Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (Switch)

Star Wars... but in Ivalice

Played and finished Final Fantasy XII for the first time. Never had it as a kid. It was released on the PS2 right as I was moving away for University and I never got a PS2 to play on so it never came to it. So I picked it up for the Switch instead. The only thing I knew was that it seen as a Star Wars-rip off in story... and when you begin to think that, you can't unsee it. So the game takes place in Ivalice, like the Final Fantasy Tactics game (which I only played the Advance version) where there is a wedding between the prince of Nabradia and the princess of Dalmasca, but the Archadian Empire attacks Nabradia so the prince together with the knight Basch sets out to defend his homeland since they are united now. The prince is killed in battle and the fortress they defended was destroyed by some unknown power that works like a nuclear bomb... or the Death Star if you like. Basch returns to Dalmasca, but the king have left to sign the surrender so the royal knights try to reach the king before it's to late... which it is, but it seems that Basch killed the king for surrendering Dalmasca to the Archadian empire. 

Two years later we follow Vaan, the brother of one of the soldiers who died after the attack and witnessed the kings death by Basch's hand, right before he stabbed him. Vaan works with Penelo in the former Dalmascian Capital Rabinaste that lies in the desert. He dreams of becoming a sky pirate. During the celebration of the new governor Vayne Vaan sneaks into the palace and find a magicte (a magical stone pretty much) but while escaping runs into the sky pirate Balthier and his companion Fran, a Viera (mystical rabbit pretty much) who also looked for the stone, these will be our Han Solo and Chewbacca for this game. Escaping through the sewers they meet Ashe, who is the princess of Dalmasca and leader of the resistance... Princess Leia I presume. They get captured and Vaan and the sky pirates are taken to an old Nabradia fortress where they escape before some bounty hunters find Balthier who owns them money. They also find Basch who have been trapped there for two years. Turns out that it was his twin brother Gebranth that killed the king, framed him and then got him locked up here. 

So not only is there a twin involved, but the brother works for the empire as a judge who goes around in black armour from top to toe. They meet the resistance and together with Ashe travels to Cloud City... I mean Bhurjerba, the floating mining town who supplies the empire with minerals while the lord is financing the resistance. After a lot of saving they rescue Penelo, Ashe gets taken and they rescue her and the magicite Vaan stole turns out to be one of three shards the Dynast-King used to create peace in Ivalice. The party escapes and plans to get the Dawn Shard from the Dynast-Kings Tomb which they get, but are captured again. The empire test the Dawn Shard, but its powers causes the ship they are on to explode, killing the Judge that controlled that ship and the whole 8th fleet, setting in motion a build up to war between Archadia and Rossaria, the other empire in Ivalice. Heroes escape and search for the Dynast-Kings sword which can destroy magicite which was hidden by the Daila Lama of Ivalice... or Yoda if you like that. Get the sword, sneaks into the Imperial capital where you confront Dr. Cid. The capital is also in turmoil since the Emperor have been killed by the senators, but the judges have apprehended the senators and Vayne, the oldest son of the Emperor take over as a dictator to bring stability when the Rossarion army seems to move on the Empire. 

Dr. Cid is Balthiers father and seems to be possessed by the being Venat, they meet the pirate leader Reddas who hunted Cid as well and they all escape. Cid hinted to the ancient city where the Dynast-kings power came from so they go there, but it holds a giant crystal where the Occurians live, the ancient gods of Ivalice who controls history and gave the Dynast-King the sword to cut the magicite from the Sun-cyst. They give the same powers to Ashe so that she can destroy the Empire and turn Ivalice back through the course of history that Venat, herself an Occurian, have led the humans stray from. With both swords the party heads to a giant lighthouse at the brink of the world where the Sun-cyst lies. Climbing the tower they find the Sun-cyst, but both Gebrant and Dr. Cid appears, Gebrant goating Ashe to take the Sun-cyst and demand vengeance. Ashe forsake it, but Dr. Cid and Venat overflow the Sun-cyst with power causing it to spew out powers that apparently powers the flying fortress Bahamut, aka the Death Star. They are saved by Reddas who takes the Dynast-Kings sword and destroys the Sun-cyst, killing himself in the sacrifice. But as he was responsible for the destruction of Nebradis as a judge on Cid's order he was kinda satisfied with that. 

Final stage is the heroes using their airship to board the Bahamut in the middle of the battle over Rabanestra between the Resistance and the Archadian Empire. The heroes face of Vayne and Venat and Vayne dies, but I don't think he was that sad since he and Venat achieved their goals, destroying the Sun-cyst and giving humans free will. As the fortress is self-destructing Vaan and friends escape with Gebrant and Vayne's younger brother Larsa that have aided them in trying to stop the war. Gebrant is mortally wounded and ask Bashe to protect Larsa. Balthier and Fran stays behind so the other can escape as well as flying the Bahamut away from Rabanastre before crashing into the ground. One year pass and Ashe is supposed to be crowned Queen, Bashe works as Larsa's judge, Balthier and Fran survived and took back their airship and Vaan and Penelo prepares to set out on their own adventures, the end.

It has its moments, but the story doesn't gel all the way. I can see the themes, Ashe struggles with the thought of acquiring power to restore her homeland and the fear of becoming as corrupted as the Empire. Basch struggles with his failures to protect his former homeland and his new king. Balthier is just the rouge who sees himself as the leading man, but he pushes the plot forward all the time and is the voice of reason (and voiced by the same guy who was Commander Nelson in Wonderful 101). Fran is supposed to struggle with having left her forest and therefore becoming cut off to the voice of the forest. It doesn't effect much though, and Vaan and Penelo really doesn't do much. Apparently since Vaan was the main character in the last minute since they began with Basch as the leading role, but they thought an older main character would turn people off. The power struggle of the empires are really interesting, but the Occurian plot seems disjointed from the others. I get that the lighthouse shows the true face of the Occurians how they look down on people and acts a bit like vengeful gods, but it's never explained. Skies of Arcadia shows the same thing with the Silvites, but there they directly tells the player that the rains of destruction is the Silvites reseting history. Here, I don't get why Venat turned on them, and how was the humans trapped by the Occurians history, what would have been different? 

Gameplay on the other hand... I can see the evolution to XIII. Here they introduced the Gambit system where you can pretty much set the combat AI how you want, if you are gonna attack, with what, against whom or heal and so on. A bit confusing in the beginning, but I got the hang of it really fast. Sadly I didn't get how to set up so that my black mage (Ashe) would use different spells against different enemies depending on which element they were weak to. Think I would have been better against certain bosses in the end game (or dealing with the damn elementals). You also can customise the classes for every character how ever you want from the 12 you got access to, but starting equipment and base stats push you to a certain direction, and then you have the ability to combine it with another class. I went for a spread with all 12 classes. I get that certain combinations are really good together. Kinda alright altogether. Wasn't to hard to get a hold off, but as usual it leads to a strategy where you don't have to push any button, just move until the auto-function takes you to nearest enemy. 

Music... no Uematsu, not bad music and the orchestrated version on the remaster is really good. But again, the imperial theme sound like the imperial theme from Star Wars so not even that can escape it. Graphically... I think X looks better. People's faces looks washed out in comparison. And the voice acting... it sounds bad in my ears. Maybe the more heavy dialects make it feel more unnatural to me, but I assume the heavy compression of the voices is the bigger culprit. Also, the story is a bit too human centric. The only non-human in the party is Fran, even tough there is several established races in Ivalice like the moogles, the Nu Mou and the Baangas. They introduced even more here so even worse that 5 (or 8) out of 6 (or 9) characters are humans... or humes, sorry. Still, worth a play through and for god sake, play the remaster that added speeding up and a minimap. I finished just after 53 hours and that's thankfully for speeding up game play with 4x. I can't imagine having played this the original speed. Although, gotta be fair, at times the speed up and the wriggling of the camera made me feel a bit dizzy. 

Ecco The Dolphin 3D (3DS)

Seven Star Had Ursa Major!

Tables Turning, Turning

And Rain Maker!

Was at my parents home during easter, the other christian holiday since this will show up around Christmas, and decided to play through one of the four different Ecco the Dolphin games I have bought through the years and it landed on the 3DS, since that was what I had with me to my parents. Part of the 3D Classic Collection where they took classic games and spruced them up in 3D for the 3DS. At release seen as one of the more impressive graphical titles, great music and atmosphere but seen as one of the harder games. Mostly because the developers set out to ensure that kids didn't finish it in a weekend. 

It's about Ecco the Dolphin who one day tries to impress the others in his pod so he makes a high jump out of the ocean and as soon he leaves a tornado hits the water sucking all life out of the ocean, including his pod. So Ecco has to set out rescueing his family. First he has to find the Big Blue, a blue whale that have traveled to the North Pole awaiting death it seems. Traversing shark infested waters and deadly ice blocks that crush you over and over you finally finds him, but he only knows that the tornado appears every 500 years and sucks the oceans clean, but he directs you to the Asterite, the oldest living creature. Turns out it's some kind of DNA-Helix that lives in the waters who directs you to Atlantis where there is a Time Machine so that Ecco can travel 44 million years into the past and help the Asterite to power up so that he can power up Ecco. Turns out that the tornado is caused by the alien race the Vortex from the planet Vortex in the Pegasus constellation (which they note lies very close to the dolphin constellation... why that matter beyond that it's a game about a Dolphin I don't get). Anyway, the Vortex have no food so every 500 years they suck the oceans of Earth to feed on it.

With this knowledge Ecco travels back right before the tornado appears and jumps with it, ending up on the alien space ship where he fights off the Alien Queen and rescues his pod and returns to Earth. I gotta say, even how bonkers the story is with aliens, time travel and Atlantis... I kinda liked it! Following the story it gets weirder and weirder and I love it. 

Now was it as hard? Well, since I used the 3DS version I set up the Super Dolphin Mode which means infinite health and air. Yeah, since Ecco is a mammal he needs air to breath so a challenge of the game is to traverse underwater mazes before the air runs out or you get killed by the hostile creatures, like crabs and sharks. So no anxiety over that, still got crushed by the ice blocks or the walls of the alien ship. I would probably never have finished it the normal way, which probably explains why I have bought it four times, for Wii Virtual Console, the Sega Mega Drive Collection for PS3 and the Switch collection. Graphics are nice and the music is really good, I really like the Mega Drive sound of it. I got the sequel for the Mega Drive compilation on the PS3 so might try that one day. 

Finding Teddy 2 (Switch)

Look, a winter game! It has snow!

A game where a little girl plays video games and then goes into the wardrobe and follows her flying teddy to a library to help fight off this evil magician that taken over this magical land. That's the gist of it I got from Wikipedia since the game doesn't tell you that much. What's more interesting is that I got this for the Wii U, but it was named Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus. So I thought this was actually a sequel which stopped me from getting the game since I wanted to finish the original first. I couldn't do that on the Wii U since it glitches out completely when I play it there (don't know if it is a bad download or that the game really is that glitchy, it freezes after just a couple of minutes so I stopped playing),

Works fine here. It's pretty much styled after Zelda II and you gotta go through 4 different worlds to find the temples and the four seeds so that you can open the final door and fight off Anguis. Neat things are musicon, an instrument you carry with you that enables you to learn different sounds and with it do some musical puzzles. You get a lexicon and the villagers you meet tell you what you need to tell the Guardians to enter the palaces, of course after you done some side quests for them. There's also the firefly collecting game where there is 50 fireflies that are hidden, but if you listen to what they sing you can mimic the sound and reveal them. Getting all 50 unlocks the black overalls. My ears can't get the tunes at all so I used a guide. I would recommend it anyway since I think the chests of the temples with the new items uses the same principle since I had to look up what to do. Nice in theory, but way beyond my capabilities. I like decoding messages and such to get clues and the like, but that I can handle with pen and paper.

Another reason for the guide is so that it can explain what all upgrades do, since the overalls don't heighten the defence, but increases health and marble pickups (marbles being the currency). Of course, since so much of the game is based on these musical puzzles you can also skip a lot of the game. I used it once to get the health upgrade from the Tower of the Stars, a super hard platforming challenge where you gotta do four different rooms to get the codes to open the door to the upgrade. I did one, but the second one wanted me to jump and pogo stick my sword on bullets from enemies to get to the code. And the control more often than not doesn't differentiate only using the weak downward thrust from the special down-attack that means insta death. I gave up there. 

Overall, enjoyable while it lasted. Graphics are nice, the music very soothing and the ideas intriguing. In the end one could spot a Zelda II poster above the TV so the question is if this is just the girls imagination running wild. It's not without its faults though, and one is that this version also had a glitch, a glitch that made it impossible to go to credits after beating the final boss. So I just youtubed the ending. I beat the boss and have no inclination to do so again. Apparently this game is just cursed for me.

Final Fantasy X-2 (Switch)

 

Girl Power!

Finally finished it, after failing to win in the original release at the end boss. And then never even try it on the remaster release for the PS3, but I got it on Switch and finish it. Don't know why I prefer to finish them on Nintendo console, but I again attribute it to the Pro-controller, just feels right in the hand. This game is also interesting in that it was the first direct sequel to a main Final Fantasy, and afterwards they pumped out sequels to VII, IV and later on XII and XIII. 

The story is that 2 years after Yuna defeated Sin and entered Spira into the Eternal Calm trouble is brewing again. Spira stand divided in different factions, New Yevon who arose from Yevon that try to preserve some order, often being associated with old people and the Youth League rising from the Crusaders with much radical younger supporters and a quest to bring the truth to Spira. There's also a third faction, the Machine Faction rising from the Al-Bhed, but they are not that important since they basically just digs for machines in Bikanel Desert. To unlock the past Sphere Hunters have appeared to gather spheres that show Spira's past. Yuna joins the Gullwings, that are lead by Rikku's brother.... Brother, after Khimari as the new elder of the Ronso found a sphere of what looks like Tidus. Yuna, Rikku and newcomer Paine (that looks a bit like a younger Lulu) sets of searching for sphere's.

This evolves into stumbling upon a secret weapon of mass destruction that lies dormant under Bevelle that New Yevon tried holding away from the people which gets hijacked by a ghost that possesses the leaders of the factions. The ghost being a look-alike for Tidus, and speculated to be the person the fayth based Tidus on, is an unsent that 1 000 years ago during the war between Zanarkand and Bevelle tried to get the weapon from Bevelle to save his girlfriend Lenne that was a singer and a summoner. But as she tried to stop him from destroying all of Spira (which apparently was the problem with the weapon, it was assured destruction for everyone which explains why they couldn't use it against Sin, nice save there writer) both were killed and he spent 1 000 years roaming a cave until the ones becoming leaders for the factions was on a mission for the Crimson squad during operation Mi'hen and the leader of Youth League was possessed.

That's the dramatic story that glues it all together, otherwise it's Yuna and friends going from place to place doing side quest and mini-games showing you what happened to all the people and tying together some loose ends like the animosity between the Guado and Ronso, Lulu and Wakka hooking up and expecting their first baby etc. You go on a "murder-mystery" to find out who smashed up the hoover craft on Mi'hen high road, playing a sphere break tournament. There's a lot, divided by 5 chapter (and chapter 4 is just a railroad for Yunapalooza, a concert to unite the world as Yuna as the headlining act) and a tips for new-comers, don't go after the hot-spots the first thing you do, do them last. That was the problem I had as a kid playing it for the first time, meaning I missed out on a lot of Dresspheres, garment grids and levels. Maybe play the Besaid one first since then you get the White mage dressphere.

Dresspheres is this games job-system, which means this was the third time it was used and the last time was Final Fantasy V. And you also got levels back instead of the Sphere Grid from X so this is basically more closer to old-school Final Fantasy. You use garments grids where you equip the dresspheres and equip them to the players so that in battle you can change job and also by passing through gates get some bonuses, which I pretty much never used, but at least it doesn't penalise you for changing jobs like the old games. Put up a team of Lady Luck, Alchemist and Dark Knight are pretty much enough to power you through to the endgame. Yuna at lvl 72 and Paine lvl 65 and Rikku lvl 63. The game encourage the player to play the games over and over since to get 100 % and the good ending you need to make a different choice, either give a sphere you stole in Kilika to either New Yevon or Youth League. It affects the factions look on you and gives different cut-scenes that add to the percentage score. Finishing unlocks New Game+ where you keep the garment grids, dresspheres and the unlocks for the spheres so that the games get easier or makes you try different jobs, since why still use the Gunner, Thief and Swordsman jobs when they are 100 % and items allow you to use the skills without equipping it? (Some garment grids do the same).

Overall, it's a fun game... if you can get past the more goofy, girlier and fan-service part of the game. I mean, I think I didn't replay it as much as a kid since you wouldn't want to be caught by your parents as Yuna, straddled over rival Leblanc giving her a back message as Leblanc moans really loud, and most females have very exposed clothing... or that within 10 minutes Yuna falls from a ledge and the camera just zooms in on her ass, glad she is officially 19, but it gets weirder the older I get. 

How does that stay in place?

Glad I'm living alone without any insight from the neighbours... maybe I'm gonna pull down the curtains just in case anyway. So I got both main game on the remaster and there's only one thing left and that is Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission. Started it and it's a dungeon (or more correctly Tower) crawler where you and the monsters take turns in order to get to the top. I'm not gonna play that. I read a synopsis and it feels just sad since the main trio of X-2 seems to have a falling out and go their separate ways. I gather that the original was tied to the percentage score of X-2, but they remastered it without the 100 % dialog so that is probably why it's seems so dismal. But the main reason is I can't bother to learn the gameplay, it just doesn't connect so I don't wanna get into it.

Some negatives is that the music isn't that good, it's not bad and I like the rock style and the chocobo theme is a real ear-worm, but I miss things like the Hymn of the Fayth and the assualt song. Songs that elevate the scenes in the epic proportion... or that might be the reason there isn't one. Most of the main voices are the same, but it's clear they changed Rin for example and that puts me off a bit, but hey, George Newbern is one of the main guys.... you know, Superman from the Justice League series.

Final Fantasy X HD Remastered (Switch)

April 16 2019? Maybe was time that I actually played this (2021-03-20 as of writing)

So I got Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Collection again, but this time for switch, so I had to play it. And I still like it. I like the story, the graphics are cozy nostalgic for me and the music is heavenly. I noticed I never wrote about the story last time which is a bit uncharacteristic for me since I usually focus on that. Glad I can fix that right now? Basically it's about the blitzball (some kind of water polo sport) player Tidus from Zanarkand that during the cup honoring his fathers Jechts disappearance ten years earlier (he himself a famous blitzball player) the city is attacked by the monster Sin and together with his father's friend Auron is transported to the land of Spira. In Spira Tidus learns that Zanarkand was destroyed 1 000 years ago in a war between Bevelle and Zanarkand and after that Sin appeared. His father also ended up in Spira 10 years ago and journeyed with the High-Summoner Braska and sir Auron on a pilgrimage to defeat Sin and they succeeded, but Sin is back again. 

Tidus joins up with Braska's daughter the summoner Yuna and her guardians Khimari, a ronso blue mage, Wakka, a blitzball captain and Lulu the black mage. On their journey they meet up with Auron again and Rikku the Al-Bhed thief. On their journeys they meet the maester Seymour Guado of Yevon (pretty much the church of Spira that gives hope to the people by claiming that if people atone for their sins, using machines and all that, Sin will never return when the summoners bring the Calm) who intends to kill Sin and become it in order to destroy all of Spira so that all can be free of death... a psychopath is what he is. The church is corrupt and just perpetuates the status quo, even being led by an unsent Maester Maika (unsent being a person that died and haven't been sent by a summoner to the Farplane, and if they aren't sent they can turn into fiends). At the same time the Al-Bheds are kidnapping summoners in order to save them since the Final Summoning they uses to destroy Sin will kill the Summoner. 

Turns out that the Final Summoning must be created by sacrificing one of the guardians. Also, the Final Summoning destroys Sin but is doomed to become Sin since the entity inside Sin, Yu Yevon was a summoner of Zanarkand that as the city was destroyed 1 000 years ago put up the Fayths the summoner prays to recieve different Aeons (summons) by using the survivors from the city, and most of them was used to summon Zanarkand in a dream world so it would become eternal. And since Tidus is from there he is a dream given life by the Fayths since they are tired after 1 000 years and want's to end it. Meanwhile Auron lost his life after Braska destroyed Sin so he has walked around unsent to stop the spiral of death by masterminding everything together with Jecht who become Braska's Final Summoning. Tidus and the gang blasts into Sin by using machines that Al-Bhed have salvaged, like an airship. 

Also you fight Seymour 4 times, the last inside Sin before fighting Jecht as the final summoning and then Yu Yevon, which you can't loose since you have auto-life granted. Nice with a boss that isn't that hard. It's more for story purposes. Yuna sends Auron and Tidus disappears as the Fayths are dying since Yu Yevon isn't summoning anymore.

I finished it 2-3 times, played to the end some 2 more times and I love it more and more. I recall some complaining that Tidus steals what is actually Yuna's story, and on one hand they are right. He hardly actually effects the story in any meaningful way other than actually question how the world works. But on the other hand, it's about Tidus and his strained relations with his father Jecht who always towered over him. He was a drunk, belittled him and his mother didn't look twice at him when his father was around. Until he ended up in Spira and tried to get home, and had to confront his behaviour. Jecht stopped drinking after hurting an innocent beast while drunk that forced Auron and Braska to pay for the damages. And as he realised he couldn't get home whenever he talked about Tidus he almost teared up. Which makes it so sad when he chooses to be the summoning, since he has nothing in Spira. And the music, the Hymn of the Fayth in every incarnation in the game sounds amazing. Auron's theme is fantastic and the assault song as they go for the wedding scene is thrilling, they even used it on the trailer timing it with the cannons from operation Mi'hen going off. And since I never got there as a kid I'm always entranced by Seymour's last battle theme. And the voice acting... I like it? One of the first (almost) full voice acted games I played. And good voices. 

Now, I only played it for 60 hours and only got 3 fully upgraded Celestial Weapons, but I got all summons and Al-Bhed primer. I pretty much sat with a guide by my side so that I could know when to go to Besaid before the Dark Aeon appeared and all that. Got a no encounter weapon that made the end game so much easier. So I checked up on my save on the PS3. I played that for 90 hours, got 4-5 celestial weapon fully upgraded (missing Lulu's that I got this time around thanks to the no encounter weapon). I even defeated the Dark Aeon at Besaid since I got all the Jecht spehere's (I got the trophy to support it), but I have to replay the game since I missed some primers at the Al-Bhed Home. I was actually thinking that if I ever wanted to play it again I might do it on the PS3 since it has the trophies, but since I got the ones I got and frankly the controls are better on the Switch (used a pro controller). I think it has to do that the right stick feels like a walking stick compared to the PS3, it's even placed more naturally above the d-pad. Also I imported a cartridge with both games on it, screw that with only giving 1 game and then download the other. At least not as bad as Capcom who gave you the smaller game (by a lot) and got you to download the 23 GB game to play it.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Switch)

 

Definitively the definitive edition

After playing Age of Calamity I got the urge to continue with the original game, which I also got for the Switch but never finished until now... or finished or finished, I got the ending of the legends mode and finished adventure mode, not 100 %. I basically stopped playing right before the end when I got it for the Switch. Pretty much the Ganondorf stages and it's a pity I did since they had tacked on a couple of extra stages after beating the original game. So after banishing Ganon from Hyrule... again, another portal appears bringing the Wind Waker universe into the Hyrule Warriors one. Apparently Phantom Ganon is... I don't recall his plan, he possessed Cia and brought her back to life, got Helmaroc King to kidnap Tetra so you gotta save Tetra with the help of King of Red Lions and then you fight Phantom Ganon and bring Cia back to life. You get the new sub-weapon in the hammer and a couple of extra modes. There was also Linkle stages, but those are pretty much the old stages with different scenarios focused on being grinding levels for materials from tougher enemies.

I started up my old save on the Wii U that I haven't played in ages and I could see I got a bit into it. Got all skulltulas in legends mode and all heart pieces and such. Then I noticed that Cia and her stages didn't have any heart pieces or such. So they added that. Skulltula missions changed and they added boss keys and fairies you could pick up in Adventure mode to enhance your character. If they added that to the 3DS-version I don't know. The Wii U got all characters so that's noting new, together with costumes and such. Mostly just got it as DLC so no need to play to unlock it as here. You got Linkle, Twili Midna, Medli, Toon Zelda, Tetra, Toon Link, King of Red Lions, Ravio and Yuga. So even more a celebration of the Zelda-series. 

Playing through it again, it doesn't grab me as Age of Calamity. I don't like the big bosses since they can really mess with you since if your unlucky and they don't use the attack that enables you to stun them and get the special attack on them you just wait on them. In Age of Calamity it felt more dynamic with the dodge mechanic giving more skill to the player. But then after getting into it I plunged another 40 hours into it. The addition of quick switch between playable character made the game go faster and when I realised I just could use Link in mission where you allowed 2 playable characters I could use the other slot for the character that would be needed to get the A-treasure instead of playing with that character. What are you gonna do when Link is level 111 and Ravio is level 17? You could probably speed it up even more with another player. 

Although I noticed that the game seems to glitch out a lot which I didn't recall in the original. For example when opening chest or if the camera pans over an area it just goes haywire at times, not loading the right asset and a couple of times Link was just sitting in the air as Epona didn't load at the victory screen. It also crashed at one time.

A DnD Tale: Curse of Strahd - Enter the castle

Feels right at home

Continued with the plan. Before noon Immeral, Hope and Toby sneaks toward the burgomeister's mansion. They look into the kitchen window and Immeral shadow teleports in and open the window so the others can enter. They close the door and begins looking into the second floor. they find a library and a bedroom belonging to the son in the family, and then unlocks first a closet where they find a chained unconcious man, they immediatly back out and close the door. They open the next door and finds rows after rows with dolls looking like Ireena. They back out and close the doors. They lock both doors since now they are a bit freaked out. Not freaked out enough to get an idea. After looking through the mansion they will rescue the man in chain, and take him too Old Bone Grinder so that he can hide there, but in the meantime he can at least work the mill by making flour. When they defeat Strahd and hopefully gets Barovia back into their own dimension, they will use the mill to start exporting flout. They get the idea to join with the wizards of the wine to export wine as well. They have the capital, and not only the deed on the mill, but the property in the town of Barovia. The castle they can use as base and let Ismark become the new lord of the land and the children can help in the production of the flour. They also get the idea that they can find the deed to the ruins of Berez and set up some production there and also offers tourist guides to the Amber Temple. So that created the goal of establishing Hope & Immerals Emporium, a merchant empire from the mist of Barovia, to the valleys of Nerath, to the shores of the Forgotten Realms. 

So that derailed us for some minutes. After getting back into action they looked through the rest of the rooms and found a ladder to the attic where they noticed foot prints in the dust to a room where they could hear cats meowing and a boy casting some spells. They dispell the charm that was on the door with one of the saved spells in their ring and then Immeral shadow steps in and clubs him cold. They tie him up and make sure he can't cast a spell and grabs his spell book. They find a teleportation circle, and normally it's not working and is the reason the servants gone missing since they were killed when the son used them as guinea pigs, but I thought it would be more fun if they where teleported instead and they ended up in Castle Ravenloft.

They ended up in a room with a brazer with white flames and several coloured stones. There was also a rhyme mentioning that they could travel to different places with by throwing a coloured stone into the fire and then jump into it. They wanted to get out as quickly as possible, but I hinted that a lot of the stuff they look for is in the catacombs and that was just the stairway up and a corridor. Now, to make it easy I reasoned that they had seen the castle model in the Amber Temple and I gave them the map of castle Ravenloft from there as well, in the book it was destroyed, so I just flipped to the map of the castle that came with the book to make it easier for them to navigate (plus I had no skill in writing it all up). Sadly it showed the traps so they could avoid the trap door that would have thrown them down to the torture chamber filled with the water zombies. Instead they could block it after fighting just one crawling zombie. 

They enter the catacombs and lucky for them they don't have to look through all the crypts, but they make a line toward the side crypts, first finding Sergei von Stradovich tomb. They open it and find the sunsword and a +2 plate armour. They of course ask nicely if they can take magic artefacts to fight the evil before taking them. They then goes to the tomb of the King and Queen, Strahd's father and mother. They first have to get past a curtain of blue light, which they use their second stored dispel magic on. They find the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind on the Queens tomb and take it and tries to go back to the teleporter. But they get ambushed by four vampire spawn that jumps down from the bat covered ceiling. Being level 7 they handled it pretty well just being 3 people. Of course Hope doesn't have magical weapons and should only have done half damage, but we forgot that. The spawns are killed and they get to the brazzier and throw the violet orb in, teleporting them to Tsolenka Pass. They use the final dispel magic spell to get past the fire and then heads to Vallaki again, arriving around 18:00. They eat, gives the talisman to Cygnus as the only one being able to use it and goes to bed, ending the session.

Now, I believe I just make Katrina and Cygnus play through the Festival of the Blazing Sun event, with the release of Rictavio's tiger so that they rescue it, befriends Rictavio that gets the tiger out and leads them to van Richten's tower where they are attacked by the werewolves they are looking for. They only get XP and there is no magical artefacts. They will get the knowledge of the Werewolf's Den and the full Barovian map, but that ties in to their back-story much more than Hope and Immeral. Hopefully I can lead them to Argynvostholt which leads them back to the castle and the dinner with Strahd as well as another excuse to looking for the skull of the dragon. 

Batman Beyond

 

Criminals are a stupid, cowardly lot!

They plan and plot, but they always get caught!

I had to get the blu-ray for Batman Beyond (or Batman of the Future here in Europe).It was broadcasted in Sweden when I grew up, but I can't say I watched, it didn't look that good and the intro put me of with its sound and visuals. Which was a mistake from my side since it's clearly a decent show. The behind the scenes stuff is kinda funny with the idea that they tried to appeal to kids, but somehow got an even more dark show. The old one also had a lot about drug addiction, but here we have a take on parents that abandon their children, children getting hooked on VR or genetic manipulation, Corruption, greed and all that. Here the villains more often die, maybe not mentioned, but they are gone. The TV-person that sinks to the middle of the earth, the league of assassins that are killed by their own, and the ink lady that disintegrates in water. Not to mention Terry's father and his father's coworker. 

Story is that Bruce Wayne gave up the cape when a heart attack forced him to use a gun during his last mission, several years later Terry McGinnis stumbles upon Wayne manor while being chased by a gang of Jokerz (a gang styling itself on the Joker) and takes the latest bat-suit to figure out who killed his father. That turns out to be Derek Powers, the businessman who took over Wayne Enterprises and established Wayne-Powers. During the fight, the nerve gas they experimented on got out causing Powers to turn into the radioactive super-villain Blight. First season is pretty much Terry fighting Derek Powers so that Bruce Wayne can get control of Wayne-Powers. 

Second season focuses more on Terry's everyday life at school and at home, while the third and last season is some mix between them. There is some villains that show up again, like Bane, Mr Freeze and Ra's Al-Ghul, and some references to other character. As well as a 2-parter with the Justice League being a hidden pilot for the Justice League shows that would follow. There's also one movie, Return of the Joker. It's also the censured version so instead of Tim Drake shooting the Joker, we instead get the electrocution of him instead (how that is more child friendly I don't know). There's also the instant when the Joker kills a henchman, and instead of firing at him, gas him with laughing gas so that he lays spread on the table with this grotesce smile. Again, how that is more child friendly is beyond me. 

Overall good enough. Not the same pull like Batman the Animated Series. Still fine though. Hopefully we can get Superman and Justice Leauge in 2021 or 2022 so I can get all those good DC series.

A DnD Tale: Curse of Strahd - Back to Vallaki

Back in town

So finally we get out of the Amber Temple. We load up all the treasures we can carry upon the wagon, uses one of the patches we found on the fiend in the statue to summon a horse to drag it and then control the shield guardian to carry other parts of the treasures. We walk all the way back to the Old Bone Grinder and hides all the treasures that isn't worth carrying around on the upper floor and then leaves the shield guardian to guard the place. We head back to Vallaki in order to get our bearings straight and figure out the next step. They go through the card reading again and get that the three treasures they need to fight Strahd is all in the castle and they have to figure out away to get there as well. They also figures out that one of the few places they haven't been in is Argynvostholt, the mansion of the order of the dragon who fought Strahd long ago before he destroyed it. The cards pointed to an ally that could fight Strahd there. And they still haven't found the third emerald pine cone that was stolen from the wizards of the wine.

They also realise that they haven't explored Vallaki that much so they begin asking around. There is a festival happening in a couple of days, called the festival of the blazing sun, that the Wachter family hates the burgomeisters and that green light appears in the attic of the burgomeisters house and that two servants have gone missing. They check on the Wachter family first and gets to meet the lady of the house. I dropped the plot here, so instead of keeping the mystery of Strahd IX I just gave away all the plot points about him being a vampire and the cause being murdering his brother to get his fiancé. Not, other players might say that it gave the whole mystery away, and they be right, but my sisters believe they were supposed to learn this back in the beginning of the adventure, meaning the meandering is a fault upon themselves, so deflecting blame back to the players are always better.

They also get information on the book club and that they are free to join if they could get rid of the burgomeister security guard. And that the burgomeisters son drove Lady Wachter's  daughter insane. Hope and Immeral decides to leave and come back at night to try to sneak in under cover of darkness. They come back at night, sneak into the basement and triggers a trap that awakens several skeletons. Immeral has the best roll of this game and single handedly fells all but one of the skeletons using the ki points to deal away damage. Hope doesn't have that much luck and blames it on a bear trap that bit her leg during the travels from the Amber Temple. They find a hidden passage that leads to a book club meeting that they decide that they better leave alone since they are only two and Immeral used up most of the ki points. So they rest up for the night and visits the burgomeister the next day. There they learn that two servants gone missing and the burgomeister hires them to find the missing people. None of the other servant dare to speak with them as long as Izak the security guard is around them so they are able to get the chef and he tells them that the only strange thing being that he was given orders by the burgomeister's son to feed the cat so he bring a tray of food every day. Also, the burgomeister invites them to join the parade tomorrow so they enact  plan. While the town is busy with the parade Hope, Immeral and Toby sneaks into the burgomeister mansion. Cygnus and Katrina joins the burgomeister on the parade... damn sisters splitting the party. 

Batman the Animated Series

 

Turn on the signal light!

Got the blu-rays for Batman the Animated Series last autumn and decided to check them all out after the Bond-marathon. Watched it originally on the Swedish channel 4 back in the 90's as it was first released. I was in a bit of a Batman phaze, watched the cartoon and my parents got a friend of there's to record Batman and Batman Returns from channel 3 (which we didn't have) on VHS. Yeah, I'm that old. Still loved watching it again. First season phenomenal, I can watch episodes like On Leather Wings and Hearts of Ice over and over again. The animation, the music and the voice acting is superb. A bit sad there isn't the Swedish voice track, but what are you gonna do? The behind the scenes commentary was also interesting with the animators pointed out that they didn't like the animation due to some of modelling and I can't see that, well, maybe how the batmobile curved itself traveling along some cliff

Compared to season 2 where I think they felt the modelling got better, but at the same time, there's fewer episodes I like to watch again. The Ra's Al-Ghoul episodes are probably the only one I can recall at the moment. Then again, I'm the weird one that really liked episodes like The Forgotten and It's Never To Late. Maybe not as a kid, but now I do since I get the symbolism. Then we have season 3 and the redesign... not a fan of it. I've seen people mentioning ScareCrow as a good redesign, but he's hardly in it and the original design scarred me a kid. The animators mentioned they really liked it, and I get since it was easier to animate and didn't get off-model whatever, but there's hardly any other episode I want to rewatch. 

There was also two movies in the collection. The Mask of the Phantasm and Sub-Zero. Never watched these as a kid. Phantasm, it looks great, and is a bit scary at times. It's a bit of a prequel to the whole series, but as someone pointed out, was it necessary to end with the Joker? Also, no commentaries or anything? A pity. Sub-Zero another Mr Freeze-story. Nothing much to say, it pretty much wraps up his story until the Batman Beyond episode. It's funny they got all Mr Freeze episodes on the blu-ray, even though 3 of them already is in this collection. Hearts of Ice is always watchable though. I'm missing one movie though, Mystery of the Batwoman. Don't know why that wasn't included. 

Update 2024-08-17: So a couple of months ago Netflix added the first season and they also had the original Swedish dub. So I watched that... well, the english original voices clearly is better. There is like 5 guys and two girls doing all the voices in Swedish and when Jim Gordon, Joker and the Pinguin have the same voice it gets kinda weird. A pity the trail episode was here with them all gathered. I gotta give them credit for the Ninja episodes where they speak Japanese and it's still the Swedish voice actors making it very coherent. No, I will probably watch the english dub forever onward, and there is something special with episodes like the Grey Ghost with Adam West just because it is Adam West and its so much better (or maybe Adam West is just a better voice actor than the Swedish dub).

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (Switch)

Meow Meow Meow!!!

Another remaster from Nintendo, this time of Super Mario 3D World. Played the original back in... 2014? 7 years ago? Good God! I feel old! Still, I for some reason liked it much more this time around. Mostly since I finished it in one day. Or at least beat Bowser in World 8... oh sorry, World Bowser. I went back and checked my old save on Wii U and I only got to World Fire Flower. This time I actually got to the final level. Mind you, I didn't finish it since it was hard so I started doing some groundwork for 100 % and for that you need to clear each stage with each character. It's not that hard after getting all stamps and green stars, but it's tedious. I basically started one character from first to last level I finished. Mario and Luigi is almost done. Then after Bowser stages done by secret character Rosalina and occasional Toad and Peach done here and there where they were needed or in Toads case used for a faster time just running through. Still, challenging all the way through. The only thing that was interesting was how they handled the few levels needing touch controls on the Wii U Pad, but was solved with use of a trigger and the controls inner gyro. Worked very well.

The interesting part was the Bowser's Fury. An all new mode in real 3D. Mario is helping Bowser Jr after Bowser went crazy and covered in oil rampages through some lake so Mario sets out collecting Cat Shines in order to awaken the Cat Bell that enlarges Mario so that he can battle Bowser's huge form. 100 shines and I 100 % it in 10 hours. So that was my Sunday. Man, I guess I really was well prepared after finishing the Super Mario 3D All-Star Collection. I really liked this mode. Hard to see it as a direct sequel to Super Mario 3D World since it could as easily have been an Odysseus sequel. Maybe that the Power Ups is more showing it. One thing I really liked was that you could collect 5 of each and use it as see fit, and I really liked that since I was getting a bit annoyed in the base game having to go to an old level to get the right upgrade since I needed it in another level. A problem in the mode is that as we get close to the end Bowser never left the Fury mode, meaning if I didn't die or found another shine it was a hurdle so it was easier just to die. Think you got more time as well before the next showing.

I really liked that game. It was a true 3D Mario game, maybe a bit short and pretty much one world, but it was a fun world. The use of Plessie to travel around was real fun and using it in the final battle, real fun. Also the boss battles with Bowser is amazing, feels great ground pound him or just stun lock him with his own created pillars. 

Hyrule Warrios: Age of Calamity

 

Hero Time!

As mentioned in the last post, I got this game and after playing through Breath of the Wild I could finish this of. I clocked 65 hours in to the game and pretty much 100 % it. It was marketed as a prequel to Breath of the Wild and it delivers on that. Begins as Link is mortally wounded before being put in the Shrine of Resurrection as Zelda's awakening of the power of light also awakens a mini-Guardian that was in the Castle. It escape through a portal and travels back in time. Link, Zelda and Impa is trying to stop Calamity Ganon from emerging and so gathers the Champions to control the Divine Beast as Zelda tries to awakens the sacred light within her while Link gets the Master Sword. At the dawn of the Calamity everything goes to hell. The castle is overrun and the Divine Beasts are corrupted by Ganon. Link and Zelda tries to rescue the Champions, but before they arrive, warriors from the future have returned to the past. Sidon, Yenobo, Tebe and Riju arrives to rescue their respectively Champion. So we enter a different timeline.

The king was also able to escape and Master Kogha of the Yiga clan switch sides after being betrayed by the seer Astor that killed his second in command. You also befriends Hestu the korok and you can find the secret characters Monk Maz Koshia and the Great Fairy. Everyone attacks Hyrule Castle, but after defeating Astor and a corrupted version of the mini-Guardian they merge, corrupt the good mini-Guardian so you have to destroy it. Afterwards you fight a humanoid beast form of Calamity Ganon, but no attacks are able to land, until the broken mini-Guardian comes to life and runs toward Zelda and kamikaze-bombs itself upon Calamity Ganon and allows the heroes to seal Ganon away, saving Hyrule. Damn, I never thought I would feel sad for the mini-Guardian.

Now, the main story is over, but you can still do missions for pieces of the mini-Guardians to unlock it as a playable character and also get Calamity Ganon. I actually 100 % it, the reward being the clothes of Link from the first Hyrule Legends. Interesting enough I felt rather disappointed by that since it was staggering with things all the time that made me continue (upgrades and the secret characters), but after that it just disappeared. Which was good since there wasn't anything else, but they could at least made some fanfare or something. Also, in the beginning I didn't like the map system since it didn't make sense, but I got used to it and some upgrades clearly improved it as it was easy to see which missions had the potential for parts to upgrade with and such.

It was fun game. Love the details, take for example that there is this only woman paegent in Gerudo desert, but the male Gorons are allowed in, like in the game since the Gerudos can't see if they are male or female. Love those small details. A bit of a cop-out with the split timeline, I was expecting to cry my eyes out watching the last stand of Link before being killed. Hope Breath of the Wild 2 arrives soon cause I got a craving for more of this world.

Update: Well, what do you know, they announce DLC just a week after me finishing it. Alright, at least Im in phase for this game compared to the first Hyrule Warriors. Pretty much expect Sooga, Robbie and Pura (or whatever her name is) as playable characters, maybe Astor too. Otherwise I don't know. A couple 100 more deku seeds as well.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Champion's Ballad

They are all dead Dave!

Took me 4 years, but I finally got round to play the DLC of this game. Mostly because I was starting up the new Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and got this real craving for playing Breath of the Wild again and since you might have guessed from the Bond-Marathon, I haven't been playing video games for some time. I actually took a whole month of in January of 2021 not playing a single game. Maybe winter depression or chaos of the world, but I just couldn't feel it so I watched movies and TV-shows instead. And now this come back and I recall why I loved the game when it first came out.

So first I began looking through all the rest of special costumes and whatnot I hadn't gathered, like N64 Ganondorf, Tingle and some royal guard costume. I tried if I could get through the Trial of the Sword in order to upgrade the Master Sword, but no luck. All goes well up to the first stone giant, so I hate the lizfalos. They wreck me and I don't know how to get past that, and that is something like level 7-9 and there's 45 of them! I just wanted to get to the first checkpoint!

So that was a dud so I began looking into the the Champion's Ballad. You get four new shrines on the Great Plateau which grants you the last heart or stamina piece in the game (heart piece in my case) which you must do with a special weapon that one-hit kills everything, but means you can only take one hit as well. Took some time, but I did it. Really satisfying destroying each camp of monsters. A new quest is given as each Divine Beast region gets 3 new shrines which you need to find from a pillar that appears near the beast. It shows like a satellite map which makes certain areas harder, but not impossible. You also get a poem for each to solve in order to open the shrines. Biggest trouble was the desert one in the Yiga clan hideout. I thought I had to guide a rolling snowball into the hole, but instead it was an orb you got from the hideout. Probably spent an hour trying again and again until I looked it up.

After finding and solving each shrine you get an emblem and a small scene as the Champions are asked to become champions. Getting all four you return to the resurrection chamber and unlocks a 5th dungeon. Solve that lets you fight Monk Maz Koshia and that gives you control of the 5th Divine Beast, a motorbike formed like a horse. Which you need to fuel with materials every so often. It was rather fun driving around afterwards. Gathered some more koroks seed that I don't how I could have missed the first time around. I went to the hidden temple with all the Guardians and thought, maybe it's time to get revenge so I killed every single one of them before finding it satisfactory for this time.

A bit bummed I couldn't finish the trial of swords, but hey, what are you gonna do? Get good at the game?

Skyfall

Still miss the old posters, but at least the barrel is there.

Film 23 and the 50th anniversary of the movie series since it was released in 2012. A bit hyped in Sweden as the the villain in the beginning was a Swedish actor. Begins with a mission where Bond is shot by one of the MI6 snipers (who later turns out to be a Moneypenny so establishing that character as well). Bond is presumed dead and M and is being questioned on how the mission could fail, the bad guy got away with some computer that I guess contained information about NATO agents as such. After a briefing on their way back someone blows up the MI6 building and begins releasing information about the agents. Bond watching in a bar in some village in Turkey or around there, travels back to London and begins the search which leads to South East Asia and some casino in Macao that takes him to some abandoned island.

Turns out that the bad guy is behind all this is some former MI6 agent named Silva who wants revenge after he was captured and suffered from an old cyanid capsule as he tried to take his life. Seems the pain drove him insane. Bond takes him hostage and back to London. Turns out that was part of the plan as the new Q looking into Silvas computer finds a virus that releases him and enables him to escape as a subway cop in order to infiltrate the hearing where M is questioned in order to kill her. Bond arrives in time to save her and take her away and gets his private Aston Martin and drives to his ancestral home Skyfall to fight Silvas off. The grounds keeper, 007 and M fights them off, but in the end M is fatally wounded, but Silva stills bites it. 007 returns to MI6 and meets the new M, Ralph Fiennes that have been in the movie all along.

It might be that I watched them all in a row for a very short time, but I'm getting bored by these movies. Besides that I don't know why. Maybe that I don't care about M which makes the whole emotional weight of the movie rather pointless for me. Cause the conflict is more with her, it has nothing with international politics or such things. They try to put it as a fight between the old and new as MI6 and spies are not needed with the dawn of the internet and such and the cold war ended 20 years ago. And I can see that, but as things like Snowden and Wikileaks proved, you still need someone to give the information away and if you want it from the enemy you need to get in there. Cause a fact was that Wikileaks only released information from the western world since those where the once that where willing to let out the information, none from Russia and China so it pretty much only hurt the western world. Now, don't get me wrong, it showed the hypocrisy and evil things that was committed by what we call democracies and want to have higher standards for it. 

Quantum of Solace

Another Way To Die!!!

Quantum of Solace, the first James Bond-movie I saw in cinema and that was back in 2008 when I was in the US. So maybe I'm blinded by nostalgic feelings, but I think this is the best Daniel Craig Bond-movie. First off, best song and soundtrack for Craig. Everyone else seems to hate the song Another Way To Die, but I love it. It's the only Bond track I got on my iPod after the Dalton-movies. They even used parts of the song in the actual soundtrack.

Story-wise it follows the last movie with Bond taking mr White to M for questioning, but a double agent set him free and is later killed by 007 who chased after him. Looking into the double agent 007 gets to Haiti to look into a contact for the agent, Bond kills him and is picked up by a woman who leads him to Dominic Greene, the head of an environmental organisation. Turns out the organisation is a front for Quantum, the organisation that mr White worked for. Greene is staging coups in Latin America and is looking into Bolivia at the time where a general is after the power. Meanwhile the CIA is striking a deal with Greene for the oil that Greene would be getting his hands on.

007 gets stranded by the MI6 after he gets framed by Quantum for killing a body guard to an adviser to the British government that are part of Quantum so he gets help from the agent he suspected double crossed him in Casino Royale so he gets to Bolivia. MI6 sends another agent to look over him. Both agents gets killed by Quantum, but Leiter slips him information about Greene's deal with the general so 007 and some Bolivian woman who's family was killed by the general go to the desert. Turns out that Quantum isn't after oil, but water. They dammed up the water in the area and are about to get control of most of Bolivia's water supply and are to resell it to Bolivia as a monopoly provider, fooling both the general and the CIA. 007 blows them up and the dam giving water back to the people. And then the movie ends with Bond confronting the agent that lured Vesper Lynd to betray him in Casino Royale and taking him alive.

I like this story. It's smart enough to get that oil isn't fought over more, but water is a new conflict resource, and people needs water. I might find it interesting since I studied American Foreign Policy in the US and it was brought up, conflict due to natural resources like water. Is the Israel-Palestinian conflict still religious, or is it due to who controls the water of the Jordan river? What happens when Sudan decides that it will block the Nile for their own electrical consumption that will make the Nile canal in Egypt worthless? Climate change, Scandinavium stands to be winner with a bit better warmer climate, but we already notice that we might have to think about conserving water since the changed weather patterns creates droughts (even in my own region). Might also be fun in that it pokes fun on the Americans, not only that they are so focused on oil that they miss the water, the bad guys take everything in euros since the dollar isn't what it used to be. That's a reference that the dollar plummeted in value probably around 2006 to be able to make it into the movie until the economic crash of 2008 in September. I mean, you could get a $ 1 for almost less than 6 SEK, it hasn't been that low since 1992 when the Krona was pegged to 5 SEK per dollar (we got used to at least 10 SEK per $ before and now it hovers around 8-9 SEK per $). It was a really great time being in the US with that dollar, but people was a bit scarred when it suddenly rushed up after the crash.

I still like it, it has forward looking plot, a shadowy organisation behind it all and it works rather well.

Casino Royal

 

The first shall be the last

21st film and Danial Craigs first. A reboot of the series as Bond is given his 00-license by killing an informant selling information from within the MI6. His first mission is to get a bomb maker in Madagascar which leads him to the Bahamas... is it the 3rd or 4th time we are in the Bahamas? And that leads to Miami where a terrorist organisation plan to bomb a new prototype airplane to tank the stocks of the company and win by betting against it. Bond stops that and the man with the money is in trouble. Le Chiffre as he is know is the treasury of an unknown organisation that take cares of terrorist groups money and lets them get it from everywhere in the world. And he gambled the money on the stock market and now the customers want their money back so he arrange a card game at the Casino Royale to get 150 million dollars to pay off the debt, the MI6 sends in 007 as their player.

So most of the tension is on the card game, throw in one assassination attempt on Le Chiffre from a dissatisfied customer and another on Bond with some poisoned drinks. Bond also loses the game at one point, but the incognito CIA-agent Felix Leiter allows him to use his part of the buy-in since he isn't good enough to beat Le Chiffre. Nice to see Leiter again since License to Kill. Bonds win, but after the game he and his assistant Vesper Lynd gets kidnapped by Le Chiffre to get back the money since his organisation will have his head. And they still do since as a Mr White said before killing him, trust is very important for their organisation.  Bond is rescued, believes that their contact man Mathis betrayed them and gets him taken by the MI6 for questioning. 007 and Lynd goes on holliday in Venice... also for the 3rd or 4th time. Turns out that Lynd was the snitch as she was black mailed by the organisation and she dies in a shoot out in a sinking house. Ends when Bond confronts Mr White who is the man behind it all. 

It was way better than the Pierce-movies, and I think it might be that it doesn't have the obvious fake effects like the missiles, explosions and paragliding in Iceland. It even have decent behind the scenes documentaries with Bond and the producers. The main title song don't move me, but the soundtrack works rather well. Still not as good as the older movies. M is still Judy Dench, but no Q or Moneypenny. Also, the threat is grounded in terrorism and a shadowy organisation behind them all. Good enough for me. Stock market gambling and all that still works and you shall never use company funds for your own pleasures. And you especially don't gamble with them. Especially more fun after the GameStop stockmarket debacle at the beginning of 2021.

Die Another Day

 

Is it over soon?

20th Bond-movie and the last of Brosnans-movies and basically the last of Classic Bonds. Or maybe Classic Bond is always before the current Bond? Whatever, we start in North Korea as Bond infiltrates the country and leads a helicopter astray with a diamond curier... not another diamond smuggling story! This gonna be bad. Still, he gets in and meets the son of a high ranking general, Moon, that I think gives weapons for diamonds, but they get information that Bond is a British spy so they arrest him and intends to kill him so Bond activates the bomb within the case of diamonds and hunts Moon until he crashes into the sea and apparently dies. Bond gets taken in by the father and is tortured for 14 months, all over Madonna's song Die Another Day. Worst Bond-theme ever.

He's exchanged for Moon's closest ally (who got some of the diamonds lodged into his face after the bomb went off) that got caught after killing three Chinese agents in some peace summit between China and South Korea. He's also believed to have broken down and given information on agents in North Korea so that was why MI6 had to get him out. To clear his name 007 escapes the facility in Hong Kong he been taken too he enters a hotel to get refreshed as well as get information from the Chinese agents running it. They send him to Cuba where diamond face have been going. There he meets a CIA-agent Jinx and enters a clinic that focuses on genetical engineering of rich clients. 007 tries killing diamond face, but fails and only gets some diamonds that are identified as conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone, but engraved with Gustaf Graves insignia, a businessman with a diamond mine in Iceland.

Bond confront him in a gentleman club with some fencing action until he's stopped by Graves personal instructor Miranda Frost. He's contacted by M and learns that Frost is an undercover agent tracking Graves so Bond is off to Iceland and Graves Ice Palace where he unveils Icarus, a solar satellite that can give solar energy for crop development all year round. But 007 discovers that he is in fact the genetical engineered Moon that survived the intro of the movie. Bond have him corned but is betrayed by Frost that also was the informant that got him caught in North Korea. And she did all that because Graves made the fencer that won gold medal in an olympics against Frost to default by giving the person steroids. Feels a bit small for betraying your country to a terrorist. Bond and Jinx escape and goes to the Korean border where the Americans and MI6 are stationed. A coup in North Korea where Graves father been overthrown by the nationalist and Graves as they begin using Icarus to level the mine filed and also take away the US nuclear umbrella, enabling North Korea to take over South Korea. Jinx and 007 boards Graves plane, kills Graves and escapes by dropping a helicopter midair from the plane.

Seen by many as the worst in the series and I'm inclined to agree. The effects doesn't look that good, not compared to earlier movies. Might still be the higher quality of the picture overall showing the faults more easily. Music is not that good, and it starts with the gun barrel sequence at the start of the movie with updates to the original theme. I liked it in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but that sounded good (or I prefer that sound would probably be more correct). It's also bit problematic in that it's the 40th anniversary so they look back to the older movies, the plot is inspired by Diamonds Are Forever for example with the diamond smuggling and satellite plot. The Aston Martin is back and we get a whole sequence with the old gadgets. But Bond should try to predict the future and this just defeats the purpose since it's already been done. Also, the North Koreans... yes, they are the only country one could show as evil during 2002 since that wouldn't affect box office numbers, but would they really risk biting the hand of China by killing their agents? China is pretty much the only reason no one does anything against them? 

Also the only Bond movie I owned before this collection. Must also add, that this movie had the worst content on how they made the movie. Overall, Brosnan-era wasn't that good. The only one who still would stand up would be GoldenEye since that threat is the only that would still work. All the other fails in some way, this one has North Koreans infuriating China, Tomorrow Never Dies have a Britain that believes they can take on China and The World Is Not Enough is destroyed by the collapse of the oil price after the recession of 2008. At least an EMP against a modern capital still works... but wasn't the microchips from A View to a Kill supposed to neutralise that threat?

The World Is Not Enough

 

The family motto

The 19th film and the last Bond-movie of the last millenia. As well as Desmond Llewelyn as Q as he tragically died after the films release. Longest serving actor on the movies so that won't probably be beaten for quite some time. Begins in Spain as Bond picks up some money that have been taken back by some Swiss banker, but 007 really want the name of the person behind it, but a fight breaks out, but he is saved by an unknown sniper. Back in London the moneys owner Sir Robert King thanks him, but is killed as a pin on him triggers an explosive reaction with the chemicals in the money and blows him up.

Turns out an old enemy of the MI6, ex-KGB Agent Renard that got a bullet in his brain from agent 009, is back to exact revenge. Bond goes to Azerbaijan to protect Elektra King, Robert Kings daughter and former kidnapped victim to Renard. King is an oil company that builds a pipeline on the north of the Black Sea (even more north you have Russian pipelines and on the south of the Black Sea  you have the oil from the Middle East). 007 follows a lead that takes him to a Soviet former nuclear base where Renard steals the plutonium from a bomb. It looks like the bomb is used to blow up a King plant via a pipeline but when Bond is there he finds that only half the plutonium is there and the rest is missing so he lets the bomb explode before reaching its target. Meanwhile Elektra has lured M to Azerbaijan and kidnaps her and moves her to Istanbul.

There Renard takes over a nuclear submarine on the pretense on getting equipment via deal with the ex-KGB agent from GoldenEye. The plan is to use the last of the Plutonium and get the submarine to meltdown and destroy the competition for the King company. Bonds stop it and blows it up.

I assume its the first time we have a female bad guy as the main antagonist, but they really muddle it with Renard so it looks like they try to have it's cake and eat it as well, since Elektra doesn't do as much sadistic things like the old main antagonist. Renard does it all and it's only in the end it's revealed Elektra is behind it all. Also, I get its ripped from the headlines with the oil pipes and such, but it feels like the plan falls short in 10 years when the oil price collapses and still haven't recovered some 10 years after that. Compare to Man With The Golden Guns focus on solar energy or A View To A Kill and the believes that microchips will be of importance. Maybe they thought oil would still be important even after like what happened with gold even though the gold standard fell 7 years after Goldfinger was released. 

Another things that bothers me is M. In GoldenEye she is described as all numbers and no gut reactions, following all the rules and all that and here... she seems to be to personally involved in the case just because she knew Sir Robert from school and putting her self in danger by bypassing  security protocols. Feels a bit inconsistent with her earlier portrayal, might be a problem related to that they try to give the supporting cast more depth and a calculating person is rather one-dimensional.

Tomorrow Never Dies

 

Fake News: The Movie

18th movie and I'm wondering if I'm getting fatigued on Bond-movies since I can't seem to keep my mind focused on them. Or even watch more than one movie a day. Or the quality of them really is slipping. It starts somewhere in the Russian mountains where terrorist are selling weapons toward different terror groups. Bond is there broadcasting it to London and the Royal Navy orders a missile strike. Turns out that one of the planes are equiped with some nuclear missiles so 007 have to get them out before the missiles strike. Which he does, credits roll and... the music is so boring. Music is really getting worse.

We start up in the Chinese sea where a British ship is being harassed by Chinese MIG:s for trespassing in their waters. In reality there GPS is being tampered by the News media corporation Carvers Media Group headed by Elliot Carver. With him is one hacker that was present at the terror auction and escaped before the missile hit. Carver has a stealth ship which torpedos the ship and then they blow up one of the MIG:s and lastly kills the surviving sailors with Chinese rifle ammunition. And Carver prints it directly so the next morning at London they get the information first from the news. The Navy wan't to retaliate and MI6 wants to investigate. Bond gets 48 hours and are sent to investigate Carver since they noticed something strange from one of his satellites as well as the interesting news that was released long before the Secret Service got news of the death of the sailors. 

007 gets to know Carter and a Chinese Agent. He gets in to the HQ and gets the machine that causes the GPS to malfunction. After escaping heads to South East Asia where he meets the CIA that with the machine can pinpoint where the ship actually sunk. He HALO drops into the water and finds out that a missile is missing and meets the Chinese agent again. Both gets captured by Carver that takes them to Saigon, they escape and finds out where the stealth ship is as it's about to push Britain and China to war as their navy's are standing against each other. 007 blows the stealth cover so Britain begins blowing the ship up. All enemy dies and the plan is foiled. The plan was causing a war, Carver would help by launching the stolen missile on Beijing killing the Chinese high command so that the General in his pocket could take over and give him broadcasting rights for 100 years, which he was denied before. In the process destroying the whole British navy.

On one hand, the fake news angle, media moguls holding the power and all that is off its time and would still works partly today, with the exception that the internet pretty much destroyed the monopolies of information that media moguls had. On the other hand... in what world does the British navy stand a chance against the Chinese military? I get being able to fight off Argentina in 1982, but the Chinese? Why not do it like in the older movies, put USA against China and Britain playing the mediator (think You Only Live Twice between USA and USSR)? On the other hand, we can probably track the huge overconfidence of the British that lead to Brexit from this time, what with New Labour and the British pop invasion of the 90's so why not global security as well? Or, thinking about it... maybe China in the 90's wasn't that military strong? I knew that the economy started to take off in the 90's and its GDP rose with 10 % per year up until the economical crash of 2008 and that they are trying catchup with the US, but the US is so far ahead I hardly see that as feasible for several decades, but they gotta have been able to take on China? Or was it some reaction for leaving Hong Kong to China? 

Goldeneye

 

Finally Bond is in Russia

17th movie and the first Pierce Brosnan-movie. Together with Judi Dench as M and Samantha Bond (haha) as Moneypenny. Q is still Q. It was also 6 years after the last movie so that was the longest delay between Bond-movies and still is. It begins in Archangels as 007 infiltrates a chemical plant together with 006. The mission goes wrong when 006 is captured by General Ourumov. 006 is shoot and Bond blows the plant up after escaping on an airplane. Credits and we go 9 years into the future. During an evaluation in Monaco Bonds encounters an operative of the Janus syndicate, Xenia Onatopp who seems to take a Canadian admiral to a yacht owned by Janus. 

Infiltrating the ship the next day he finds the corpse of the admiral and figures out that the target is the showing of a new french military helicopter. It's invisible for the radar and can withstand  an electric magnetic pulse (EMP). He can't stop it being stolen and returns to London. The helicopter travels to Russia and an old military space base which contains the keys to a weapon called GoldenEye. A couple of satellites that can once shoot an EMP. Xenia works together with Ourumov as they take the keys together with the hacker Boris that worked on the base. The only survivor is Natalya Simonova after Xenia kills all the worker and sets one of the satellites to fire at the base to hide the theft.

In London they watched the theft in realtime by satellite until the EMP blows all equipment. Connecting the fact that the Tiger Helicopter was at the place and probably stolen by the Janus syndicate Bond is sent to Moscow to confront the unknown leader of Janus. In Moscow he meets the CIA-agent Wade (who is played by John Don Baker that played Whitaker in the Living Daylights) that shows him to an ex-KGB-agent turned mob boss that leads him to Janus that turns out to be the very much, but scarred 006. 007 is knocked out and put in the Tiger Helicopter together with Natalya that searched for Boris the hacker and got caught by the bad guys. After escaping the heat seeking missiles they are taken in by the Russian military. The Russian Defence minister is questioning them, but seems to be aware of Ourumov's foul play. Doesn't help much when Ourumov appears, kills the minister, escapes with Natalya and Bond chases after them with a tank.

Ourumov escapes to an armoured train where 006 is. They use Natalaya as hostage to ensure that Bond can't kill them. Doesn't help that much since Ourumov gets killed, but 007 and Natalya is looked on the train with a bomb as 006 and Xenia escapes. Natalya tracks Boris with some hacker mumbo jumbo and that leads to Cuba. They escape the train and we are in Cuba. Wade gives them a plane, they get shot down from a secret base under a lake and taken in. Action, explosions. The plan of 006 is to fire the last GoldeEye on London after they hacked the banks and stolen all money to destroy the trace back to them, and also so that 006 can get vengeance on the British for betraying the cosacks in 2nd World War which was 006 family or something like that. Bonds blows everything up and then the marines and Wade show up from Guantanamo... another poor choice by the Bond crew after 9/11.

On one hand, I haven't seen it that much, but I played the N64 game a lot more so the first parts of the movie I know fully well. Never finished it though. For some reason I never got that they where in St. Petersburg, I thought they where in Minsk, Belarus. Don't know why I thought that. Back to the movie, watching it now... it's alright, but I don't get the nostalgia like for the older movies (even though I pretty much have seen all of them around the same time). It could also be due the effects not giving that aura of fantasy since the picture quality might be too good. Most of the time I couldn't see the tricks and miniatures on the old movies beside the documentaries, but here I clearly saw that it was a miniature setting they crashed the MIG-plane into and the heat seeking missiles on the Tiger looks really fake. 

Could also be that there doesn't seem to be the same documentaries that existed for every other movie, might be that there was more things saved that was shown around the release. I still want an explanation why Dalton quit, why it took 6 years for the next movie and the casting process for the other. And the other actors as well. They had Baker for The Living Daylights, why not his other Bond-movies? And the discussion of the music? It has some decent sounding themes, but they aren't that bombastic, and John Barry said himself that the sound should sound bombastic. But the main theme is nice, didn't know Bono wrote it. I should actually like the movie more than I do now, since I was obsessed with helicopters as a kid, with reruns of AirWolf and such. Maybe it's because the helicopter seems very much like the helicopter from the Batman the Animated Series.

License to Kill

 

Worst Bond?

16th movie, Timothy Daltons second and last movie as Bond, and it's said to be the grittiest of them all. Pre-credits scene follows first the drug lord Franz Sanchez getting back his girlfriend who ran away with some other bandit... and they proceed to cut his heart out. Out of sight of course. Then switch over to 007 together with Felix Leiter on the way to Felix wedding, when the drug patrol or whatever appears and tells them that Sanchez is in the Bahamas right now so Felix that heads the case for this goes off and 007 tags along. They capture him with their helicopter escaping to Cuba in his own plane. And then follows the song License to Kill. A large step down from the last movie, but who can top John Barry and A-ha? 

So Felix gets married. Sanchez escapes with the help of a dirty cop that he bribed with 2 million dollars and Sanchez retaliates by killing Felix's bride and feeding him to a shark. Not the whole body, just the leg to send a message. Which Felix survives so not a good plan I would say, even for the cop who took the money. I don't get why even try to take revenge on Felix. He even says it's nothing personal, only business, so why not just leave? As we learn he is on the cusp of a big deal so why even antagonising the Americans for killing their CIA-agent? Maybe they didn't expect a British rouge agent to deal with.

As this gets personal for Bond he finds the shark in a fishing centre owned by some researcher. Who in actuality is smuggling drugs for Sanchez with subs and aeroplanes. Oh, underwater action, must be a good Bond-movie. He finds the dirty cop and feeds him to the shark by throwing the case of money on him, which is a nice symbolism, greed kills him. 007 and Sharky, a mutual friend to Felix, starts to prepare an operation against the researcher, when Bond is taken to M who wonders why he isn't on his mission the arguments gets heated enough that Bond resign, but escapes to finish his own mission. At the yacht of the researcher he meets the girl again from the intro. Meanwhile they prepare to send a shipment to Sanchez and another boat appears with the body of Sharky. So 007 kills the man responsible, destroys the shipment of drugs and steals the money from the plane that made the delivery. A good scene.

Alone, 007 gets to Leiters home where he saw Felix hide all information he had on the Sanchez case where he locates the last living informant, Bouvier. Bond finds Bouvier at a bar when Sanchez henchmen shows up, Bouvier is packed with a shotgun and is able to hold the place so that she and Bond can escape. As a former pilot she agrees to fly 007 to Ishtmus City, the capital of Ishtmus in Latin American country, mimicking the strongmen militaries of that continent and the drug lords around there. Of course, many of them was sponsored by the USA as to try to stop the spread of communism. The film doesn't go into that. In Ishtmus Bond get closer to Sanchez and during the night he lays explosive plastic around the plexiglas window to blow it up and with a special gun that only 007 can use, that Q gave him, intends to assassinate Sanchez. He's stopped by Hong Kong drug police that works with the British operative. The failed assassination disturbs their plan to get to the factory that creates the drugs Sanchez is selling around the world. They were there undercover as drug lords to join Sanchez in a drug cartel over the whole Pacific with some new experimental drug that can be hidden in petrol and then extracted, making it impossible to track.

Bond is taken to their hideout and is about to be sent home to England, but Sanchez military tracked them down and in the fight kills the other agents, leaving Bond unconscious tied to a table. Already established with Sanchez, the drug lord thinks the other agents tried to kill him and Bond tried to stop them, and was the reason for being tied up. So Bond starts manipulating him by making him paranoid over his own henchmen. The researcher he insinuates payed the sum to get Sanchez killed so Sanchez investigates the ship as it comes back. He finds the money Bond stole, but now it looks like it was embezzled. So the researcher is thrown into a decompression chamber and makes him explode. 007 is invited to the laboratory and when the henchmen that was at the bar recognises him, he starts burning up the place with the high explosive drug. He also get Sanchez to kill the head of security. Then follows a chase with tanker trucks, all destroyed and in the end Bond lights the petrol drained Sanchez up in flames with a cigarette lighter he got from Felix as a present at the wedding. Everyone in Ishtmus celebrates and Bond talks with Leiter over the phone that recovered. And then he gets away with Bouvier. The end.  

One of the movies I saw the least of, mostly since my parents though it probably wasn't good for a kid to see it. And they were probably right. The violence is graphic, the revenge theme is heavy. Watching it now, it's pretty decent. Maybe not the best plot to go with two drug related movies after each other. Also, the plot isn't that world endangering. Music is not that great. And I can't help notice that something looks off with Daltons hair. It's only been two years between movies, but looks like Dalton got hit hard with aging. Compare to Connery and Moore. Connery got some silver in the hair while Moore only got wrinkles. And the title for the Swedish version was Time for Revenge since they already used the title back in first movie and after this they didn't even bother translating the movies.