zelazny's tone in The Changing Land reminds me of Eric Rücker Eddison's in The Worm Ourobouros. Eddison's book was published in 1922, and Zelazny's came out in 1981, but there are still tonal similarities. Both share in a writing style that comes off as pulpy and have similarly fantastical content.

I still need to find Nine Princes in Amber to complete the first part of Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber, but The Changing Lands has opened up as a fine introduction to this icon of an author.

Dawn and Dusk nearing their ends

My trudge through the endgame of Pandora's Tower is one step closer to being finished. Both the Dawn and Dusk Towers now have but one chain anchor left to break in them.

Yet I can't help but wonder if I really only need to break one more anchor in either of them to get into the Masters' room.

I mean, that is where the two towers connect, and it wouldn't make much sense if you had to unlock both doors just to get in through one of them. But we'll see.

The trick now, though, is climbing up to the fifth floor in the Dawn Tower and then descending in the Dusk. Why? Because the last chain anchor in the Dusk Tower is somewhere between the fifth and third floors. Alternatively, I could just try to figure out the portal puzzle that stands between me and the last chain in the Dawn Tower.

This final dungeon — there's just no end to its generosity.

Trying to save Roger Bacon's bacon

Mackay's survey of alchemists across the ages continues in The Madness of Crowds. Over the course of twenty pages he wends his way from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. And most of the alchemists he covers have their alchemical deeds neatly covered.

His coverage of England's own Roger Bacon, though, offers a curious case.

Mackay makes no attempt to hide his contempt of alchemists. Each and every biography thus far has included some sort of reference to the alchemists being misguided or having wasted their lives. Roger Bacon's entry in Mackay's collection includes this treatment but it comes primarily through an apologist lens.

No mention is made of Bacon's famed bronze head, imbued with life and the wisdom to answer any kind of question put to it. Neither is there any reference to Bacon's idea of walling up all of England through magical means. Instead, the bulk of this particular biography is all about Mackay lauding Bacon's intelligence and his claims that superstition rose around his reputation because his peers simply couldn't comprehend the extent of his genius.

In fact, rather than Bacon's alchemical deeds, Mackay chronicles his general scientific accomplishments (like his understanding of convex and concave lenses). Mackay's Victorian English pride certainly shines through.

Fullmetal touch screens and recovery times

After another half hour of gameplay, another 15 or so episodes of Full Metal Alchemist have played out (so I'm up to about episode 33 of 51). Full Metal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy does a pretty good job of keeping pace though. Instead of highlighting every battle from the series, the major ones from the main plotline are emphasized and the game is otherwise filled out with little minigames.

In the section of the game I played through tonight (Warehouse 5, and Ed and Al meeting with their teacher Izumi) there were three such games. One is a memory minigame, another a rhythm-ish minigame, and the third a stealth minigame. All of these used the touch screen. As someone who doesn't play that many beat 'em ups, these breaks from mashing the attack buttons are very welcome.

Especially since Ed can beat up chimeras ranging from lizard-lions to dragon-gryphons in ten blows or less without so much as a scratch if you mash those buttons quickly enough.

That's not to say that the beat 'em up portions of this game are broken because Ed's overpowered. It's just that enemies have a very slow recovery time. If you manage to catch them in a combo (get within brawling range and mash those buttons!), then there's little chance they'll break free. Though the same thing goes for Ed.

Not in that enemies launch combos and those can catch Ed in a rain of pain. No.

But in that environmental hazards like retracting spikes are perfectly timed to match Ed's post-hit recovery time. So if you're hit by a such spike once, you'll likely be hit by it again just as Ed's getting up. And again before you manage to jump (or have the damage dealt throw you) out of harm's way.

Tonight's session also saw the first appearance of necessary alchemy in a battle. While fighting the living armour named Number 48, you need to transmute giant stones into statues. Number 48 then attacks these statues and while it's mid-blow you need to knock its head off so that you can fire off some of your offensive alchemy. Otherwise, when it's got a cool head about itself, Number 48 just blocks everything.

What I like most about this sort of necessary alchemy is that you aren't really told about it going into the battle. You either need to remember the fight from the series and watch for your cue to copy what Ed did in it, or just watch for when your currently available alchemical skills change. Forcing the player to keep an eye on both screens like that is something I enjoy because it brings an element of discovery into an otherwise dull and straightforward genre.

The madness of alchemy

Mackay is quick to state that all alchemists through the ages are quacks of varying degrees. Though he also mentions the very important point that in their fumbling about for the philosopher's stone and elixir of life they made several important scientific discoveries.

After a little bit more of an introduction, he then proceeds to give a brief biography of every known alchemist from the earliest record to the most recent (as of the 1850s). As of twenty pages into this section, Mackay is up to the early thirteenth century and looking at Roger Bacon.

Though, having read the play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay which is about Bacon, it seems that it could have also been about Albertus Magnus and his apprentice Thomas Aquinas. Mostly because the play's centerpiece is Bacon's animated, question-answering bronze head and Magnus and Aquinas apparently brought a bronze statue to life. A living statue that the two men set to doing menial household tasks and that was, according to Mackay's report, so chatty that Aquinas smashed it to bits. I wonder if the statue ever shrugged and sarcastically remarked "It's a living" while it was up and about?

The other thing that's grabbed my attention from the first few alchemists that Mackay's covered is that he's pulled a lot of his information from French sources. I know that Orleans in France was a center for magical practices, but even so, is there some propensity towards the wondrous unknown in France?

The Dawn and Dusk Towers, one Gordian Knot

I've finally set up my Wii in my new place and so I've finally returned to playing Pandora's Tower. Normally time away from a game in which I'm stuck helps me to work through whatever Gordian Knot I'm trying to undo. However, such wasn't the case with the Dawn and Dusk Towers.

It's not that these towers, which I hope and believe are the final two in the game, are particularly difficult. Really, they're among the more straightforward of the towers as far as actual in-tower mechanics go. What's giving me so much trouble in them is that they're too similar.

Warping between the Dusk and Dawn Towers is necessary to get around debris in the one or to access a higher floor in the other. But this warping is only viable because the two towers have nearly identical floor plans. Often in tonight's play session (hunting for those last few chains that need breaking), I found myself going through familiar doors over and over again. In different towers. Or I stumbled into one or the other of the towers' slightly different rooms.

What makes my situation still worse is that the guides that I've found for the game describe these towers in a very linear fashion. Shy of working through those guides from their beginnings, they won't be of much help. Nonetheless, doing so is probably the fastest way for me to clear these towers and finally move on in the game.

And that state of affairs in itself is proof of the difficulty that adding a timer to dungeons offers. Were it not for Elena's imminent transformation (and for enemies respawning after you leave their rooms), getting through the Dawn and Dusk Towers would just be a matter of brute forcing my way through with relentless exploration. In other words, I could just chop this Gordian knot in two.

Finishing Breakfast

What a compelling, yet clinical, ride.

After Dwayne's rampage the final event of Breakfast of Champions is, weirdly, Vonnegut's meeting Trout. they converse, Vonnegut departs, and is left feeling a sort of sadness. Maybe because meeting his creation has changed something in him, or because he makes a point of mentioning that he is now fifty years old and Trout's final, fading request is "Make me young, make me young, make me young!" (188).

It's an odd detail that ranks up there with the constant noting of penis and hip-waist-bust measurements.

The author's meeting his main character is definitely pure quirk, but the anatomical statistics that Vonnegut notes definitely give the book its clinical tone. Yet, despite that tone it's still fairly incisive.

Vonnegut does come out against contemporary society on some fronts that definitely seem damning (people giving companies names simply because they 'like the sound of [the word used for the name],' and Kilgore's noting that people's conversation is mostly quoted lines from television shows).

And I think that's the main thing to take away from Breakfast of Champions. Characters that appear in other works (like Trout and Rosewater) are empathetic, but for the most the book is about Vonnegut toying with the very idea that makes Dwayne snap: Everyone else is just a pre-programmed machine.

It's definitely possible to feel for Vonnegut's characters. But not with anywhere near as much investment as that which is placed on most characters from more recent fiction. It seems that no one's really writing in the same clinical vein these days, and I can't decide if that means we're all working empathy machines or broken critique machines. Or both.

Whatever the case, Breakfast of Champions is definitely a book worth imbibing (and definitely one that goes down quickly, though its effect is lasting).

Starting into Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy

Until reading through some early in-game text I'd completely forgotten that Al and Ed are 10 and 11 respectively. So kids that aren't even pre-teens are running around laying the smack down on guys who're wielding curtain rods, knives, and guns. Just like in the hit anime series, y'know?

Because if there's one thing I remember while Fullmetal Alchemist completely mesmerized me when I first started watching it, it's how the brothers Elric battled hordes of enemies. 

To be fair, though, as little sense as the "beat 'em up" genre might make for the game adaptation of a series that complicates its share of fantasy/adventure anime tropes, the text between levels helps. Actually, its being in Al's voice explains the simplifications that help to keep the game's action-driven pace going, too. 

The dialogue on the other hand is merely all right. It's definitely a stark reminder that Ed's much older than his age, and that there's some truth to what a friend of mine (whose music blog you can find here) said on the matter of "subs v. dubs:" (to paraphrase) 'Dialogue always sounds cooler when you can't understand it aurally, since when it's in English it just sounds like the same trite stuff that's in every other show.'

Thus far, the game's relegated the series' alchemy to special attacks and touch screen events. Short of turning the game into an RTS a la Lost Magic, I think that Natsume took the middle road in terms of bringing alchemy into the game itself. For better and for worse, since it seems underused thus far.

Though there's still quite a bit of game left. The game covers the entire original series and I'm hardly through the first 10 episodes (after about 40 minutes of play time). So there's still another 41 or so episodes' worth of game content to go.

A brief and prosperous trade in tulips

Mackay moves from stock schemes to tulips without batting an eyelash. The apparently unexplainable madness around tulips does relate to commerce, though. Specifically, throughout the middle of the 1630s the now iconic flower was a hot commodity in the Dutch market.

Mackay is sure to note his surprise that such mania could seize "so prudent a people as the Dutch" (93). A detail that once again dates his miscellany.

Nonetheless, moving past the Victorian English perspective of Mackay, The Madness of Crowds' value is made clear in this brief chapter.

This book's not just a relic of another century; this book is a memento of a Europe more extrinsically drawn in deep and differing colours.

Not to mention Mackay's propensity for flashing his vocabulary. I'd nearly forgotten about good old "repast," surrounded as we are in the everyday with the salt-less "meal."

Forget all the new corn that comes from old fields, sometimes that old almost forgotten corn from those same fields is even more interesting.

Dragon Quest IX finished

Bringing everyone's level up to 45 did the trick. I finally beat Corvus. Dragon Quest IX is over.

Looking back, the shape of the successful final battle was weirdly by the numbers. 

It had its first act, in which things were going well for my party of Minstrel, Thief, Mage, and Priest. Then, the second act rolled around when Corvus recovered his HP and his MP and it reached a climax after Corvus knocked out Nizk the Minstrel and left everyone else with just a few HP. Finally, the third act kicked off with Peridot the Priest successfully healing everyone over the course of a few turns and then climaxed with the final blow to the big bad. 

I know that much of the battle wound up as it was largely because of chance, but still. Its shape is perfectly that of a grand cinematic battle. 

Unfortunately, the game's ending doesn't share that quality. 

After a pseudo-anime sequence in which Corvus is appeased and reminded of his true Celestrian nature, the standard RPG "what are they doing now?" scenes play over the credits as each major area and character is revisited. Scenes that are rendered in the in-game graphics. 

What makes this so disappointing is that it feels like the developers forgot to replace the in-game graphic scenes with their animated counterparts. Unless, simply because it directly involves a dragon (and this is a Dragon Quest game after all), Greygnarl's fight with Barbarus was meant to be the only animated cutscene.  

Overall, as an RPG, Dragon Quest IX is, for the most part, a bog standard J-RPG.

Its story is interesting, if spread a little thin from the start of the fygg quest to the discovery of Corvus. Actually, the game's characters are much more interesting than most of its story events. 

The game's job system holds potential for those who don't mind grinding as a matter of fact, but is quite frustrating for those who would rather grind with broader goals in mind. 

The game's music is quite grand, but lacks variety. 

And the game's combat system is simply that of a classic turn-based RPG.

Anyway, despite the shortcomings listed above outnumbering the game's strengths, I find myself interested in the promise of the post-game's being its "mortal" phase. It feels like a shorter, perhaps deeper, adventure is about to start.

Yet, I can't say I'll be dedicating myself to finishing what's left on the Dragon Quest IX cartridge before moving on to something else. I have other Dragon Quest games to check out after all, not to mention other games that are much much shorter than this grand adventure proved to be.

Like Full Metal Alchemist: Duel Sympathy.

Breakfast's climax is charged but not emotionally so

After Karabekian's really effective (and affecting) speech, Breakfast of Champions comes down for what is more technically its climax. Weirdly.

As mentioned before, Vonnegut writes this book in a strangely clinical way. As such the emotional impact of Dwayne's climactic breakdown and rampage is lost in the mix. We can see the way that the man showing us snapshots of psychotic Dwayne and providing explanations becomes agitated as Dwayne tears into his homosexual son Bunny and his secretary Francine, but that emotion doesn't come across in the text.

Yet, even without much emotion in this highly charged moment of the book, it's still compelling. This is what the book's been building to, after all. But I think the shocking nature of Dwayne's actions is what does it more than the way that those actions are described.

Dwayne's beating his son and secretary is affective not because they're characters we've come to learn deeply about and love, but because Dwayne himself is established as such a buttoned-down character. Even though we've been told all book long that Dwayne goes crazy in the end, the extreme nature of his actions still shocks.

In a way then, Vonnegut might not tug heart strings directly, but his distance makes all more the tragic the state of human madness and its ripple effects.

History's role revisited

So the problem with the South Pacific scheme in 1720s England wound up being one of demand outstripping supply.

The price of the company's stock, at a time when many of its holders were selling, was such that the country itself nearly ran out of cash. As a result, and unlike a similar situation with actual goods, England's credit was called into question - a state of affairs that's as perilous on the international level as it is on the personal.

What happened with the banking crash of 2008 wasn't as cut and dry as a single company over-valuing its stock, but the same greed, pride, and desire of the low to better their quality of life were at play. Not entirely rotten motivations, though the power players in both the 1720s and 2008 had no real need to improve their lot in life.

I'm not trying to say that history repeats itself, only that knowing about things like the South Pacific scheme show history's value. This Victorian miscellany of madnesses has got value.

And, running with Einstein's definition of insanity, there's the implication that humanity on the whole is a little insane.

Grinding for two

Though easier metal slime battles would be welcome, Dragon Quest IX's levelling system is far from broken.

Yet, based on a suggestion from the GameFAQs forums my level grinding just got faster.

Reducing my party to two members gives both far more experience than they'd get as members of a four person party.

Nonetheless, the  game's experience divvying is weird. It doesn't give more experience to the lower level character. Instead, the lion's share of experience goes to the party member who does more. So Nizk, my main character, is going to be a few levels above 45 when my grinding's done.

At least the Bowhole's Liquid Metal Slimes give about 20,000 experience per party member. It's just a matter of defeating them with only two. A feat that'll be all the trickier while bringing up my Mage's level.

Twin Breakfasts

Reminding me of Infinite Jest is one thing. Bringing Twin Peaks to mind is something completely different.

Yet, Rabo Karabekian's speech about his abstract painting shares a tone and purpose with Albert Rosenfield's explanation to Sheriff Truman about being a man of peace. Both are delivered to an antagonistic audience, spoken by someone defending a higher ground, and come across as perfectly sensible though outside of what might seem like common sense.

A yellow piece of tape on a canvas painted green being about the divinity of awareness is, after all, definitely outside of common sense's perception of such a thing. And Karabekian's calling the rest of the human person nothing more than a meat machine drives home his no-nonsense, I'm-saying-something-very-important tone.

And it feeds into the book's true climax. Not to mention affects the author himself, who just so happens to be present for Karabekian's speech.

Yeah, Breakfast of Champions is that kind of book. And I'm loving it.

Facing Dragon Quest IX's final boss once more

Well, in this case, the third time was not the charm. My latest battle against Corvus was going well until he kept using breath attacks turn after turn.

If only you could lob breath mints at monsters in Dragon Quest IX.

On the upside, I can't fault the game's AI for its random factor.

Just as Corvus went heavy on the breath attacks for the first time in our latest match two monsters in his realm nearly slaughtered my party on its way up. Who knew that they could use the spells Kaboom and Kacrack?

Corvus will be tried again after another round of level ups. And maybe a wardrobe change. But not a shift in trades; my party of a minstrel, thief, mage, and priest seems quite effective. Its three loss streak notwithstanding, of course.

Grinding in grottoes with bruising bosses

Dragon Quest IX's grottoes have a strange difficulty curve. In one found through following a map called "Rock Mine of Doubt Lv.29," the monsters you encounter change thrice.

At first they're throwbacks to the early part of the game, then they're the sort that give about 300 experience points each (whereas monsters in the Realm of the Mighty give about 1750 per group per battle), then the boss is a machine with two attacks per turn.

Attacks that do damage ranging from 50 to 120 HP.

When party members have about 200 HP a piece a one-two punch from this boss just leaves them reeling. If my healer has a miss timed turn, one character - or the whole party - could wind up dead. Balancing on a pin like that makes for a tricky fight.

At least there are some Metal Medleys lurking in this grotto. So level grinding isn't impossible, just drawn out.

Writing of balancing on pins, though, I think that my party could get through the fight with Corvus at this point. And, not that it isn't fun, wrapping this game up sooner rather than later is definitely something I'm keen on doing.

A stock market warning from 1720

The Madness of Crowds (a convenient short version of the book's full title, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds) verges on being a Victorian miscellany. I write "verges on" since it covers a lot of topics, but it gives quite a bit of space to each.

Reading about the stock market crazes of France and England in the 1710s/20s makes me wonder how the Western world has come to rely entirely on such markets for its economy. Times have definitely changed drastically since the eighteenth century and credit is a much stabler thing than it was when trade was nowhere near worldwide nor running through manifold channels.

But to read Charles Mackay assessing the people who fell for the "scheme" of early stock trading as "fools" makes it difficult to see how our world evolved from one so far removed from our own.

Yet, there's still some truth to what Robert Walpole, the one English member of parliament who spoke out against trading on credit alone, had to say against it: Having such a system "would divert the genius of the nation from trade and industry."

As big as the stock market is today, I can't help but wonder what those on Wall Street (and Bay Street, for Canadian readers) would be doing with their wits were it not for the draw of potentially immense, relatively easy wealth.

Starting to see light in the Dawn and Dusk Towers

My progress through the interconnected Dawn and Dusk Towers continues to be slow. But, with all of the beasts that Aeron's been thrashing and the "Skill Band" he has equipped he's building levels quite quickly. Level 40 should be sufficient for the games' final few Masters, but we'll see.

Actually, I'm feeling better about my struggles with this game's final two towers.

Perhaps it's that quickly rising level of my player character.

Or, maybe knowing how tightly linked these Towers are has forced me to see them less as two distinct towers and more as one singular construct. Not to mention their chains are usually paired together. So the anchor for a chain in the Dusk Tower is usually just a teleport away from an anchor in the Dawn Tower. I have just one more to break in that Tower and two more in the Dusk Tower.

Nonetheless, from a gameplay perspective it still feels like a hassle to get through Dawn and Dusk.

Yet, at the same time, forcing the player to finished two dungeons in tandem so that they become one dungeon seems to be the only clear way to advance the difficulty of a dungeon to what's necessary for a game's final bit. Outside of simply making a longer dungeon (which combining two is a form of, but still).

With my continuing level-grinding, though, I'm feeling certain that whatever the Masters of these two towers are, they'll be pushovers. And, that the game's final boss will probably be a step down from them in difficulty.

Telling all undercuts Dwayne's drama

For all of the speed and shock value that Vonnegut's bullet point style can generate it has one major failing. Since most of what Vonnegut does is tell, anything emotional falls flat.

In the scene where Dwayne is freaking out at Francine about her idea to open up a KFC near the correctional institute, we're not really shown any of what Dwayne does. Instead we're told.

The few bits of imagery we are given (like Dwayne's appearing coiled like a rattlesnake) are stripped of their power as soon as their illustration appears.

Scenes of emotion that are more effective, though, despite Vonnegut's "tell-all" style, are those with Trout. Mostly because the things that Trout goes through are more abstract and thus refuse to be drawn.

With nothing to trivialize or poke fun at the drama occurring around them, his emotions are able to breathe and to be empathized with. Though that we can empathize more easily with Kilgore Trout than with Dwayne Hoover makes sense, since Trout is the story's prime mover and more or less main character.

Dwayne on the other hand, is a caricature from his introduction onwards. His big house, his dead wife, his homosexual son, his relationship with his dog, and his commercial empire all work together to create a character who's about as much of a caricature of middle class white success as you can get. As such, I think it's harder to really empathize with him. Though were we shown more, I'm not sure that would be necessary for his more dramatic scenes.

Seeking hidden grinding spots

After my second attempt on Corvus went even worse than the first (since he was much more aggressive), I've decided to sit back and grind for a bit. But, rather than just going on a prolonged metal liquid slime hunt, I'll be exploring another of Dragon Quest IX's features: the secret grottoes.

These hidden areas are found through the use of various treasure maps. Those grottoes that I've been in so far have been laughably easy, but there are some that promise much more challenge and much greater rewards. I imagine that eventually they'll get to the point where even the regular enemies give decent experience and something of a challenge.

However, I'm not going through all of the game's secret grottoes. That would add way too much to my time with this game. Instead, I'm just aiming to get all of my party members from level 41 to level 45. I've alchemized the Rusty Sword found in the Realm of the Mighty into Erdrick's Sword, but that wasn't boost enough. So I figure that once the whole party's reached level 45 they'll be much more prepared for the game's final story-related battle.

As long as Corvus doesn't end up as aggro as he was in my most recent attempt.

The Victorian eye for flow

I don't expect that much will change with Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It at first struck me as something vaguely tabloid-like and it's not really changed course.

The end of Law's saga has been revealed, but as I'd expected, little analysis has come with it. Mind, there has been some, but it comes across as more chatter rather than anything really substantial. All the same, The Madness of Crowds is quite readable. It has yet to be so pre-occupied with itself that it becomes choppy or ill-edited.

It seems, then, that even if they too often fell victim to sensationalism, the Victorians knew quality when it came to the appearance and flow of the printed word.

Feeling the need for an overworld in Pandora's Tower

Pandora's Tower is starting to feel a bit over long. Admittedly, it might be the way that I'm playing it in bits every four days. But it's starting to feel tedious.

Play style aside, the game itself is lacking something that any action/adventure/RPG game featuring mazes and puzzles requires: Distractions.

Aside from getting pre-set numbers of the varying grades of beast flesh in different towers the game offers no sidequests.

There's no marble maze type game that rewards wins with a monetary prize or a piece of heart, either. Nor can you get a fishing rod and cast into wells scattered across the land. There aren't any minigames.

And there's nowhere to go to just fool around because the game's only areas are the Towers, the Observatory, and the generally event-less stretch of grass in between.

This isolation from non-essential story-driven game standbys definitely generates a strong sense of loneliness. There is no comic relief character, no underdog to root for, no brooding swordmaster with a mysterious past. Just Aeron (you), Elena, and, when you call her up, the witch merchant Mavda. That's it.

Out of everything that Pandora's Tower is designed without, though, I definitely miss the presence of an overworld the most. In most games this area might be nothing more than big empty space intended to pad out average play time. But I think such open spaces serve another purpose.

Overworlds offer players a place of respite. They're areas where you can feel a definite sense of being in transit, of being between plot points. As such, overworlds tend not to be stressful places in video games. Enemies will likely hang out on the overworld, sure, but if you don't want to fight, you can run away. And actually escape. Unlike when you're cooped up in a tower.

In a game that's almost entirely dungeons with very little in between in the way of low pressure exploration, I think some sort of overworld in Pandora's Tower would be a welcome resting place.

I've been playing Pandora's Tower for 32 1/2 hours. Translated into in-game time, that's roughly a few months. Strange as it sounds, after feeling isolated right alongside Aeron for so long, I'm about ready
to have this game done. There're just another five chains to break in the Dawn and Dusk Tower. Just five more.

Trout's unachievable slew of stories

Every time Kilgore Trout appears in Breakfast of Champions I feel conflicted.

Trout's a fine character. Who couldn't enjoy the observations and musings of an old writer who's at peace with the world as it is. But he (for the purposes of the all too aware man behind the curtain, Vonnegut) gives away ideas like candy on Halloween.

There are so many short story synopses in this book it seems that Trout's written a story about nearly every grand political or cultural issue.

And they all sound compelling.

Even stories like This Year's Masterpiece, about a world in which the value of artworks is determined by the annual spinning of a game show-style wheel. For this story and the rest we're given the sort of synopsis an editor might find in a query letter. Were I that editor I'd express definite interest.

What bothers me about these stories, though, is that Vonnegut's just throwing them all away. There's no way that he could turn around and write them all out. And that's a shame. Because, satirical take on science fiction writers aside, I'd really like to see Trout's stories fleshed out.

Dragon Quest IX's still got some fight in it

Well, Corvus doesn't quite follow in Zoma's footsteps, but his final form still overwhelmed. Two attacks per turn and quite powerful ones at that.

So it happened like this.

After a few more oddly easy mini-bosses and more climbing I reached the game's big bad: the fallen Celestrian Corvus. Dragon Quest IX's end was in sight.

My party first fought a semi-Celestrian, semi-demonic Corvus. In this fight I was forced to shift tactics since he regularly used a technique that nullified my stat boosts. So my troubadour, thief, and wizard attacked while my priest healed. This fight went well. A fine success.

Then my party was pitted against the dragon Barbarus. Another steady battle, one in which my old stat-boosting strategy worked perfectly. The only problem with this fight was that it took a toll on my party's MP.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but Dragon Quest IX's quick save feature seems to trigger a bug that breaks the Goddess Ring. This accessory is supposed to recover its wearer's MP with every step he or she takes. But after loading quick saves this power, more often than not, de-activates. Unfortunately, I was working off of a quick save.

Nonetheless, I had curatives to spare so I bolstered my party's MP and then faced Corvus' full demon form. Without bothering to manage my in-battle inventory beforehand. Who needs a Yggdrasil Leaf (this game's revive item) when two characters have the equivalent spell?

I'm convinced that is just what decided the fight.

My priest, my party's steadfast healer fell first. My main character and troubadour tried to sing her back from the brink of death, but with no luck. Not before he joined her there.

Then the battle became nothing more than a window onto Corvus' attacks. Interestingly, he flashed no stat-boost nullifier in all twenty or so turns of the battle. The most frustrating moves being a healing technique that recovered 500 HP and another that restored all of his MP.

So, having been the mop rather than the mopper in the answer to "who will mop the floor with whom?" I'm left with three choices. Extend this game's time on this blog with quests and more grinding, things that could well stand to make that final fight a breeze; re-configure my battle inventory and try again, this time fighting much more conservatively (healing every round); or just grind and give it another go.

Considering Dragon Quest IX's fairly full post-game game, I'm drawn to just trying again. Maybe after just one more helping of this game's grinding.

The Victorians *would* like a 728 page tabloid

Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds almost reads like a tabloid newspaper. Its first 24 pages are filled with anecdotes and recountenances written in an almost chatty style.

But, thus far there's almost no analysis to be found. There's been no look at what allowed John Law's Mississippi Scheme to succeed as it did aside from human greed.

For a book from 1841 (second edition printed in 1852) such a shallow tone is odd. Especially considering that this book is non-fiction. But then, I've never really read anything that could be called a miscellany before. Especially not one of the Victorian ilk.

In fact, considering its length of 728 pages, I wonder if The Madness of Crowds was more of a conversation piece. Obviously it was a popular book if it went through two editons, but it doesn't strike me as something people would sit down to read cover to cover. Perhaps Mackay's voice and tone are attempts to encourage that, though.

Regardless of its original purpose I'm in it for the long haul. No doubt there'll be a pleasant surprise or two along the way.

Dawn and Dusk linked and locked

It's become completely clear to me now. Pandora's Tower's Dawn and Dusk towers need to be finished in tandem. Teleporting between the two is essential for getting around either. But what I don't understand is how I can progress beyond the weird Möbius strip-like section of the two towers that I've seen so far.

Rubble on the stairs keeps me from getting to another teleport point. Rubble in a room keeps me from getting to what looks like another door. And so on.

Also, all available chains have been broken and each tower still has three remaining.

Though, being stuck once again at least means that Aeron will see a few more level-ups. Possibly enough to expand the equip grid.

At any rate, tying two towers together as Ganbarion has here makes for an ingenious final puzzle.

Not just because it's a puzzle bigger than a single room or floor, but because it's also a puzzle that calls on what I'd consider the hardest skill to master in any game: Keeping two separate maps straight in your head while also overlaying them. Without drawing out these maps or going to GameFAQs (which could still happen), I'm nearly stumped. This is definitely Pandora's Tower's greatest challenge.

Not even some sort of multi-form final Master could top it, or so it seems right now.

Breakfast of Champions shows notes of Infinite Jest

The cast of Breakfast of Champions is far from the size of Infinite Jest's. However, after Wayne Hoobler's introduction I find myself starting to get the same feeling I had while reading Infinite Jest. This book of Vonnegut's is important. It's literature. It's stirring whatever that thing called "humanity" is within me.

Maybe it's the bullet point format that gives the impression of a story told in snapshots. Maybe it's the tightness of the relationships and how we're shown the way that Trout and Hoover are gradually whirling together (shown it in a way similar to watching two cars driving for a minute (from each driver's perspective) in slow motion and then crashing).

In fact, I think it's the second one. Definitely the second one.

Vonnegut's telling us how the story ends gives his book a definite end point. As I read I can see things moving toward this endpoint. But at the same time, there's some sort of sense that I have that maybe - just maybe - things won't end the way we've been told they will.

As a reader and a writer, I had a similar feeling throughout much of Infinite Jest. Not because I knew how it would end (although *technically* it ends with its first chapter) but because I knew that a cast of that size would eventually curl in on itself. I knew that characters would meet, either directly or merely in passing.

Knowing that two characters will cross paths isn't the same as knowing how a story ends, though.

Given the difference between those two, you might think that knowledge of characters would give a stronger feeling of humanity than a knowledge of plot, but I can honestly say that I feel as much anticipation for Breakfast of Champions' climax as I did for seeing Infinite Jest's characters finally crossing paths.

Dragon Quest IX's final dungeon: Underwhelming (despite its transformation)

You know a final dungeon means serious business when it's alive. Dragon Quest IX's is special though since you get to see it come into being.

Once you choose to go to the Realm of the Almighty to finish off Corvus you're treated to a scene in which the once simple architecture of the Realm breaks apart as tendrils and muscle tissue erupt at oblique angles, making it into a strange perversion of a world tree. As is the usual for the game's cutscenes, it's done in the game's usual graphics.

No fancy animation is shown for it (though the transformation would definitely work as a cinematic piece).

But, somehow, seeing the final dungeon take shape before your very eyes in the general graphical style of the game makes the transformation more shocking.

A clean, entirely separate, animation sequence would definitely give much more detail and personality, but showing this transformation in the game's quasi-16-bit, 2.5D style makes the transformation truly look like the work of a greatly powerful being. One that can rend the very ground over which you've watched your characters walk for the whole game and turn it into something twisted and deranged.

Although that powerful being's henchmen are worryingly easy.

The monsters in the Realm of the Mighty tend not to give chase. And those that do don't take more than two rounds to trounce. I took down the second iteration of Goreham-Hogg in so few turns I was left asking myself and the game: Really?

Is this really the game's final dungeon?

I know that there's more to do once the game's story is complete. There are more treasure maps to find and grottos to clear. Side quests are likely to still be accessible, too. But, my characters are sitting at levels 39-41 and it looks like the only challenge the rest of the dungeon will hold is its sheer size.

Unless, of course, it turns out that Corvus took some lessons from this game's version of Zoma (found in a grotto) and attacks at least twice per turn, doing well over 200 damage per attack. But somehow I doubt that.

Seabrook goes too far beyond Bowie In Berlin

Capping off a book about Bowie in the seventies with a section about the influence of the music he made then makes sense. But naming the final chapter after a song from an album outside of the realm covered by said book is a sure sign that things will go too far.

The impression that I'm left with after finishing Bowie in Berlin is that Seabrook wanted to write a compendium about Bowie but was limited to a single era for a reason that remains a mystery. Branching out, as he does, into a swift overview of the rest of the twentieth century, strikes me as more than the necessary capstone about the influence of Bowie's 70s output.

Ultimately, because of this extended end point I'm left wanting to know more about Bowie in the seventies. What the musician got up to in the final two years of the decade might not have been music-related, but surely it would shed some light on Bowie's state during the music making of that era and the next.

Not to mention, cramming the remainder of Bowie's career up to the 2000s into less than 30 pages leaves it little room to breathe.

Though what I think Seabrook covers justifiably he covers well. With a definite lean towards the musical side of things rather than Bowie's life and practice more generally.

But still.

Thomas Jerome Seabrook's Bowie in Berlin is a good starting place for those interested enough in Bowie in the 70s to not mind the odd hole left for another source to fill.

On Vonnegut's infinite breakfast

Breakfast of Champions continues to evoke some of the same feelings that Infinite Jest did. As such, I've been able to home in on their cause a little bit.

Two parallels between these books that I can confidenty point out are its characters and its plot's concentration on convergence.

Both books involve an extensive cast of characters. Infinite Jest trounces Breakfast of Champions in terms of the number of its cast, but the ratio of major to side characters is comparable.

Vonnegut's brought in a bunch of incidental characters that are as interesting as the mains over the last few pages, and it's clear that they're there primarily for the sake of the book's ultimate convergence.

Like the ever closing circle of Infinite Jest's various character groups, Breakfast of Champions is entirely about the meeting of two people who are a whole country apart. And this convergence is explosively climactic, just as much of Infinite Jest's final convergence is.

These two similarities also point toward a shared style. Sort of.

Breakfast of Champions is far from being a hyper-realistic novel, yet both involve a strangely effective sort of telling that simultaneously shows to varying degrees.

They might not match up one to one, but anything like Infinite Jest practically reads itself while in my hands.

Finding the connection between Dawn and Dusk

The final two towers of the thirteen in Pandora's Tower are made available as a pair for a reason. As one represents light and the other darkness, one dawn and one dusk, one male and one female, the two towers are connected.

Yes. Connected. But not through those mysterious locked doors that I keep coming across.

Instead of standard issue doors, the towers of dawn and dusk are connected by vortexes. Holes in the floor surrounded by an aura the colour of the Tower that you're teleporting into (purple for dusk, yellow for dawn). These connections are essential since the two towers share a design but have fallen apart in different ways. It's a neat mechanic for a pair of dungeons to use.

And it makes me feel quite uneasy.

Since you can close and open portals with stones that you find in these two towers, I'm dreading an intricate teleportation puzzle.

Something complex would be out of step with the rest of the game's focus on combat, though. But combat is kind of scant in the Dawn Tower. There are some servant beasts wandering around all kitted out, but they're no major threat any more. Even taking on two such beasts at once doesn't present much danger.

So far one chain in the Dawn Tower is broken, leaving three to find. As much potential as warping between the Dawn and Dusk towers has for making progressing complicated I'm hopeful that I'll be facing the Master just a couple of play sessions from now.

Vonnegut tells all (and draws us pictures, too!)

"Show, don't tell" is gospel in just about every creative writing class, group, or circle these days. But Kurt Vonnegut writes like he's anathema.

All the man does is tell. He tells us what his characters are doing, what they're thinking, their measurements (dress measurements for women, penis measurements for men), he even tells us in advance how his book ends. Yet, Breakfast of Champions is just about the most compelling book I've read since starting this blog over a year ago.

It has to be the drawings.

Part of what Vonnegut makes horrible fun of in Breakfast of Champions is the idea that revelatory literature is marketed as/within pornography. "That's the only way it will sell," the publishers that the in-novel writer Kilgore Trout deals with surely say. More so to each other than to Kilgore, from what I've read so far.

And so I wonder if the same prurient curiousity that's inflamed by a racy magazine cover is what's driving me through this book.

Surely bullet points about the two psychologically complex characters Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout work similarly. They don't let us plumb the depths of these two, but instead offer only snapshots taken in their most vulnerable moments and states. It's almost as though Vonnegut has sat you down in a room and is throwing Polaroid after Polaroid on the table, with a brief narrative/explanation/description accompanying each.

Formally, the books been just brilliant and ridiculous all at once.

An angelic archfiend revealed (spoilers below)

That Celestrians are constrained by strict rules makes perfect sense. Angels are considered beings without free will, after all. And so such rules would constrain the angels of the Dragon Quest IX world.

As such, it makes good sense that Corvus the famed and captive Celestrian (who was finally revealed to be the game's big bad) couldn't be attacked when faced in battle because of his senior rank. And after I'd spent a good twenty minutes walking around with the Goddess Ring equipped to refill everyone's MP.

Oh well.

The Oubliette beneath Gittingham Palace was enemy ridden enough to make up for the lack of a boss battle. It's narrow twisting halls also made it difficult (but not impossible) to avoid fights. But I can't see the newly renovated Realm of the Mighty being bigger than the Oubliette. Unless in his ascending to this game's high heaven, Corvus radically redesigned the Realm of the Almighty.

Finally standing at the precipice of Dragon Quest IX's end I am faced with a question. It's the same question that faces any gamer at the end of an RPG. Should I barrel onward or take a step back and do some quests and such to (eventually) get the game's best equipment?

This game's definitely reminded me of Radiant Historia with its limited (though well-composed) music. Maybe its final boss will be just as much of a pushover.

Lodger left out

Something I'd been wondering after I realized that "Heroes" was the last album Seabrook would break down song-by-song was: "Why won't Lodger get the same treatment?"

Now I know that it does. Sort of. 

Pages 221 to 236 feature Seabrook's writing purely about Lodger. He goes over the album song-by-song and points out how it was received, how Bowie reacted to that, and the general impact that the album had. Just as he did for "Heroes", for Low - even for Iggy Pop's The Idiot.

Except Seabrook doesn't set his break down of Lodger apart from the book's regular text with headings and credits. 

Not doing so seems like an oversight to me. 

Maybe Seabrook didn't think he had enough material to justify giving Lodger the full treatment, or that there just wasn't enough to say about the songs themselves. So far, it sounds like he, along with the rest of the music critic world, doesn't regard Lodger very highly. Perhaps his not setting the album apart then, is a kind of snub. 

Whatever the reasoning behind this editorial choice, not giving Lodger equal treatment definitely throws off my notion that Low, Heroes, and Lodger form any kind of trilogy. Having mentioned the fact that many critics saw Lodger as an anticlimax after Low and "Heroes" on page 234, Seabrook is certainly asserting that the album does not fit with the previous two.

Truegold cracked, two Towers to go (spoilers below)

Two more towers. There are still two more towers to go.

I knew that Truegold Tower wasn't the end of the game. I know that there are twelve laws of Aios. I no know that there is supposed to be a Master for each of these laws, since they were made to embody the laws.

But I had thought that the last two Masters would be mini-bosses in some final tower/dungeon. Possibly in a two-on-one match.

That's not the case though. There are still two more towers to go.

At the very least, after finishing Truegold I was rewarded with one of the longest of Elena's dream sequences yet. The quasi-occult diagram of elements represented as body parts that's shown is definitely a nice touch. Especially since the dream itself states outright that humans are vessels for the Masters, for the gods of Aios. Plus, after this dream sequence Mavda reveals that the masters are creatures from The Scar (the bottomless chasm below the Thirteen Towers) that have traded places with the human vessels on offer. And, that the curse is the mark that these creatures' vessels bear.

With that revelation, the first thing that comes to mind is the plain and simple fact that there are some totally whack creatures in the Scar. Not just because they're made of metal, but because some of them are fixed into place. Kind of like the Master of Truegold Tower. Though she can jump.

Actually the fight with Truegold's Master should have made it obvious that there's still more game to go before the true final dungeon opens up. It's not that it was an easy fight. Rather, it was a strangely frantic, almost puzzle-based, fight.

Instead of hacking away at this or that or tricking the Master into letting you on its back or anything like that, you have to align the master flesh in the Master's inner ring with the opening in its outer ring. A process that sounds similar to cracking a primitive safe. And that would be perfectly appropriate since a safe is a fine place for gold.

But is Truegold a fine place for a safe?

Not so much.

Although I needed to check a guide to discover that you can move both the inner and outer rings of the Master to line up the flesh with the opening (a necessary manoeuvre in the Master's second half), there really wasn't much to the fight itself. It was a lot like the previous Master in that you needed to juggle using the chain and dodging the Master's strangely slow-moving attacks.

Hopefully a humanoid mech-type creature is one of the next Masters. Though, given the maniacal scream laughter Truegold's Master let loose it wouldn't surprise me if the towers representing man and woman were a little more on the nose about the distinguishing features of the two in their Master design.

A hearty breakfast indeed

Breakfast of Champions is a welcome reprieve from Russian literature - even from reading about Bowie.

Part of the rest comes from the speed of Vonnegut's bullet point style. Yet, at the same time what he's writing about isn't fluff to be carelessly zoomed past.

It reminds me of Frank Zappa's rock/pop output: it uses popular means but strives to say something verging on the unpopular, making it perfectly counter-cultural. Though Vonnegut seems far less virulent than Zappa. Perhaps that's just an inevitable difference between a performer and a writer.

I'm really getting into Vonnegut's illustrations, too. They add a self-effacing quality to the book that gels excellently with the storytelling method that Vonnegut's chosen.

However. I do wonder one thing. Having read Slaughterhouse-Five, a book written in standard paragraph form, why is Breakfast of Champions not?

Grinding through Goresby-Purrvis and Godwyn

Once again, all it took was gaining a single level all around and Goresby-Purrvis went down. With a fight, but nonetheless. I chalk most of the victory up to my new strategy, however (mostly because everyone who reached level forty didn't get any skill points for their trouble and so nothing new and powerful was learned by anyone). 

First there's the assist duo. Thoth, my wizard, increases the party's speed and then attack power while my priest Peridot heals and boosts defense. 

Then there's the attack duo. My thief Kleftis (weirdly tank-like) attacks or heals my main character Nizk. Nizk, always uses the "Falcon Slash" ability since it attacks twice (and after all the magic buffs he hits for around three times the damage of a single strike). 

Keeping this setup running and using Coup de Grâces as they came up saw me through the fight with Purrvis.

And the bout with the the Gittingham big bad himself, King Godwyn. 

Not to mention the battle with bad King Godwyn's second form as well. 

Though being levels 40, 40, 39, and 38 (Nizk, Kleftis, Thoth, Peridot) no doubt helps, I think my strategy is doing more than grinding ever could. And this, using the game's stat-boosters to concentrate attack power in a few select characters, is definitely the way to play. Dragon Quest IX's combat is purely turn-based after all.

RPGs like Chrono Trigger, where there's less time to make decisions about stat-boosts cut back on the players' ability to do so. 

RPGs like Tales of Phantasia, where the battles play out like arcade fighting games, include such abilities usually only for the AI controlled characters. In doing so, these games release the player from having to actively use them in combat and thus release them from case by case strategizing for the most part. 

But purely turn-based games like Dragon Quest IX are much more contemplative. Having finally figured that out, I'm now ready for the last leg of the game. And surely that's what's coming next. 

Truegold Tower almost too easy

The final two chains of Truegold Tower are a breeze to break. As I opened the door to the fourth and final, I couldn't help but think: "This was too easy."

But maybe that's the point.

As a final dungeon, Truegold Tower's not meant to be long, but instead it's meant to be dense. That is, it should do a lot with a relatively small number of rooms. And that is just what it does. Puzzles, monsters, roundabout routes - all of it.

The thing with Pandora's Tower though is that much more often than in any Zelda game (for example) what it considers a "floor" is actually a physically recognizable piece of a structure.

As an example, Truegold Tower has five floors.

This is obvious in its floor plan and in what you encounter within it, spatially. There's a central column that's open on the bottom two floors for the statue of the Aiosian goddess the tower represents, and that central column continues through floors three to four with Truegold's generator. Atop that central column, on floor five, is the Master's room. And so Truegold Tower feels like a real structure, like the thing that it purports to be: A tower.

Going back to Zelda, most of the dungeons in those games feel more like a collection of similarly-themed rooms. Of course, dungeons that are called "Towers" do look like towers. But what exactly is a Water Temple supposed to look like (and why does it have so many rooms)? Or is the inside of a whale really that compartmentalized?

For all of its fantastical setting and plot points, I think that making dungeons more accurately reflect what they are (and making that a recognizably real thing) helps to give Pandora's Tower its edge. It also makes the differences between the towers stand out all the more - beyond simple thematic differences. Every dungeon being a tower makes it easy to feel the different ways that you're (sometimes) forced to progress through them.

After running through fire and swinging over water, simply climbing upwards and knocking a few giant hammer heads loose is just plain easy. Though I didn't have quite enough time left to take a peek at Truegold's master. Ah well, I'll just have to wait until Thursday.

Seabrook hits a nerve writing of opening notes

Without having to worry about analyzing an album, Seabrook's writing about Bowie has markedly improved. Bowie in Berlin's third part is instead full of interesting facts and observations. It's the sort of narrative construction of a person's life that I genuinely enjoy reading.

And within that narrative, there's a welcome twist.

Bowie's bringing the violinist Simon House on for the "'Heroes'" tour is quite interesting to me. Not because I'm familiar with House's work, but because I've dabbled in playing the violin.

Throughout my self-tutelage I was always trying to figure out the opening riff to "Ziggy Stardust" by ear since I couldn't then (and still can't now) reliably read violin sheet music (or translate guitar tablatures). And what did House most remarkably do while on tour with Bowie? He played the opening riff to "Ziggy Stardust" on electric violin.

So now I just need to dig up a copy of Stage and try to work through it with an actual example. Any book that broadens your listening (or reading) like this is definitely a success.

But, not everyone is an amateur, self-taught violinist.

Obviously this is a very specific example of Seabrook's retelling of Bowie's life and music affecting me, but it still goes a long way to confirming my suspicion that without albums to focus on Seabrook's general attention to detail would increase. Sure, most biographers would likely include Bowie's bringing a violinist in for his tour, but only a handful would mention House's playing the opening of Ziggy Stardust with Seabrook's enthusiasm.