THE GRIMOIRE OF THE RIFT

I mentioned it previously here - that being a narration of one of the more difficult battles. (And annoying.) The full name is FINAL FANTASY TACTICS 2 ADVANCE*: GRIMOIRE OF THE RIFT (or FFTA2 for short), for the Nintendo DS. It's a wonderful game - one controls a number of characters in a similar manner to games such as 'Fire Emblem', turn-based, small-scale, but with very few GAME OVERs (though the few that exist are annoying - you can die before you get the chance to save!) and a nonlinear progression.

That was not the best of explanations, but it's not too important for the moment - suffice it to say that 1) it's fun and 2) there's a lot of content in the game, such that 20 hours of play probably got my brother and I around 20 or 25% completion.

Until his cartridge died suddenly and without warning.

It was a strange death - it played fine, it loaded save-games fine, but it could not save - complaining of "Data not accessible." We searched for solutions - 20 hours of gameplay is a lot to lose, to be forced to repeat for one to progress further! My brother, whose cartridge it was, found reports of the error on ROMs, and solutions for that purpose (but not for his!) - I examined the cartridge itself, and found that it rattled almost - something loose inside! But neither of us could find any solution.

Today, we returned it, and got a replacement. Twenty hours gone.

It sort of bites.

Moral: I guess killing doesn't solve all problems!

*"Advance" in the manner of "Advance Wars" or others, in that it was the version of the series as brought to the amazing GAMEBOY ADVANCE**; oddly, also like Advance Wars, FFTA hasn't lost the prefix in its move to the DS.

**FFT preceded FFTA; there weren't any "Wars" games in the US before Advance Wars 1, but in Japan, the older ones were named after the system; Famicom Wars, Super Famicon Wars, and sequels thereof.