age of empires 3 (pc)
11/2005
i was anxious to play this after seeing some trailers of gameplay. but really it’s more of aoe2 with better graphics and a different timeline. this time around it has true 3d engine as well. i played thru all of act 1 in one sitting. the plot seems thrown together so that’s not motivating me to play it non-stop or anything. act 2 is frustrating, i had to cheat on 2 levels on it to finish them. and this was after replaying them both like 3 times. my gripe is that the units don’t seem to be that well balanced. 5 cannons is like an unstoppable force. the computer of course creates them with lightning speed.

to be continued..

final fantasy II (IV) (snes)
11/2005-12/2005 – status: finished
i never got a chance to play this on the snes it was already a rare find even way back then. i did have ff6 (3) though which is one of the greatest games of all time. after playing it now i wish i did play it when it originally came out. the crappy graphics i don’t mind but story-wise this one doesn’t seem to evolve that much from final fantasy I on the nes. it really feels like it belongs on the nes because it’s not even in the same class as ff6.

the poor english translation doesn’t help much either. i just finished the game today, i had taken a 2 week or so break from playing it. picked it back up again and realized i had no idea what was going on with the crazy storyline. i was surprised by the death of a playable character. disappointed that i couldn’t pick and choose who i wanted in my party. you can see some early character design ideas. edge -> shadow, edward -> edgar, yang -> sabin, rosa -> celes, tellah -> strago. some of those comparisons aren’t really that close of a match while others are almost dead on. i plan on giving the game another chance in it’s better translated form on the gba/psx, and possibly even the fan translated snes version of ff4.

my preferred characters to play were cecil (he was cooler as a dark knight), kain, and edge. finished the game in exactly 22 hours.

update 12/2011:
i’ve been playing a lot of final fantasy I lately and have realized that i was too harsh on ff4. it’s a nice evolution of ff1 with early 16-bit graphics (since the game practically debuted with the snes launch). it has a loose story (like ff1) that is wrapped around completing several sub-quests. and since the north american releases dates of ff1 and ff4 are 1990 and 1991 respectively, i would have been thrilled at the time to have owned and played ff4 when it originally came out. my disappoint upon playing ff4 now was going from a masterpiece like ff6 to then playing ff4. i had my hopes up and expected something just as great, meanwhile, forgetting the time periods these games came out. ff4 came out in ’91 and ff6 in ’94 so it was unfair of me to compare the two.

star wars: empire at war (pc)
4/2006 – status: finished
i just finished the game on medium level as both the empire and the rebels. the game over all is enjoyable but not addictive. i like how there’s both space and land battles. i really enjoy the space battles, land battles become quite tedious and i for the most part auto-resolve them. the master of orion style of planet micro-management seems like an unneeded element of the game. although i like how the space stations can be upgraded. there’s a weak storyline to go along with the gameplay. the game endings leave a lot to be desired. me and ram have tried the multiplayer aspect a few times and we both prefer the space battles over land battles. i personally don’t think the land battles are very well balanced with the units vs. space battles. the only cool thing about the land battles is the ability to have vader or the emperor in your ranks.