Wishing you a... hold on, stat check... Happy New Year!

It's been an RPG kinda Christmas for me this year. I'm not normally an RPG fan. Sure, I like my stats and upgrades in other games, but I've never been a massive roleplayer. If I have been at all, most of the RPGs I've played are western RPGs as opposed to Japanese turn-based affairs.

But this Christmas, I've gone all out and am playing RPGs than ever before, by complete accident. First I got Chrono Trigger on iOS. Then came along the beautiful surprise of Final Fantasy IX on my new (hah) PSP. Then Christmas happened and I got Skyrim. And I've just remembered that I'm in the middle of Dragon Age: Origins. SO MANY RPGS.

Chrono Trigger is still going strong. There's a section, about midway though the game where you fight several tough bosses in quick succession but, it never felt as though the game was ganging up on me. With out giving too much away, halfway through there's an amazing twist in the direction of the story and a whole new location is revealed. Needless to say, I'm having a great time. Even when this jerk showed up to repeatedly ruin my Chrono-Frog-Robo dream team;

This isn't even a major plot boss fight. He turns up,
you kill him, and that's it. No explanation or anything

Thanks to the generosity of my neighbour, I've now got a PSP! It's the same one he lent me back in 2009, but this time, it's actually mine for good. I was idly browsing the PSN store for PS one games to buy when I stumbled across FFIX. After regaining consciousness, I bought it, downloaded it twice because my internet failed halfway through, and after sorting out the screen size, flung myself back into Gaia.

IX is quite an impressive game, as it manages to be a nod to the classic Final Fantasy formula, as well as introducing loads of great new ideas. The world is a return to the industrial revolution with magic style of the older games. VII and VIII decided that apparently the fantasy genre included horrendous dieselpunk, but there's none of that marlarky in IX. It's all Black Mages, airships and hitting people with swords because fuck guns. man.

When I first played FFIX I was about 11 years old. It took me a long time to get anywhere in that game. I got stuck at a boss called Gizamaluke, through a combination of poor equipment choices and being bad at games. This time around, I'm taking things much slower, and experiencing the everything the game has to offer. Tetra Master is the ongoing mini-game in FFIX and it's a fantastic distraction from the main plot. I'm also making sure my characters are levelling up properly, and aren't constantly under threat from one hit KOs. Even though the "abilities through apparel" mechanic is dreadful, FFIX is a solid JRPG, if a little aged. You know what'd be great? A 3DS remake. Make it happen, Square Enix.

It'd look like this, only with more dimensions

Skyrim is everything everyone says it is. It really needs a full blog post about it and for that reason, I will be writing one next year (hah!) so I can make a FUS about it (ha-HAH!)

Finally, with only four hours left in 2011, my game of the year, unsurprisingly, is Bastion. I've already said everything that needs to be said about it, but the ultimate truth about Bastion is that is is pure joy to play. Pick it up today.

Well, that's another year wrapped up. 2011 has been a crazy good year for games, and 2012 promises to deliver some corkers too. Hope to see y'all then. You know where to find me.