The Top Five: Pairings

What is in a pairing?

What makes us melt over two people who share an interest in each other?

It's a uniting force in fandoms, large and small. It can cause massive debates, bring two people closer together, or even tear them apart.

But why? Aren't they just fictional people? Why does their happiness matter to us?

The simple answer:

We, as people, love a good story, and want the characters that have come to mean so much to us to be happy.

In these next five posts, I will outline my favorite five pairings in the video games I have come to love, counting down to number one!

Completely Titilating

The North American Box-Art.

 It's no small secret that I am one of the biggest Final Fantasy II/IV fans on this side of eternity.

 I own practically every version of the game ever released, and am saving up money for the Wonderswan version as you read this.

So, you can imagine my excitement when I discovered that Final Fantasy IV The Complete Collection was being released for PSP. I promptly preordered the game.

Let me just say I was not expecting the game to be as good as it is.

I had no reason to expect that it would be better than any of the previous versions of FFIV, not after the DS version (which I found aesthetically pleasing) screwed up so many people's perceptions of The Blue Planet. I was not expecting it to be so true to its original release, but that is exactly what I received.

This game is good.

Its two dimensional graphics are colorful and gorgeous, it's more challenging than some of its previous iterations, and the tweaked dialogue was somewhere in between the DS version and the Advanced version, a balance between old and new.

If fact, that pretty much sums this game up; it is, at its core, a balance between everything held dear by "Old Skool" fans like myself, and the newer generation of Final Fantasy IV fans brought on by the DS version.


"Old Man Harvey" and his lovely wife, Rosa, as
seen in The After Years.

The Original Quest was pretty much the same.
Same old strategies, same old Cecil, same old fast-paced story line.

But at the same time it was new. New graphics, the best translation I have ever been fortunate enough to witness in a Square game (those lines that kept changing? they've been combined, causing the narrative to make good sense for the first time!), and a remastered soundtrack that sounds better than ever on the PSP.

It was like meeting an old friend after good plastic surgery; it still looks like them, just younger.

And the ability to choose to listen to the original SNES soundtrack or the Arranged version...!


It's no secret that I <3 the Red Wings, and they look
better than ever in The After Year's new intro movie.

The new Interlude was the worst part of The Collection. It was short, and painfully easy; hardly worth level grinding just to keep Cecil from dying.

Of course, even that wasn't all bad. It's narrative nicely bridged the two games, and had enough touching scenes to cause an old  fangirl like me to spazz over it.

It even had a few memorable quotes for Cecil that I think will go down in history almost as much as the DS "Why now stay your hand?!" and "This is a fight for me and me alone!" Of course, nothing outdoes "Spoony Bard," back yet again.



Tellah never looked so good.

The After Years also received some upgrades. Ceodore is easier to level up, which makes his horrendous statistics that much less horrendous. The new coherence gave me motivation to play through all the stories, rather than flinching from buying the more useless episodes, as I did with the Wii version.

The new intro video, ala Final Fantasy IV DS, is definitely worthy of praise, though the inconsistencies in hair and eye color between sprite work and official art still exist.

I even find myself forgiving them for the useless, yet somehow endearing, Gallery Mode.

Edward, still Spoony.

Overall, though, this game gets a high grade from me on the scale, scoring an 8.5 out of a possible 10 points.

My only advice to you is to buy it and live the magic for yourself, especially if you missed the game one of the other times its been around the RPG block.

Wow, What a Way to Start a Blog

This morning, tradgedy struck Japan.

An earthquake with a whopping seismic rating of 8.5 ravaged their land, the shock waves so intesne that they hit even Tokyo.

Please keep Japan in your thoughts. It is a terrible tradgedy, and loss of life is something that hurts me to no end as someone who holds life so sacred.