I was working my way back to town.  My party was battered after surviving an encounter with a FOE that should have decimated us.  We had gotten some items we needed, logged plenty of experience, mapped out more of the strata, but were badly in need of some rest and resupply.  Sure we could have used a Warp Wire to head back, but I knew we would make it through a couple of random encounters and any experience is always welcome.  Then, just as I could see the exit … the screen went black, my battery was dead.  And I hadn’t even noticed the indicator light turn red. 

Saves are rare in Etrian Odyssey II, meaning that I had just lost more than an hour of hard-fought experience, including the battle against the FOE that I doubted I could win a second time.  It was late, and I had planned to go to sleep after returning to town, but now I was annoyed and frustrated, so I grabbed my PSP – certainly a few holes of Hot Shots Golf 2 would do the trick!  Uh oh … no response to the switch.  I had played it a lot but hadn’t been so good about charging … so it must be another dead battery.  It had been even longer since I charged my other PSP, which still has LEGO Indiana Jones ready to go.  Unfortunately, that was dead as well.  I switched off the light and went to bed, completely exasperated.

At work I have to go between several facilities for my projects, and make heavy use of my PDA.  I only have a charger in my ‘main office’ in the engineering building, so it is generally a couple of days between charges.  When the battery gets very low it suspends operation and conserves the final 10% or so of the charge in order to protect the vital state information.  So even though the system wouldn’t switch on the following Monday, I felt confident that nothing was lost, and just plugged it in to the charger.  The same is true for laptops – when battery level becomes critical the system goes into a ‘deep sleep’ mode that preserves the ‘state machine’.

I am not really saying that I expect the same level of complexity in a portable gaming device as with those other devices, but perhaps it would be nice to have some sort of ‘suspend’ mode when the battery reaches critical.  I mean, as it stands now the system acts like it is a desktop PC when you pull the plug; any sort of grace period would appreciated.  But in this regard the DS is better than the PSP – I usually see the red flashes of the DS and get it to a charger in time.  WIth the PSP, it is very likely that I will suddenly notice that the light has started blinking just before the power-off happens.  Perhaps that is dur to location – my hand is always over the power light on the PSP whereas the DS is more likely to be visible.  Also, I have my PSP’s in cases and just use the clamshell of the DS for protection.  But regardless, the PSP has been much more likely to strand me without saving.

Oh – one more thought: last year we were preparing to take a trip and my older son had plugged in his DS to charge … but hadn’t done a very good job because it wasn’t plugged all the way in and therefore didn’t charge.  He hopped in the car and within fifteen minutes was ‘done’.  Fortunately Dad was feeling generous and let him borrow his at the next stop.

What about you – any horror stories or just plain frustration over dead batteries?

Tags: Misc