I think I want to shake the hands of the developers of the PS2 game, Suikoden III. Then I want to kick them in the shins.

I recently finished what was overwhelmingly a great game. Lots of fun. Beautifully put together. I haven't played any of the earlier Suikodens--I've been told I would have recognized certain characters and had a little more in the way of their back stories if I had. Even so, the game had a story line that was comprehensible whether you've played the earlier games or not.

I wil start with the things about the game that made me want to tear my hair out in painful clumps. I'd rather start with the negative and get it over with. Ultimately, this review is much more about the positives.

1. The first and probably the largest downfall of Suikoden III is that it initially requires lots of patience: I played several hours off and on before I really became interested in it. I know other people who set it down and never picked it up again. Too bad. The game really begins to give you more freedom and get addictively fun after the set of second chapters.

2. Another thing that drove me nuts initally was the fact that there was a pretty steep learning curve, and the game did little to teach me how to use rune magic, up characters in magic and fighting skills, create combos, figure out what people's potential in different areas was, etc. I'm used to the Final Fantasy-type games, where you are bombarded with instructions. It took awhile to understand everything. I realized as I went along that I'd been playing with a seriously underequipped party for a while.

3. There are not many times where you fight numerous long battles and don't have a chance to save, but one is too many.

4. It takes a while to catch on to the "Suikoden Way." In the same way as someone who has never played a Mario game has no clue that spraying open windows with water in Mario Sunshine will produce a gold coin, I didn't have a feel for Suikoden at first. I would occasionally get frustrated with the pace of the story. In that respect it felt a little forced. ie: run around trying to trigger the next plot point. Or try sleeping. Something might happen the next day.

5. This happens a couple times: I hate battles where the player is destined to lose no matter what. "I just kicked your ass. Now you're stealing my stuff and telling me you're letting me go??"

And now on to the positives.

1. All in all, the story line was pretty well crafted. Three nations vying agaist each other under the threat of something that seeks to destroy all three, and you are able to play a character from each. You choose which character you want to play first, then between chapters, you can switch to another person to see the perspective from the point of view of other cultures. Seeing things from three perspectives was enjoyable. Little things that are a mystery from one point of view suddenly become clear when you play the same time period from another perspective. I was pretty even-handed with the characters--I played chapter 1 with all three people before moving on to chapter 2. It's not at all repetative. In fact it's interesting when characters ocasionally overlap.

2. I really liked the way each culture had a very clear identity. The Xexan Federation looked and worked akin to Shakespearean England-- knights and tudor architecture. The Grasslands were a cooperating force of six tribes. Each tribe had a distinct cultural attitudes and customs, along with colors and designs. Beautifully done. It contributed enormously to the atmosphere of the game. Later in the game you work to create a place of neutral ground-- an area where all the cultures can trade and coexist peacefully. Because they were so distinct before, it made it more rewarding to see everyone interacting.

3. Amazing. I just played an rpg and didn't even spend hours leveling characters up so I could beat the final boss. You collect 108 playable characters over the course of the game, and at first I dreaded trying to level them all up to each other. But Suikoden III is not at all stingy with rewards. When you kill something stronger than you are, you get massive amounts of experience. ie: add a level 4 charcater to a group of level 30-somethings, and within a few "just tough enough to be interesting" fights, you're all within a few levels of each other. Another nice feature is that experience is not divided among characters. For example, if only one character survives the fight, they receive the same amount of experience they would have otherwise. Makes it so one person doesn't leap up in front so much, and gives more even leveling up. Also then I don't begrudge the experience to characters I don't prefer. There are also several optional bosses who give enormous amounts of money and rare items in addtition to pretty good experience. A few visits here and there, and everyone is up to par.

4. Every Item in the game has a purpose if you want it to. Example: You begin to find a series of recipes early on--later in the game, a character you recruit sets up a little cafe at your home castle. (one of the many people you convince to set up businesses or move to your castle/town.) The recipes, combined with spices or vegetables you find in different parts of the country, can be used to create foods that are useful for eliminating various status effects or recovering huge amounts of HP. However, none of that is obligatory. I like having choices.

5. The optional side quests are a good fun, and worth your while. I mentioned the optional bosses earlier, but there are also two different card games one can play, a track race one can do for prizes, and a series of really freaking adorable dogs found various places that can be adopted to live at the castle. (only one is part of the 108 stars you're collecting) More very cute things about the dogs, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who's eventually going to play. You are also able to buy items at a trading post in one town and make quite a bit of money by keeping your eyes open and selling for a profit later. Don't sell too many of the same rare item to one town though, or the value will go down as the market gets saturated. There are several other fun things that shed light on your more mysterious charcters-- a detective who will do funny little investigations into the character of your choice, and a bathhouse/sauna where different combos of characters will produce enlightening and often pretty funny conversations.

My very favorite of the random additonal activities, though, is putting on plays! Hurrah! Once you've acquired a theatre director and some of the scripts, you will have a chance to select a cast from the characters you've collected. Every charcter has acting strengths and weaknesses, and each responds differently according to the role. Let the hijinks ensue! The Boy and I spent an entire evening putting together unlikely casts and producing plays. Sometimes it's very very funny. Many times the audience hates it. "Sir Boris of the Xexen Knights stars as the little match girl! See 'Romeo and Juliet' with an all ninja cast!" Every now and then you get wild applause for something completely unlikely.

SO. I reccommend that if you can find it cheap, Suikoden III is a load of good fun. Lots of detail, and not many negatives that can't be avoided.

- Transmission end -

An additon to the "Bookstore Sections People Think We Ought to Have" list:

Today someone was appalled that we didn't have a specific section for books about "Great Human Achievments of the 20th century."

This afternoon a boy walked up to the counter and said,"I need To Kill a Mockingbird." All three of the booksellers at customer service simultaneously quipped, "Man...What did a mockingbird ever do to you??" (Snort! ....Ok. So it wasn't funny.) The kid was not particularly amused. "Oh....I mean, uh, the book." Boy maintains that his response would have been a solomn, "It mocked me. And now it must die."

Also: when a book is as huge a seller as The South Beach Diet is, it's a pretty sure bet that every person whose trade is books knows whether it's out in paperback and possibly even the exact laydown date that it will be. 2 older ladies today were put out that we didn't have the paperback. (It always kills me when people in fur coats with huge rocks on their hands won't shell out the couple extra bucks for a hardcover.) I began to let them know that the book is not out in paperpack and won't even be printed till the spring, but got cut off by one of the lady's declaring that "Yes it is so out. You can get it at Target for $6.99. You people should know these things." I thought about informing her that the paperback she saw is a little fat/carb counter South Beach book, not the one she was thinking of... but suddenly I didn't care at all that she'd be wasting her time and getting the wrong book. I was even...dare I say it? A tiny bit satisfied.

Bad! Bad bookseller! Sit in the corner! No cookie!

I used to feel sorry for junior high girls.

Well...Some of them I still feel sorry for. Being a junior high girl can be an exercise in rejection, uncertainty and depression. My junior high years were. I'm glad to see some preteen girls today sure of themselves and taking the world by the horns. Except that so many of them drive me nuts. While I wouldn't wish the evils of my preteen years on them, they can bloody well celebrate their adolescence somewhere else, thanks.

Point in case: there is a flock of 13ish year old girls who keep our "hokey fluff-manga" section in business. (Not to be confused with "hokey fight-manga" for boys. Or, for that matter, "freaking amazing and cool manga," which is a much rarer beast than the previous two.) They pull vast quantities of books off the shelves and sit in the aisle, commenting on how attractive various characters are. (ie: "Ewwww! I would never read that! He's totally ugly!" Or "That's not even cute!" They're loud and annoying and wost of all--in my way. The other day during the huge snowstorm, they descended on the store and made nests of books back in Graphic Novels. Their squeals and yapping rang through the mostly empty store. They trooped up to the register with their purchases. There, thanks to the indescribable indescisiveness of jr highers, the poor clerk stood there 20 minutes trying to reverse a transaction one of the girls had made with a Visa gift card. She'd then decided she want to pay cash for so she had the kicks of knowing there was still 30 dollars on her card. (Did anyone mention that the card is the same as cash? You can use either of them anywhere.) But no--the whim had taken her, and she was adamant.

While they waited I heard things like, "The only reason I love Justin Timberlake is that he looks like Orlando Blooooom." Agreeing sighs and oooohs from the rest of the flock. Or "Did you see such-n-such (awful) film? It was soooo cool. Orlando Bloom wasn't in it though. But it was still sooo cool." Tee-heeing and pushing each other around ensues. One particularly perky (used in the worst sense of the word) girl felt the need to loudly comment on how everything everyone else liked was "so retarded." What a jewel. It was when she pulled her hands into her sleeves and started slapping the other girls with them that I began to gnaw off my own arm. One ill-timed slap and a display of Burts Bees's moisturizer in a glass jar smashed from the counter to tile below, shattering. The was a moment of silence, then the princess declared shamelessly, "That's sooo retarded that they had that there!"

Yeah. So stupid that we display merchandise at the counter, where people will obviously be slapping their empty sleeves. Still, a spark of something in me that wants to protect people from embarassment manifested itself. It always does. I pretend not to see if someone trips. I try to make people feel better for some reason. Save their dignity or something. My big mistake was that this girl had no dignity. One of her friends started picking up the pieces of the broken jar, and apologized. Maybe it was for her sake that I said, "Don't worry about it. It was just a sampler." What point was there in telling her that it was a $12 jar and she'd have to pay for it? She didn't have the money. She'd just spent it on fluff-manga. I took over for the dear little friend who was trying to be helpful. Bless her. Find some new people to hang around with, Chica. Princess hopped on one foot and whined while I cleaned the mess she'd made. Then she began to---what??--- slap people with her jacket again. I finally gritted my teeth and snarled, "Considering what you just did, I'm amazed that you're still flapping your jacket around." Apparently my wording was too complex because she looked at me as she slapped and said, "....Huh?" I finally yelled, "Will you STOP IT???" Whereupon she turned a little red (Thank GOD, maybe there is some hope.) and reverted instead to hopping on one foot until the register snaffoo with her indecisive friend was complete.

Book store sections people feel we ought to have :

1. The Anti-Bush Section. "I'm looking for 'Bush Whacked.' You know--anti Bush books? Where are they?"
Let's head over to the entire poli-sci area, shall we?

2. "There's this book, and I don't remember the author or title or what it was about, but it was this greenish color and it was like, this big?" Ah! Fortunately, our Greenish This-Big Book Section was just restocked.

3. The Angel Section. "I want a book for a 12 year old with facts about angels. Where's the Angel Section?" When I questioned more closely, she got testy. "The books of angel facts. Information on them. You know--non fiction!" Not that I don't believe in angels, but facts? Like what they eat? Plumage colors? Mating behavior? Would the bird section do? I led her to inspiration/religion, but clearly she was not interested in Cherabim, Seraphim, their eternal chant of "Blessed is the Lord God of Hosts," and their roles in Revelations. After she haruphed a bit and mentioned Sylvia Brown, I promptly repositioned her in metaphysics.

4. Perhaps this section is right next to the type of Angel Section mentioned previously. I was cornered by an uncomfortably wide- eyed and intense woman recently asking for the section on "Indigos." Umm. I wasn't clear on what an Indigo was, and therefore wasn't much help--even after she declared that she HAD ONE. When I failed to register the appropriate look of awe and jealousy, she caught on, and explained that basically it is a child who is a reincarnated angel: Blessed little beings who see people's auras and predict the future and have visions and are a rainbow of peace to the world. "And then they grow up into total bastards, right?" Actually, I held my tongue. Yeah, I believe kids are special, but what about her other kid, who's not an "Indigo" and can't get away with murder by exuding peace, holding up two fingers in a benediction and saying, "Mother, the time will come when you will see my grand purpose for ordering an X-box online with your credit card." What about him? How fucked up will he be? He looked worked over already, just standing there in all his awkward gawky puberty, glaring at the ground and ocasionally rolling his eyes when his mother spoke. Darn The Indigo section.

Once again… It’s been long enough since I wrote a nice long post and had the computer shut down or the browser close unexpectedly or do something stupid myself to completely negate all the time I spent….uh….where was I going? Oh. It’s been long enough that I forget that I swore in rage that I would never blog again.

Christmas was magic when I was little. There was never a Santa Claus, but it was just fine--though I will certainly be creating some sort of Santa mythos for my own kids. So many traditions. Just as Easter is my mother’s holiday, Christmas is my father’s. All the traditions either stem from his side or the family, or are something he concocted for us.

Christmas Eve: during the day the lucky ones got to go to a movie with my dad. The not as lucky, or “too old” ones stayed home and frantically cleaned and baked and wrapped along with my mom. After the inevitable church service that night, we’d return home and the sisters would exchange a gift or two. My brother didn’t happen along until I was 15. Thus, to this day, the exchange of sibling gifts is still referred to as “Sisters Gifts.” (i.e: "Shall we do Sister Gifts before or after the PJ Hunt?")
As implied by the previous statement, another big part of my early Christmases was the annual pajama hunt. My dad created a series of riddles every year—poetic little rhyming things that led us to various places to find the next clue. At the end of the hunt was a stash of brand spankin’ new pjs for us to wear that night. After running upstairs to change, we all gathered around the kitchen table and dad poured us each a little glass of some sort of cheap red wine, and we solemnly toasted various things, drank the wine while making eeewwww! faces, and were immediately ready to go to sleep. (Clever, Dad….clever.) Then the candles of the candelabra were lit, and we were each lighted to bed and tucked in by candlelight.

Cue visions of sugar plums.

Christmas Day: Inevitably as small children, we woke at unearthly hours and attempted to start the day until the parents decreed one year that no one was allowed down the stairs until 7am. Thereafter, we sisters gathered with hushed giggling at the top of the stairs in the wee hours. It was arranged who would carry the littlest, (inevitably there was someone too small to leap down the stairs with the herd) and as the clock in the hall began to chime seven, we perched in the dark on the top stair, ready to fly down the moment the last chime finished. Those were hazy, magic memories… the tree, lights glowing, with presents mounded impossibly high to my young eyes, and in the light of it, our stockings beneath the mantle, stuffed to overflowing. (To this day, I can’t figure out exactly when Dad and Mom put the gifts out and lit the fireplace.) After a few ooos and ahhhs, we snatched our stockings and ran to the parents room, where we emptied them and opened all the little separately wrapped gifts and candies within. After breakfast we opened the gifts and then it was on to the rest of the day… I think my dad really had fun making things special for us when we were little. I remember his face during our stocking and gift opening. He looked so pleased. He’d done well.

Maybe I’m idealizing. Maybe I’m leaving out the parts where we fought, or got yelled at or otherwise screwed up, but I think it’s significant that of those times, the good is what I remember most. Later Christmas Day is another story. But Christmas Morning was always magic.

As we got older, Christmas morphed into something we did mostly for the younger siblings. We stopped getting the mound of gifts that happened when we were young. Mom tried to turn us into practical young ladies. I realized the year we got actual wooden clothes pins in our stockings and received wrapped gas containers for our cars as gifts that there was no going back.

I think in light of that, that I was ready for the type of Christmas I had this year. Both the Boy and I worked on Christmas Eve and the day after, but it still was lovely. Christmas Eve we had a gathering with his side of the family, and after that went with his mom to the beautiful gothic cathedral, Kirk in the Hills, for the midnight service. The carillon rang through the darkness and snow to announce Christmas Day. Beautiful. The Boy and I did our gifts weeks early, (neither of us could wait for the other to open theirs) and on Christmas morning we slept in luxuriously. The first Christmas in 27 years or so that I’ve slept past seven am. When we finally wandered downstairs, I found that Boy had hung and stuffed my old stocking with things like French cinnamon biscuits and Calamata olives and Swiss dark chocolate and and…lots of other yummy goodies. He vigorously claims that Santa did it, not he. (Thanks anyway, Boy.) We ate yummy things and played video games and called and got calls from people we love. The day was about our own little family and then our families and friends. Later on we had some people over and we drank good wine and talked.

It was a beautiful Christmas.