I've been wanting to do Game of the Year lists for a while now, but I never seemed to play enough games in any given year to justify a list. This year, however, I came somewhat close! Truthfully, there were about 11 or 12 games that came out this year that I played, but I didn't feel good about putting them on a list by default. There are probably a few other games that came out this year that would almost certainly make this list if I had the capacity and/or time to play them.

Firstly, some honorable mentions:

Super Mario Maker

I'm gonna be honest, I played about two hours of my brother's copy of this game. However, being a subscriber and follower of Giantbomb, I feel like I've seen enough of this game to say that it's pretty damn good. I considered putting it on the list as I did actually play it, but I like a list of 8 better than a list of 9. A list of 9 just feels incomplete.

Dragon Quest Heroes

I've never played a Musou before. I probably won't start playing more anytime soon. I really like Dragon Quest. The fanservice was plenty to keep playing this game which I think is a decent game for the most part. The optional superbosses showed a glimmer of interesting and challenging combat that I didn't expect. I wish the rest of the game gave me that as well. I will most definitely play the sequel if it comes to the west.

Until Dawn

Another case of a game that I don't have but I've seen enough of it to give it some praise. I watched GBEast play it, I watched Mary Kish play it, and I watched some of Dave Lang's extra life playthrough of it. I never need to play this myself, but I'm confident in saying that it's a pretty cool game.

Alright, so here's my Top 8 games of 2015 in a mostly particular order. Prepare to be shocked and amazed by all of my unique choices and opinions that no one else had this year.

8. ROCKET LEAGUE

You may have heard about it. Rocket powered cars hitting giant balls into giant-er nets. This game came out of nowhere for me. The month it was free on PS+ I heard some murmurs about how it was incredibly addicting and awesome. I figured I'd give it a shot since it was free even though I'm not a big sports guys. BOY, were those murmurs right. Anyone who has played Rocket League knows how fun and addicting it can be and how easy the phrase "just one more game" rolls out of your mouth at 3am while playing. I played some fantastic online matches even with my kinda garbage internet, but definitely not as much as I would've liked to. I fell off of it pretty hard after platinuming it, but I will always be down for a game or seven.

7.& 6. ORI AND THE BLIND FOREST / AXIOM VERGE

Now I know what you're thinking, man what a cop out. Or at least, that's what I'm thinking. But I honestly can't decide which one I liked better. I like Metroid games. I like games that are similar in structure to Metroid games. (I've heard the term "Metroidvania" thrown around before.) I also like games that divert themselves from Metroid by having unique and interesting weapon and traversal mechanics. Both Ori and Axiom Verge are fantastic games in their own right and fantastic Metroidvania (there's that word again) games.

So here's the thing, Ori and the Blind Forest is an absolutely gorgeous game. The art design is inspired and beautiful. The story is simple but heartstring-tugging and controlling Ori is an absolute joy. I wondered if I would ever unlock warp points or be able to get across the map quickly, but once I got all of the powerups I no longer cared. Making my way finding all of the powerups turned from being a chore to enjoyable because of all the neat movement powerups you get. I, like most I think, did not expect the game to be as difficult as it was. There were a number of sequences where what the game was asking you to do seemed unfair. Way too many instant death traps and timed trial and error sections hurt my enjoyment of the game. The quick respawn and the ability to create your own checkpoints mitigated this somewhat, but it was still a little off-putting. That said, nothing ever seemed impossible and it felt rewarding to complete it.

I played the hell out of Axiom Verge. I played it on hard mode and even did the speedrun mode and finished it in under four hours for the trophy. This game is pretty rad. The powerups and items pull a unique spin on the classic Metroid powerup designs and you get excited every time you find something because you have no idea what it could be. And once you do it always ends up being way cooler and way more useful than you thought it would be. The story contains some interesting twist and is much more involved than you would assume on the surface, though I think most would agree that the protagonist is a bit...well he could use a haircut. My only real knocks against the game are the weapons and the environments. The are a LOT of weapons in this game. Some are way better than others. Some are downright useless. Only a handful actually do anything useful other than killing dudes. I would've preferred all of the weapons to have a unique effect even if that meant not as many, I ended not using 70% of them anyway. As for the environments, I just found them very samey and hard to navigate. Some areas have unique looks but I think it's the first few areas that look way too similar and the backgrounds are so loaded with pixels that areas blend into one another and it's not exactly easy on the eyes. I just prefer a little more variety.

And that's that, my pros and cons for Ori and Axiom Verge. They are very similar yet very different. I liked both of them a lot. I'm a sucker for sincere games with beautiful art like Ori, but I think Axiom Verge is the better Metroid game. Gun to my head, I'd put Ori at 7 and Axiom Verge at 6.

5. LIFE IS STRANGE

Every time a new episode was about to drop I put off playing the previous one as long as I could. I just didn't feel like playing it. Then when I would finally sit down and play it, Life is Strange always pulled me right back in and I couldn't wait for the next one. The teens were annoying, the adults were out of touch, and the dialogue was occasionally stilted and at times felt forced. But honestly, it only added to the charm. Much like actual high school, I groaned every time I had to go back, but I look back at it fondly and the experience will stick with me for a while.

4. METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN

This game used to be higher on my list. After mulling it over for a while it slid down a little. Watching Drew play all of the Metal Gear games was my first experience with them. It was somewhere early into his run of MGS4 that I decided that I was pretty heavily invested in this series and I wanted to see the rest and play the others for myself. I'm one of those crazy people that enjoyed the amount of cutscenes in MGS4, the anime-as-fuck story was a huge draw for me. So when MGSV came out and was the polar opposite of MGS4, I was disappointed when the story fell short of...just about everything. But whatever, I could complain about that all day, but I'd rather talk about how MGSV is the most fun game to play. Honestly though, you know if you've played it and I'm sure we'll hear all about it on Day 5 of the GOTY podcasts. Just know that I consider MGSV to be one of the finest gameplay experiences of this or any generation.

3. UNDERTALE

Contrary to MGSV, Undertale is a game that slowly crawled up this list. I initially put it somewhere around the 6 or 7 mark. Turns out I had roughly the same experience Austin did while playing. It wasn't until the end of my first playthrough and into my second that I realized just how involved this game is. I finished my first run and thought, okay, that was neat and all, but I'm not sure if I want to play it again. I then decided to just look up the stuff I missed and I discovered just how much was left to see. I was blown away by how much was crammed into this simple little package. I could go into more detail, but you should probably just play it for yourself if you haven't. The characters are charming and funny, the soundtrack is one of the best I've heard and remains lodged in my head, and the overall package is honestly something special.

2. BLOODBORNE

Let's talk about how rad this game is. Before this game came out, people just assumed it was Dark Souls in Victorian London. It turned out to be something much more. The bait and switch to the Lovecraftian horror put a much more interesting spin on this game. The trick weapon system alone is enough to put Bloodborne high on this list. The initial game lacked build diversity and replayability that the DLC only somewhat solved, but the DLC is honestly what put this game so high on my list. The sheer amount of new, badass weapons and some of the best bosses and areas in the Souls series elevated the base game to, in my opinion, the best in the series. I've played through this game like 7 or 8 times and even though I have literally nothing left to do, I'll probably end up playing it a few more times.

1. THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT

So I played this game twice. Yes, the long-ass, enormous game that people barely had time to finish (or didn't), I played it twice. It's mostly the reason that this list is a Top 8 and not a Top 10. Granted I didn't do everything there is to do, there are about 8,000 question marks in Skellige that I assume are just random treasure that I couldn't be bothered with, but I generally completed most of the quests. God damn, this game hits just about every pleasure point for me in terms of what I like in games and I wish I was better at articulating why that is. The Witcher 3 is everything that I wanted Skyrim to be. Dynamic characters with complex story arcs, consequences to my actions and the actions of characters around me, and a world that was lived in and revolving around me. The first time I experienced a storm in The Witcher 3, I got goosebumps. It wasn't triggered by a cutscene or entering an area, it just happened. Now I know that dynamic weather is nothing new, but it happened out of nowhere with such a ferocity that I felt tiny and insignificant in the world. It sounds dumb on paper, but it was an extemely immersive experience. Sure the game has flaws with combat and inventory that has since been fixed, but the positives heavily outweigh the negatives. I don't know if I've ever been so immersed in a game before and I absolutely cannot wait to jump back in when the next expansion drops.

Part 4, yo.

IX: Meteorite Madness!

That's right, Butts is back in town for Part 5 of the Fiesta. Now when we last left him, Butts bid farewell to Galuf and Krile as they returned to their world. Interesting thing to note is the fact that the return trip is a simple matter of teleportation, while the initial trip involves crashing a meteor through a dimension into the earth. I could spend this entire post wondering about the elaborate meteor travel infrastructure, but I've already thought about it way too much. Let's just move on.

...Or we can think about them for the next chunk of the game, sure. Dissatisfied with being left behind while Galuf fights Exdeath in his own world, Butts, Lenna, and Faris decide that they aren't going to let him fight alone. The question is: how do they get there? Investigating one of the meteorites reveals that they could use their power to open a portal, but one meteor isn't enough, and it's going to be a one-way trip. So they must travel to each one and Cid will...do something to it to make it...go, I guess. It's not that simple though, the meteorites are guarded. By MONSTERS! First up are the Purobolos.

Now, normally these things are a pain in the ass until you realize their trick. After killing a couple, one of the others uses the Arise spell to revive them. If you don't have a way to hit them all, this battle could theoretically go on forever. Unfortunately for the bombs, they don't have infinite MP. They can only use Arise a few times and once they run out, you're free to massacre them.

Or if you've got a wizard, two Frost Rods are all it takes to wipe them off the map.

The monster guarding the next one is the Manticore. Psh, I've absolutely steamrolled almost every boss at this point, what kind of challenge could this thing possibly bring?

Okay well, turns out Aqua Breath is painful. It's fine, it's fine. I'll just be faster with my rod breaking and penny throwing next time. This thing is actually susceptible to Stop as well, but Galuf was my Bard and I neglected to switch anyone to Bard in his absence or give anyone the Sing ability, so I brute forced it instead.

Alright, last one. Who we got?

Excuse me sir, you've forgotten your clothes somewhere. Yes, we're all impressed by your physique but honestly, could you put some clothes on?

Titan is a difficult fight. His Earth Shaker attack hits everyone for some pretty hefty damage and he always uses it when he dies so you need to be able to survive it. The strategy here is the same as the Manticore, kill him before he kills me.

And with that, we get a rad summon that we can't use and all of the meteorites are...well whatever they are, the portal is now open! There's literally nothing left for us in this world so let's go!

As we say goodbye to World 1, let us remember what we've done and what we've left behind. The dragon that we rode and left...around somewhere and the trail of hundreds of broken rods will serve as a memorial for our deeds.

Our heroes take the plunge down into the portal in the center of the world and are carried up into the sky and presumably head sideways into an alternate dimension. Magic! They arrive on a small island in the ocean in the middle of nowhere. Huh, Galuf's world kind of blows. The game ever-so-subtlely tells you to use a tent by giving every random encounter a 100% chance to drop a tent. Oh, and if you faff about for too long, your party "suggests" that you use a tent.

Okay, fine, these things aren't cheap you know. Butts and the others set up camp for the night and oh no! A monster comes to capture them! What a twist! Lenna and Faris are dragged just offscreen and Butts is left to contend with the monster himself.

Now, you aren't supposed to win this battle, but if you are decently leveled, have high damage output, and get lucky, it can be easily won. For your trouble you get an ether and the chance to brag to your friends about how you totally thwarted Exdeath's machinations.

What a trickster, that Exdeath. The party wakes up in a cell and the man himself is peering in.

One of Exdeath's lackeys informs him that Galuf is leading an assualt and is currently heading this way. Exdeath promptly prepares for the siege.

Galuf, feeling inadequate at the sight of Exdeath's giant mirror, withdraws his troops and instead decides to go it alone. Now, if anyone is wondering about the rules of the fiesta when it comes to having a party of one, I'm allowed to make Galuf anyone of the four jobs that I have. Once the party reunites though, I need to make sure I have one of each. I made Galuf a Black Mage for this sequence since B. Mages can just nuke every encounter. Luckily, the game gives you easy enemies since you're handicapped.

Galuf sneaks through Exdeath's castle with relative ease since all of the guards are inexplicably locked in a cage as well and Exdeath himself went back to his room, or something. However, one obstacle stands in the way of Galuf releasing his friends.

That's right, it's everyone's favorite bumbling idiot, Gilgamesh! Now if you're not familiar with Gilgamesh then you probably haven't played many (or any) Final Fantasy games. Square Enix likes to throw this guy in just about every game as an optional boss, a summon, or a weird treasure hunter guy. More on him later, because he's dispatched quickly for now.

Now that we've gotten our full party back, our four jobs are redistributed thusly. Our heroes must now conduct a sneaking mission to escape from Castle Exdeath. Butts knows exactly how to handle this.

X: Clash of Titans.

Success! Butts and friends have made it out of Castle Exdeath and can now travel to Galuf's place to regroup and form a new plan of attack! However, escaping was only half the battle. The only way off the island is to cross the Big Bridge and Exdeath's troops are amassing to block our path. Cue the music!

The chances of pushing through Exdeath's troops are slim at best. Surely he has gathered his finest soldiers to stop us and surely epic battles to the death will now commence!

Well, let's just assume that the big guns are being saved for later. Also, I neglected to grab a screenshot of the other half of Exdeath's army, the FLYING KILLERS.

Either Exdeath is toying with us, or he honestly thinks some tabbies with wings strapped on will stop his greatest foes. I like to believe that Exdeath is a big softie at heart and just likes cute shit. After dispatching the adorable army, Butts reaches the home stretch. Only one door remains between our heroes and safety, but uh oh...do I hear something behind that door?

And this time, he means business. Gilgamesh uses some nasty Blue Magic, but his main gimmick is using Protect and Shell halfway through the fight, halving your damage. He's also got some mighty zingers as he pretends to give up moments before using those spells.

But alas, even Gilgamesh isn't strong enough to stop Butts. Maybe next time, buddy.

Now that Gilgamesh has been defeated, our party is in the clear. Hey, what's that light over there?

Our heroes are mere seconds too late as Exdeath sets off his castle barrier which sends the party flying off conveniently all in the same direction. They land in the middle of nowhere and not even Galuf knows where they are. Now that they have a second to breathe, he berates them for coming after him and Butts apologizes for ruining his plan. Galuf counters this by saying that what happened ended up being a good thing, because his entire force would've been wiped out by the barrier. To himself, he says that he's happy that Butts and the others are here. A touching moment.

The task is set: find out where the hell we are. We've got an entirely new world to explore and we'll get to it next time!

Catch up on Part 3 here!

VIII: You're Going the Ronka Way.

Welcome back to the Four Job Fiesta.

As you may recall from last time, Butts wrecked his airship and roadside assistance sent him a purple bird that can bench 450lbs. as a replacement. It's almost time to face the music from Cid, but before we do that, our heroes have a couple of pit stops to make. The black chocobo is unique in that it can fly over mountains thus gaining access to the entire world map, however it can only land in forests. Luckily, the places we want to go are both right next to forests.

Our first stop is Istory in the very top left corner there. This is an optional little town with a few interesting items, but the reason I personally came here was to grab the next Bard song, Romeo's Ballad. This is the song that casts Stop on all enemies in battle. If you don't know what that means, basically when I use it, enemies can't do anything. I can sit there and wail on them and never worry about being attacked. That is of course, if they're vulnerable to it. I end up using it in almost every random encounter from here on out with mild to great success. Istory is also the home of the Toad spell, which I'll never use, and some really powerful rings that are way too expensive. Also, Ramuh, a summon, is camped out in the woods to the east, but since I don't have a Summoner he is free to live out his days.

Our second stop is Lix, Butts' home town. His childhood friends are here to greet him and we learn more about Butts' backstory. Upon returning to his home, we learn that Butts' parents have passed away. His mother contracted a fatal disease and died in his youth, and by means of a flashback, we discover his father, Dorgann, was played by Marlon Brando.

The song Alluring Air can also be learned here. I believe it confuses all enemies, but I never used it because Stop > Confuse. The real reason to come to this town is the hot sale happening in the shopping district. Seeing that this is Butts' hometown and all, he gets half off at the drug store. Score!

The party returns to Cid to break the news about the airship and Cid is surprisingly chill about it. In fact, he was some interesting news to share. King Tycoon, Lenna's father, has been sighted traveling to the ruins of Gohn to the south. This also happens to be where the Earth Crystal is located. The problem is getting there. As stated, our chocobo can only land in forests and there's apparently no way to just like, have it fly close to the ground and then jump off or whatever, so by foot we go! The major obstacle in the way is the Desert of Shifting Sands. Normally, there's no feasible way to cross the desert by foot, but Cid and Mid have a plan. There's a giant Sand Worm that lives there and our resident nerds have the brilliant idea of "if we kill the Sand Worm we can use its body as a bridge." GENIUS. The problem is killing it. Well, so far nothing has really put up a fight. We can just crack a rod and...

You realize you're talking to three wizards and a lady with a harp, right? What do you mean we'll be sorry?

As it turns out, Mid is partially lying, magic works fine on the worm. What he's trying to tell you is to not target all three holes with your spells. The way this fight works is, if you attack one of the holes that the worm is not in (and he likes to move a lot), he counters with a pretty powerful gravity spell which cuts your HP in half. Combine that with his sandstorm attack, which deals mild damage but has the added effect of slowly draining your HP, you can find yourself in trouble fast. Fortunately, cracking rods deals so much damage to early bosses that I simply outpace the worm's damage.

After traveling across the dead worm's rotting corpse, our heroes arrive at the ruins of Gohn and play hide and seek with the missing king.

I mean, when the first crystal breaks at the beginning of the game, he appears as a ghostly figure to Lenna. Who wouldn't think he was just that, a ghost? Anyway, King Tycoon pulls an ACME style trapdoor trick and sends the party down into the depths of the ruins. They discover some pretty amazing technology down there and I'm not saying aliens, but aliens. They arrive at a room that is basically Cerebro from X-Men and get transported across the world to similar ruins underneath Crescent Island, where our airship was sucked up by the ocean. You see where this is going.

Like all things awesome, the device explodes after use. Cid and Mid travel back to the Crescent Forest to...return the chocobo, I guess? Plot convenience? Sure. While exploring the ruins underground, Butts discovers a switch with a ridiculously specific purpose.

Also located in these ruins is our boat! Apparently, it wasn't just sucked underwater it was carefully docked in a black void of nothingness.

But wait, there's more! The dock is also home to yet another ship! And this one has propellers! Butts sends Cid and Mid to work while he and the others catch some shut eye, as heroes are want to do. After a quick cat nap, Cid is finished with the new airship and our heroes can now travel back to Gohn and find King Tycoon and the Earth Crystal. Of course, in Final Fantasy V, nothing is ever that simple. Upon nearing Gohn, we once again are greeted with a rumbling of the earth. This time, something is coming out of the ground instead of going back in.

The flying city rises high into the atmosphere. So high, that our airship can't handle the pressure...or something. In any case, we're going to need some help here. Reporting back to Cid and Mid, they send Butts on a fetch quest to find some Adamantite to reinforce the hull of the airship. Conveniently, Galuf remembers seeing some near the meteor he arrived in this world on. The party travels to the meteor and find the adamantite...and the Adamantoise guarding it. Oh, what's that? The programmers forgot to make the adamantoise immune to instant death? Well, I can't use instant death, but this thing only has 2000 HP so a single Frost Rod does it in. Returning to Cid and Mid, the airship is outfitted with some sweet rims and we can finally reach the flying ruins. However, the ruins have a defense system in the form of laser cannons and flamethrowers.

The Sssssoulllllllllll Cannon is actually mildly difficult...if you let it get that diffusion beam cannon off. The launchers can fire missles at you and inflict the old status, which makes your party weak as shit. Unfortunately for it, I brought a stack of Thunder Rods.

Hey, Black Mages are really powerful. But they're about to get not so powerful.

Butts enters the Ronka Ruins (there's a name) in search of a king and a crystal. By the way, the Earth Crystal is what's powering this flying behemoth. It's also about to explode under the pressure. We should hurry. The ruins are full of distractions though, in the form of invisible floors and obnoxious traps.

As they reach the center of the ruins, the party finds King Tycoon staring down a snake...bird...thing. He then sics Butts on it.

So, okay. This thing sucks. The first phase of this fight is fairly simple. Archeoaevis has four different forms. They aren't so much forms as they are the same creature with a different weakness and HP value. When its HP hits a certain point, it will silently transform to a new weakness. The trick is to scan it with the Blue Mage ability Scan, and that will tell you what it's weak to. I can't do that. I have to guess. Meanwhile this thing has some nasty attacks. In particular, its Malestrom attack reduces the HP of whoever it hits to single digits. Let me paint this picture for you. Potions heal for 50 HP. Hi-Potions heal 500 HP, but there's nowhere to purchase them yet, so I only have about 8 from drops and chests. I also have 12 Elixirs that fully heal me, but elixirs are rare and valuable in the late game. But desperate times force me to use them. In other words, not having a White Mage to heal sucks. Limited resources force me to end this battle quickly. Too bad there's another trick to this fight.

When you kill it, it comes back in a new fifth form. This form is completely immune to magic. It also has 2500 HP. So therein lies the problem, I need to kill this thing fast, but the only way I have to damage it is the couple of daggers and the slightly better dagger I have. The good dagger does 60 damage, the rest do 20. This thing killed me hard. I lasted fairly long with the resources I had but it wasn't enough.

So I struggled with this for a bit, trying to figure out how I could possibly kill this thing with a party that could only poke at it with knives. Eventually, I decided that I needed better knives for everyone else. If everyone could do 60 damage, I could conceivably kill it in 10-12 turns provided it was nice to me with the attacks it used. I left the ruins, went to the town that sold Mythril Knives, bought three more for my other party members and came back for Round 2. I managed to beat it after using up all of my hi-potions and about 10 of my elixirs, but there it is. I later learned that Black Mages could use a Flail that would've probably made it way easier, but whatever.

King Tycoon thanks Butts for removing the obstacle and continues to the Earth Crystal. At this point is clear that this dude is possessed and protests from his daughters ain't helping. He knocks the party out and prepares to destroy the Crystal when a tiny girl busts through the wall like the Koolaid Man and knocks the king out.

The girl reveals herself as Galuf's granddaughter, Krile, and Galuf finally is fully cured of his amnesia. Krile came from the other world by another meteorite cause apparently it's super easy to get a loan for one of those things over there.

Our heroes are too late. The crystal is too weak and shatters before their eyes. This is bad on multiple levels. Not only have the crystals that govern the forces of nature shattered, oh by the way, an evil warlock named Exdeath was sealed by the crystals and now that they are gone, Exdeath is free.

King Tycoon uses the last of his energy to save the party from Exdeath and restore some power to the crystal shards. FINALLY. We got all of our jobs! Now I just need to find out what my final job is. My first roll was Dragoon. Well, since I really didn't want to use any of the classes I used before, I donated to get a reroll. I got Dancer. Damn. Okay, we'll give it one more shot.

Knight!

Okay, I can work with that. Knight isn't the most interesting class, but it has some nice perks. It can equip powerful swords and armor that most other classes can't. It can use its Guard ability to completely negate any damage done to it and its Cover ability lets it take hits for critically wounded allies. Not to mention that it can learn Two-Handed which doubles a weapon's power at the cost of having no shield.

Great, now we have access to all of our jobs meaning we can make someone a Samurai as well.

You may be wondering where Galuf went. Well, now that his memory has returned, he explains that Exdeath was an evil warlock from his world that he and three other guys, named the Warrior of Dawn, sealed away when Exdeath came to Butts' world to destroy the crystals. Butts' father, Dorgann, was one of those Warriors and he stayed behind to watch over them. But things went awry and once they realized the crystals were in danger, Galuf ...flew the meteorite to Butts' world to fix it. Unfortunately, meteors don't have seatbelts so he banged his head and got amnesia. Fast forward to now. Galuf decides to return with Krile back to his world to fight Exdeath and bids Butts, Lenna, and Faris farewell.

The End?

Not even close.

Part 1 here! Part 2 here!

PART VI: Call The Fire Brigade!

There are a number of moments in FFV where the game doesn't give you any prompts and there aren't any obvious things to do. When our heroes land in the Karnak prison, they encounter one of these instances. In every case, all you need to do is wait around for something to happen. If this were a game in 2015, you may think that the game broke or the scripting got messed up and you'd have to reload. Nope. It takes about a minute for the prisoner next door to hatch his masterful escape plan.

Fortunately, our jailers have bigger fish to fry. The Chancellor arrives to reveal our cellmate as this game's incarnation of Cid. Let's be honest here, not the greatest portrayal of Cid over the course of the series, but when immediately following the Sledgehammer-wielding, bearded-boulder of a man that was Cid in FFIV, it's difficult to top that. This one is...well, serviceable at best. Regardless, Cid is more or less imprisoned for claiming that the crystal is in danger or something, never was to clear on that. He was probably trying to prevent them from exploiting the crystal like EVERYONE ELSE in the world. The Queen has gone AWOL at this point and all hell has broken loose. Butts is recruited to go investigate the crystal.

The Fire Crystal is underneath Castle Karnak, but we need to travel to the steam-powered ship which I guess connects to the crystal? Sure, why not. But before we do that, Butts needs to finish his shopping trip that was rudely interrupted. As I explained in Part 2, Karnak sells Rods. Rods break the early game. Buy lots. Also available are level 2 attack spells that our Black Mages can use. The wolves in the nearby forest carry large sacks of gold so some grinding fills our pockets quickly.

The steamship is a relatively easy dungeon for four Black Mages. There are enemies called Crew Dust that use Flash which blinds the entire party, but guess what? Wizards don't need to see to conjure lightning bolts of killing. There is one enemy that is completely immune to magic so I'm forced to flee every time one comes up. I could attack with a dagger, but that does about 12 damage so no thanks.

At the end of the dungeon our party finds the missing Queen. She...seems to be glowing.

The Queen shows us her Human Torch cosplay outfit and another boss battle begins. This boss is a stumbling block for newbie players and probably the first challenge of the game. It transforms into 1 of 3 forms everytime it is hit and each one is a pain in the ass. One forms heals itself with a fira spell and another hits you with a high powered fire attack. Chances are it will outpace your healing and kill you fast. I cannot confirm any of this since I just snapped two frost rods and wiped my hands of this nonsense.

This method doesn't work for the whole game, trust me. In any case, Butts is once again too late to save the crystal because...uh who's that?

Alright wolf man, you can sacrifice yourself to buy us time to escape the currently exploding crystal room, that's so nice! Oh shoot, he forgot to explain why there are WEREWOLVES in this world. Oh well, maybe next time. A daring timed escape sequence follows as the castle just straight up explodes. Why was the...eh forget it.

Hey, we got some new crystal shards! That means new jobs! Unfortunately we only get three of the five shards right now, and Bard isn't one of them. Damn. Okay, well hopefully this next roll will give us something we can use. And it is....

Samurai!

I don't know much about Samurai. All I know is now we can start chucking pennies at monsters for massive damage and Samurai is not the one that gets Dual Wield. Shoot. Oh, and it's an Earth Crystal job. I GUESS WE'LL JUST BUY SOME MORE RODS THEN. NO BIG DEAL. Okay, where's this last crystal so I can leave the back row before Act 1 is over?

PART VII: "Book Burning" and "Sorry, Did You Want Your Boat Back?"

The Earth Crystal is located quite a ways away so Butts is gonna need that steamship working. The resident guy-who-built-it, Cid, is in a sad or drunken stupor for inadvertantly causing the destruction of the crystal. We're gonna need something to snap him out of it.

Now that the knee high fence was blown away by the castle exploding, our heroes can now travel to the Library of the Ancients. The Library is fittingly filled with books. The books are unfittingly filled with monsters. The monsters fittingly die when wizards cast Fira on them. The idea here is to find Cid's grandson, Mid, and get him to snap Cid out of it. Also found here is Ifrit, who is annihilated by a Frost Rod, and the boss Byblos, who is... annihilated by a Frost Rod.

I didn't need to get Ifrit because I don't have a Summoner and he's useless to me, but I still have one job left to roll so I got him just in case. Though I plan on rerolling if I get any job from my previous run. That's Blue Mage, Summoner, Dancer, or Dragoon.

Let's roll through the next few story beats here. Butts brings Mid back to Cid and Mid promptly bitch slaps him back to his senses. This triggers Galuf's memory to partially return due to him remembering his own grandchild slapping him to sense. He reveals that he is from another world and he traveled to this one via the meteorite. Stay with me here. Cid and Mid have completed repairs on the ship and the open ocean is ours!

Wow, a ship already? We're only a couple hours in and already we have access to 90% of the world map! Let's find that crystal so we can be a second too late to save it! When searching for an Earth Crystal, a moon shaped island is clearly the best place to start. Maybe some of the townsfolk can help...Hey, what's that rumbling?

We had insurance on that thing, right? Are you keeping score? That's FFV boats- 0, Whirlpools- 2. Our valiant party is once again without transport. FFV giveth, FFV taketh away about 30 seconds later.

Great, now we're stuck on this island. At least there's a piano. And a minstrel that teaches us a new song that we can't use yet. And some equipment we can't use. Say, what's going on in the forest down south?

It's a purp...black chocobo! Black Chocobo's have the unique ability among Chocobos to fly. Awesome, let's all cram on its back and find another ship to destroy! After chasing down the zippy bird, the party ascends to the sky...to land immediately. Something is preventing the Chocobo from carrying four adult-size people across the ocean. Faris applies CPR to it and it spits out the remaining shards of the Fire Crystal. That's right, the crystal exploded so hard, half of it flew across the ocean and down a Chocobo's gullet. Or the stupid bird saw shiny things and ate them like an idiot. In any case, the Bard job is finally available to us!

Our newly acquired Bard sits in the back row like everyone else, but now we have access to some cool new abilities. Throughout the game you will encounter "songs" that Bards can use. Right now, we only have access to one that casts Regen on the party and soon we'll be able to explore the rest of the world map and visit some other towns. The songs we get there will let us cast Confuse and Stop on enemy parties. The Stop song is especially useful as many mobs are vulnerable to it. Bards are pretty good. More on them later.

You are now required to listen to this song for the rest of your time reading this.

For whatever reason, the Black Chocobo is able to fly over mountains, something a winged dragon five times its size could not do. Clearly this chocobo has been working out. The party makes their way back to Cid and Mid and claims that the other guy totally ran the red light and totaled our vehicle and it was totally not our fault. Thankfully, our resident nerds are super chill about it and come up with an idea for a replacement. However, it involves a desert, flying cities, flamethrowers, and a boss that may or may not be immune to magic.

Shit.

PART 4

IV - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Catch up on Part 1 here!

As our heroes pull themselves out of the ship graveyard after setting it ablaze, they wonder where to go next. More like I wondered where to go next. FFV is a game of many strengths, telling you where to go is not one them. Okay, scratch that, they do tell you where to go, they just frequently neglect to to you how to get there.

Unfortunately, our heroes are stuck. The Water Crystal is in Walse and since there's no wind, no ships are sailing there, and there are mountains blocking the way by land. So clearly, one option remains. Let's go find ourselves a flying dragon creature!

The North Mountain is home to many lovely flora and fauna. One of which is a pretty flower that poisons your entire party by simply stepping on it. Awesome. Upon nearing the summit, Lenna is suddenly shot with a poison arrow.

LENNA GETS POISONED COUNT: 1

A charming lady appears and reveals herself as Magissa, a hunter. She claims a princess could fetch a fair price on the apparently existing black market so she attacks the party with her husband, Forza.

Like most living things, the pair can be set on fire. YOU DEFEATED.

The group ascends to the summit to find a sickly wind drake. The dragon grass, or whatever it's called, to cure it is conveniently located about 7 steps away. BUT ALAS! Those pesky poison flowers are in the way! Lenna decides to brave the plants and save the drake.

LENNA GETS POISONED COUNT: 2

Thankfully, they brought antidotes.

Success! Our heroes have procured a flying machine! Surely nothing stands in our way now!

Okay, well, surely nothing slightly above sea level stands in our way now! We'll just sidle around those dirty mountains and make our way to Walse.

Upon arriving in Walse, our courageous companions figure that finding a town with an extensive canal system is probably is in the right direction to a Water Crystal. They proceed to mingle with the locals.

The King of Walse is fairly confident that nothing bad will happen to the crystal on his watch. Who cares if one of the mystical objects that controls the elements of nature exploded? That can't POSSIBLY happen agai... Hey, what's that rumbling?

Another meterorite has fallen near the tower where the Water Crystal is housed. Butts should probably check that out. Oh, and something about a rampaging beast called Garula attacking the tower. The guards at the tower have been trampled by the Garula and as our heroes ascend the tower, they come upon the king in a bad way.

It's okay, pal, we'll take care of it. Garula is quickly dispatched when Galuf snaps a Frost Rod in half over his knee. More on that trick later. Bigger problems are now afoot. Garula had managed to shatter the crystal anyway. Now everything is going to shit. What were you saying about the crystal being safe, King Walse?

Well this is pretty bad. That's two crystals destroyed and Syldra has ...died again? saving the party from drowning. Apparently she kind of survived the whirlpool and had barely enough energy to save everyone again. Hey, good news though! Our Water Crystal jobs have been unlocked! Let's roll the dice and see what we get!

We got Bard!

No joke, Bard is stupidly overpowered. The songs Bards learn have ridiculous support effects including one that inflicts Stop on entire parties of enemies, and one that raises the level of our party up to a max of 255! At this rate I may actually attempt the superbosses.

BUT. Bard is a Fire Crystal job. Meaning we don't have access to it yet. Well, the Disco Inferno from the back row continues until then.

V - "Always bet on Black Magic" or "Get out of my dreams, and into my Kar-nak"

Well saving the Water Crystal was a bust. Good news is we get two more chances at it! Say, where's the Fire Crystal? What's that? Halfway across the world? Okay well, we'll just fly over to...sorry? The area of the world we are in is completely enclosed by mountains? Then how does anyone even know that there is... you know what? Nevermind. We'll find a different way.

Those meteorites conveniently have magic circles inside them that act as warp points to one of the other meteorites. The coincidental convenience continues with our party arriving at the meteor near the Fire Crystal upon using the magic warp circle. Butts and the group mosey on over to Karnak, a city on fire. No, really, the streets of the town are literally on fire.

Karnak is unique for being the town where you can purchase rods for 750 gold. Flame Rods, Frost Rods, and Thunder Rods all have a unique effect. If you open your inventory during battle and use a rod as an item, it will cast a level three magic spell on the enemy. That is why having a mage that can equip rods (you need to be able to equip them to use them), is so useful in the early game of a Fiesta. Level three magic spells, the -agas, do between 1500 and 3000 damage. At this point in the game, random enemies barely have over 500HP and bosses average around 2000-4000HP. You see how overpowered this is. So let's buy as many as we can! Hey wait...

The locals apparently saw Butts and his crew emerge from the meteor and assumed they are in league with the monsters that also came from it. When he goes to purchase something, Butts is arrested and gets his bitch ass thrown in prison. (A side note: whatever you try to buy will be placed into your inventory for free, so be sure to pick something expensive.)

That's it for now, guys. I'll try to update this every couple of days or so. Thanks for reading!

Part 3!

I - FOUR JOB FIESTA

Hey folks! Do you like to impose restrictions on yourself in games in an attempt at "having fun"? Do you also enjoy rolling the dice and letting a twitter bot decide your fate for 20-40 hours of your life? Well have I got the game for you!

It's the Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta! What is that, you ask? Well you could go to this website for all the info, but I'll break down the basics for you. As you may or may not know, Final Fantasy V was the first game in the series to have a robust and fun to use job class system. FFIII also had one, but the mechanics behind it made it a little bothersome. The rules are simple. There are four points in the early game in which you obtain a couple crystal shards that grant you access to a few of the job classes in the game. Each time this event occurs you tweet at the aptly named "Gilgabot" and it will assign you a job. Now here's the rub, you may only use the job classes that the bot assigns to you for the entire game. So, of the 20 jobs in the pool, you only have access to four. And yes, you can be assigned the same job (depending on the rule set) more than once if you're unlucky.

Now there are variations to these rules. You could play a Normal run, which will grant you one job from each crystal. You could also choose to do a Team 750 run in which you can only get jobs that can use rods (rods cost 750 gold), or a Team No750 which grants you only the ones that cannot. I'm personally doing a Chaos run, which means that the bot can assign me any job from any crystal even if I haven't gotten it yet. The first job always comes from the first crystal, so you have something to change into, but after that it's up to chance. I could get assigned a job from the 4th crystal when I get the second one and simply not be able to use it until I finally get it.

The other tricky part to this is the rule that you must always have one of each class you are assigned. Once you've obtained all of the classes, there's no doubling up. Say you get Summoner, White Mage, Knight, and Dragoon. You can't just switch everyone to Summoner to cheese a boss by nuking it with Bahamut every turn. You are required to have one of each which can get tricky in spots. Luckily, characters can learn abilities as they level up their jobs of which you can pick one to use while in a different job (So you actually can have everyone nuke bosses with Bahamut). Probably the trickiest of the rule sets is Natural. Natural means that each character is assigned a job. They cannot change their job. They are stuck in that job and cannot learn other job's abilities. Personally, that sounds not very fun.

You can go to the website I linked above for all the info. This event is to raise money for the Child's Play charity and they've already surpassed their goal of $10,000 which is awesome. The best part is, you can play too! This event goes on until September 1st and you can play as many times as you want!. The site lists everyone playing and also has links to everyone streaming the game as well, if you're into that.

II - MY FIRST FIESTA

So this isn't my first fiesta. I finished that one this morning. I got Blue Mage, Summoner, Dancer, and Dragoon for my four jobs. Obviously, there are jobs that are much better than others and let me say, I got fairly lucky with my loadout here. Blue Mage is an excellent job and could probably solo the game. A number of their spells can instantly kill enemies (and some bosses) and they have access to a lot of unique abilities that bypass some basic restrictions of combat.

As for my other classes, they did alright for me. Like I mentioned before, Summoners are great for absolutely wrecking bosses and I never had any issue with any random encounter. Turns out, nearly every random battle can be won by summoning Titan, Syldra, or Bahamut once or twice. The only issue here is running out of MP. Luckily, Dragoons learn an ability granting you an attack that steals a modest amount of HP and MP from your target. Not bad. Give that ability to a Summoner and your MP woes are pretty much solved. Dragoons are also excellent physical tanks and it was nice to have some physical damage in my party. I never really did find Dancer all that effective, but being able to equip a Ribbon was nice. I mainly used her as my second Summoner.

Overall, I didn't have that rough of a time. I got a decent lineup and knew a lot of the boss strategies from back when I played years ago. I hit a few stumbling blocks, but it was fun figuring out strategies with what I had available, and that's really when this gets fun and satisfying.

III - ROUND 2- FIESTA ON, BARTZ!: Part 3!

But let's get on with it. I decided to play again and share my playthrough here because I had a lot of fun the first time and I wanted to share this in case anyone else wanted to get in on the Fiesta.

Obviously for my second playthrough I couldn't have the same name for my character. Those familiar with FFV may know the main character as Bartz, but I decided to go with his fan translated SNES name.

The start of the game is pretty simple. You have no jobs so everyone is a Freelancer. Most, if not all, battles are won by using the A button to attack. Maybe you'll need a potion here and there. Probably not though, even the first boss is pretty weak.

The story is your basic RPG, Final Fantasy fare. There are four crystals. The big bad wants to destroy those crystals. Your party of four awakens as Warriors of Light. A dude has amnesia. (The old guy) There are moogles and chocobos and pirates and thundagas. It's a Final Fantasy game. It's also really good. It doesn't take itself too seriously and the translation is goofy as all hell.

There's even some jaunty humor around the androgynous fellow in your party. Faris is presented as a male pirate captain, but that quickly changes when Bartz, sorry, Butts and Galuf get a couple glimpses of...some things.

Getting down to it though, your first task in the game is to check out the Wind Crystal in the aptly name Wind Shrine to see why the wind is no longer blowing. Butts, being a wandering traveler, finds Lenna and saves her from some goblins and the pair find the amnesiac Galuf near a fallen meteor. Lenna and Galuf decide to check out the Wind Crystal and Butts joins them after some soul searching. They come across a pirate cove and decide to steal their ship after they notice it can sail without wind. Turns out the pirates have a tamed sea dragon thing named Syldra which basically carries the ship around.Captain Faris catches them in the act, but she notices that her and Lenna have the same pendant and decides to travel with them to find out why. The group travels to the shrine and come up upon the Wind Crystal as it shatters, much to their surprise.

This is the point where you are granted your first job classes. I revved up the old Gilgabot and discovered that my first job was Black Mage. NOT BAD. One of the best actually.

So now my party is really squishy and smacking things with some wooden rods isn't really effective. Luckily, things tend to die when you set them on fire.

The group decides to travel to the remaining crystals at the behest of Lenna's ghostly father, King Tycoon. Unfortunately, along the way the ship gets caught in a whirlpool and Syldra sacrifices herself to save the ship. Without wind, however, the party is left to drift endlessly. Eventually, they land in a ship graveyard full of undead creatures. I proceed to more or less burn the entire thing down cause, you know, fire > undead. When the group finally hits land, they are confronted by a Siren who projects images of their family. Butts succumbs to the image of his dead mother, and Lenna (and inexplicably, Faris) collapse at the sight of Lenna's father, King Tycoon. The trick doesn't work on Galuf though, for his amnesia has caused him to completely forget his own granddaughter. He proceeds to rouse everyone else out of their stupor and it's BOSS TIME. Oh man, the first real boss of the game! This could get rough, everyone is at a low level and...

The Siren changes to an undead form like 3 seconds into the battle. Probably not the best idea while staring down four wizards with a fire spell.

And we're off to the next crystal and my next job...next time.

Thanks for reading and if anyone decides to join the fiesta, I'd love to hear about it!

Part 2 is here!