On Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West
We did it! We finished a legacy game. A huge shout out and thank you to Chris and Matt for keeping us on a semi-consistent schedule and getting this game to its conclusion. I thought I’d give my thoughts and recollect on the process!
Background
What’s a Legacy Game? - A legacy game is a board game that gets played over multiple rounds, with the game, rules, pieces or conditions for winning changing each time. The basic premise of the game is usually the same, but new challenges, goals, or pieces to use may be incorporated with each passing round. It’s usually played with the same people each time, and at the end, you have an entirely unique-to-you game board.
What’s “Ticket to Ride”? - Other than a Beatles reference, the Ticket to Ride series is a collection of board games involving trains (and sometimes boats…). The series has over a dozen entries, each with a different spin. The game has players collecting different colored cards in order to pay for new train lines connecting cities across a map. The overall goal is usually to connect specific cities in order to earn points, but some other games have bonuses for the longest train, using the most train cars, etc. We have a few games in this series and particularly like the “Europe” version of the game.
Who did you play with? - Brian and I played with some friends / neighbors / former coworkers of ours: Chris and Matt! They’re the reason we’ve been introduced to the Ticket to Ride series and they’re who we bought the legacy game for. Legacy games themselves tend to be somewhat expensive, since there are a lot of custom stickers, added rules and materials, and limited replayability until it’s finished, so we wanted to play with people who would really appreciate it… And who would make sure we finished.
Gameplay
We broke gameplay up into one or two rounds per game night, spread over four months. Each player got to pick a specific train line / color - Yellow (Erie) for me, Black (New York Central) for Brian, Red (Pennsylvania) for Chris, and Blue (B&O) for Matt. The game started with three puzzle pieces showing the eastern US (the former colonies) and the simple premise of (1) connect cities with your trains, (2) make as much money as possible, and (3) keep in mind that Mama O’Connell, a big bad stretching over the series who we kept calling Mama Odie, is someone we want to stop somehow.
At the end of each round, we tallied our points on a bank slip and stored it in a box that matched our train line, not to be touched or looked at until the overall end of the game after 12 rounds of gameplay. As the overall game progressed, more pieces of the board are added and the map expands, but it’s the player’s choice which part gets added next. It was hard to keep track of who was in the overall lead since points were kept secret, especially as new challenges were added: a circus to grow, stocks to collect, treasure to find… Especially since we would only play every other week at most and every new challenge made us prioritize different things: would we try to connect as many cities and complete as many tickets, or would we try to make as much money through various means, or would we take this round’s gimmick in stride and try to make a fortune that way?
Endgame
So? Who won??? Well, it was kind of an upset in my mind. Whenever I play boardgames with Brian, I expect him to win. It’s one of his many secret talents. So, when we finally finished the final round this past Friday, I was absolutely shocked when Chris won by a rather slim margin (12 points!!). The entire game, Brian seemed to have all of the goals prioritized: he managed to collect the most stocks, he always collected a ton of money, and he completed a decent amount of tickets. It was one round, one single ticket that went uncompleted, that allowed Chris to eke out ahead. In the end, I think this was a good thing, particularly since this was Chris’ Christmas present to begin with.
Final Thoughts
Overall, if you like Ticket to Ride and have a dependable group of people to dedicate a solid chunk of change and good bit of time to, it was a great investment. Each round was an easy 1-3 hours in gameplay when you factor in setup and breakdown. The rules were a little convoluted, but there was clear thought in the overall progression of the game itself and I had a lot of fun.
I rather liked the game as a whole. It was challenging, fulfilling, and each new round brought new intrigue. I liked that the map ended up spanning hundreds of years, cities in Canada, the US and Mexico, and a variety of geographical zones. The map pieces were well themed, came with interesting and refreshing gimmicks, and became motivating factors in continuous playing. The final round even seemed semi-high stakes and really seemed like a grand finale. It even came with optional extra endings in case anyone had ever played before and already knew the ending.
One of the few downsides involved the fact that we only played with four people, not the max of five, so there weren’t as many benefits, challenges, or resources related to the green team. Another downside was the irreversible nature. This is usually a highlight of the legacy games, but if someone gets distracted and say, holepunches a ticket incorrectly or fills in their name twice on their score box or loses their cards or confuses their cards with someone else’s… Some mistakes are easier to fix than others. That being said, that’s not really an issue at all and leads for some good laughs and memories along the way. A final downside was the cost and time commitment. This game isn’t cheap. A solid hundred dollars to buy a game that you’re going to desecrate and over 24 weeks to complete isn’t something everyone has or can do.
I’m happy I completed yet another goal for the year, and I think we’ve already purchased another legacy game to start soon. -G
On The First Quarter of 2025
Well. that was a hard three months. Between losing Clyde so suddenly, and lots of shake-ups and responsibility increases at work, and Brian hitting a bit of a busy season with his job, and keeping up with family and friends, I feel like those first few months of 2025 flew by. We’re still adapting to this new silence in the apartment without Clyde, but that just means Brian and I are spending more time together. Chores have become a two-person job, simply because neither likes being alone in the silence. But that also means we’ve been rather productive. When we’re not reminiscing about good times with Clyde or complaining about work or discussing upcoming plans, we’ve been reading and cleaning and finding new ways to fill the space. The Lego train platform is nearly finished, for now, I’ve read quite a few books, and I’ve started mulling over an idea for a novel - a lot gets done when you quit TikTok and have a lot of big feelings to deal with.
I thought I’d use this opportunity to check in on some of the goals for the year that I made back in January, and possibly add some new ones to the list:
Read 25 books - Very in progress! Since January, I’ve finished 13 books, and I’m about a third of the way through book 14. Should a book review come soon? I’m also very open to recommendations despite my 40+ book long TBR.
Visit one new NHP (bonus points if it’s in a new state) - Not yet, but we’re working on it. I’ve discussed taking some time off around my birthday for something special (it’s my golden birthday this year) so hopefully this one will be accomplished by the end of May!
Re-start learning a language, preferably Spanish - Well. It wasn’t Spanish. I started up on Duolingo and also got Brian to join, which subsequently meant we got a family plan, so there are a handful of friends learning alongside us. I’m re-learning French, while Brian is learning German.
Finish a Legacy game (we have two ongoing right now!) - So close to being complete!! One legacy game has a single round left, and the other has quite a few rounds, but we’ll be finished this one likely before the end of April. Thoughts on the legacy game process coming posthaste.
Get the website to 1000 views - Work in progress, but getting there. We’re up to 124 unique visitors and 221 page views, so that’s not too bad! Not to get into the details of analytics, but I can see why people pull the sympathy card for clout. 32 of those visits came after Clyde passed. Maybe we’ll have to do a Cat-urday picture and story time or something…
Do something for Dad - still very “to be determined” but I’d really like to something meaningful. More than just a donation in his name. Maybe I can see how much those benches cost in OCMD or what it takes to get a plaque on a tree somewhere.
Travel to a new state. This one is ever so slightly different than number 2 on the list, but I’d really love to get to a state that I’ve never been to before. The list isn’t all that long (PA, NJ, DE, MD, VA, NY, CT, MA, FL) but maybe I can add a WV, OH, or something in the New England-ish area.
Write more. I have this idea for a novel. I’ve had a lot of ideas for novels. Maybe I can make that into something.
Take the ATP exam. I’ve been studying and learning and preparing, but I took a break from it all when work got hectic. I need to get back to this.
Anyway. That was a lot. I’ll try to check in again in July and see how we’re doing with all of this, but that being said, I’ll be gearing up for the extended school year starting, so maybe I’ll be a little preoccupied.
-G
On Clyde
It’s been a hard week.
Then again, “hard” doesn’t really cover it. On Monday, March 17, Brian and I had to help our sweet kitten Clyde pass on. Grief is hard. Stories are hard. So maybe I’ll start at the beginning and see where this goes.
On December 31st, 2015, I went to the local SPCA just to look at some cats. We had recently lost our family dog and I had been wanting a cat for a few years. Now, with a few weeks of winter break, a finished basement, and no other animals in the house, I had finally worn my mom down to at least consider looking at cats. There at Providence Animal Shelter, in a rehabbed aquarium that held kittens, was Clyde. He was so small - he never did grow all that much - with wide, curious eyes and big whiskers and a little crook at the tip of his tail. He scratched everyone that was there, including my mom, except for me. I couldn’t explain why, but I knew he was meant for me. He had come from a hoarding house in Jersey where hundreds of other cats had been found, he was a runt, and he was scared of pretty much everything, but after some convincing and some phone calls home and practically begging my dad, Clyde came home with me. We took a pit stop to the PetCo first, where we got his Flyers tag and a collar, a brush, a litter box, some toys and some food. He had that Flyers tag his whole life.
Bringing him home was easy, but getting him to adjust was tough. He was so small and loved to hide. He constantly played with wires. He climbed on things. But we kept him in the basement for a while and helped him adjust. I slept with him on the couch in the basement for weeks. He learned to sit in my lap, watching me read or draw or play video games. He started to sleep with me, preferring to curl into a ball in the crook of my armpit, pressed against my body and arm, purring like a chainsaw. He had the biggest purr for the littlest boy.
From then on, it was instant companionship. I hated leaving him to go to school or work. Whenever I was there he’d be by my side, at my feet, following me, leading me, with me. We were inseparable, No matter where I was, Clyde was with me. In a way, he still is.
Through huge life changes, two moves (and a stint back with mom and dad), two degrees and more, Clyde was there. He was even at my wedding (the legal one, anyway). I couldn’t have asked for a better familiar. Everyone who met him loved him, partially because he never really caused trouble but also because he was just so cute. Since he never really grew much, he was a perfect cuddle buddy. My dad would often cuddle up on the couch with him and take long naps when I wasn’t home. He loved to play. His catnip pickle and orange jingle ball and his laser pointer were among his favorites. Brian would get Clyde to run laps in our living room, making high-speed circuits around our couch. He loved treats. Hearing that bag crinkle would make him come running and even hearing the word “treat” would make him stand at attention. He knew a few words, like his name, and the letter “H”, and treats… Or anything that sounded like the word treat. In his last few months, he would respond to a new nickname from Brian - Jurj. If you’ve watched BoJack Horseman on Netflix you might’ve heard this one, but Clyde started responding to that like it was his own name.
Being without Clyde for the first time in a decade is sundering. I wish I had him here. I wish he didn’t have to go. I wish we got more time. But in the end, we did manage to get a little more time.
About two weeks ago, Clyde’s eating and drinking slowed to next to nothing. At first I thought he was being picky about his food. He was the type of boy who liked something once, and that was pretty much it. We were constantly rotating in new wet food to help his water intake, but he was a food snob. So when he wasn’t super fond of his wet food (which he never really was in the first place), I wasn’t that alarmed. Then he stopped drinking a ton of water. We thought it might be his bowls, so we bought new ones. When that didn’t work, we bought a fountain. He never touched it. Then he stopped eating his dry food, which was always an easy win for him, and I got really concerned. Clyde had always had bad teeth, lately he had been starting to get a cataract on his eye, and last May he had been at risk for kidney disease. Between these three, I had finally made the call and my Mom and I took him to the emergency vet. That was last Wednesday. They ran a lot of tests, and the results were mixed: an eye ulcer (give him drops), his teeth are absolutely awful and he should probably have them taken out (but they didn’t do dental there and couldn’t give him antibiotics because…), he has a heart murmur - a 4 out of 6 in severity (so that’ll make treatment complicated), and he’s dehydrated (so he needs fluids, but we can’t give him too much because of his heart) and he’s constipated (so he got an enema), and a scratch on his nose and eye (but those should be fine). A short trip and a lot of answers, but really just the solution of eye drops, oral medication, and a cone that he absolutely hated. He was pretty okay for two days, not himself but not worse, and we had a follow up last Friday with our usual vet. Brian and I took him with minimal complaint, which was abnormal since Clyde loathed his carrier and would give the loudest meows when he was confined in it. Clyde sat quietly in the car, waiting for the vet, and even on the ride home. Yet another red flag. Our vet confirmed the murmur, but said his eye was clear, so we were free to remove the cone. She was concerned about his nutrition and his teeth, so she gave us more painkillers, an appetite stimulant, and an antibiotic. She also ran a blood test, but those results wouldn’t be in for a few days. We went on our way, and Friday and Saturday were more or less okay. He wasn’t eating a ton, but he was eating some wet food and sipping some water, but he still wasn’t using the litter box. Come Sunday, after trying to give him his appetite stimulant and his eye drops, Clyde wanted nothing to do with me. He yowled, ran, hid, and complained when I tried to pet him. This lasted for over an hour and Brian and I took him back to the emergency vet. This time, things were much more concerning. They ran an x-ray and though his colon was clear, we later found out (from our normal vet and with some digging) that he had a very, very enlarged kidney. His kidney levels were off the charts and into the hundreds (our vet later told us that they had spiked from “normal but high” on Friday to astronomical on Sunday, something she’s never seen in her career) and that he was in late stage kidney failure. Our choices were an extended hospital stay, where they would try to give him fluids to flush the kidneys but that might stress his heart (killing him) and may or may not even help his kidneys, or take him home and make him comfortable. It was an obvious choice.
We had one great last night with Clyde. We tried to have a “normal” evening, but after three hours at the vet and a diagnosis so grim, we couldn’t take our eyes off of Clyde as he stationed himself in his new hiding space: under a towl hanging from the banister at the top of the steps. Ultimately, with offers of handfuls of treats that he hungrily accepted, we got him to come up on the couch with us, sitting between us like he had done hundreds of times before, for one final time. We also got a good final cuddle with him: he slept both next to me in the crook of my arm and in between us with his head on Brian’s pillow, for one final time. Over the course of the night, he wasn’t doing well getting back up onto our rather low bed, yet another red flag. In the morning, we tried calling our vet for a follow up, but she wouldn’t be in until later in the morning. In the meantime, Clyde was now refusing medicine as well as food and water. We decided against chasing him around to force the medicine: it wasn’t work stressing him. He wouldn’t get up on the furniture or even eat treats, a massive red flag. He was wobbly and lethargic, and was giving these begrudging, long meows when we pet him. It was almost as if he knew, and we knew though we couldn’t bring ourselves to admit it, that it was time.
Calls to a service, Lap of Love, were made. Confirmations with our vet followed. She called us earlier than expected, we suspect she called us out of office hours just to confirm: we were making the right choice. She had never seen such rapid advancement in her career and she suspected it may be a very aggressive and rapidly advancing form of cancer, possibly in his kidney but who knows where else. He wasn’t suffering yet but he absolutely wasn’t himself. He wanted nothing to do with anything he liked: treats, toys, broth, cuddles. It was time.
A doctor from Lap of Love came to our home and helped us guide Clyde over the rainbow bridge in the calmest, quietest, most peaceful way possible. He was with Brian and I, in Brian’s lap and my hands, while my mom was there too to provide support. Some of the people who loved him most were there to help him take one good, final nap. It was the fastest and longest moments of my life, all wrapped in one.
And now he’s gone.
I don’t want to akin this to losing a child - he didn’t come from my body - but I raised him. He was the closest Brian and I have to a baby. He was my everything from the moment he would wake me up at 5:30 in the morning for wet food to the moment I went to bed and he cuddled beside me. Now that I’m not running in a constant state of anxiety and stress for the first time in two weeks, my body feels hollow, my mind continues to race, and my heart is torn through. Brian and I continually rationalize that this was best for Clyde. No suffering, no prolonged pain, no continuing through treatments that could ultimately backfire. I know it was for the best, but it doesn’t make me wish I could conjure him back to us, just like he was a handful of weeks ago, so playful and curious and bothersome and loving and soft and warm. But I can’t. I couldn’t, even if it was possible, if the result would be the same.
I know he’s warm, safe, loved, fed, in whatever is beyond, but that doesn’t help us here. Clyde is missed, but Clyde is safe. Clyde is gone, but Clyde is so, so loved.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for following my ramblings. The last twenty-four hours sucked. I know this was incoherent and long and quite possibly I’ll edit it in the future, but I wanted people to know, just in the event that I lash out this week. Here’s why.
Hug your pets, count your blessings, savor the good, the bad, and the everything in between while you have it.
Sweet dreams baby Clyde. Mama loves you ten buckets full.
-G
On Final Fantasy I - IV
I’ve been playing through the Final Fantasy games and trying to 100% complete each one in order before moving on to the next. I finally finished FFIV this morning at 12:44am (thank you Steam achievements for keeping track for me.) Partly as a way to motivate myself to carry on with what I’m doing (I really want to jump ahead to VII) I thought I’d put some thoughts on each game here. It’ll be fairly brief for the first four since I didn’t think of this idea until now and maybe the others will generate longer entries. Time will tell.
Final Fantasy (100% Completion: 02/06/2025)
The first entry in the series, so named because the creator was going to be out of a job if he couldn’t make a successful video game and thus, if it flopped, this would be his final fantasy. As we know, it was wildly successful and we’re now up to something like 20+ FF titles, not including all the expansions for the MMO FFXIV. I actually played through this game on the Nintendo Switch first and then realized that there were no achievements and steam had many, so I replayed it on Steam and then continued on from there, blitzing through as fast as I could after having just done most of the same things on the Switch the day prior. It’s a relatively short game compared to what would come later, but for being on the original NES it had a good bit of content. I blasted through with a team consisting of a warrior, a red mage, a white mage, and a black mage. For those unfamiliar with the FF classes (and I’ll try to cover them as they come up, but some will be skipped entirely) FFI had a choice of six classes - Warrior, Monk, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage - each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Warriors can equip the best armor and weapons while thieves can attack more times per turn with less powerful weapons and monks can get by with no weapons besides their fists but are lacking defensively. On the magic side of things, white mages heal and protect, black mages deal damage and buff, and red mages…. well, they do a bit of white and black, but can’t do it all and can’t learn any of the most advanced magics of either side, they can, however, wield a goodly amount of weapons for melee combat as well as some decent armor for defense. Jack of all trades master of none has long described the red mage. I followed a guide for all four of these games just to be able to ensure I completed everything in a single playthrough. This game was pretty easy once I realized that one spell that both the black mage and red mage could learn (Temper) not only raised the attack of a party member (the warrior) but also stacked as many times as you could cast it. This led to very few fights that posed any real danger. This was the only game in the series that used spell slots akin to Dungeons and Dragons before switching to the Mana Point (MP) system that is still in use today (with a single exception that I know of at the moment, that being FFVIII, but we’ll get to that eventually.) The longest part of this game was running back and forth in a very specific area trying to get one single kind of enemy to spawn so I could kill it to add it to the in-game beastiary - a collection that shows all enemies you’ve fought in the current game and FFI - FFVI all have 100% completion achievements for.
Final Fantasy II (100% Completion: 02/09/2025)
Ah, good ol’ FFII. The bastard rented mule of the red-headed stepchild of the Final Fantasy world. I don’t think any other title in the series is more polarizing. They tried something new with this game - no classes, instead all stats grew dynamically based on what you’ve done during combat. Lost a lot of health points (HP)? Well then you gain HP! Cast a lot of spells and used your MP? You get more MP! And each weapon type and spell type had a similar leveling method. This leads to lots of early game instances of punching yourself in the face to lose HP, casting a lot of healing magic to restore that lost HP and at the end of combat everyone is gaining HP, MP and all the other stats associated with whatever they used. You can game this system ridiculously hard and become relatively overpowered very early on. You might not even notice until you get a new party member who has 150HP and the rest of your team all has 3,000+HP. Oops.
Speaking of new party members… In the first few FF games you get to pick the name of all 4 party members you start with and in FFI and FFIII you keep that team for the whole game. In FFII you name all four characters, and the opening fight is scripted that you lose, and, when you come to, you only have three party members. A motley crew of different adventurers come and go throughout the game, but your fourth original party member is absent for about 90% of the game. This was extremely frustrating. And without a guide to tell you, the characters that join temporarily (and usually leave because they died) will leave very suddenly and if you put gear on them it’s gone. Did you just spend all your money on the best armor and weapons you could and gave them to this awesome mage with all the cool spells? Oh, he died, and all that money was wasted. Seriously, the amount of party death in this game is ludicrous.
All that being said, given the aforementioned way to increase stats to near godly levels, there’s not much here to pose a threat and again the hardest part is tracking down the last few remaining entries for the beastiary. Well, that and struggling to care when they try and tug at the heartstrings, but you’ve spent next to no time with the characters that they think you should feel attached to.
Final Fantasy III (100% Completion: 02/12/2025)
What color is your parachute? This is the first game with a job system (job == class). You’re able to freely change characters from one class to another on a whim and gain access to all the fun toys that go with it (changing from a white mage to a warrior means you lose all your magic but gain the ability to equip good armor and weapons, for example.) This sounds awesome! Until you start playing and realize that items to restore MP are so few and far between and switching from a class with no MP to one that does have MP starts you off at 0MP. And there are so many sections that more of less require a team of all mages for a specific part of a dungeon but melee for earlier parts. Also having to cast various debuffs on your own party to be able to access certain parts of the game (like casting mini so you can visit the gnomes, or casting toad on your party to be able to swim to the bottom of a lake and then having to cast it all again to undo the debuffs so you can attack again. Such a MP dump.) There are also a large number of sections that require an entire team of (insert job here) for a fight or two and then swap it all back. Each job has to be leveled independently, and there’s an achievement for getting a job from level 1 all the way to 99. I kept a single character as a white mage for the majority of the game just to hit that milestone. This took me through about 95% of the game,
The story was alright, but nothing too much that I could remember with any clarity. The amount of jobs that essentially amounted to nothing was a little disheartening. This was also the first game to feature something that would become a mainstay of the series moving forward - summons. These spells allow you to call forth a powerful entity to attack opponents for you. Most of the summons that started in III continue to exist in games today such as Ifrit who attacks all enemies with fire, Shiva who attacks all enemies with ice and Odin who attempts to auto kill all enemies but fails if an enemy is too strong (or if it’s a boss. Can’t make it to easy). Sadly, in III, the summons are rather lackluster and I didn’t find myself using them much. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the Summoner class doesn’t get unlocked until very late in the game. It did see me through a handful of fights but not enough to make a lasting impression.
Final Fantasy IV (100% Completion: 02/24/2025)
Quite a jump in time to complete given the ranges for the last three games. Partly that’s because I couldn’t play as often with work and other commitments and partly because this was the first game on the SNES which had much more powerful hardware and more memory to make bigger games. (This game has three separate maps to explore instead of the one (I, II) or two (III).) I must admit that I don’t care for FFIV very much. It tried to get into in-depth storytelling and some people love it, but I found it tedious. I didn’t like the characters with the exception of Rydia (who just happens to be a summoner! For joy! And summons are beyond useful in this game!) This game did away with the job system, you couldn’t pick a class, and your team was a rotating cast of characters up until the very last dungeon. You also couldn’t pick a name off the bat, you had to find a specific NPC to let you change names. Getting through this game felt more like a slog than anything, but that was my own inability to care about most of the characters. I realize that when this was made some of the now over-used tropes were fairly new, but man they feel rough and dated now. The row system (back row takes and deals less melee damage, front row does/takes more) has been in the game since FFI, but in IV they decided to mess with it. in I, II, III and then V-whenever, you had full control over who was in which row. In IV though, not only do you get five party members (up from four in I, II and III) but the rows are locked - either slots 1, 3, 5 are front while 2 and 4 are back, or vice versa. This sucks near the end of the game when you have 4 people who benefit from being in one row or the other, but someone has to be left out.
IV is also the first installment to feature the ATB or Active Time Battle system - instead of everyone choosing an action and the game making you take turns so everyone on your team and the enemy team all get a chance to make a move once per round, the ATB makes it so a bar fills and once full you can make an action; if you’re very fast you might get multiple actions before someone else gets one. Cool in theory but was still being fleshed out here. Some actions, like summons or casting spells may take longer than anticipated, in later games when you cast a spell it happens instantly, but in IV (and possibly V and VI, time will tell) there’s a significant delay. Sometimes a single cast may take so long that other party members move two or three times before your single cast goes off. This is especially aggravating on few boss fights that require ice magic at specific times, but it’s nearly impossible to line up those windows with the arbitrary cast times. And if you get the timing wrong, it actually heals the boss instead of damaging it. The ATB also means if you happen to be called away or get otherwise distracted during a fight, if you don’t pause, will lead to the enemy wailing on you as their ATB bars continue filling even if you don’t choose an action. This may have happened more than once as I was repeatedly killing enemies for specific items while watching YouTube on my off monitor.
Speaking of killing enemies for specific items… This game had an odd fascination with this concept. Certain summons and items were dropped by specific enemies throughout the game. I was very lucky with some and less so with others. I know parts this will pop up again in the future, but if I ever see a Princess Flan again, I think I’ll scream. For those not in the know, Princess Flan is an enemy near the end of the game. It can be farmed using an item called Siren (which is another item farmable earlier on) and drops an item that you need for the best armor in the game. If that were all this wouldn’t have been too bad. The issue is that Princess Flan casts fury on random party members. Fury takes control from you and they automatically use a basic attack on a random enemy each time the ATB bar fills. These things have roughly 20,000HP and an basic attack deals (at least for me at that point in the game) 500-3500 damage to a single enemy. Princess Flan always appears in packs of 5. Now, if you can cast the summon Bahamut with Rydia it will deal 9999 to all 5 enemies at once. However, since summons take an egregious amount of time to cast, she’d usually get hit with fury mid cast and instead be relegated to just normal attacks which would turn a two turn fight into a 30 turn fight really quickly. Yes, the armor you get for turning in the item that these monsters drop is an achievement that I needed for 100% completion. It took me roughly 85 battles to get the item. Not nearly as bad as some of the horror stories I read online (hundreds or thousands) but still greatly vexing.
Hopfully V will be better, but, time will tell.
-B
On Train Platforms
So if you’ve known Brian at all, or you’ve seen our engagement photos, or you’ve seen our Lego collection, you may know that we like trains. A lot. And while we’d love to have a full train platform with miniatures and grass and moving pieces, that’s both expensive and all-consuming of square footage. Both things we’re not willing or able to shell out right now. You may also know that we really like building Lego. I’ve been building Lego off and on since I was about ten, when my mom took me to the park one day, I found a minifigure, begged her for a Lego set, and got instantly hooked. I stopped with the hobby in high school and sold off a number of my sets in college or gave them away, mostly because I thought Lego weren’t cool. I was wrong. Here I am over ten years later admiring a little Lego scene we’ve built, all centered around two and a half trolleys/trams/trains. I say “and a half” because as I’m typing this, Brian is building his Christmas present: a rather large Lego model of the Orient Express, and it’s currently in pieces. Literally. He has a single train car partially built and a ton of track laid. The rest of the platform, however, is doing well. We went to Home Depot, Brian did some measurements, stud-finding, drilling, and swearing, and ten holes later: we have a cool shelf in our living room for our little Lego friends to inhabit! I’m sure Brian will share some snazzy photos soon, but this is in more or less constant reconstruction at this point. I keep adding figures, changing which flower and butterfly combo goes where, and deciding how best to show three trains in a completely one-dimensional (on a horizontal axis) plane. I think after I post this I’ll get into the rendering software and see if I can model out an elevated trolley platform. Decisions, decisions…
-G