Insomniac Nightmares

It’s very slow going, with one game to blame.

There was some small progress on God of War II, but given that I have been mostly without my Vita charger and for some reason it’s never worked to charge it off the PS4 no matter what the “USB charge settings” say, there’s not enough battery to get far in that, especially given how it inexplicably drains while playing that game.

There was some picking at Friday the 13th, finally earning two of the unique kill trophies. I wasn’t aware they’d finally implemented the single player challenges; to be honest, I thought the game was dead after the lawsuits. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, you can’t earn trophies in the single player modes, and multiplayer might as well be dead; waiting 20+ minutes for a match, sitting in the lobby for enough players for another 10 minutes, then the host leaves and you get to start all over again. I was hoping the release of the Switch version would have reinvigorated the game somewhat (it’s what made me pick it back up, learning it hadn’t been killed yet), and that they would have finally added Jason X, but sadly both were hollow hopes.

Then there’s Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise. At last update, I had finished the main game and was picking off the grindy and post-game trophies before heading into Extra Hard mode for the finale. Having finally finished that grinding, I say this:

Fuck this game’s grind. I have earned most of the battle trophies in several Star Ocean games (sometimes more than once, as I’ve lost save files or rebought them for other platforms.) I’ve hunted flags galore in Assassin’s Creed games. I have literally spent a thousand hours in both Diablo III and The Binding of Isaac. I’m not a stranger to grinds, and frequently enjoy them.

But this. Ugh. Part of it is the monotony; there’s no change, no feeling of progress, not even little magic numbers going up because you don’t earn XP for any of the minigames you have to engage in. Second is that you have to play those minigames. The colosseum isn’t terrible, just repetitive, but it’s pretty much the shortest part. You’ll need about 1.5 million casino chips, earned (at best) at an average of 2k per hand of blackjack. You’ll need to knock out $100 million in debt (for a broken vase) in 3 minute bursts of running a hostess club where you earn between $3k and $1 million per round… and you’ll be investing a crapton of time and money you obtain through other means to find and train hostesses and keep them in shape to earn that money. You’ll have to earn roughly 180k of racing points, that you’ll earn, under optimum conditions, about 1,800 a go. That’s not counting the grinding you’ll have to do to get your car to a point where you can actually win those races.

Aside from that, there’s a boatload of playing minigames to get the shopkeepers to like you enough to sell the other components you need, grinding to level up your secret techniques so you stand a chance against the top-tier colosseum matches, and grinding for the cash to do your upgrades and buy the materials (you’ll need around $200 million.) It’s miserable.

On the bright side, as of this morning, it’s done. There’s 3 trophies left; one for maxing out all skills (which doesn’t require much grinding, but there are roadblocks in the skill trees that can only be undone by orbs you only get for finishing a chapter.) The trick? There’s 11 chapters, and 15 or so of the roadblocks. So 2 playthroughs to deal with that. There’s one for using a specific attack against a specific boss (you might be able to do it on your first playthrough, but it would require you doing all the grinding at the midpoint of your first playthrough,) and the last is for finishing it on Extra Hard (which, after that grinding, is pathetically easy.)

It’ll be done today or tomorrow, and then I can go play something else, but goddamn. Fuck that grind.

What about you? What do you feel about grinds? Let me know down below!