Pegasus Knights are Worth Waiting For

From the end of my last post on this blog: "Hopefully I don't let the blog be idle again for 4 months." Yeah... it's been over a year since then. So much for that.

Thing is, I really enjoyed doing it, and have been quite busy (read: school) since then, so I never had the chance to continue. (Well, I probably had the chance, but I kind of forgot about this blog until now.)

I have played a lot of games, though. In May and June of this year, I played two PS2 RPGs - Persona 3: FES and Persona 4.

Ladies and gentlemen, they were fantastic. Persona 4 is probably on my top ten list of favorite games - and that list has been fairly static since about 2000 when Majora's Mask first came out. Persona 4 is definitely my favorite PS2 game, at the very least.

But it has been a while since I've played those games. And I will likely play through them again in due time, and write more in depth about them when they are more fresh in my mind. For this post, I will talk about an old standby, another game definitely on my top ten list: the Genesis strategy RPG Shining Force II.

Shining Force II was my first RPG, so it is likely that I am fairly biased when it comes to discussing its quality. I can see why some people might say it's story could be considered weaker than the one in the original Shining Force, but I don't care, I still prefer it. There are a few typos in the game, which do annoy the holy hell out of me, though.

But the battle system in this game is exactly how I want my strategy RPGs to be: nice and light. The closest battle system to Shining Force II is the Fire Emblem series (for the most part - it is a little more complicated and deaths are permanent, so those games aren't as replayable to me). But SFII does not have the Tactics Ogre problem where you have to position your guys behind or to the side of the enemy in order to do more damage or anything stupid like that - you go up to the guy you want to fight, and you attack him or use magic on him or whatever. The strategy in the game comes from who you have fight who, and when and where - but not to ridiculous levels.

Anyway, I've beaten this game several times, but in the past, I always sort of beat it the same way, using the same characters, promoting them the same way, etc. This time, however, I decided to max out my characters as much as possible, and I discovered something about the character Chester: I prefer to let him wait to be promoted to a Pegasus Knight, because he is fantastic when he is overleveled.

Seriously.

I got him to level 28 unpromoted before I finally got to Pacalon and got the Pegasus Wing. When I promoted him, I replayed a battle a few times to level him up to everyone else's level, and now his stats are fairly ridiculous compared to everyone else. He doesn't have the highest attack power (strangely, Slade does, although I'm okay with that), nor does he have the highest defense (Jaha does, as usual). He does, however, have the highest agility on my team, so he always goes first, and his HP is very high as well. He is incredibly well rounded and I love using him, as a flying character is always good to have.

As far as everyone else goes, I got them all to level 23 before promoting them. I did this because I hated getting 1 EXP for every kill I got and didn't feel like playing battles over and over again to level them up. Chester was idle for quite a few battles before I promoted him to the awesomeness he is now.

So anyway, I'm heading to Moun right now, and am currently in the battle where you eventually get Jaro, who I also might use because Taya sucks and Kazin already is amazing. The fact that I've been playing this game since my childhood and still find new ways to get through it amazes me, and proves to me why it is so good.