Crafting in FFXIV: Where to start?

After poking about on my baby Ninja on Cactuar I had decided to pick up some Crafting classes so that I wouldn’t be falling behind on them as much as I have on my main on Moogle.
After some careful consideration on how I was going to do this I went ahead and started levelling the three crafter classes you can pick up in Limsa Lominsa (my homebase): Culinarian, Armorsmith and Blacksmith.

I don’t mean to write a guide on crafting, since there is more than enough of them out there already, but I would like to share some of the things that made it “easier” to level crafting on a brand new character.

Tip #1:
Pick up all the crafting classes in your starting town. From level five onwards you can pick between three rewards from quests. Because all starting towns conveniently have three crafts you can pick up you can level them up together and pick all the rewards from the quests simultaneously, making it much easier to “gear up” in general. You can get almost a full set this way for the first 10-15 levels.
From level 10 you can start looking into picking up accessories from the local Jeweler on the markets to fill up your right side. Since you won’t be provided any jewelry from the crafting quests.

Gear I got from doing only the level 5 and 10 quests for the 3 crafting classes in Limsa!

Tip #2:
Make all the recipes in your crafting log. Especially for the first 10-15 levels it will give you almost all the experience you need to level up. Added bonus: Up untill about level 15 you can get all the materials you need from the vendors. After that things will change but I will explain that in a later post.

Tip #3:
Levequests. Do them. Some professions don’t have that many recipes in their crafting log. When you plan to level from level 5 to level 10 just check the local levemete, see what items you need for the levequests and hold on to them, this goes for the entire levelling process by the way. They might give you that bit of experience you need to get to your next crafting quest! The rest of the items you can often sell, or hang onto, whatever you prefer. Especially when you are crafting tools for other jobs it’s nice to hang onto those since they can fill in the gaps that the crafting quests leave.
A special note here for levelling culinarian. Just keep the food. It helps you level other classes and you make it anyway, might aswell use it!

Tip #4:
Aim for filling up the quality bar as much as you can. From the moment you get the Master’s Mend skill (which is level 7 I believe) you can start fiddling around with HQing items. Make sure you always have two tries left to finish off the item (even if you would only need one) just incase the first one fails. Trying to HQ an item is always worth it seeing as with every step off quality you add succesfully you get increased experience from crafting the item. Play around with it and see how you like it. Sometimes you might get lucky and craft an HQ item for a levequest or for use!

Tip #5:
Branch out. Once you hit about level 15 you will notice that you are going to need items that you cannot buy from the vendors anymore. This is the point that you can start looking into picking up the gathering classes and the other crafting classes if you prefer. I know that levelling one crafter is a timesink, let alone multiple at a time. However it’s much easier to focus on a few at a time since all the crafting classes unlock usefull cross class skills that make your life much easier.

Tip #6:
Play your own way. For myself I figured that it was just the easiest to combine all the crafters in one city and attempt to level them up together because I have nothing on this particular server. However if you want to focus on just one at a time: go ahead! Nothing is stopping you from playing the game the way you want to. I prefer gathering everything myself so for me it’s an incredible timesink. You can however opt to buy everything of the market boards or just buy the completed items off the market boards and level solely on levequests… It’s all up to you! I just hope that some of the tips in my little post might be usefull when starting out.

I might be doing some more of these posts as I advance my crafts to higher levels. I hope you liked reading my tips. I know that they worked for me!
Levelling the gatherers and crafters is a nice way to break away from the mainstory or level a battle class for a bit. In the long run, if you’re serious about it, having high level crafters and gatherers can earn you lots of gil, make you fun glamour sets and even some pets, mounts and housing items!

Picking up the Pieces

For the past week or so I’ve been taking a long hard look at myself and my accomplishments in life and came to the (not so) shocking conclusion that life as I imagined it 10 years ago hasn’t turned out the way I wanted.
I have had to deal with a lot of roadbumps on the way, so to speak. Most of them were out of my control, others however I have created myself and the road to overcoming them is longer and harder than I thought it would be.

All my life I have been struggling with motivational issues. You could say I’m lazy, but I don’t feel that way, I just feel unmotivated. At primary school I was one of the more intelligent kids in class. Due to how the Dutch school system works however all the attention went to the kids who were struggling to keep up, whereas the ones who were struggling with boredom got more or less ignored. I never had homework the way others had, I learned fast and worked fast and got everything done at school so that I would have the afternoons and evenings to myself.
This continued, partially, on in high school. Subjects I enjoyed I would be done with on time. The ones I didn’t I kept postponing untill the last minute and then either failed or got just a high enough grade to pass the class.

Fast forward to university. I hated half the program. Science didn’t interest me, I wanted to be a therapist and all the courses I had to do that didn’t involve that I made sure I put as little effort in it as possible without failling them. I didn’t go to college a lot. I skipped almost all morning lectures, unless attendancy was measured and you had to be there or you would fail. I stretched deadlines and managed to maneuver my way through 5 years of this without getting caught in lies once. I know it’s not a healthy way to go about life, but it’s a way that I have been using for atleast the past 20 years and I’m not sure how to change it.

Right now I’m still suffering from the same issues. I have gained a lot of weight over the past two years, as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, and finding the motivation to hit the gym consistently is hard. I rather stay in bed than get up and go. It’s the same with applying for jobs. I just can’t find the motivation to actively browse jobs, write letters, update my resumé and apply. It’s all detrimental to myself, I’ll never leave the house or get my own life if I don’t have work, and yet I can’t stop doing it. I’m just not motivated, at all.

The only motivation I seem to have is when it comes to playing video games. And even thent it’s waning. I can love a game for a while and then completely discard it a few months later. It’s the regular cycle on Diablo III for me, it’s becoming a bit of a cycle on World of Warcraft and it has happened on FFXIV aswell. Not to mention all the non MMO games I’ve bought over the past year and have barely played. I pick them up, play for an hour or so, put them down and then never look back. By the time I feel the need to play again I’m completely lost as to what and where the story is so I have to start over. Which I detest. So instead the games just lie there, gathering dust.

I do feel like I am on a crucial point in my life where I need to start changing some of my habits. I’m afraid I will be stuck in my infinite cycle otherwise with no way of getting out. And that scares the hell out of me.

Summer Sale and Blizzard Brawl

As we all have noticed, the Steam Summer Sale has started again. Although I had planned not to buy anything, there are some deals that I just can’t/couldn’t let slip and so I caved in this year and made a small budget for games I still want.
Child of Light was 75% off yesterday and so naturally I grabbed that together with Mickey’s Castle of Illusion (nostalgia!) which was 50% off. That should net me atleast a few hours of entertainment right there. I gave myself a €20 budget this year which I’ve spent half of now on those two games. I’m hoping Ori and the Blind Forest will get hugely discounted aswell so I can pick that one up and I have my eyes set on Rayman Origins, after having bought Legends with a huge discount last year.
All in all it would mean I would get to nab 4 awesome platformer games for only €20 if I’m lucky and I would be thrilled with that.

In other news, I have found myself becoming slightly addicted with Heroes of the Storm, Blizzards MOBA. After playing League of Legends for years, and having to admit that I can’t lasthit for my life and thus would never get out of bronze rankings, playing this game is a breath of relief for me. Due to the way Blizzard has developed the game there is much less focus on the individual skills of a player, instead the game is more about teamwork and taking objectives. Ofcourse if you get matched with one or two dopey people there is a big chance you will lose the game, but it’s much less brutal than League of Legends is.
I currently own 10 heroes, the minimum requirement to be able to play Hero League aka Ranked, and am saving up so I can finally get Sylvanas. Although Blizzard has a few bundles you can buy for real money to get into the game faster I feel like you are able to buy enough Heroes with gold as long as you do your dailies. From my personal experience I found that I have been able to buy atleast one Hero a week, sometimes two when I went for the “cheaper” ones.
Seeing as the game has only just officially released, and there aren’t that many Heroes to get yet (37 to be precise), it’s fairly easy to own a whole bunch of them in a relatively short time.

My favourite champion to play is Valla. I have clocked about 60 games on her. I feel her kit is strong and she’s exactly the type of champion I like to play. Hard hitting, can make/break a teamfight and she has an escape in the form of her E skill: vault. I have even broke my “I don’t want to spend any money on f2p games anymore” rule to get her Angelic skin when it was on sale for €5.

I look so cool in games now! Best skin (together with Blood Elf Tyrande)

It gave me an incentive to be even better and push even harder on this champion, because I have actually spent money on it now. Not to sound bigheaded, but I like to believe that I am proficient on Valla and that I know the champion well enough to perform well on every map, with multiple builds.

What I mostly like about Heroes is that a lot of my friends play it aswell. I can just queue up with 1-4 others and play. Blizzard rewards this aswell since you get an XP bonus for playing with friends. Most of us are casual, although I have one particular friend who has been playing the game like crazy. He mains Sylvanas and has played about 100 games on her so far. He’s really good on her, but spamming a champion that much will do that I guess. It’s dedication that I wish I had aswell. Although 60 games on Valla isn’t nothing either. I just need to pick one or two more champions to be good at so I can have some variety of play and to prevent burnout.
For now I fill a lot of time that I don’t spend on FFXIV with Heroes of the Storm and I’m having an absolute blast while doing so.

Same Old?

Our guild had an interesting discussion last week about sexism in the Gamer community. It baffled me that there are still a lot of men who deny the gamer community is sexist at all.
Just look at all the comments surrounding EA’s announcement to include women’s teams in FIFA 16, look at the gamergate scandal from last year. The gaming community is still very much sexist, and denying that only makes you look even more ignorant than normal.

A lot of guys don’t even realize that what they say is sexist. “Oh, she’s a good player… For a girl”. No, no people it doesn’t work that way. Gender has nothing to do with being a good player or not. I’m not different because I’m a girl and I don’t require a special set of skills to be on the same level as a guy.
And then there’s the constant “kitchen” and “housewife” jokes. Newsflash, they’re not funny. But seeing as they’re only jokes apparently us women need to suck it up and deal with it. And god forbid if you say something about it, then you’re an uptight bitch who can’t laugh at a joke.

I have a male friend who is very pro when it comes to women’s rights (no he’s not gay before you ask). Even he makes inappropriate jokes at times, which I told him. He gets very offended then, how I would dare call him sexist. That’s how far the jokes at expense of women are ingrained into the male society, even the ones that do stand up for equality don’t even notice it when they make inappropriate comments themselves.

Sometimes I feel like it’s a lost fight to begin with. Women are still not equal to men in many ways. Our society has made huge steps, I’ll admit that, but we are nowhere near true equality. There are no jokes at the expense of men. Women don’t make fun of men doing “female” sports. We don’t tell our men to go to the shed and fix our shit. We don’t accuse men of being asses because “they’re probably on their period”. Yet this is stuff I have to deal with on a regular basis. Hearing a guy make fun of the women’s football World Championship is just hurtful, making comments that “women’s football is comedy” is not right and does no justice to the women who work hard to play there. It’s plain disrespectful and rude and it’s making me hate the people I’m around in the gamer community.

Ofcourse one hundred percent equality isn’t attainable. Men and women are simply not the same. Our brains develop differently making us excel at different stuff. Men are usually in better physical shape, women are better when it comes to socializing (in general, don’t bite my head off). This is the result of thousands of years of evolution. I don’t expect a woman to do the same hard physical labour as a man, often times women are simply not built for it. I don’t expect a man to be as good in sharing his thoughts and emotions as a woman simply because it’s a new concept for them. Ofcourse there are women who do hard physical labour (and I mean real hard labour, working in mines, as lumberjack etc) and ofcourse there are men who have very developed social skills. But in the base we are just not the same and it’s good that way. But it’s time that both men and women realize that we should respect eachother and stop making one or the other gender feel like less than they are. Because it’s breeding hatred and resentment and that can never end well.

So guys, please think twice before making a degrading woman joke. It might be funny to you, or when you’re alone with your buddies, but it’s highly inappropriate and sometimes hurtful when there are women around. And girls, not all men are sexist or out to hurt you. Stop putting the male society down, don’t turn into feminazi’s.

To end this post on a positive note: Look at my Dragoon Nexus Weapon!

Dedication

There has been a time, about 5-6 years ago, that I considered myself to be good at World of Warcraft. It was the end of Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Cataclysm was dawning, and I had found a home in a Horde guild on Vashj-EU.

I had rerolled from a Hunter to a Warrior (a decision that I still slightly regret untill this day) and was topping DPS meters on most fights due to broken Warrior scaling and the famous trinket from Saurfang. I would spend hours reading up on my class, tweaking, practicing, just to make sure I was doing the best possible thing I could do.

Fast forward and I have kind of lost my touch. I am an average Shadow Priest, I’m not the best, I’m not the worst but it isn’t really my forte. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Priest to death but the Shadow specc is not and has never been an specc I could excel at. I have always played Holy rather well and I can now find my way around the Disc specc. But I will never be on the same level as Shadowpriest as I was when I was playing Hunter and later Warrior.
I try to improve here and there. I know I can pull amazing numbers when need be (40k DPS on Iron Maidens Heroic puts me in the top 25% of the Shadowpriest population) but for some reason I can’t seem to perform to the maximum of my abilities. Everything that came so natural to me on Hunter and Warrior is now a struggle. And I wonder if I have chosen the wrong class for this expansion.

Of course just pure DPS isn’t everything. When it comes to game sense, spatial awareness and improvisation I haven’t lost any of my earlier prowess. But the DPS well…
Maybe it has to do with the fact that I don’t really have a drive to compete anymore. The guild I’m currently in is very (very!) casual, raiding only two times a week with no real aim except for clearing Heroic raids before the next tier of raiding comes out.
I also make a cameo every Sunday in a Horde guild on a Balance Druid which, to be honest, I’m not a fan of playing at all. I’m seriously considering dropping that raidgroup seeing as I feel no attachment to it whatsoever. The only thing keeping me there is the fact that one of my closest friends raids with them and I still want to be able to play with him.

So here I find myself in the position that I lack dedication to both of my raid teams. That I lack dedication to WoW as a game and to see what I can improve as a Priest. And it’s wearing me down.. I feel the serious WoW burnout and I’m not sure how to handle it. I’m still of the opinion that Blizzard has made a good game. I still love my Priest. But I just can’t be arsed to put in the effort to get to the point that I excel on my character again.
And I don’t know how to change it… 🙁

I Haven’t Been Idle

I haven’t been idle. Simply away from my blog. I’ve found myself wandering about in FFXIV again. With Heavensward on the horizon, and the news that if you wield your Zodiac Zeta weapon you get an advantage on the new relic, I’ve set out to get my Dragoon Zeta. This is how far I’ve come already 🙂

The glow in the Screenshots might not be very overwhelming, this is due to my PC being a bit bad. It looks much better on better graphics! But atleast you all have an idea what I’ve been grinding for.

Zenith

Atma

Animus

Novus

The Warning Signs

I’ve found myself spending more and more time on in Azeroth lately.
Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, however I am starting to see the warning signs. I’m not getting stuff done that I should be doing, I don’t do anything but sit at my PC and game. I don’t workout, I don’t apply to jobs and I’m not writing on my thesis. Hell I haven’t even thought about my blog up untill today. The old addiction is starting to kick in and that’s something I hope to have caught in time, before it can get any worse.

The thing with having too much time to spend is that you often end up spending it on stuff that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Why do today what you can do tomorrow right? With having the amount of free time I have I find myself putting off important stuff. I don’t have any deadlines, there’s no threat of “failing” or “losing a job” if I don’t do X by Y day. It’s frightening really. Having absolutely no obligations except to myself. Because it’s for myself that I want to get a job and get out of the house. It’s for myself that I want to lose weight, I notice more and more how bad it is for me to be overweight… Even if only 8-10kg’s. My body hurts in places that it shouldn’t. I have shortness of breath really fast and I feel very stretched, as the stretchmarks on my legs aren’t proof enough.
It’s for myself that I want to finish my thesis and get my Master’s degree… And maybe that is where the problem lies. I have always done everything for others. To make someone else proud. To please someone else. Now I’m an adult and I don’t have to anymore.
Ofcourse my dad isn’t happy that I haven’t graduated yet, but there’s not much he can do about it. I need to do it myself. But I don’t want to do stuff for myself. A tiny voice inside of my head tells me I’m not worth it. I’m not good or grown up enough to have my own succesful life. That I’m better off staying at home where I might get treated like a 16 year old but atleast I’m not alone. And then I still get to do stuff for others.

For now my biggest issue is not slipping back into my WoW addiction. Because it’s time consuming and preventing me to tackle the real issues in my life. Ideally I want to make a “schedule” for when I allow myself to play. The weekends should be free to do whatever I please, like almost everyone else, but during the week I need to limit my playtime. And I’m not sure how…

When The Dust Has Settled…

I get to call myself a Queen now. Talon Queen to be more precise. I’ve kicked my own butt and grinded the last 2k rep I needed to get this awesome title and the mount that you can buy once you get exalted with Arakkoa Outcasts. It looks really great and I think it’s actually a bit bigger than the other new model talbuks Blizzard has impletemented in Warlords of Draenor.

I can’t remember the last time I was so happy just farming away on a character. I’ve put more effort in my Priest in this expansion alone than I have in any of my characters in the entirety of Mists of Pandaria and I’m not regretting a single second of it. I feel like I have finally found a character that I can call my “main” and I have little issues only logging on her and playing on her. I wish I would have had this feeling sooner in my career, it would have probably prevented a lot of hurt and frustration on my behalf.
I’ve always been a character hopper although in my early days I only had two max level characters, my Warrior and my Priest and I was happy to switch only between them. Over the past seven years though I don’t think I have ever stuck to a single character for more than a year and it shows. Oh how it shows.

I thought I had found my perfect balance, I would raid on my Priest two times a week and make sure she got her stuff tailored to her. Next to that I levelled and geared my Monk on Horde side, did I mention I was actually planning to roll Monk at the start of MoP? I guess I didn’t, and I would raid on that on Fridays and Sundays.
Life however has a way of fucking you over. Or well not exactly life, games and communities do. Just as I helped set up a new website for my Horde guild so we could start using EPGP as loot our Main Tank, who also happens to be one of our Raid Leaders, let us know that he was accepted as trial into a guild who were having Mythic progress and thus would leave our little guild behind. It was hard news. I still don’t really know what to say, I’m really new to the guild and already have been put in a high ranking position due to me managing the website. A position I didn’t really ask for but have no way of giving up now.
After the tank’s departure the GM of my Horde guild had the brilliant idea to suggest that people would reroll to Alliance side and raid with Aeternus. You see, Aeternus once had plans to try to go for Mythic progress themselves. Unfortunately, due to a combination of average players and casual mindset, this plan was soon turned into “let’s clear Heroic atleast and then we’ll see”.
On it’s own the reroll plan would have been a great idea. However, the two people that were interested in rerolling were a couple that only “wanted to raid together or not at all”. These kind of package deals are a huge red flag to any guild, but especially smaller ones should avoid them. There WILL BE drama if you get people like this in your guild so it’s best to avoid them.
Apart from that, the girl of the couple also plays Shadowpriest and seeing as how Aeternus already has 3 priests (2 heal, 1 dps), 2 mages and a warlock it would be a bit foolish to accept another cloth dps while we are much better off with say a Shaman or a Boomkin. I tried to gently explain this to them, that sorry but for raid diversity and loot distribution another Priest would be a bad idea, but all I got was a bitch response. So to hell with that then.

Which leaves me with my now awesomely geared Monk, see above, that is in a guild on the brink of death. Something I have seen happen over and over in my WoW career and something I was hoping to avoid this time, but alas. Logging her leaves a somewhat sour taste in my mouth now since I feel like I belong there even less. I still love playing the class, but I’m not sure if staying in that guild is a good idea for me. For now I’ll stick around, mostly because I’m not a person who flees at the first signs of trouble, but also because I feel like I owe these people atleast for helping me gear up.

Real life hasn’t been treating me much better than the Horde guild. I feel like I’ve taking a lot of steps back after taking atleast as many steps forward. The last week especially has been tiresome. I’m tired a lot and I sleep a lot. I feel like I’m wasting time I should be spending on other stuff but I can’t really help myself at the moment. I’m just too tired.
I still miss one of my best friends. Even though we are somewhat on speaking terms again things aren’t what they used to be. I feel like I have to fight alone a lot and it’s draining me. I try to see friends and go to the gym and keep my social life going but it’s hard. Most of the days I wish I could just crawl into a corner and become invisible for a while, just so I could get some peace of mind.
It doesn’t help that I’ve had a really bad cold over the past few days either, being miserable AND sick is a hellish combination and it’s something I hope I won’t have to deal with for a long time.
Right now I feel like World of Warcraft is the only thing keeping me from lying in bed all day. I guess it’s something atleast. I feel like I can see in my Priest the person I would want to be. Strong, healthy, powerful, pretty. Someone with a Light and a Dark side, in her case quite literally, but who can keep the balance between that and use both sides for my own benefit.

I wish I could take a real selfie, one of the real me, and be as happy with the turnout as I am when taking a selfie of my character. I guess I still have a long way to go…

The Liebster Project

The lovely Jaedia from Dragons and Whimsy tagged me for this particular challenge. I haven’t spent much time behind the pc the past few days, mainly because I have the worst cold and I can’t really stare at a bright white screen for long without starting to sneeze and subsequently cry, but I figured heck, I can answer a couple of questions!
So here they are:
1. What are you looking forward to this year?
Finally graduating from Uni. It’s taken me way too long. I should be done with my Master’s Thesis in the next two months and then I can finally put my hands on that shiny shiny Master’s Diploma in Clinical Psychology. And I can rock the MSc (Master of Science) title from then on.
2. What is your favourite book?
My very favourite book of all times has to be “The man who mistook his wife for a hat” from Oliver Sacks. It’s a bundle of stories about individuals with different types of brain damage and how it has affected their lives. Mr. Sacks writes about this in a very respectful and affectionate way. I really recommend reading it to anyone who is atleast the tiniest bit interested in neurological and psychological stuff.
3. Are you on Twitter? If yes, what has been your experience?
Jup I am on Twitter and so far my experience has been mostly positive. I tend to use it to rant a bit but well. The Tweeps in general are very nice and it’s a good medium to look for the latest news.
4. Do you enjoy podcasting as a medium? Why/why not?
Not really. I’m a very visual person, apart from music I’m generally bored when it comes to listening to people talk. I need body language. 
5. What do you feel games are lacking in 2015?
Honestly? I feel like they lack originality. Everything copies everything else. I can’t really expect any groundbreaking new game to come out though but still. I also miss a good community. I’m playing World of Warcraft mostly but the community is awful. Even in the guild the social atmosphere is only so-so. People only play for themselves nowadays and it’s not really helping the social part of an MMO.
6. Where do you get your game news?
MMO-Champion and related sites.
Reddit. Oh god I love you Reddit. I can make popcorn and just read it all day.
7. Could you show us a picture of your desk? If you say no, I’ll be sad.
Voila my desk. My computer is under it.

8. Beards. For or against and why?
Against. I have very sensitive skin and kissing a guy with a beard, even only a peck on the cheek, literally makes me break out in hives and itch all day/evening. Some stubble is ok and can be very sexy, but no beard please.
9. What is the best gif you’ve come across?

10. Share something with us that made you laugh recently. Well (some background) we have an Eagle Owl terrorising a neighbourhood in our city. No joke. Some person made a little movie trailer about it and it cracked me up to no end. It’s partly Dutch but you’ll get the general idea 😀 if the link works…http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6642558/4a3505d6/_terror_eagle_owl_oehoe_the_movie.html
Hmz, the tagging part might be an issue. I don’t have that many people on my blog and right now I feel a bit too sick to come up with questions of my own so I think I will leave that be for the moment.

Majora’s Mask: A Whole New World

Yesterday I got a little surprise when I went out shopping. I was in desperate need of new sneakers, my old ones have served me well for the past two years but are now starting to seriously wear down. I found a pair I liked and proceeded to pay when my uncle and my dad’s girlfriend suddenly decided they would pay for me as an early birthday present.
Being the financially starved person I am I was very grateful for this. Mostly because it allowed me to spend the money somewhere else. That somewhere else being my very first Zelda Game!
Even the box looks cool.

Yes. Believe it or not I have never touched a Zelda game in my life. I never had any Nintendo console growing up and on the Gameboy the game didn’t really appeal to me. I was more of a Pokémon kind of girl. And Donkey Kong… Lots of Donkey Kong.
Anyway, since I didn’t have to pay for my new shoes I figured I’d run off to the toy store and get my game. And so I did.
First off I have to give huge props to the developers. Because I haven’t played the original game on the Nintendo 64 I can’t really make a comparison that way but to me the game on the 3DS looks absolutely stunning. I think this is the first game that really looks 100% 3D and I love it. It’s the first game in which I have 3D on constantly because the graphics are just so good. Not only are the cutscenes in 3D, the gameplay is in 3D aswell and it adds a whole new dimension to the game.
Unfortunately yesterday I was so tired I couldn’t really play much so I did some of the introduction and then headed to bed.

As far as the introduction went, I have to say it’s a little bit confusing when you haven’t played any other part in the series. Apparently Majora’s Mask is more or less a sequel to Ocarina of Time and so you don’t really get much introduction into Link’s character or why he has a certain thing stolen from him. However you immediatly get a glimps of how evil the main villain is after he transforms you into a wooden little boy for no apparent reason. Again this is a little bit confusing. Am I supposed to know this guy from a previous game? For now I just went along with it but I do miss some of the story that Final Fantasy for instance is very good at.
The controls of the game seem manageable so far. It’s not very complicated to master. However the game has been developed with the new 3DS in mind so there is one button I lack which would probably make camera angles much easier to handle.
The game itself evolves around trying to save a world from doom in 3 days time. In the game world those 3 days fly by superfast. I’m only on my first cycle so far but I already know I’m probably doomed to fail since I spent a lot of time running around and exploring instead of doing the tasks that were given to me. Luckily it doesn’t really matter if you fail, you just have to start over again. I’m sure I’ll have to start over the cycle many times in this game, but I don’t think I’ll mind it too much.

What (pleasantly) surprised me the most is that this particular Zelda game is much harder than I expected. I’m used to the Final Fantasy turn based style of games and this is more of an action RPG so it requires a completely different mindset to play. Even then I still found it challenging at some point. Aiming Link at certain destinations requires some skill and paying attention or he might end up somewhere that gets him killed. You also really need to figure out a lot of cryptic stuff. And if you don’t do that fast enough you won’t make the three day cycle. 

For the people who already played this game on their N64 I’m sure it’s all familiar and they would run through the game in no time at all. For a new player however, especially one that isn’t all too familiar with the series as a whole, this game is actually quite hard to get into and it can become frustrating if you keep on failing your cycle over and over.

So far though I’m happy I made the decision to buy this game. It’s a whole new world for me and I enjoy it from what I’ve seen from it. The fact that this game is a bit more challenging than what I’m used to is only a plus in the long run since it will probably keep me entertained more than a game where I fly through in no time.
I wish I could talk a bit more about the game itself, how I find the worlds and the story but since I literally only got to play for like an hour or so I can’t really say much. I might make a follow up post when/if I play more of the game, or maybe even finish it, so I can do a better “review” for people who might be interested in buying it. For now I’m excited to start this adventure.