See, once most of our friends had Nintendos, we finally managed to convince our parents to get us one, but actually Mom was one of the people who spent the most time on it. It wasn't a bad thing--in fact, our whole family had a really nice time sitting around talking while Mom would play some role-playing game. If nobody minds letting one person have the controller the whole time, RPGs are actually really good for socializing, because while you're going around fighting monsters on the way to the next plot point, everybody can talk and laugh and stuff. It was really nice.
Unfortunately, when you're only about seven years old, you're not always interested in talking for very long. This got to be a major problem when Mom was playing The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, or Crystalis, or Dragon Quest, or even Final Fantasy, because Mom liked to be able to destroy the bosses right away. And that meant leveling up. She would spend hours upon hours walking back and forth, back and forth, fighting monsters to get experience, and it. was. Boring.
So whenever Athena got her chance to play, it was her goal to beat a game in the shortest time possible, and, where applicable, at the lowest level. For example, when our family first started playing The Adventure of Link, on average, everybody needed Link to be at level 6 before beating the first boss. Athena got to the point where she could beat him at level 2. We were very proud. And ever since then, we try to use strategy instead of brute strength.
But Kingdom Hearts 2 makes that impossible!! And believe me--we tried for many many many hours trying to beat the Hades Cup at the lowest level possible, and it just. wouldn't. work! Stupid round 49 and its Cloud, Squall, Yuffie, and Tifa all fighting together. Four super powerful Final Fantasy heroes against one little kid. It's not right, I tell you.
And so today was the day where we had nothing left to do but level up before we could get to the next sidequest. But! we managed to beat the boredom! by listening to our Yukiru Sugisaki 10th Anniversary Decade CD drama in all its beautiful crossover glory. Not only did it help us stay entertained while leveling up, but we even leveled up faster than expected! ...okay, so that second part had more to do with equipping the ability that helps you get more experience points than anything to do with the CD. But still. (For anyone who might be wondering, we didn't equip it toward the beginning of the game when we first got it because our desire to stay at the lowest level possible overrode our desire to level up quickly. Pride is not entirely logical.)
And now we're at a high enough level to go beat some more stuff up, but I had to update LJ first. But now we're done, so we're off! Today I'm thankful for finding a way to make the most out of time spent leveling up, getting a chance to listen to Decade again, Double Daisukes!, not spending as much time leveling up as we had expected, and having plenty more drama CDs to choose from for our next bout of leveling up (next we're thinking Me & My Brothers!).