Dad Life and New Games
So the title of this post are the main reason/excuses for not posting in 6 months. So I am just going to skim those reasons, not doing them justice because I could go onto whole new blogs about being a father and about the new games coming out on Xbox One. Perhaps I will start including paragraphs devoted to them, however this blog is still going to primarily remain a chronological adventure of the final fantasy series.
Dad Life
There is nothing like being a parent. Period. End of story. If you are someone who looks at your pets as your children, and talks to your (parent) friends about how your pets are your babies; stop, just stop. You are just embarrassing yourself and I guarantee that your friends are scoffing at you behind your back. Now that I have said that this whole paragraph will probably come off as an attack on people who love their pets, I don't mean it to be, I am just going to discuss how my life has changed since becoming a father. It feels like almost everything in my life has changed; Priorities are the big thing. I have changed how I prioritize my time, money, and overall health. I have very little free time, I work more than full time and time not at work is now time taking care of Lyla (my daughter's name) to give Audra (wife) a break. I do still have some free time; early mornings and weekends, I just have less of it. Money is big, from new baby furniture and clothes to restocking diaper bags and butt cream, babies are just expensive. Then overall health goes hand in hand with time, but if I have a little bit of free time in a day and I haven't worked out, but I also haven't spent any time with Lyla I am going to choose being with my daughter every time. There is also sleep which comes into health, you sleep less and are woken up in the middle of the night: obvious baby stuff. Also, everything changes; how you look at the world (thinking how anything and everything could harm/affect your child), rearranging your house (what can she get into, what can she put in her mouth, keeping for from moving toward potentially dangerous items(she can't quite crawl, but it is impressive how far she can move by squirming)), how you plan (can baby come, sitter, diaper bag packed, stroller, carrier, milk, what time is Lyla going to sleep recently), and communication, the big one.. You have to learn how to communicate with your significant other in a much more efficient way. You have more to communicate about, with less time, and increased stress and frustration that you sometimes unload on the wrong person. The last thing I want to touch on(in this post) about being a parent is the Joy. There is no Joy in the world like seeing your baby smile when you come home from work, or holding her when she is in a snugly mood, making her laugh and giggle uncontrollably when playing, being proud when she learns or does something for the first time. or laying in a family pile on the couch with your daughter and wife just watching a movie and cuddling.
A quick note about workouts, as that has been a main topic in past blog posts. I have been having hip trouble when I run the last few months, and two weeks ago I tweaked my back while I was front squatting. So now I am focusing on yoga and high intensity bodyweight movements and workouts. Circuits and insanity and pullups and junk like that. So that is about it workout wise, When I hurt my back, lifting and holding my daughter was painful, so that really hit me as something that I cannot allow. What jumps in my mind is that in a crisis, if I am injured from working out to hard I won't be able to help/save my daughter. So that is my mindset going forward with my workouts, less weights, more bodyweight stuff and at home stuff. Workouts that are tough, but come with a smaller chance of getting injured.
New Games: Xbox One
So another reason I haven't been playing Final Fantasy besides my new daughter and having less free time is that with the free time I do have I have been playing Xbox Games. The games I have been playing the last 6 months were
Batman Arkham Knight; really fun game, the action and fighting are very well done. Not as good as Arkham City, simply because the only real change was the batmobile fighting, which I didn't really like. The story line was frustrating(spoiler), because knowing a decent amount of Batman comics and stories not all of it, but enough to know that Jason Todd has already mysteriously come back from the dead to become an antihero/villain, so I was frustratingly hoping that I was wrong and Todd wasn't the Arkham knight, he was.
Elder Scrolls Online: Really great game, spent all my free time for a couple months playing this game. It plays almost exactly like Skyrim except it is an MMO, the skills and leveling system is similar but more difficult. Lots of content. Lots of time, and very fun to play by yourself and with friends, highly recommend this game.
Battlefield 4, fun game, my favorite battlefield since bad company 2, also better than hardline. I am not a huge battlefield fan, the only real reason I still play is because some friends from work are big fans and I get on to play with them occasionally.
Battlefront, played the beta, very fun, instant action, have it preordered for later this month.
Halo 5. Huge Halo fan, Storyline was a little random and crazy but had a fun time playing it. It also has the most fun multiplayer since halo 3. Still has many of the things that has frustrated me with recent halo games, but they are downplayed and 343 has done a good job balancing everything in the game. I have friends that play so I get on a couple times a week and play, even by myself sometimes too, which I haven't gone on by myself and played multiplayer since Halo 3, this Halo is very fun online. They still have a few bugs/inconsistencies to fix and definitely need more maps. I have good games and bad games. Generally, I finish with a kill/death ratio of at least 1 or better. I am not near as good with grenades as I used to be, the new boost/dash they have in the game makes it really easy to avoid being hurt by grenades which is very frustrating as someone who was better than most people at using grenades and corners to my benefit whenever in a firefight to get an edge, finish a kill, or start by hitting them with a grenade before we start shooting. Also, the radar is tiny, it is almost useless as by the time enemies show up on my radar they are already in range to shotgun me, it has only come in handy a few times around very tight corners, which I would usually use a grenade to welcome someone around a corner, but I miss more now because I don't see them coming in time with the radar and they can dodge my grenades more efficiently. Those changes seem pretty small, but with how I have played past halo games, they are huge changes that has affected my play style greatly.
Now on too a little bit of Final Fantasy.
I got back to playing this morning. Just hunted a vampire in the earth cave for the village Melmond. This game has some very confusing and difficult dungeons. I get lost very easily in the 2d world. Some of the creatures caused stone, paralyze, and poison, so I was lucky that I travel with a full compliment of items. Once again once I got to the boss and he was easier than many of the random encounters in the area. I took out the vampire in one attack of Fire 3. Then I had to go back through the levels of the dungeon to get out. There was a mysterious evil stone in the lowest level so I am assuming that I will have to come back to this dungeon before too long. I got back to the village and apparently accomplished nothing, nobody seemed too excited that I killed their vampire, and they are complaining that the earth is still decaying. One guy mentions a hermit down south that may have the answers I need. So I guess I am heading that way once I rest and stock up on supplies...apparently there is no item shop in this town, back to Elfheim, then too the hermit. All my characters are level 19, and the game at this level still feels pretty easy, the only tough times come when you are fighting monsters that can cause some of those status ailments I mentioned before especially stone(Gold needles are 800) and paralyze. So I am not sure who this guy was talking about, as a hermit to the south, I didn't find anything, but the only other place to travel on this section of continent is a cave to the west. A giant is guarding the pass and will let me pass if I give him a star ruby, perfect as that was the main prize after beating the vampire, seems like I am on the right track. I think I have mentioned this before but it is weird how much crap you get in treasure chests, you get a small amount of money, or some crappy weapon that isn't close to as strong as your weapon, or one that has a specific purpose, like does more damage to water foes or undead, but very few items you find in chests you actually use or equip to a character right away.
So I was right, after going through the short Titan Pass I found a hermit who gave me an earth rod so that I can move the evil stone and go to the next level at the earth cave. I think I have mentioned this before but the damage that your characters do is so random, it is hard to count on any sort of consistency. My monk right now is my most consistent damage dealer, usually 3 hits for ~215-260. It varies so much between how many hits to how power the hits are to whether there is a critical hit. It can very from 1 hit for 45 damage to 4 hits for 300+ damage. It makes it difficult to strategize at times. Each character's role is really starting to show up though: My knight, with his armor and sword is a hard tank with moderate damage, it is very rare that anything (especially physical attacks) hurt him more than 1 or 2 health, he has 460 damage, it is just some magic that hits him hard. He does decent damage, typically 3 hits for 130-160 damage. The monk has no armor but decent defense stats so he doesn't take a ton of damage but more than my knight, he also usually does more damage, however since he just uses his fist, his damage seems to vary more based on the creature's defense that he attacks. The mages, both white and black, are really only useful in specific scenarios and boss fights, they don't have much health or do decent damage so more often than not they are just a liability. But they can come in handy from time to time. So I fought my way back down to the Earth Cave Basement and fought the main boss, Lich. He was notably tougher than other bosses but still only took me two turns to kill, I was throwing physical attacks, fire 3, and Dia 3 at him, each of those did 100-150 damage, less than against most monsters. So once again I get back to that town and nobody seems too impressed by what I have done. I don't even know where to go now...guess I'll sail around for a bit....
This game is nuts, I sailed around for every until I found what I thought was a new town, turned out to be Elfheim, then I did find a new dock shortly after that. Then I ran around and found a new town called Crescent Lake which seems like the next place based on the equipment that I am purchasing. I have mentioned this before, but this game is so confusing and does not give you enough hints about what to do next. It is also very expensive, especially armor and magic, I am way stronger than I need to be and have spent a bunch of time grinding levels, and I still don't have enough cash to completely upgrade my team. Normally about this far into a game is when you have a bunch of extra money and don't need to worry about being able to afford upgrading equipment. Well, maybe this isn't the next town, nobody is telling me anything...ugh. So I am off again wondering around trying to find where to go. Most of my characters are level 20 now and I have put in about 24 hours, the time is a bit inflated because I have a tendency, especially while grinding, to leave the game on and go get food or watch an episode of something with my wife, or now going and getting my daughter, to the 24 hours is not all actual game time.
Well that was dumb of me, I didn't look everywhere in Crescent Lake, I found a circle of mages off to the east of town, but still in town. One of them gave me a canoe! Off to explore some more, but now with the ability to cross shallow lakes and rivers! Yay I think! Traveling around randomly and I found a pretty tough castle/citadel and found some very interesting items, healing staff and gauntlets, have healing and bolt action during battle. Also found an ice brand sword! finally find a weapon that is better than what I have equipped. I also found a rat's tail, I am assuming that will come in handy later..? Now just cruising randomly some more and I found a Volcano, we will see what is going on in here. More confusing dungeon and maze like rooms and floors, then a boss and another crystal is found! The gauntlets and healing staff I found in the Citadel make my mages much more useful on an every fight basis, now one can use the Gauntlets(bolt2), the other can use healing staff(Heal) so that they can help instead of just do almost no damage. Now I am just floating around these rivers and getting lost. Found a cave, but it is getting late, I have played more video games today than the last couple weeks combined and this new cave looks frozen so I am going to go back outside, save, and call it a night. Well that was a long post. Going to be working 12 hours shifts this week so I probably won't play or post until next weekend. Also, not going to proof read this post, so my bad if there are errors or inconsistencies. bye bye
Dad Life
There is nothing like being a parent. Period. End of story. If you are someone who looks at your pets as your children, and talks to your (parent) friends about how your pets are your babies; stop, just stop. You are just embarrassing yourself and I guarantee that your friends are scoffing at you behind your back. Now that I have said that this whole paragraph will probably come off as an attack on people who love their pets, I don't mean it to be, I am just going to discuss how my life has changed since becoming a father. It feels like almost everything in my life has changed; Priorities are the big thing. I have changed how I prioritize my time, money, and overall health. I have very little free time, I work more than full time and time not at work is now time taking care of Lyla (my daughter's name) to give Audra (wife) a break. I do still have some free time; early mornings and weekends, I just have less of it. Money is big, from new baby furniture and clothes to restocking diaper bags and butt cream, babies are just expensive. Then overall health goes hand in hand with time, but if I have a little bit of free time in a day and I haven't worked out, but I also haven't spent any time with Lyla I am going to choose being with my daughter every time. There is also sleep which comes into health, you sleep less and are woken up in the middle of the night: obvious baby stuff. Also, everything changes; how you look at the world (thinking how anything and everything could harm/affect your child), rearranging your house (what can she get into, what can she put in her mouth, keeping for from moving toward potentially dangerous items(she can't quite crawl, but it is impressive how far she can move by squirming)), how you plan (can baby come, sitter, diaper bag packed, stroller, carrier, milk, what time is Lyla going to sleep recently), and communication, the big one.. You have to learn how to communicate with your significant other in a much more efficient way. You have more to communicate about, with less time, and increased stress and frustration that you sometimes unload on the wrong person. The last thing I want to touch on(in this post) about being a parent is the Joy. There is no Joy in the world like seeing your baby smile when you come home from work, or holding her when she is in a snugly mood, making her laugh and giggle uncontrollably when playing, being proud when she learns or does something for the first time. or laying in a family pile on the couch with your daughter and wife just watching a movie and cuddling.
A quick note about workouts, as that has been a main topic in past blog posts. I have been having hip trouble when I run the last few months, and two weeks ago I tweaked my back while I was front squatting. So now I am focusing on yoga and high intensity bodyweight movements and workouts. Circuits and insanity and pullups and junk like that. So that is about it workout wise, When I hurt my back, lifting and holding my daughter was painful, so that really hit me as something that I cannot allow. What jumps in my mind is that in a crisis, if I am injured from working out to hard I won't be able to help/save my daughter. So that is my mindset going forward with my workouts, less weights, more bodyweight stuff and at home stuff. Workouts that are tough, but come with a smaller chance of getting injured.
New Games: Xbox One
So another reason I haven't been playing Final Fantasy besides my new daughter and having less free time is that with the free time I do have I have been playing Xbox Games. The games I have been playing the last 6 months were
Batman Arkham Knight; really fun game, the action and fighting are very well done. Not as good as Arkham City, simply because the only real change was the batmobile fighting, which I didn't really like. The story line was frustrating(spoiler), because knowing a decent amount of Batman comics and stories not all of it, but enough to know that Jason Todd has already mysteriously come back from the dead to become an antihero/villain, so I was frustratingly hoping that I was wrong and Todd wasn't the Arkham knight, he was.
Elder Scrolls Online: Really great game, spent all my free time for a couple months playing this game. It plays almost exactly like Skyrim except it is an MMO, the skills and leveling system is similar but more difficult. Lots of content. Lots of time, and very fun to play by yourself and with friends, highly recommend this game.
Battlefield 4, fun game, my favorite battlefield since bad company 2, also better than hardline. I am not a huge battlefield fan, the only real reason I still play is because some friends from work are big fans and I get on to play with them occasionally.
Battlefront, played the beta, very fun, instant action, have it preordered for later this month.
Halo 5. Huge Halo fan, Storyline was a little random and crazy but had a fun time playing it. It also has the most fun multiplayer since halo 3. Still has many of the things that has frustrated me with recent halo games, but they are downplayed and 343 has done a good job balancing everything in the game. I have friends that play so I get on a couple times a week and play, even by myself sometimes too, which I haven't gone on by myself and played multiplayer since Halo 3, this Halo is very fun online. They still have a few bugs/inconsistencies to fix and definitely need more maps. I have good games and bad games. Generally, I finish with a kill/death ratio of at least 1 or better. I am not near as good with grenades as I used to be, the new boost/dash they have in the game makes it really easy to avoid being hurt by grenades which is very frustrating as someone who was better than most people at using grenades and corners to my benefit whenever in a firefight to get an edge, finish a kill, or start by hitting them with a grenade before we start shooting. Also, the radar is tiny, it is almost useless as by the time enemies show up on my radar they are already in range to shotgun me, it has only come in handy a few times around very tight corners, which I would usually use a grenade to welcome someone around a corner, but I miss more now because I don't see them coming in time with the radar and they can dodge my grenades more efficiently. Those changes seem pretty small, but with how I have played past halo games, they are huge changes that has affected my play style greatly.
Now on too a little bit of Final Fantasy.
I got back to playing this morning. Just hunted a vampire in the earth cave for the village Melmond. This game has some very confusing and difficult dungeons. I get lost very easily in the 2d world. Some of the creatures caused stone, paralyze, and poison, so I was lucky that I travel with a full compliment of items. Once again once I got to the boss and he was easier than many of the random encounters in the area. I took out the vampire in one attack of Fire 3. Then I had to go back through the levels of the dungeon to get out. There was a mysterious evil stone in the lowest level so I am assuming that I will have to come back to this dungeon before too long. I got back to the village and apparently accomplished nothing, nobody seemed too excited that I killed their vampire, and they are complaining that the earth is still decaying. One guy mentions a hermit down south that may have the answers I need. So I guess I am heading that way once I rest and stock up on supplies...apparently there is no item shop in this town, back to Elfheim, then too the hermit. All my characters are level 19, and the game at this level still feels pretty easy, the only tough times come when you are fighting monsters that can cause some of those status ailments I mentioned before especially stone(Gold needles are 800) and paralyze. So I am not sure who this guy was talking about, as a hermit to the south, I didn't find anything, but the only other place to travel on this section of continent is a cave to the west. A giant is guarding the pass and will let me pass if I give him a star ruby, perfect as that was the main prize after beating the vampire, seems like I am on the right track. I think I have mentioned this before but it is weird how much crap you get in treasure chests, you get a small amount of money, or some crappy weapon that isn't close to as strong as your weapon, or one that has a specific purpose, like does more damage to water foes or undead, but very few items you find in chests you actually use or equip to a character right away.
So I was right, after going through the short Titan Pass I found a hermit who gave me an earth rod so that I can move the evil stone and go to the next level at the earth cave. I think I have mentioned this before but the damage that your characters do is so random, it is hard to count on any sort of consistency. My monk right now is my most consistent damage dealer, usually 3 hits for ~215-260. It varies so much between how many hits to how power the hits are to whether there is a critical hit. It can very from 1 hit for 45 damage to 4 hits for 300+ damage. It makes it difficult to strategize at times. Each character's role is really starting to show up though: My knight, with his armor and sword is a hard tank with moderate damage, it is very rare that anything (especially physical attacks) hurt him more than 1 or 2 health, he has 460 damage, it is just some magic that hits him hard. He does decent damage, typically 3 hits for 130-160 damage. The monk has no armor but decent defense stats so he doesn't take a ton of damage but more than my knight, he also usually does more damage, however since he just uses his fist, his damage seems to vary more based on the creature's defense that he attacks. The mages, both white and black, are really only useful in specific scenarios and boss fights, they don't have much health or do decent damage so more often than not they are just a liability. But they can come in handy from time to time. So I fought my way back down to the Earth Cave Basement and fought the main boss, Lich. He was notably tougher than other bosses but still only took me two turns to kill, I was throwing physical attacks, fire 3, and Dia 3 at him, each of those did 100-150 damage, less than against most monsters. So once again I get back to that town and nobody seems too impressed by what I have done. I don't even know where to go now...guess I'll sail around for a bit....
This game is nuts, I sailed around for every until I found what I thought was a new town, turned out to be Elfheim, then I did find a new dock shortly after that. Then I ran around and found a new town called Crescent Lake which seems like the next place based on the equipment that I am purchasing. I have mentioned this before, but this game is so confusing and does not give you enough hints about what to do next. It is also very expensive, especially armor and magic, I am way stronger than I need to be and have spent a bunch of time grinding levels, and I still don't have enough cash to completely upgrade my team. Normally about this far into a game is when you have a bunch of extra money and don't need to worry about being able to afford upgrading equipment. Well, maybe this isn't the next town, nobody is telling me anything...ugh. So I am off again wondering around trying to find where to go. Most of my characters are level 20 now and I have put in about 24 hours, the time is a bit inflated because I have a tendency, especially while grinding, to leave the game on and go get food or watch an episode of something with my wife, or now going and getting my daughter, to the 24 hours is not all actual game time.
Well that was dumb of me, I didn't look everywhere in Crescent Lake, I found a circle of mages off to the east of town, but still in town. One of them gave me a canoe! Off to explore some more, but now with the ability to cross shallow lakes and rivers! Yay I think! Traveling around randomly and I found a pretty tough castle/citadel and found some very interesting items, healing staff and gauntlets, have healing and bolt action during battle. Also found an ice brand sword! finally find a weapon that is better than what I have equipped. I also found a rat's tail, I am assuming that will come in handy later..? Now just cruising randomly some more and I found a Volcano, we will see what is going on in here. More confusing dungeon and maze like rooms and floors, then a boss and another crystal is found! The gauntlets and healing staff I found in the Citadel make my mages much more useful on an every fight basis, now one can use the Gauntlets(bolt2), the other can use healing staff(Heal) so that they can help instead of just do almost no damage. Now I am just floating around these rivers and getting lost. Found a cave, but it is getting late, I have played more video games today than the last couple weeks combined and this new cave looks frozen so I am going to go back outside, save, and call it a night. Well that was a long post. Going to be working 12 hours shifts this week so I probably won't play or post until next weekend. Also, not going to proof read this post, so my bad if there are errors or inconsistencies. bye bye
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