Waiting on my copy of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core to be dropped off tomorrow, so in the meantime I'm playing Infinite Space for the DS. It's a crossover between a spaceflight sim, an RPG, and a visual novel adventure. Basically you play as this kid named Yuri whose sole desire is to get off of his backwater home planet and travel the "sea of stars", and it goes from just having the one ship and a few-odd friends as crew members to being captain of an entire fleet ten years later.
It's my second playthrough, and this time I actually spent enough time level-grinding to make it to the top of the 0G rankings, basically there's a parameter called "Fame Points" that you get from each battle and other situations, and it serves to rank you amongst the other freelance commanders in the galaxy. The best part is that you end up getting rare blueprints for building and customizing your ship as you get higher. At the very top of this list is Valantin the Pirate, who actually plays a significant role in the story although in the background for the most part. Anyways, you get an idea of just how badass he is during the tutorial mission, you get to pilot his ship, the Corsair, while it walks you through the battle system. At any rate, if you manage to knock Valantin off his pedestal and become #1 on the rankings, you get the blueprints for his ship, which is hands down the most powerful ship in the game.
It took me a shit-ton of time and effort to get the blueprints for the Corsair and the credits required to build it, but in the end it paid off. Now it's my flagship, and it's got state-of-the-art weaponry and enough hangar space for 60 fighters. Then i've got my Jaberlin-class carrier, that's another 60 fighters and some AA guns, it's flanked by two Gluck-class cruisers with additional heavy weaponry and 12 fighters a piece, and finally in my front line, a Castilla-class shield ship to tank for the rest of my fleet. Now time to kick some major Lugavolian ass...
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"Yeah, so this one time, I tried playing poker with tarot cards... got a full house, and about four people died." ~ Unknown comedian
Happy New Year from WP's resident fortune-teller! May the cards be ever in your favor.