The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => General Chat => Topic started by: DragonKnight Zero on December 31, 2018, 09:10:40 PM
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It's 2019 somewhere. Also gives me an excuse to wax about a game I'll still be finishing up in 2019.
Final Fantasy 4 replay:
With all that I've learned about FF4's ATB system and other assorted mechanics trivia, felt inclined to pound my way through this with the intent of domination. First thought, soooo slow, how do people stand walking so slow everywhere. Used Slow on nearly every boss fight for my convenience and also saw to making using of Berserk on more durable fights.
Cagnazzo: Party order is Tellah, Palom, Porom, Yang, Cecil Yes, this does matter for turn order manipulation. Yang has ice and thunder claws. Yang punches, Cecil hits, Tella selects Bolt 3 even though water hasn't gathered yet because charge times. Palom casts Bio; Porom casts Slow. Cagnazzo doesn't get to do anything besides his turn 1 attack and retreat into shell. Yang's next attack finishes him. Dominated.
Magus Sisters: Only memorable because Delta attack Bio oneshots Tella. Battle ends soon after. Oh well, don't really need him standing at this point.
Lugeie: Yang's thunder claw takes him down fast. By the time he gets to Laser someone, it only does about 150.
Rubicant: Fire 2 is a fight counter so Cecil uses attack items and helps with healing while Edge opens with Suiton and throws a bunch of weak weapons. Got super lucky and Inferno only targets Kain who lives thanks to fire resistance. Having put on Slow with Rosa's first turn, I keep up without a sweat.
Rosa's only level 32 when I emerge with the underground airship. So end up going partway into sealed cave for EXP; some equipment upgrades are a welcomed side effect.
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I close out 2018 by starting up Dragon Quest 11 in earnest. The start was reaaaaaally slooooowww but now that I have Erik and am Doing Things it's going much better. Early boomerang user ftw~
Thinking I'll go Greatswords for the main mostly, just because I like big smashy weapons. Kier has recommended dagger for Erik for the status attack thing so I'll probably invest in that while keeping an up to date rang for random mangling.
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Quit copyiiiing me~
How devoted is Dragon Quest to honoring those nostalgia feels? There's still a "How much EXP 'til I level up?" question in the churches even though this information is freely available in your menu at any time.
I'm a few hours in, glad to see we got the obligatory jail/escape sequence done with early. Is charming game so far but I want more PCs. I don't know what it is about DQ character modeling or animation, but despite my hating Toriyama's character designs in every other context, they actually look cute here (as in DQ8). It occurs to me now that I've played DQs 1, 4, 8, and 11. If this pattern continues, I will see you all again in Dragon Quest 14: the Quest for More Puff-Puff.
DDS2 skill system looks encouraging (I gather you can respec later too). Boomerang hype!
I'm playing hard mode because apparently that's what all the cool kids do. I had one game over to randoms when it was still a Solo party. Enemies are decently threatening, but you can pick and choose your battles freely, so it's perfectly manageable (this is maybe a tension killer, but I can hardly complain about the convenience). I also picked the Shypox option because, well, I had to see what it did, didn't I? If no one else turned this on: occasionally the Luminary loses turns in battle/refuses to engage in NPC dialogue for characteristically goofy DQ reasons. It's nothing big. But the couple times so far where the MC's refused to talk to someone because they were too attractive, both the NPCs were guys. Just sayin'.
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You can respec later on, and respeccing to optimize your setup based on your number of skill points is one of the most fun aspects of the game imo
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I'm nighting Gris and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Surprise, I can still hold a controller after all these years! Last week-ish in December I picked up Nier:Automata and powered through from storyline A, and now have ABCDEGHIOWZ. NA unseated Xeno as my favorite series because it hits a lot of different emotional, cinematic and literary cues.
Gris is gorgeous platformer that features a spindly-arm and leg girl who's lost her voice in a colorless world; so far after 40 minutes of nighttime play it seems the overall mission is to return color to the world. Music by Berlinist, https://www.berlinistmusic.com, which is melodic enough. I wouldn't describe the game as funny; it's more of a puzzle simply about movement and form. I'm appreciating its simplicity.
XB2 has a very coarse, saccharine beginning and the modeling for women is downright digusting. I do think they were looking at Mariah Carey for one character though. The battle system was incredibly uninteresting to begin with, and I hate when games drag out battle features over the course of five new environments. The Blade and Driver relationship undergirds lots of basic ass narrative white noise, but in battle, it seems to me that at the very basic level, Blades are like job class and elemental attributes blended into one living organism, and battle then unfolds best and most efficient only when you learn to string together the features of teammates moves for timing and linking combos. Once I approached battle like that after taking a shoopuff ride, I could appreciate it a bit more. Because it is incredibly boring fighting just as one limited Driver or one Blade, meaning that hack and slash hack and slash hack and slash.
So far the music is pretty great; reminds me of the jazzy-ness of BOF, which needs to be revamped gfd. I don't care what anyone says but anything Yasunori Mitsuda touches is absolute gold. But the worst thing so far? MY GOD the story is absolute trash and it is so tacky in this day and age to have verbose cutscenes you can't advance because the writers were too lazy to not drop fifty kingdoms and names in under an hour. Wont to forgive such archaic bull and have no expectations that it will get better. If it does, that will be pleasant. But, this is mostly a mindless game with dependably beautiful environments and camping features.
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I hate when games drag out battle features over the course of five new environments.
heh. I've been playing Resonance of Fate, and I appreciate how bold the combat design is: got in a random encounter to start the game. Lost. Tried it again. Lost. Finally went to the tutorial, and it took like half an hour but it explained literally everything that will ever be in combat, up to the most advanced techniques. Traditionally this would be considered bad design but in the context of RoF it works, and spares everyone the hassle of shoehorning it into the actual game. Also you need to know like half of it just to win any fight at all. About halfway, I would guess, into the game and I like combat a bunch. Plot thusfar has been a lackluster combination of villains who sound like teens who were just exposed to philosophy, the main characters doing nothing of importance, and kind of a lot of workplace sexual harrassment. We'll see but my expectations are low.
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I hate when games drag out battle features over the course of five new environments.
heh. I've been playing Resonance of Fate, and I appreciate how bold the combat design is: got in a random encounter to start the game. Lost. Tried it again. Lost. Finally went to the tutorial, and it took like half an hour but it explained literally everything that will ever be in combat, up to the most advanced techniques. Traditionally this would be considered bad design but in the context of RoF it works, and spares everyone the hassle of shoehorning it into the actual game. Also you need to know like half of it just to win any fight at all. About halfway, I would guess, into the game and I like combat a bunch. Plot thusfar has been a lackluster combination of villains who sound like teens who were just exposed to philosophy, the main characters doing nothing of importance, and kind of a lot of workplace sexual harrassment. We'll see but my expectations are low.
RoF has no coherent plot until the very end, and even that is nothing of importance.
Overall the story is better treated as episodic, and it focus on character's internal problems because they are mostly mentally incompetent.
The only surprise in the end is that particular antagonist won the whole deal and get away everything he wants.
GBF - My gacha luck exploded.
3 copies of Gabriel. Shiva, Kumbhira and limited JK showed up. Then I got Magisa, dark Eustace, Tiamat, Mafia, light Silva and light Claris, as well as Forte and Wolf.
I don't even anymore. My gacha luck was already stupidly good in summer, and I was expecting a serious rebound of karma later on. But know, my luck just got even better.
Got a dupe of Ganbantine and Reunion.
I was debating who to use the Spark on. Usually I would use it on limited characters, but the ones I don't have are also the ones that do not have immeidate use to me. So I sparked Athena instead.
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With Rubicant, screw the fire 2 counters. Edge/Kain/Cecil do a ton of damage with ice physicals (and you have a stack of Bacchus Wines from fighting Mad Ogres in the dungeon), smash Rubicant's face in with physicals.
Sylph Cave gives you a ton of great gear upgrades and levels, yeah. It's notably harder for randoms than the Faemarch dungeon though so potion up. But the Avenger alone is so shiny, as is some of the weaponry in that dungeon.
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Link to the Past Randomizer:
(https://i.imgur.com/cieT9QJ.jpg)
I can stop any time
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DQXI: Beaten, for reals this time. Frue Final boss kicked my ass repeatedly. I ended up leveling to 99 and forging everything for all the achievements, then beat him. Got the platinum trophy.
Spoilers for part 3: So part two was Final Fantasy 6 and part 3 was Bravely Default. But it did a better job of making repeating the same tasks interesting than BD did. The big problem with all this is in the story department. Yes going back in time to save as many lives as possible makes sense from a real world standpoint, but it destroys your story moments. Part 2 turned Serena from boring character who barely exists into OMG I HAVEN'T HAD THESE FEELS SINCE THE OPERA SCENE FROM FF6 SERENA IS BEST CHARACTER NOW HOLY SHIT HER SKILL GRID FITS TOGETHER WITH VERONICA'S. Like seriously they made me have feelings for a fucking skill grid. Then part 3 happens and Serena loses all her development and is back to being a nothing character. While Sylvando's reconciliation with his father in part 2 was silly, it was a lot better than part 3's version. Likewise Erik and Mia.
Postgame nostalgia run was great. I have played all of them except 10, which I think is a Japanese-only MMO.
I expect someone to put "they made me have feelings for a fucking skill grid" in their signature now.
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DQXI: I'm already so sick of the field theme that plays absolutely everywhere in the overworld that I just turned off the music altogether. Maybe I'll turn it back on for bosses and towns, but wow, I never need to hear that one song again.
(EDIT: I guess I should note that otherwise I'm having fun.)
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I have also been playing a boatload of Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires since I picked it up for the PC to make streaming it easier.
Since the main reason I liek it is creating characters, I've been doing a bunch of...fan "art" I guess, for books(Jade City, Skyfarer and Born to the Blade), and videogames(some FE chars and now Suikoden mains).
Since I was talking about this in chat somewhat, and it was requested that I share, here is my twitter thread with all the Suikoden mains I made in it:
https://twitter.com/VySaika/status/1080555195208163329
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Saika/Sierra: I dunno if either of you are using the Steam version, but if you are, get the orchestral mod:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1521444556
Field theme is still not great or anything, but everything else gets better.
Saika: Greatswords are very good on Luminary, IMO. Single swords eventually get competitive at the very, very end of the game, but the way shields work, they basically get absolutely better as the game goes on with higher block rates, more elemental resistance, more random other bonuses, while at the start of the game shields are basically decorative. So no reason not to go greatsword.
I'm playing hard mode because apparently that's what all the cool kids do. I had one game over to randoms when it was still a Solo party. Enemies are decently threatening, but you can pick and choose your battles freely, so it's perfectly manageable (this is maybe a tension killer, but I can hardly complain about the convenience). I also picked the Shypox option because, well, I had to see what it did, didn't I? If no one else turned this on: occasionally the Luminary loses turns in battle/refuses to engage in NPC dialogue for characteristically goofy DQ reasons. It's nothing big. But the couple times so far where the MC's refused to talk to someone because they were too attractive, both the NPCs were guys. Just sayin'.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1612414272
(also, hardcore, good luck! losing a key healing action in the middle of a long fight seemed too devastating to me to turn on Shypox, definitely tell us how it goes)
Captain K: Yeah, Djinn & I said similar things earlier. Makes sense in-character, but too bad from an external perspective. Still kinda works anyway, in the sense of showing other possibilities that are less... dramatic.
Djinn, in the other thread: Yeah, I can't blame you for missing the DQ3 connection, because it makes no damn sense. Basically: The very, very VERY end scene is a lady putting aside books of Heroic Deeds or some such, then telling her kid to wake up. This is the opening to Dragon Quest III, hero's mom telling him to wake up. Additionally, the Yggdragon rambled about what sure sounds like future Dragon Quest plotlines, and we're meant to believe that the Yggdragon has some sort of future sight / prophecy ability, so basically Yggdragon is saying that in various future disasters she's forseen, don't worry, a hero will arise to bail us out in these future Dragon Quest games! Which is kinda like a prophet telling somebody at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 that they've foreseen many more world wars, but don't worry, brave heroes will ensure that Good Ol' Brittania will keep winning. I guess that's better than the alternative, but in-character, none at all would seem better. So yeah, DQ3 was the chronologically first of the series, and DQ11 is claiming to be a nonsensical prequel to it, despite a different world map, different villains, different cosmology, etc. I guess the 6 orbs are still consistent?!
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Megaman 11 - Started this up while on vacation. :) I chose to play ‘classic’ mode for Megaman fans rather than ‘casual’ mode for people who hadn’t played Megaman in a while, despite not playing Megaman for a while. In hindsight, this might have been mildly optimistic on my part. Well, whatever. I beat all of the robot masters and I am enjoying the game a lot. It reminds me a lot of MM8, with the longer stages and often technically tricky stuff, as well as some oddball mechanics that feel right at home in 8. The weapons are mostly quite potent and more consistently solid than the weapons in some of the previous games.
The game’s main wrinkle in the traditional Megaman mold is the introduction of the Power and Speed gears. The Speed Gear makes the action move slower for a short amount of time (five seconds?). This is obviously helpful against pretty much anyone you use it on. In particular, it is very useful during the stages where fire/a shredder are chasing you for instant death. And it can be a very nice option for bosses sometimes, especially those that you don’t have the weakness for. There are situation in which the Speed gear can backfire. For example, it can also be used for platforming, but can sometimes interfere with platforming rhythm (especially with moving platforms and such), so I don’t usually use it for that.
The power gear is pretty useless without weapons. With the weapons, it gets more interesting. I will outline how they work based on each weapon. My feeling is that the weapon energy used is about double of what is used normally, but I haven’t really quantified that number.
-Bounce Ball just sends projectiles bouncing around. There are three projectiles; one above, one middle, one below in front of Megaman. It’s relatively weak but an interesting weapon nevertheless. The powered up version just shoots two sets of balls, one behind and one in front. it’s interesting, costs less than the other weapons in the game which is nice (I feel like MM11 has a lot of expensive weapons!)
-Tundra Storm is the height of the screen and about twice as wide as Megaman and pretty much crushes everything in its path. The power gear version is a fullscreen clear and costs a lot of weapon energy, unsurprisingly.
-Block Dropper is a little bit different. It drops four blocks from the top of the screen about the size of Megaman. The cool thing about it is that it drops said blocks quite far away from Megaman in front of him, which means you can use it to snipe enemies from far away. I find this weapon EXTREMELY good and greatly enjoy it. Its Power Gear version gives you more blocks. I rarely use it because the base weapon is so useful that I don’t want to spend the ammo.
-Pile Driver is the one I’ve played around with the least, since it was the last boss I fought. It moves you forward in a dash, stabs the enemy, and then moves you back a bit. It’s pretty damn stylish, for sure, but I’m not sure how good the weapon actually is. It might actually be more useful as a dash than it is as a weapon, but I haven’t experimented too hard with it yet. The Powered version just makes you go further.
-Blazing Torch moves upward at a 45 degree angle for a while and then turns down at a 45 degree angle. Despite the bizarre trajectory, it is great because it can casually kill a lot of powerful enemies, including many shielded enemies. It kills Sniper Joes in a robot in two hits, which is grand. The Powered up version adds two more flames, which again could be useful but the weapons are pricy without power gear…
-Acid Barrier is a very useful shield! You can shoot some little acids while you have the shield up, and it blocks a lot of stuff very consistently. The Powered up version allows you to kill enemies too, so I often use it instead. Such a great platforming tool, especially in Wily 1 which is evil and hates you personally.
-Chain Blast is the worst weapon regularly, I actually don’t fully understand how it works. But the Powered up version OHKOs Sniper Joe robots so I mostly just use all my weapon energy on the powered up one.
-Scramble Thunder is the best ground crawler in the series. It’s fast, it’s deadly, it breaks through shields, it can be shot upwards to the ceiling/ kill enemies. The Powered up version just makes it larger, which is kinda pointless to be honest.
tldr; the weapons are all actually useful in different ways! wow!
The stage design is generally quite enjoyable and diverse, which i really like. The stages are quite a bit longer than old-school classic Megaman, which is interesting. I found them a little too lengthy for how hard the game is, overall, but it’s fine. I’ve heard people complain about the length of the game but I am finding that it is taking quite a while on a first playthrough (admittedly very rusty on MM in general….). The boss fights are largely enjoyable and feel like classic Megaman bosses. I like Tundra Man in particular because he’s a prissy little jerk. (He’s probably the easiest boss, too, and has an amazing weapon.) The profiles for the robot masters are quite cute and add a little extra flavor to the game.
I’m currently on Wily 1. That stage is an absolute monster. Bonus points for guessing what asshole retro Megaman boss inhabits this stage!
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(also, hardcore, good luck! losing a key healing action in the middle of a long fight seemed too devastating to me to turn on Shypox, definitely tell us how it goes)
So far, I haven't had an otherwise winnable battle wrecked by it, but it's definitely a possibility. The Kingsbarrow boss did have a moment of "MC is at critical health -> loses his turn so doesn't get healed -> immediately gets KO'd," but I was well on the way to losing that battle anyway. This is probably a lesson for how to approach bosses in hard mode: go home and heal up first, come back at full health and with reforged equipment, ideally have party pepped up at the start if that can be arranged (Scorched Earth wrecked them).
And playing on PS4, so no mods for me.
Also, sword and shield MC here. I decided very early on that I didn't want to give up the defensive bonus of a shield while running a solo PC in hard mode.
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You should turn on the music for all of the good tracks
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...I think there was maybe one town with good music?...
...and a couple bits in the aftergame
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Completed a second run of Metroid: Samus Returns, this time trying to go quickly. It should be noted that this was around 3:50, which is pretty crazy long for a "try to go quickly" second run of a Metroid game. Obviously I wasn't anywhere near perfect in my route and this wasn't even close to a speedrun, but I thought it was striking how much those 40+ boss fights add up! Might make it a little less replay-friendly than other Metroid games, but it's still pretty good at that of course; I mean, I did already play it a second time. Still need to get 100% at some point, but I'm going to have to take a break from it for now. The rubber cap of my 3DS D-pad started slipping off during this run which apparently is a Thing Which Occurs so I'll want to fix that before doing any more 3DS action gaming.
Meanwhile, also playing through Octopath, naturally; in the middle of the chapter 4's.
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Beat Berseria.
I join the chorus of hype/praise for this game. The plot is great, and the characters are amazingly fun, each havimg a fleshed out personality and various quirks with distimct relationships that grow over the course of the game.
I think some of the melodrama after the big reveal was a little over the top, but the finale more than made up for it.
Part of the fun was the divergence from the "save the world" motivation. The PCs were unapologetically NOT fighting for the 'good of other's but for their own motivations. (Well, exceptimg Eleanor kinda). This is relatively fresh in an RPG of this type and I'm general more imteresting than the standard fare.
I generally think of the game as an interestimg take on a group of villainous protagonists, up until Eleanor joins up at which point the dynamic becomes more interesting.
The combat system being so different between randoms and bosses makes it difficult to get a feel for some of the character's worth. I think magilous is more valuable than she appears because of her ability to neeutralize magic, which is the most dangerous threat you generally face.
Fun factoid: the game ate all my vombat items right before the final boss, so I fought through both phases with no healing or revival items.
Comparisons to Zestiria are inevitable, and they are generally favorable to Berseria.
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DQXI: I visited Hotto, an event which calls for some celebration for multiple reasons.
Full party at last!
Monsters fall before us as
Wheat before the scythe
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Megaman 11 - Finished this up while I was travelling. Final time was about eleven hours including all of the resets and stuff. (I saw people complaining about the game’s length as if they’ve never played a Megaman before, but I digress.)
Game’s pretty good. I kneejerk the game below 2/3/8/9 and above 1/4/5/6/7/10. It reminds me a lot of 8, with the powerful weapons and longer stages, but I feel like it lacks that extra push to be as enjoyable as 8 is because of its randoms being less challenging (you can mostly just throw random weapons at them and they die). I also liked the bolt (in-game currency) economy in 8; not enough to buy absolutely everything. 11 definitely can potentially give you a limitless supply of them, which allows you to not really make decisions while purchasing items. I didn’t really grind, though, and I spent a lot of money on extra lives because I like to be HARDCORE rather than just spamming Energy and Weapon Tanks. The robot masters are quite fun in this game, especially without exploiting their weaknesses, but I found that you cannot be that sloppy even with the weakness hits. Quite a few of the regular stages are also quite nasty, fitting the traditional MM mold.
Wily 1 delivered just as I had hoped. The stage was nasty, the boss was nastier, and it really showed off the weapons. I ended up capitulating and using an E-tank on the boss. Wily 2 was quite a bit easier (although not trivial) but the boss was quite fun. Wily 3 was just the robot masters, and Wily 4 was the nasty final boss. As with the robot masters, Wily’s weakness is quite powerful, but you need to use it wisely. I ended up using a weapon tank during the final form. The first stage of Wily is often hit or miss, but I thought it was quite an enjoyable boss that didn’t feel too overwhelming but was still fun.
I ended up being pretty fond of the Speed/Power Gear system, even if Speed is a little too powerful because it recharges faster than was really necessary. It adds an extra wrinkle to the formula, which frankly a Megaman sequel really needs. A little bit of balance could make this mechanic really nice.
As mentioned in the previous post, the weapons are really good. My kneejerk is that Pile Driver might be the worst, but I’m not 100% sure. I’ll have to do some more playthroughs.
Not sure what I want to play next. I am in the middle of a replay of Suikoden V, as well as a first playthrough of Bayonetta 2. Maybe I should finish those up first. ^_^
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Guessing the returning boss is the yellow devil. Who else would Capcom (and the fangames) be so obsessed with? At some point I'll get around to finishing 8 as well as trying out Power Battle 2.
Wind Waker travelouge: Earth Temple
It's a 3D Zelda dungeon; what is there to say? Would have liked more than 9 hearts and one bottle but the game has been forgiving so far more tension than real danger of running out of resources. This one has controlling a helper character into the formula. Working out the puzzles is straightforward by now. I do get some inherent satisfaction with shining light into dark places (spoilers: mirror shield, though it's rather obvious a few rooms in) so enjoy it more than would have otherwise. Introduces a few new enemies to fight. The floormasters are easily the most annoying additions. I think they're floormasters anyways. Without Navi to tell me enemy names, they could be called Creepy Grabby Hands for all I know. They become easier to deal with once I find a sword strike when they grab on beats out their "return player to earlier room" schtick.
Boss manages to be more memorable by not falling into the predictable "go to light spot, shine light until it's stunned, carve up with sword" routine. Using light to stun it is still there but there's another step involved that took more effort to work out until I found it by accident. Really comical what I need to do there. Massive pile of blubber defeated and on to the next plot point. After doing lots of exploring first though.
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DQXI: I visited Hotto, an event which calls for some celebration for multiple reasons.
Full party at last!
Monsters fall before us as
Wheat before the scythe
My name is Hotto
Yeah I like to get blotto
Simpsons paraphrase
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Momodora 4.
A fun metroidvania game the combat is smooth the bosses are plentiful and the power-ups are frequent
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Kappa: Awesome re LttP race. You doing randomizers of late? You mentioned FF4 Free Enterprise of course.
LFT: Finished last replay. Have a notepad with various thoughts, should post it. Of note: The superfight at the volcano got much easier when Elfboy reminded me of MP switch. >_< Have a half assed replay going on in LFT now. I forgot how absolutely embarrassingly awful Agrias's Holy Knight class is at PA; even the C3 defender doesn't remotely save it.
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My name is Hotto
Yeah I like to get blotto
Simpsons paraphrase
I CAST THEE OUT!
DQXI: I walk into the horse-racing town where there is about to be the big annual horse race so I just assume the plot will find a way to railroad me into participating in the big annual horse race, but everyone tells me I can't participate in the big annual horse race because the list is already full, but then oh no, son, you better believe we're finding a way to get you into that horse race. Because DQ plot.
Enemy threat level took a sharp uptick stepping into Gallopolis. They were definitely prepared to deal with a full party! It was difficult getting out of an encounter with everyone alive until I'd got a couple levels and new equipment (admittedly nabbing a metal slime helped a lot with this). Boomerangs are already trailing off badly, so might re-spec Erik the next time I pick up a new dagger.
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DQXI:
"Kevin can't stop thinking about how much of a burden he is to everyone! Kevin is overcome with crippling embarrassment!"
Fuck this game is getting too real.
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FF6- Replay, I blame Dhyer. Just got to Magitek. Cyan remains one of the worst designed RPG characters I've ever seen. It's embarrassing the extent that he's eclipsed by every other PC to this point. I did the river loop to get Gau Angiform rage early. It's less good than I expected; the 50% chance of firing off a scrub physical is eh. Not worth the time investment. Probably will roll a Terra/Edgar/Mog/Setzer team, for all that I'm tempted to use Locke for steal farming. Eh nah, Dragon's Den I don't remember being worth the time or energy.
Meeple said this offhand on Gamefaqs a decade ago, and he's right: the degree to which his game overcorrected for FF5's broken setups is something. You get an autohaste accessory at the start of the game and it's not especially good, Blue Magic skillset's a bust, etc. I really dislike how overcentralizing magic is and how little you care about weapons outside of magic stat/evasion boosts as well.
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In fairness, caring about weapons for magic stat and evasion (in addition to their properties on direct offence) is two more ways you care about weapons than many RPGs.
Generally agree with the rest of your comments.
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There are only a handful of weapons you use for physicals, which are mostly Locke's weapons and Fixed Dice. It's also a direct property of how the physical skillsets like tools don't care about either defense or your attack stat. It's pretty striking in comparison to FF4, where weapons for everyone was important for stats and different roles as well. IE: Using different elemental claws, Rydia with a bow and arrow vs a rod, that kind of thing.
But it's probably not something that could have been fixed without a drastic redesign of the game's system. Even if you increase the influence of physical attack/vigor in the attack formula, you'd still favor things like throw and tool over attacking. So it goes.
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Shantae and the Pirate's Curse- Fin!
Shantae is a game with three things on its mind. First! Fanservice! Second... the complicated interpersonal relationships of its majority-female cast. I guess being a solid metroidvania would be a distant third.
Shantae's crouching animation involves shaking her hindquarters, which is either her winding up to pounce like a cat or her innate need to shake it manifesting. Frankly it's probably both considering. Her splash for "IT'S THE SNOW LEVEL AND IT'S FREEZING" involves turning her back to the camera to shiver and ensuring full view of the booty. The primary cast all get "brass princess bikini" alternates for one level. Risky is chained up in the finale, complete with bondage splash.
But also the game's plot can adequately be described as "Basically Scott Pilgrim"- despite her troubled past and propensity to hurt everyone around her, Risky Boots has been cursed by seven evil exes, and if she wants to win the girl Shantae's gotta beat them all! And then the main cast is...
- The token Straight, Sky, is entering full derangement levels of trying to find a boyfriend/husband. Overcompensating much?
- Rottytops shamelessly asks to eat Shantae's brains at every opportunity, while secretly also considering her a best friend, hero, and probable soul mate. I mean she lies her ass off specifically to get Shantae to lovers carry her through the forest in her introduction. Although when she arranges a sleepover at Shantae's in the ending, she does immediately proposition Bolo, so I guess she's bi (and has managed to roll a 20 on Insight and knew Shantae was too hung up on Risky in the moment to give her attention)
- Shantae among other things: wears all of Risky's signature equipment, keeps trying to dress up like her even beyond that, has to fight a dragon in hell, and of course offers the villain ultimate power in exchange for Risky's safety.
- Risky in the ending claims Shantae "is just like [Shantae's] mother, except more annoying". How old is Risky and did she bang Shantae's mom?
Oh, right, and the game opens with Risky bursting in on Shantae in the bath. As you do.
Like I have to think the game's target audience is lesbians. I'm not really stretching here with these interpretations, the main cast all wanting to fuck seems like the natural reading of the actual plot, but everyone being too afraid to actually say that out loud is not how you'd write that if it was just titillation for straight dudes I feel like, despite the obvious fanservice of the art.
Oh, yes. Distant third. A few areas delve a bit deeper into precision platforming than the way it handles checkpoints and rooms supports I think (with the caveat that my primary point of comparison is Celese, which is *absurdly good* at exactly that), but they're a minority of rooms, and an equal number absolutely land in the sweet spot where dying is motivating rather than frustrating, at least as a personal thing. The Metroidvania aspects are... extremely playing to my biases actually, the way it's divided into islands which each having its own smaller internal zones keeps each map easily accessible and makes backtracking sorta enjoyable, since it's not time consuming and you get a good sense of how much better you are.
I do think the latter areas got a bit excessive on enemy damage? I think Shantae wants areas to be trickier than bosses as a rule (honestly Saliva's boss is probably the only tricky one, and that's just you lacking the resources to do it well). Granted, items are HELLA good, and if nothing else the final boss would be a nightmare if you made it a point of honor not to use them.
Easy, easy 8/10, and I coouuullldd be underrating it, I'm looking at my ratings and it's definitely feeling like I like it more than the 8s but less than all the 9s, but that could be new game smell so gonna lowball it.
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Yay Pirate's Curse. You should definitely check out Half-Genie Hero when you get the chance; I don't think it's quite as good overall and I suspect you'll agree, but if you liked the first one that much it's absolutely worth a look.
I didn't use items in boss fights until the final boss (since I figured they'd make every other boss too easy, as is often the case in these types of games) and yeah the final boss is completely crazy that way. Enemy damage... I agree with regards to Mud Bog Island, at least, that was very rude. I didn't find the rest of the lategame tooo bad on that front.
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Yeah, it's mostly Mudbog Island. The ice wolfs having 6 damage is kinda absurd, buuuut if you slam into them you kinda screwed up so that's not too bad. Mudbog is jammed full of Venoms and it's legitimately hard to navigate it without hitting some portion of them.
I actually had 1/2 Genie Hero before I even picked up Pirate's Curse funny enough, but I had a "blah I wanna buy something" whim and got this.
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You know, I also got a pretty 'for lesbians' feeling from Shantae. But I can't really single out *why* it feels that way. It has a ton of stuff in it that I ostensibly associate with fanservice for straight otaku (see the aforementioned chainmail princess bikini episode) but despite all of that, the game doesn't come off in the same exploitative manner. Perhaps it's Shantae herself, or Risky's relationship to Shantae, that makes the characters feel like more than props for titilation despite all the overt titilation?
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If I had to guess it would be that the female characters project confidence in their sexuality. There's often a lack of agency in the presentation of women's' sexuality in male-oriented stuff. So it's perhaps less that it is 'for lesbians' and more that it is a presentation that isn't offensive to women in general.
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I think my feelings line up with Jim there. I definitely don't get a specific "for lesbians" vibe from the game but it respects its female characters and gives them plenty of agency so :thumbsup:.
Anyway, stuff I'm playing.
Deltarune - Hmm well. I had fun certainly, though it's tough to know how to feel about incomplete works. I will say that nothing during the game's 2-3 hour runtime really wowed me like Undertale managed (e.g. with the Papyrus fight, so I'm not just picking things from past the 2-3 hour mark of Undertale!). And the change in the storytelling conceit to something closer to the average RPG definitely made the silent main start to feel like a drag on the game in a way Undertale's never did. I kinda had a "whatever" reaction to the final scene. On the other hand the other characters were good; Susie was quite effective (and got some good character development) and the main non-playable character is Bowser Jr. with Toby Fox writing him and I never knew how much I needed this.
Mega Man 11 - It's Mega Man, it's tough but fun, solid execution of the formula while feeling different. I've beaten a majority of the stages at this point.
Octopath Traveler - Beat all the Chapter 4's and have cleared two of the advanced job shrines. Definitely feel the game has trended upwards from Chapter 2 to where I am now, which is nice! Game clock is at somewhere over 60 hours now, everyone is roughly balanced at around Level 50. Not sure how much I'll do but taking a shot at the superboss is definitely going to happen.
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Reached one of the final rooms in Gris but ran into a bug, I'm sure. It has to be a bug. I've dropped into a space where I can only move left and nowhere else without having acquired some skill in a previous room I never visited. Gris is incredibly linear and it's quite difficult to get lost, but gamers have complained about some pesky bugs where you fall through the first stage's plummet to the second-to-last stage without any of the skills you're supposed to pick up in the game. So, I am a bit frustrated I cannot finish. It seems things are fixed more quickly for Steam users than Switch. Regardless, I still stand behind the beauty of this game. Thinking on it though, it's probably two hours max if you try for it in one sitting, which probably means it's a 30 minute or less speedrun game: you can't skip some important skill-acquiring scenes, for example. I do see a lot of replay value in this, especially on the nights where I just want a buffet of sensorial beauty. I hope they send in an update for similarly situated gamers on the Switch like me, because I do not want to restart. Who enjoys a fugue restarting at the final moments of its sounding?
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Mega Man 11 - Beat (not to be confused with the bird helper, whom I never used). Didn't use any E/W/M tanks. Bustered all the bosses once (either in their own stage or in the boss rush).
Solid game overall! Speed gear is a really fun tool if a bit too strong. Power gear isn't as fun (or powerful) but definitely has its uses, especially on certain weapons. Never really used the desperation speed+power double gear (except by accident) but it has obvious uses.
Weapons are a solid set, and well-balanced too. This game almost certainly has the best "worst weapon" of any Mega Man (MM9 came so close but Concrete Shot was bad). I'm not even sure what the worst weapon is, actually! They were a lot of fun to use, though they did tend to drain weapon energy pretty fast. The upgrade which makes WE-restorers hit all your weapons at once was a huge boon; loved it more than I expected because it encourages you to use your full arsenal instead of focusing just on a singular most effective weapon.
The shop economy is weird, everything felt really undercosted. I never came close to running out, though I can see how you would in the final dungeon since there's not nearly as many screws there. But yeesh, you get 300 screws in Tundra's level every life you pass through a certain screen there, which is itself enough to buy 3 E-Tanks, if not other things. Can you imagine any other MM game just randomly putting 3 E-Tanks in one screen and not even making them a challenge to reach? ..... maybe Mega Man 3's final dungeon.
Bosses were fun. Stage design was... good but not exceptional. Stages are definitely a bit long compared to the series norm but they did add an extra checkpoint to help mitigate this.
Rough attempt to rank the weapons:
1. Tundra Storm. The powered-up version is instant death to the entire screen pretty much, which alone is pretty solid even considering its high cost. The fact that I used the uncharged version (high damage, hits enemies above/below/around you, pierces shields, comes out near instantly and resets your fall speed for platforming) notably more says something.
2. Acid Barrier. Oh man there's some terrifying platforming in Wily Stage 1 which I dread doing without this. You can run a decent enough offence while it's up too.
3. Blazing Torch. Its trajectory ended up more useful than I expected, once you know how it works. And the damage/shield-piercing is of course excellent.
4. Bounce Ball. Nothing too special on damage but few weapons are as good as hitting anything, anywhere, and you can spam them to get the offence up to reasonable levels (so I think it compares favourably to Block Dropper).
5. Scramble Thunder. Plug Ball on steroids pretty much? For a groundcrawler it's pretty much second only to MM8's Frost Wave, having pretty high damage and shield-piercing.
6. Block Dropper. Nice, low-cost coverage of a bunch of the screen in front of you. Not very powerful but it gets the job done sometimes.
7. Pile Driver. Bizarro Top Spin variant? Better Charge Kick? The fact that it's this low says how solid weapons are in this game. It has some platforming uses since it dashes you forward, and it's got good power, though it can be risky in a variety of ways. I killed myself accidentally using it a couple times!
8. Chain Blast. THe uncharged version is technical since you launch bombs and can detonate them... but it's not very good because the projectiles are slow and the damage isn't that great unless you chain them which makes them even slower, and there's a lack of trajectory options. The powered-up version is a reasonably solid "power" weapon though.
Anyway, solid game. I think I prefer MM8 and MM9 a bit (along with a couple of the older ones but those are harder to compare) but this was a good game and one I look forward to replaying.
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Persona 5- Beat Castle 2. After the first dungeon was a massive resource struggle, the second dungeon wasn't an issue at all? At the first plot stop point I still had 80% of my SP left. Really weird ramp down (especially given that they give you a way to fuse all MT elemental spells onto one Persona). And now I just bought an accessory with SP regen, so they just wanted the first dungeon to be painful?
Also, switching off between FF 6 and FF 7 when traveling (was doing WA 1 before that, which I've almost beaten). Done a little XG too, but I forgot how abysmally bad the gameplay is (Every battle is just basically using regular attacks, but you have to hit a button 2-4 times instead of once? I honestly think gear battles are more fun...).
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Made a Dragon Quest XI stat topic (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=7030), for those curious who didn't notice already. Fun times.
Speaking of which, for Sierra / Saika, a mild gameplay spoiler/tip/time-saver once you get Jade, if you're curious and didn't already find it: Most Pep Powers aren't THAT amazing. However, Hero/Sylvando/Jade have a joint Pep Power called Electro Light with a mysterious description like "Something good will happen if you use this!" It's worth finding out what it does. SAVE first though, then go use it and see what happens, and reload the save if you didn't like the results. It's one of the two best Pep Powers in the game.
Dhyerwolf: Persona 5's first palace is flat out the toughest dungeon in the game, and it's not close. That palace on Normal is harder than the other palaces on Hard IMO. That said, I was somewhat stressed on resources in the second half of Palace 2, if I recall correctly? First half isn't so bad, as you said.
As for designer intent, I think Atlus wanted you to appreciate the various quality-of-life features you get from Confidants and the like as the game proceeds, which means doing one Palace with no guardrails. No Alert reduction, very limited SP restoration, no allies covering for Joker, etc. I'm not sure if they considered how that would combine with the player just learning how to evade or ambush guards, as well as Joker having a far tinier Persona draw.
I guess I kinda respect the intent for not wanting the various upgrades to feel like a treadmill akin to yay I got +2 Attack, but pst we quietly added +2 Defense to all the enemies, so you're not really any stronger.
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His experience makes sense. I didn't get the SP Restoration equips until Dungeon 3, so depending on your Confidant progression Dungeon 2 can be relatively tough or breezy. It's still not going to be on the same level as Dungeon 1 though yeah.
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Making the first dungeon brutal and then lowering the pressure near immediately feels like a crazy design choice to me, but doesn't mean it wasn't what they were going for. I only picked up the SP regen after the 2nd dungeon (although I could have picked up something), but I had accumulated enough coffee to deal with any resource issues at the end of the 2nd dungeon.
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It could be that the designers assume less optimal play throughout. the things that ease up pressure require b-lining some s-links and ignoring others. That's certainly true of SP-regen, which requires not only that you advance a certain link pretty far but also that you haven't spent all your limited money on earlier and more obvious equipment upgrades.
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To be clear, Palace 2 isn't a cakewalk or anything - I died several times on the minibosses, and actually had to Mementos grind a tad to take out Madarame. Just it's hard because some of the enemies are hard, not because oh my god SP is running on fumes but not spending SP is suicide.
And yeah, I think the designers just baked in assuming you were gonna spend several days visiting Palace 1, which isn't really THAT big of a deal. I think Magetastic did Palace 1 all the way on Hard (both Laggy & me set it to Normal for at least parts of Palace 1), and if you make 4-5 visits, you'll get enough levels to almost sorta survive. In the grand scheme of things, losing 2-3 days on Palace 1 trips doesn't matter and isn't going to stop you from 100%ing all the Confidants if you want to.
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Fire Emblem Echoes
When I originally played through the game, I thought it was cool how the game would generally let you deploy everybody, so you got a sense of your full team, but worried it would somewhat diminish replayability. After all, in most other Fire Emblems, you can pick an entirely different core team to go through with for a different flavored experience. Anyway, due to being on a plane a lot, I finished my 3rd playthrough of the game, so it does have more secrets left to offer! 2nd playthrough was a mild low turncount deal where I tried to get the "Fire Emblem" achievement for winning in < 500 turns. This playthrough, the third, would be a no optional recruits playthrough. Alm & Ceclia know this trip is gonna be dangerous (http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=101518), so we're gonna turn down everybody who offers to join.
Exceptions:
* For Alm, the Cipher DLC crew will be joining of Emma, Randal, Shade, and Yuzu. Well... after he can beat their maps, at least. (No other DLC allowed, including the free DLC! Villager's forks are stupidly busted, that'd kill the challenge.)
* For Celica, she's gonna go recruit Kliff & Faye, because I've never done that before. And also doing Celica route without a Cleric / Saint sounds painful.
I'll add that you can skip through conversations / cutscenes / enemy turns at lightning speed, which also makes a 3rd playthrough nice & fast. Keep Mae & Boey snarking at each other about why their trips keep mysteriously going through haunted graveyards, skip anything involving Rudolf or Jedah, good times. Note that the overall teams ended up interestingly different too; Alm normally has only 1 Pegasus Knight (maybe 2 if Faye went that way), while Celica normally has 3; Alm didn't have any archers rather than 1-2, etc.
Anyway, it was cool and different! Got to see various wacky bits of dialogue they wrote for dopey situations. Also, the DLC characters are all fully voice acted: they have well-written dialogue, a support tree, lines when people get kills near them, lines for the final battle with Duma, special sprites, etc. Shade (who is a dark mage in Cipher) ends up the gothiest Saint ever, wearing a black dress, while Emma has a huge ribbon visible on her sprite, and so on.
Act 1
Kliff & Faye are left curbside for our quest. As is Silque, so it's time for ALM'S SNACK CART healing strats, as if you want to heal up you need to stop by the provisions stands Alm wheels around behind him and eat an Orange. Emma & Randal's DLC map is too badass to be taken on now, though, so we're sticking with the core required crew, which is Alm / Grey / Tobin / Lukas / Clair / Clive. Grey & Tobin both go Mercenary 'cuz, I dunno, don't want to steal the show too much from the Cipher characters, so stick with safe & boring & also their FEH forms, villagers with swords. I delay promotion more than I normally would do due to fears about lowmanning it up; while you usually don't get much from delaying promotion in Echoes, with a small crew, it seems more worthwhile. Final map ends up a curbstomp even without Silque, the "wander up the right side and have Clair let you in" gives you a nice chokepoint and a very easy infiltration.
Act 2
NO GENNY NOOOO. Celica takes awhile to learn Recover, too, so Celica's snack cart strats time? Okay, and some graveyard grinding, I admit it. This is way harder than usual sans Genny. I do save Valbar & co. via hauling ass north on their map, then proceed to abandon them at the pirate fort. The only required Celica recruits are Mae/Boey/Saber / (much later Act 4 Conrad), so this would be a tiny team without the Ram Village extras. I skip the Necrodragons for now and collect Kliff & Faye, who are amused at the situation wherein Alm just ran off without them.
Over at the Thieves' Shrine, Celica & Silque have some "huh weird that we ran into each other" dialogue (Silque is also from the priory at Nonis), and Python & Forscythe have some "huh hello tourists to this haunted dungeon" dialogue at the Deliverance Hideout. Then it's time for some GRINDING 'cuz hey Villagers actually gain levels super fast when fighting at the Deliverance Hideout compared to the Thieves Shrine. Faye goes Saint for sanity reasons, Kliff goes Archer. Archer is supposed to be balanced around subpar stats, but when you got Villager Kliff to Level 15 or something, a lot of that downside goes away, and you just have a terrifying force of nature. Necrodragons get bodied on return, and I grab the Blessed Sword for Celica from the Sea Shrine.
Act 3
Alm's snack cart runs out of steam here vs. Fernand; while Alm can sorta survive all the enemies beelining your position early, nobody else can, and with no archers and no mages, there's no free chip damage getting in. I attempt it twice but Alm eventually runs out of HP thanks to the annoyingly luckily accurate dark mages Rigel brings. Even if I'd hypothetically beaten it, the next map is a swarm of dark mages with no real way to get long-range free damage onto them and a crew of low-resistance characters. If it is beatable, it's via not promoting both Tobin & Grey to Mercs and getting an archer or a mage of your own, and maybe having Clair lead half their army on a merry chase. LUCKILY! I am now strong enough to take on the DLC missions, which seem balanced for Act 3 for whatever odd reason. It's tricky but doable, and all the characters are in promoted classes, so these early Act 3 maps quickly become curbstomps instead with the Cipher crew hard carrying. To chat about them some... they all have good Resistance (which doesn't grow very often / at all in Echoes), and they all have weapons with somewhat inefficient forging costs but that can be forged a LOT if you want to take them to endgame, and new specials.
* Emma is a Falcon Knight with 13 Resistance, which is amazing - means all the midgame spells from Witches and the like practically bounce off her. On the downside, her Speed is kinda disappointing for a promoted unit - only 13 or so at L1, when Clair had already outpaced that easily pre-promotion as an L10 Peg Knight or whatever. (Speaking of 13, that is also apparently her age, so child soldiers, yay! At least Delthea didn't get in the thick of physical combat...) Her weapon, Trainee's Lance, has bad Mt (4) but great Hit, and more importantly, has the Solo Triangle Attack special. Which yes, Randal razzes her about making no sense. It's a straight-up triple attack for 5 HP, so her merely-okay speed doesn't actually matter that much once she learns it. Really amazing at shredding low-def units and Terrors, worthless against high-Def units as you might imagine.
* Randal is a Paladin who also sports pretty good Resistance, and also great Speed. Unfortunately, his Luck/Skill suffer, and his Strength is nothing special either. So he's a balanced unit, more of an anti-mage while Clive focuses on high Str and killing blows. His unique, Wayward Lance, is a low-hit high-crit weapon, and offers a special that doubles down even further on this - Heaven or Hell, a guaranteed double, but at -40 Hit, and with guaranteed crits if it hits. I practically never used that special considering he generally doubled anyway, already had a decent chance of crit, and the skill would tank his Hit to tragic levels. (The skill might be worthwhile on a low-speed, high skill lance user like Lukas I guess?) It gets REALLY bad at endgame with the evasion jump there, but whatever, I gave him Gradivus then. (Also, for Elf/Ciato, your team & Emma get to rescue him in his recruit map for a change of pace from the usual Echoes MO on the gender of recruitable characters in peril.)
* Yuzu is all offense all the time - think Hana from FE Fates, tons of speed and attack, no defense or HP, although acceptable Resistance. However, "female myrmidon" translates to "Priestess with a sword" in Echoes, so she also packs some magic options, which is actually great, especially since my healing is limited on this team. Maybe too great, since it seems to distract from intended sword beatdown she wants to do character-wise? Oh well. Even with her as a promoted L1 Priestess, enemies would beeline her as she looked the most killable compared to the entire rest of the team, so she spent more time than she probably preferred healing in the backlines. Her weapon, the Warrior's Sword, is pretty good; just solid stats & a +20 crit rate. The ability is pretty worthless for Yuzu though - it's Armor Disruptor, which has effectiveness against armored units. A nice thought, but if Yuzu is fighting armors, she's just pelting them with Fire or Sagittae instead and hitting their weaker Resistance stat rather than walking up tot hem, usually.
* Shade is an L1 "Saint." Like the rest of the Cipher crew, she packs great Resistance, making her a great enemy mage bait unit. She's similar to Tatiana; no Recover, but has Physic and Rescue. She also packs Freeze and Silence, although no Invoke (but that's fine by me, I've won enough using Invoke cheese). As a battle mage, her speed is averageish, which is better than most Saints who are slugs, but for a dark mage turned Echoes Saint due to where Nosferatu hangs out, her Attack stat is a bit disappointing. Still, having a ranged healer was just what the doctor ordered, so still amazing. I eventually gave her the Speed Ring to get her around more quickly as well as ensure doubles in combat.
Anyway, as you might expect, the addition of some high-res mobile units and a healer turns the situation around, fast, and most of Alm Act 3 goes down in flames afterward. Desaix's Fortress is a little tricky as usual with no archers and the only mages also being healers, and Desaix himself having Javelins that HURT, but I manage. Lutiher, Mathilda, and Delthea are all ignored and left alone.
Over on Celica's side, things surprisingly aren't that bad. Hard-focusing XP has resulted in characters that shrug off summoned units and Kliff makes for a very busted Archer with all the extra Villager levels (Alm ships an Iron Bow over to him via Merchant). Saber holds the frontline while Celica/Mae/Boey/Kliff plink from afar and Faye keeps everybody healed up. Despite ignoring Palla, Catria, and Atlas's pleas for help, Celica finds herself heading over to take out bandit lord Grieth... because... because she has a good feeling about doing this? This is actually required to meet Irma and get proof of princesshood at the Temple or something anyway, but hey, more XP. There's quite the slaughter at Grieth's Citadel as I take it nice & slow & safe with this small team; nothing like having multiple characters "Fatigued" after a single battle from all the fighting that takes place as I slowly edge up one side with Kliff & the mage crew sniping people. No trouble over at the Temple of Mila either. Rare footage of Celica having hit L20 before promotion, though, from all the lowmanning.
Act 4
Doing Nuibaba's Citadel without an archer was interesting. 0 Mila's Turnwheel uses, though! Guess I know the fight well enough now. The secret is going around up top and having a Dread Fighter bait out the defenders, since only a DF can get into Medusa range safely. (Okay, if you don't have any Dread Fighters, there's a Hexlock Shield in Fear Mountain for the same effect, although you won't be chipping back like you might with a Lightning Sword.) Once some of the defenders are baited out, I use Clair & Emma to start sniping the remaining defenders and using a Shade Rescue as needed. By the time it's time to kill Nuibaba and her Cantor friend, all her other allies are dead. Another massive slaughter count fight that takes 25 turns or so to win, but good times.
Meanwhile, over with Jerome & Zeke, there's the rare lines for when you HAVE completed the quest but did not bring Tatiana to the battle where Zeke gets to say something like "Welllll I don't know you but sure you seem trustworthy when you say you've saved Tatiana, so I'll help!" It occurs to me that if you wanted to be really horrible, you could recruit Tatiana, then run to the Sylvan Shrine and get her killed, then go to the Zeke battle where Alm would get to lie his ass off about how she's fine now. Anyways, Zeke & Tatiana remain sadly separated, as they refuse to meet up. i guess Tatiana liked Nuibaba's decorations for why she decided to stay there. Since Yuzu is sporting the Warrior's sword and Shade the Speed Ring, I actually ship Celica the Mage Ring found in Nuibaba's place.
For Celica, meanwhile, the rout continues. Despite having a smaller team than Alm - 6-7 vs. 10 - Celica's team still feels more powerful in some ways, especially now that both Mae AND Boey are packing Mage Rings and are artillery 1-5 units of doom capable of sniping enemy mages without counter easily. Hiking through the swamp is easier when everyone is high enough level to shake off most summoned Terrors and you don't have to worry about protecting Atlas/Nomah/etc. from Gargoyles swooping in on him. (I gave Mae a bit of Defense boosting too.) Conrad joins up, and the Storming of Duma Gate mission proves easier than usual, as super-Kliff just wrecks everything and super-Celica / super-Saber are hard to kill off all the extra levels they've gotten. Conrad is basically a useful meatshield for baiting enemies off his good resistance, and then everybody in the backline kills stuff horribly. Duma Tower doesn't put up much more of a fight.
Act 5
No archers and no mage ring and lots of Bow Knights dissuading a Falcon Knight dive means that the Last Bastion is slow going. Still, a combination of Lightning Sword and Yuzu's Sagittae help clear a path along one edge, and then it's easy after I penetrate the back of the Last Bastion and can approach from the "wrong" way. Wasn't really ever under much threat, even if it took awhile to win. Rudolf I just plain charge the center courtyard with no archer trickiness, have people who can survive Rudolf critz in his range when he aggros, then have Alm take World's Worst Dad out. (Side comment: I didn't plan on talking MUCH about the plot, but one of Rudolf's lines made me wonder - he tells Berkut that the weak have no place in his army, and to git. Was... was this supposed to also be sympathetic-for-no-good-reason? that is, he was trying to save Berkut's life in an assholeish way? Well, if that was the writer's intent, it worked too well, as he still comes across as the bad guy everybody thought he was. Okay, backing to skipping this nonsense.) Mycen joins as our final recruit although he doesn't fit in the party yet (but will fit in Celica's party later for Duma!). Berkut & Rinea aren't too bad, although approaching Rinea is tricky since I don't have a Gold Knight I'd trust to kill her like Mathilda (Randal's offense is too weak, Clive will die horribly if he misses), so I play it slow and use Dread Fighters to approach safely. Duma himself, well, the lowmanning doesn't matter now and I have some super-Alm and super-Celicas from the focused XP, so the fight is probably easier than usual if anything. Bow Knight Kliff snipes key targets, Saber/Grey/Tobin are DF magic tanks to lead the way, Faye & Shade can heal from afar. Unusually, I decide to lead Lord Duma on a walk to the center of the map, then have DFs sneak in after he's wandered off to take out the Medusa user and the Witch summoner. You also get to marvel at the Ram Village massive support stacking meaning that DF Grey is enjoying Alm/Celica/Mycen/Tobin/Clair supports all at once and Duma only has a 22 Hit on Grey as he futiley chases him downward, and is led away from his worshippers. Victory!
(Also, Clive gets an ending that assumes Mathilda died, since she wasn't in the party. No, Clive, she's still waiting for you, don't worry, Alm is just weird.)
Act 6
I might actually do an Invoke-less aftergame to see how it goes, depending on how crazy I feel. We'll see! I do have 3 Dread Fighters I can Villager loop at least.
Album with various amusing dialogue / odd scenes of Duma placement:
https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMpAUqehIagnwCSyX4EOLdphPENhT6nTfAgku6T
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Octopath Traveler - Finished the postgame. The final superboss was an enjoyable challenge for sure, although losing to the second stage would have been soul-crushing. I had around three hours between my save before and after that sequence, and it's not like I spent much time on the mini-boss squad. Granted, much of the time I took was spent painstakingly strategising out turns, precisely so I wouldn't have to redo things.
Long game certainly, final clock was over 78 hours. The story fits together nicely from a plotting point of view, though it's unfortunate that it doesn't really involve the characters. Octopath even did a good job with its characters, so it's a shame that it couldn't at least pull a Chrono Trigger and give them some more dialog in these shared sequences. Also disappointing how they play no role in the epilogue sidequests about various important NPCs.
Still, a very solid game. Not much has changed about my assessment; it doesn't really excel anywhere but it certainly does a good job everywhere, and is one of the most overall solid RPGs in recent years. Recommended to any Switch-owner who likes RPGs and has the time to play 'em.
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Domination of FF4 continues.
Dark Elf: Took off the Rubyrings too early. Boss did the worst thing possible, piggyfying Tellah and I had no items to cure it. Still won with Cecil, Yang, and Cid bashing away but no domination with Tornado or Stop like I wanted.
Asura: Easier in the Japanese version than the US release. Rydia and Rosa take up slots 4 and 5. My first actions are fighters defend except for the one with the Defender who itemcasts, Rydia Bio, and Rosa Reflect. Everyone but Edge has mage species resist gear so Asura can't really do much with her physicals. Would have been OK if Edge dropped but all those Protects add up.
Leviathan: Cecil's scrubby healing is enough to free up a Rosa turn to berserk Edge, first priority is Slow of course. Slow in place, she gets another free turn later on and I berserk Cecil for the hell of it. Rydia pumps out Bolt2 and Kain keeps Jumps coming. Before being berserked, Edge drops some Raijin to prey on lightning weakness.
Sylph Cave: Went a lot smoother than I remember. Having Edge drop an hourglass when there are multiple Morbols around makes all the difference; it was worth the 4 hourglasses I used getting the treasures here. I blow up 6 Dreamevil formations with Leviathan; they take too long to chop down with melee alone.
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I started replaying FF9 despite knowing it is a poorlifedecision.jpeg. I've been watching some speedruns of this game so I deploy some speed stratz on some of the battles. Managed to finish Disc 1 in a little under 4 hours. I also didn't run into like any encounters until after Hunter's Festival (which I made Zidane retire from because Coral Ring > better than all other things you can get) so by the time I was walking to Gizu's Grotto, enemies were 2HKOing and Zidane still had the Mage Masher equipped. Ended up having to grind a little to get out of that hole. I'd say, Gizu and Zidane start of D2 is kinda where the difficulty is most likely at their highest. If I didn't grind it out, I imagine Clerya's Trunk to be a complete mess.
Fights in this game are pretty simple. I actually had the most difficulty on the Black Waltzes due to the before mentioned no encounters until that point. The spells were OHKOing or 2HKOing and when you don't have Garnet in one of those fights, turn economy can go to hell if they start spamming MT. But after that, you get more critical skills, get MP Attack on fighters and damage skyrockets. Vivi/Steiner are pretty good as a result since they can OHKO randoms/2-3 round bosses. Others are less good. Garnet is pretty bad, Zidane is underwhelming and Freya's okay but not great. Will see what happens as we continue.
Also, the character work in this game is pretty bad. Like the plot itself works actually but the people it revolves around really need work. Vivi/Freya are cool, but then Freya becomes invisible after halfway through D2. Zidane/Steiner/Garnet/Beatrix all have issues. I guess Brahne works for a figure that you don't like but eeeeeeeeeeh
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Langrisser: It's a mobile gacha game based on the old Langrisser/Warsong strategy series. Basically Fire Emblem Heroes but based on better games (oh yeah I went there).
Has that old-school anime art which is nostalgic, and there's some interesting options for gameplay. You have support troops that you can change, so your main hero might be a swordsman, but he's leading a group of lancers which mitigates his weakness a bit.
Got myself an ugly old man (Bernhardt from Langrisser II) so I'm happy. Oh and did I mention you fight Cho Aniki? I'm not actually making that up.
EDIT: It's also supposed to have a Trails in the Sky collab coming up.
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Fire Emblem Fates - Doing a playthrough of Revelation Lunatic, the only route I haven’t completed on the highest difficulty yet. Also using male Corrin (and therefore earlygame Felicia) for the first time.
Chapter 6 (the routesplit map) is actually tricky on this route and difficulty, unlike the other 8 variants on it. How the map works is you have to defeat one Hoshido mini-boss and one Nohr mini-boss, and you have five turns to do it in. In Hard, the Nohrian troops are fliers who start on the other side of the river, but move towards you. Simple enough, you defeat the wyvern miniboss and the Hoshidan infantry miniboss within 5 turns. On Lunatic, though, the Nohr troops are instead infantry and cavalry, who do NOT cross the river (obviously). You can pair up-separate to get Corrin across the river on the second turn, then activate the dragon vein to dry the river up, but this loses you two valuable turns. Worse yet, your options to just waltz in there and kill the miniboss (which admittedly is the easy part) on the Nohr side are limited because he starts inside the threat range of Xander and Camilla, either of whom will erase anyone in one action. So you have to respect that, bait out the Nohr miniboss, and avoid being overwhelmed by the converging soldiers from both armies. Not the trickiest but took me a few tries for sure.
After that there is Chapter 7 (darkness map) which is terrible. Chapter 8 (Hoshidan fort vs Yukimura) is… fine though I lose Gunter towards the end of it and it’s long so I ain’t resetting. The ninjas have on this map have much higher def than res which is really unusual for ninjas. Makes Corrin’s dragonstone good though!
After this map I reclass Felicia to Strategist. Holy hell I should have done this a map sooner, Felicia is actually really good with access to magic, being able to one-round most foes due to high spd/mag at range 1-2 and 8 move. She’s 2HKOed by almost anything physical, but notably not OHKOed, and on Lunatic we will take this! She also picks up Inspiration around Chapter 11 which is, as usual, dumb this early. She’s an underwhelming Maid because the low str/def results in an unimpressive combat, but rather great this way.
Chapter 9 is the wind map. It’s difficult! Not much to say. Not as tough as the Conquest version obviously but still good fun and has me constantly racking my brains in that good way.
Chapter 10 is ice digging and is terrible. I decide to be fairly completionist and expose more or less the whole map to get all the shiny treasure, and the map takes like 25 turns. With Hayato dying right near the end sadly, which is a shame because he’s quite a solid mage on Revelation and I can use those.
Chapter 11, in which your ninja has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough genderfluid dude/dudette to rescue the ninja? Well probably, but the Master Ninjas on this map have some sick stats on Lunatic, including 15/20 defences and super-high speed along with “good enough” attack (and bonus debuffing of your tanks). Fortunately Takumi can take out most of their HP in one go, and Reina who you get early on actually outright one-rounds them thanks to glorious Darting Blow. The last push with two of them near Kotaro is a bit of a pain.
I did not like the frozen ocean on Hard but it’s fine on Lunatic, since there’s actually meaningful enemies raiding your ships until turn ~6 or so when the dragon veins get exposed and you can start to leave them. Corrin’s ship is beset by multiple 18-str outlaws and a brutal berserker (atk in the 30’s, good enough speed, and some ugly crit) which converge on turn 3, that took some careful positioning to deal with. Fortunately Reina and Subaki can cheat a bit at least. The approach of Flora’s ship is a bit of a pain as some powerful sorcerers defend it, but nothing you can’t deal with carefully. Rev enemies are generally pretty conservative so you can take your time, and they don’t usually have quite the same “everyone in a group wakes up at once” AI that certain Conquest maps favour.
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Final Fantasy Tactics retrospective: C3 Orbonne
This is a series that intimidates me when I go in. However, much of the perceived difficulty comes from my own self-imposed limitations. The first fight was scary due to an awkward team setup. Geo Ramza with White Magic secondary, Archer Agrias with Equip Sword PA boosting gear, Priest with Black Magic (no MA up), Knight with Power Break and no Concentrate, and Ninja with Steal. I really wanted those Platina Helmets and was perfectly willing to reset if the first shot of Steal Helmet failed. Luck was really on my side on my attempt. 48% and 72% steals both succeeded on first try. Protect was actually relevant. Ninja did eat horrific overkill from a best compatibility Jump once. Ramza Raised her up soon and I abused the AI by having the Priest target a Raise on the Ninja that would go off after the Lancer that killed her the first time got its turn. So it went off to bother someone else. Between Agrias wrecking things and some lucky Kamaitichi procs from Ramza, the Priest got about one EXP gaining action.
Izjude is easy if just trying to win. Give some spellcasters Germinas Boots/Spike Shoes and bombard Izjude with high powered spells on round one. I'm aiming to kill every enemy and harvest crystals without allowing the enemies to get any so it's far more dangerous. Add picking up the Move-Find items to those objectives, pointless as it is. Team lineup is Mediator Ramza with Guts, Equip Armor, and Move-HP up, Lancer with hori jump 3 and Item, Ninja with Battle Skill, Time Mage with White Magic, and Archer with Battle Skill. Main opening moves are to take out the summoner before it can move and have the Archer try to land a Speed Break on Izjude before his 3rd turn. Felt a bit scared because of very limited healing. Didn't quite play out as nice as I hoped but still made it. Summoner had Judo Outfit and lived through opening assault but used its turn for Moogle, which was good enough. Time Mage contributed Slows on Izlude and Protect/Cures on allies. Lancer and Ninja smash generics; had a funny moment where my Lancer moved within range of a Knight to jump on an enemy Archer. Knight got its turn while Lancer was still airborne and could do no damage. Protect became relevant again since it allowed the Ninja to attempt to Power Break Izlude, fail, eat a counter and a sword whack, and survive through it all. Got about 2 Speed Breaks on him overall which was enough for control of the field.
Normal strats for Wiegraf 2 are to eliminate him quickly before the rest of his army joins in. I am not normal. Still going for crystals as well as Wiegraf's Crystal helmet. Team is Thief Ramza as the designated stealer with heavy armor + Move-HP up, two gunners with Weapon Break, Oracle with White Magic, and a Wave Fist Monk. There is a point to Ramza's HP centric setup: AI manipulation. It will almost never go after him if someone else is available. Got a really unlucky opening where Wiegraf's Stasis Sword KO's the monk with a critical and Stops the Oracle. First shot of 45% Weapon Break hits so I play things out just in case. Actually recovered from the mess. Ramza gets some Steal Heat working on a Knight which lands a 42% Armor Break on an Archer. Geomancer Knight is a bit tricky due to Counter Flood. After taking out the other generics, needed to lure her to spots where the Monk could safely Wave Fist her as no one else had a way to inflict meaningful damage without risking a Counter Flood. Disarmed and Threatened Wiegraf is easy enough to handle, especially once he's alone.
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I made it to about 75% of D3 in FF9. I have pretty different feelings on the characters' in-battle worth for sure now, which I think jive more with speed stratz styles than anything but hey. They do some character stuff on the late joiners (Amarant/Eiko), but it doesn't do much. Ultimately the focus is still on the first 4 so how you feel about Zidane, Garnet, Vivi and Steiner are pretty important to how much you end up enjoying the story. As I mentioned, the actual story beats are pretty good, but Zidane/Garnet/Steiner all have issues, which kind of take away from the rest of the game.
EDIT: Okay, I'm done Disc 3. Disc 4 is really a formality to finish the game so I can probably state some thoughts regarding this replay. Play time is about 24 hours at the moment. Disc 4 is only about an hour so for all intents and purposes, the game is done. Overall, my opinion of FF9 hasn't changed much; it's not great but I'd probably still rank it above FF8 objectively. The plot works for what it is, but combat and character work aren't terribly exciting and those things really hurt it from being better. The discs are also really imbalanced in length (D3 is significantly longer than 1) and there are obvious pacing issues.
More on this later when I have time.
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Kingdom Hearts III:
I made it to the mansion. That must be about 2.5 hours in to the game if you spend lots of time Munny searching and slashing all kinds of bushes and buckets. I remember a comment I posted earlier about despising games that design basic gameplay learning into its beginning? KH3 does that, and I hate it just as equally. Now, I would have been more lenient if they cut some nostalgic instances out, such as "Press X to Slash Monster!" Quality lost to nostalgia, and I'm not accustomed to that type of division. Going to admit that the number of "How to" screens frustrated me so much that I did not read, etc., and when I was clueless about things such as taking photographs, I simply went to the info menu. So what's going on with SE? You take photos in 15, you take photos in KH3 now, like, are they information-mining me? (/sarcasm)
I'm still mulling over how I feel about the gameplay, and will review it after two planets destination planets in. I'm currently overwhelmed though? The camera is Nier-levels of insane without Nier-levels of offensive and defensive battle features? I mean, blocking right now seems pretty much worthless with hordes of enemies on the screen. . . .
Music? Dope.
Sora looks different. I'll get over it.
Goofy's shaping up to be KH MVP.
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Another Eden: a mobile game that boldly answers the question, "What if Chrono Trigger were boring?" I'll stick with it a bit longer to see if it develops but I wouldn't recommend it based on the first few hours.
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Tide: Yeah, that's something that was kinda meh about FF9 for me. It has some really good character work (Vivi, Steiner, Eiko, & Kuja), and it has a few characters who have promising starts, and precisely because I know Square can do some damn good characters, it annoys me just how much the ball is dropped for the others. Beatrix is completely paint by numbers for the badass working for the wrong team. Amarant & Quina barely exist. Freya has a strong intro and then proceeds to not exist. Brahne is frustrating. It's not like villains have to be rational, but she's such a rargh-I-am-evil flat archetype it dulls the impact. It's even an explicit plot point that she is NOT mind-controlled or anything, she's just willing to hire mercs to kill her adopted daughter she presumably put a bunch of time and effort into raising as a successor. Like, if they had just changed that one thing and made her positive about her daughter Garnet but disappointed that she doesn't want to rule the world that Brahne is nicely conquering for her as a gift, that would go pretty far. "Join me and together we can rule the Continent as Mother and Daughter" and all.
That said, I got my complaints about FF9 but "discs are not of exactly equal playtime" isn't one of them, Disc 4 had lots of ending FMVs and the like I presume. :p
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Another Eden: It has transdimensional god-kitties and pretty art. It certainly hits all of the same story notes as Chrono Trigger, but doesn't really have much depth to the battle system at all. Perhaps it opens up more later?
It does get points for being decently localized and for being a functionally-normal JRPG on mobile which doesn't build its whole gameplay loop around gacha.
As someone who played FFD2, Another Eden feels like Kato took everything he learned from that game and tweaked it just slightly so that he could own the IP for it. It has a similar art design, similar sprite engine, similar battle system, a toned-down version of its gacha system, similar balance issues, similar pacing, the same musical cues, the same mission structure. It is basically FFD2-2, now with less FF.
It is worth noting that FFD2 ALSO started out exceptionally cliched and boring and I ended up loving the majority of the game (the parts between the tired-cliche intro and the thrice-repeated final chapter at least). So Another Eden, perhaps if it learned anything from FFD2, might at least be able to improve on that ending?
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Muddling along with DQ11. I have met Sylvando. He is very, very gay, but not in a way that makes him seem like a joke, which I appreciate. I'm going to presume there's no way to actually beat him in that race, either.
Smash Ultimate has also been eating up some playtime for me. The adventure mode is fun, and I'm near the end. Finally got Ike, which has been a major boon for me. Nothing like being able to knock a Legend class enemy off the stage at ~40% because I baited them into a partially charged F.Smash. Or to quote Kier, "this spirit empty, YEET"
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Finished up my Normal replay of Metroid Prime 2 after beating Hard and seeing that it wasn't much lower than my previous Normal time. About 5 hours faster which I'm content with (16 hours down to 11). Lots of rolling around with morph and boost and not doing much fighting. The game is more accessible on replays since there's less pressure in the dark world to wait in safe zones. As long as I make it to the next save point, I'm good. OK, got to keep health up before a boss fight but other than that... Player is almost never required to fight tanky enemies and the few times where it is necessary, there's a quick kill method available.
Most of the tanky enemy battles are early on, which makes the game even more unfriendly to newcomers. Anyways, I feel complete with the game. Translation: I've accomplished everything I wanted to and will probably never play the game again.
some more FFT retrospective:
Ramza was running high HP + Move HP-up again for Grog. So of course, a squire spawns with an Ancient Sword and lands a Don't Move to troll me. When it wears off, squire lands another lucky proc. Otherwise straightforward fight where one dismantles the enemies one by one if they refuse to clump up for a summon.
Yardow was a massacre. One reset because a Ninja randomly was a Virgo with high WP throw and Rafa died before I could move. Winning attempt, Priest Ramza with Summon and MA up and Archer Agrias with PA gear and Equip Sword sent all three Ninjas into the dirt on their first turns. What a difference a strong opening offense makes. Massacre for the enemies. Trolled Malak with Arm Aim while I waited for crystals and grabbed all the Move-Find items.
OK, one additional reset because Rafa killed off Malak while I was stalling. Of all the times for her to have high accuracy...
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Cultist Simulator: Started playing this yesterday. I've now put like 3 hours into it and I'm still not sure if I understand what it is I'm supposed to be doing. It's a found narrative resource management RPG thingy? But it preys on all my worst impulses which is making it hard for me to know whether I'm actually enjoying the game or not. Timers, optimizations, push-pull resource management, serendipities, unfolding narrative - all driving me batty since on top of it I wasted the first 15 minutes of the game not reading any of the prompts (TIMERS!) or understanding there was a pause button or realizing that there were some obvious interdependencies with resources.
I think I'm liking it? It's at least giving me the hate-fuck feel where it makes me actively annoyed and I want to keep going just so I can satisfy my curiosity over whether I even like it.
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KH3: This has got to be in the running for most useless minimap ever. You can't expand it to a large size, and the way the levels are designed the map doesn't actually help because there's high areas on top of low areas. I don't get lost easily in games and I have no idea where I'm going half the time here.
On a positive note, theme park attractions are great.
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The Surge: Dark Souls, reskinned for FPS fans. It's your stock "the corporation that was pretending to be good is actually evil" near-future sci fi affair, wherein a bunch of cyborgs with their brains connected to the internet are zombified by something (spoilers: the something is going to be the intentional machinations of the company's Mark Zuckerburg-alike founder). You play a middle aged brown haired white guy who became a cyborg to walk again. The game never says why he was in a wheelchair at the very beginning but my headcanon is that he was injured trying to replicate something he saw on TV. An everyman! I call it Dudebro Souls. More impressions on the plot later. Not because it's some great thing that y'all need to experience, but because I'm finding it a good jumping-off point for analysis. (My current impression is that it just doesn't lean hard enough toward satire or seriousness to work as either.)
Anyway, gameplay. Combat is good but not great - you're able to target specific enemy parts, hit the armored bits to try to chop them off to farm goodies, hit the squishy bits if you're in business mode. Mostly this has been pretty shallow, but there are a few standout enemies that have tricky movesets and require serious attention and effort. Exploration and level design is where the game really shines, and it has great Dark Souls-like environments that function as labyrinthine levels but never lose their character as places that, were they not infested with enemies and strewn wreckage, would pass as actual distinct locations. The level designers did an excellent job parceling out shortcuts, so that you have this tension of a long Dark Souls-ish excursion where you're sitting on a bunch of EXP and don't want to lose it, and you're incentivized to press onward in the hopes that you'll find safety ahead. You get these treks where you have a vague sense of where you need to go (thanks to some good signposting) and are planning out a route to get there with enough healing left to handle any unknown threat. It's not artistic in the way the Souls games are, but it's great, tense fun.
I'm probably about halfway through, more thoughts later.
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Another Eden: a mobile game that boldly answers the question, "What if Chrono Trigger were boring?" I'll stick with it a bit longer to see if it develops but I wouldn't recommend it based on the first few hours.
The plot stays boring forever. The gameplay does improve though.
Also, fetch Mariel from gacha.
The game's difficulty is heaven and Earth of a difference without her.
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Tokyo Xanadu
Started this up. What if you took Trails of Cold Steel, but had Ys 8 action-y combat rather than being an RPG? Yeah, that's pretty close to what we have here. Well that and the modern-Japan-with-superpowers-and-relationships setting Japanese devs love these days. Prepare to pick which friends of which to have short vignettes with to power up your friendship meter and unlock cool combat bonuses, run errands to help people out, etc.
* Falcom is actually kind of a small studio, so you can tell they reused a bunch of assets. Same sound effect for meters filling, same UI for teleporting around town & school as ToCS, same person-icons on minimaps with exclamation points for side quests, very similar art style, etc. Luckily, that was all very solid work, so I'm not complaining. (Although the fact that the game was designed for the Vita definitely shows as the dungeons being a tad sparse by PS4 standards... but hey, call it cleanliness, less stuff to distract you in the dungeon background?)
* The music is new, but very similar in style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWcHShXPWis&list=PLzFTGYa_evXhpikCGKPmhrhEVOFzzcUIL
* Like Ys 8, if you do a last-second dodge, you get time to slow down and get an opening. Also like the Ys series, the bosses are way way way WAY harder than the randoms, if you have trouble with the randos you will get your face melted by the boss. Also like Ys 8, I am bad at this. Playing on Hard mode, the boss of the Moonlit Garden (Sora's first dungeon... no not that Sora, KH3 players) kicked my ass pretty hard. I cleaned out all the dungeon randoms twice and saw that I gained about 1/4 of the way to the next level, so I'd only need to re-clear the dungeon 7 or so more times to grab another level. Guess I'm not grinding my way out of trouble! (Okay, you can grind MONEY with which to item-cheeze bosses if you like, so it's not totally pointless. Although Mr. "I beat Infernal Ys 8 with no items" will probably look down on me.) And yes, I did beat him, eventually, but it required gitting gud.
* As a slight difference from modern Ys games, there's only 1 character on screen at a time, and you're always in control, which is cool. Barring super-team up attacks at least. You just seamlessly tag in party members at the press of a button with the other two mysteriously not on screen, which makes no damn sense, but hey, gameplay.
* Plotwise, the secret world already exists and there's organizations dedicated to dealing with portals to the Eclipse, using that technology to build cell phone networks and apps and other cool gizmos, forging weapons, etc., which is cool and I prefer it to the "only 10 high schoolers know about this" approach. Japan likes their techno-magic, though, with characters just manifesting their Soul Devices psychically. If you're going to have blacksmiths as an in-setting thing, and call them devices, why not have it be closer to just straight-up tech? Oh well.
* I get that nobody wants to watch a crisis of faith that weird psychic power stuff is going on, just as nobody wants a big crossover series to have characters worrying about going back home or WTF is going on, but Our Hero is reacting in very stereotypical shonen ways about using power to protect blah blah blah so far. Yawn. Aren't you more interested in why a bunch of high schoolers at the same school suddenly manifested psychic weaponry? That seems like an interesting mystery, and unusual even in-setting where Wielders are supposed to be rare.
* I'm not sure if this is just the natural logic of supernatural Japanese High School drama or what, but I'd just like to say that there's a purple-haired student & old family friend who looks after Our Hero like a sister, a young female teacher who also happens to look out for Our Hero, and a new exchange "student" who is a mentor in the ways of the supernatural, has blondeish hair, is coded as somewhat American/European, and seems like the default romance possibility. This seems... familiar...
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* I'm not sure if this is just the natural logic of supernatural Japanese High School drama or what, but I'd just like to say that there's a purple-haired student & old family friend who looks after Our Hero like a sister, a young female teacher who also happens to look out for Our Hero, and a new exchange "student" who is a mentor in the ways of the supernatural, has blondeish hair, is coded as somewhat American/European, and seems like the default romance possibility. This seems... familiar...
But is there a twin-tail-sporting tsundere magical rival/love interest? You can't skip the most important part!
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Muddling along with DQ11. I have met Sylvando. He is very, very gay, but not in a way that makes him seem like a joke, which I appreciate. I'm going to presume there's no way to actually beat him in that race, either.
It is actually possible to beat him, though pretty damn hard. You don't get any special rewards for doing so, sadly. (or maybe fortunately, since otherwise there'd be a lot of savescumming going on about the minigame)
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Suikoden V - I decided to replay this because it’s one of my favoritest/oldest games that i have never replayed! I can’t remember why i haven’t played this soo- oh my god those load times why. It is totally bizarre and baffling that you can have this late PS2 game that has worse loading times than earlier PS2 games and even the PS1 era games. If any game needed an early toggle to skip randoms like BD, then it would be this game. Holy shit. This game is soooo slooooow.
Yeah, yeah, we know, the gameplay is dull and boring. So why are you playing this game again?
Oh yeah, the characters, the plot.
I think the character work in the first arc of the game is superb. The game presents you with a fleshed out, full family. How rare this seems in RPGs! Your parents are both distinct individuals and are both in fact quite real takes on parents (aside from the fact that my mom doesn’t have a nuclear bomb that she can fire at people). I always forget just how everpresent and important Sialeeds is throughout the whole game. The jaded edge that she brings to all of the conversations, particularly those about the duo of assholes, is well-needed and offers a great insider voice to the conflict at hand. She is sooooo good and would be one of the game’s best characters even before the face-heel turn.
Gizel is also really well-done. Marscal works effectively as the cold, calculating coup leader, but Gizel is is really the compelling one of the two. He’s also jaded in his own way (it’s as if the arranged marriage between Sialeeds and Gizel left both of them jaded!) . He seems to fancy himself as a magnificent bastard but also has a twisted soft side (he really does care about Sialeeds/Lym). It was fun to watch him in action as a casual tour guide of the Sacred Games, especially knowing how the plot ends up going. It’s actually neat having the PCs casually interact with one of the main villains when the player already knows that this guy is bad news. Reminds me a bit of Seymour in early FFX.
I really enjoyed the scene where Marscal and Gizel casually stroll through the halls of Sol-Falena castle after their coup, revisiting environments that you have previously explored while visiting your family. It's just that one extra gutpunch that you didn't know you needed. Haha.
Other than that, I like all of Georg, Miakis, and Lyon, although in my mind, I had definitely put Miakas higher than the other two but I’m not certain why so far. I will hold that thought, obviously, because I’ve only played eight hours of the game so far. We are just about to go recruit Lucretia.
The in-cutscene gesturing in this game is a little off. The subtlety of Suikoden III’s facial gestures and expressions is gone and replaced with wild hand flapping and overdramatized cutscenes. I think that’s the only real black mark plot/character wise so far. Translation is a lot better than Suikoden I-III (no comment on 4, been too long). The voice acting in cutscenes is actually a bit better than I was fearing, although the voice acting in the battles is poorly mixed.
Interesting experience so far!
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One of my speedrunning friends basically described Suiko5 as a Visual Novel with minor RPG elements - that's probably pretty accurate given the strengths of the game!
I haven't played anything new yet; thinking about moving my PS4 to the condo so I'll need to do some packing but might be able to squeeze in Cold Steel 3 after. Right now, I played some of the post game in FF9 and good god, this is the worst post game in the PSX FF Series. I think attribute this primarily to Chocobo Hot and Cold (Who DESIGNED this?) which is just an awful experience playing it. I cannot understand how people enjoy this considering the fact that you just get garbage for like most of it. Also, I read the treasure guide and you don't even get that many good things out of it. FFX and FF12 had the right idea of making it more curtailed towards their battle systems (main selling points). In the PSX era, FF8 had Triple Triad and FF7 had a weird combo of grinding/Chocobo racing. FF9's treasure hunting/Tetra Master just doesn't work.
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I happen to enjoy Chocobo Hot and Cold for its own sake. Worst case, all those extra consumables can be sold for cash to fund my Disc 4 spending spree. I'll admit to some frustration when Choco pecks all around a treasure spot without hitting it. And going over 50 games without a Chocograph in the lagoon did wear on me.
Lost some respect for FF9 over the years since they most likely ganked the Synthesis shop mechanics from Atelier series. It's just that series stayed in Japan at the time so US players wouldn't know better. Also a convenient segue into something I will have lots of words about.
Atelier Ayesha
Background blather: I'd never heard of the Atelier series until the music tourney. So my first impressions were a tune I ended up taking a liking to despite a lack of context and a "Who's the cute blond?" thought at an artwork sample. Looked up a bit about the series in general and it seems the kind of thing I'd enjoy. Played Mana Khemia 10 years after the rest of the DL as I didn't have a PS3 and it validated that I find the item crafting enjoyable. That game whetted my appetite for an entry which fully embraces a girly-girl protagonist. I have no complaints about using a male lead to help the game sell better in other regions (a smart move) but given the seriies' roots, was still interested in experiencing a game totally unapologetic about having a leading female.
Maybe I'll get into the story of how I found a PS3 within my spending limits another time. Still wish the connection inside the TV I use weren't so worn out. I feel like I lost some graphical quality because of a worn S-video connection that a new cable didn't seem to completely fix. It;s a good thing I went with PS3 since I noticed early on how small the text is. Would not want to try playing this on a portable screen.
Selected gameplay impressions: The global timer doesn't feel that oppressive. Only select actions move it so routing doesn't feel that stressful. Standing around doesn't appear to advance it or if it does, it advances so slowly that I don't feel like I need to rush. I'm not going to try for 100% or a perfect file the first time through.
There's a lot of learning game mechanics as I go. Game does give out enough info to feel like I have a foothold on basic actions but leaves a lot to discovery. Some of it is just buried in in-game help files that I didn't pay close attention to though other times, it appears some things the game doesn't explain at all. It was several ingame months before I worked out what the different colors of damage numbers really mean. I also didn't figure out how to correctly pick up monster item drops for a while which led to losing quite a bit of loot in the early going. Feels like I've barely scratched the surface on item synthesis. Mostly use whatever ingredients I have more of at the moment and not thinking about quality too much. There's a deep system in place so output of the same item can be quite highly varied and most traits will have some kind of effect.
Main source of income seems to be filling delivery requests, which I feel fits the context of the game. Battles give pithy cash for the most part. I also dig the varied ways of acquiring Memory Points.
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Etrian Odyssey Nexus - Kind of the last hurrah of the EO series on the 3DS. And it's one hell of a sendoff, what with having a shitton of classes available. The combat and exploration are about what you expect from the series (so I can't really say it has anything that would convert people who don't like EO's bit) but they retain the general level of quality. First game to have a world map of sorts (symbol-based), and it seems to try and ease players into it a bit more along the lines of Untold Story Modes. It's still a classic-style EO, however, and with 60 character slots, it's encouraging customization.
EO5's its base system, mechanically, so armor is still a necessity.
Observation of classes I've tried heavily so far:
Hero: The devs said this was meant to kind of cover all three categories, and in a sense it does. Heroes have a fairly standard set of offensive skills (albeit, nothing special thus far), have solid defense due to being able to equip shields (alongside a skill that lets them give the party a defense bonus before the attack goes off), and a passive that lets them recover the team's HP when they use a skill. Decentish TP pool too. The main wrinkle they get is that their actions will sometimes create afterimages which take up a party slot, and then echo the action that spawned them before disappearing. They're basically the closest thing to a Mana Khemia character invading the game, and there is some strong potential there with that skillset. Solid with a cute gimmick, but nothing *really* special at the time being.
Gunner: Yeah, not going to lie, I liked this class so much I had to use it again. These guys are different from their EOU2 counterparts, tossing aside the elemental bullets for playing around a good bit with accuracy and evasion, binds that ignore evasion entirely, and a strong, albeit inaccurate attack skill in Rapid Fire. They also retain Stun as being their big status effect of choice; Riot Gun remains their Force Break, and Shell Shock is also good at keeping a back row tied up. Double Action doesn't offer that great of damage benefits, but it does let them get a second action in for free for the relevant skills. Medic Bullet remains their backup healing option, of course, but if you're relying on this guy as a healer you're probably doing something wrong.
Ronin: This is what happens when Blademaster Masurao get improved on. Rather than lock moves to stances entirely, Ronin instead reward you for using stance-related moves by having them autocrit when you're in the relevant stance. These guys have probably the most consistent damage in the earlygame, and they're absolute monsters in that sense. Probably the squishiest frontliner this side of two-sword Shoguns or Nightseekers, though. Just, skill crits. Enough said.
Landsknecht: HI GUYS I HOPE YOU LIKE CHASERS. Seriously that's like half their active moveset early on. Their other abilities are an initiative attack, a buff that trades DEF for more ATK, and a shield-based attack that debuffs the target's ATK. So...yeah, not the worst, but nothing really special. Their passive ability lets them give more damage and accuracy to allies when leading off, so that can be helpful in some cases (coughGunnercough), but they're...nothing too great? Force Boost is a general self-buff that gives them more speed, power, and accuracy. They're really good at hitting things. And chasers.
Survivalist: ...weird hybrid ranged/utility class that is also the inverse of gunner in some ways. Whereas Gunner has gimmicks working against enemy evasion, Survivalist instead is about breaking down enemy accuracy and facilitating evasion bullshit for your party. They also get line-piercing physicals and a fire-elemental option early on (...surprisingly rare outside of Zodiac). Lots of out-of-combat utility, too, including stealing the Warlock's "I ignore terrain bullshit" skill from EO5 and keeping their EOU2 out-of-combat heal. Force Boost is a partywide speed and evasion boost. Plays very well with a dodgetank-oriented party.
Medic: ...they heal people. They also have some staffbeat abilities that require me to put them in frontrow to see how well they work, but they heal you. Their force boost makes their heals faster and cheaper. They are the platonic ideal of healer.
Sovereign: Uh, holy shit these guys. Buff like mad and with proper investment, can heal while doing so. ...alongside the varied passive healing effects they just throw out. Also tanky as hell. The value of buffs cannot be underestimated, though, especially in a game like this. Force Boost making them AoE and cheaper only helps. Probably one of the MVP classes of the game.
Imperial: The other high-end offense class of the game, these guys specialize into being walking tanks. Best STR this side of Ronin, best VIT this side of Protector, and they get some of the craziest burst damage options in the game, with Assault Drive being absolutely monstrous...with a 7-turn cooldown or so. Doesn't stop it from doing over 200 damage under the right conditions in super-earlygame. Nevermind the ability to prevent the cooldown entirely with their Force Boost. Their drawbacks? A couple. These guys are almost entirely selfish, skillwise, and their speed and TP pool blow. The latter is kind of mitigated by their Force Break (letting them overheal their TP), but they're first and foremost a damage-dealer who works best when built around. And they're almost always going last. I love the bastards anyway.
Harbinger: Feels like they got a weird tradeoff between 5 and Nexus. They're a lot less investment-heavy in Nexus, with Auto-Miasma being folded into Miasma Armor (thank god), but their numerical effects got downgraded. Probably as a result of being in a game where subclassing is A Thing, and having to compete with other status-slingers like Nightseeker and Ninja. Still pretty good, though, and Miasma Armor lets them be faster than their stats suggest they should.
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Yeah I also enjoy Chocobo Hot & Cold as a mini-game (unlike all the other FF mini-games Tide mentioned). I don't really care about how good a mini-game's rewards are; a fun mini-game with bad rewards is still fun, while a bad mini-game with good rewards is a chore you feel obligated to play. That said mini-game taste gonna vary, and there's nothing wrong with that.
That said FF9 hasn't aged well to me anyway, and synthing was always bad. Just what I want, running between stores to get things I need only to synth something in hopes that the skills it will teach me are actually useful instead of junk how fasci-zzzzz
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KH3 - gummi ship seriously needs better navigation.
Respawning crystal is also the worst design ever...
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The in-cutscene gesturing in this game is a little off. The subtlety of Suikoden III’s facial gestures and expressions is gone and replaced with wild hand flapping and overdramatized cutscenes. I think that’s the only real black mark plot/character wise so far. Translation is a lot better than Suikoden I-III (no comment on 4, been too long). The voice acting in cutscenes is actually a bit better than I was fearing, although the voice acting in the battles is poorly mixed.
Interesting experience so far!
IV's translation is generally fine for base understanding but the sentence structure is incredibly stiff and overwordy. Too many broken contractions and examples of dialog no person would speak. Tactics and V really shoot way, way ahead on translation and text quality it's kind of insane.
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Is this the first time the DL is playing a game at the same time as Niu?
KH3: THE FUCKING MOBILE GAME?
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Funny enough KHIII had close to a world wide release (Japan got it about 4 days sooner) so everyone got to do it around the same time!
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Finally getting to some backlog, started Danganronpa 2 a few days ago. Interesting blend of VN and Ace Attorney, enjoying it quite a bit so far.
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Etrian Odyssey V: This game is literally impossible. In order to beat it you have to form a party.
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Is this the first time the DL is playing a game at the same time as Niu?
KH3: THE FUCKING MOBILE GAME?
Yes, the plot is entirely about mobile game now.
Ven and Marluxia are both mobile game character from distant past. The girl Saix and Axel is looking for is also a mobile game character. The black box is also from Mobile game.
The REAL chess master that is playing everyone is also a mobile game character.
But this still pales in front of the true insanity that's the secret movie.
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Mobile Games are the future. Even real games are now just vehicles into driving into them.
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Romancing SaGa 2:
So I picked this up again due to Shun playing the awesome-looking new Romancing SaGa mobile game that has yet (if ever) to be translated. He kept telling me about this game and I got intrigued.
I finally finished it and... wow, this sure is a SaGa game. And even by SaGa standards, it is pretty weird and like nothing else.
If I were to do a write up of RS2, it would probably start with something like “If you ever played a faulty copy of FF1 and couldn’t save your progress, so you kept trying to beat it as quickly as possible before your mom forcibly turned your console off, then you know what it’s like to play Roguelikeing SaGa 2...”
And it would end with “...but once the game is firing on all cylinders it is a treat to behold and there’s no other game out there that can give you that unique experience.”
...The middle bits would be incoherent blubbering about quest triggers and character recruitment and incomprehensible battle formulas. It has a weird rogue legacy-esque multi-generational plotline about ruling an Empire and passing down skills and abilities as you direct history and gain the fealty of many different clans, families, kingdoms, and even some magical races like Salamanders and Mermaids (who can also become Emperor/Empress if you're determined!).
It is strange and convoluted and I expect exactly zero people to convinced to play a SaGa game at just my recommendation, but if you are a SaGa fan and thinking of checking out one of the few entries in the series available in English, then it's definitely a unique game with some seriously interesting mechanics. Though it is plagued by the usual SaGa issues of being painfully opaque and requiring a FAQ just to understand the FAQs so you can play the game effectively.
The new remastered version for Switch does have a nice new feature that lets you restart the game from the beginning with all of your stuff/learned skills/money/etc. so that you can just run around and experiment freely when you first boot up the game, then throw it down in frustration, only to pick it up a year later with all that progress you made on your experimental run to make it feel less wasted on a restart. (Now that you've taken the time to smartly research the game's mechanics and gameflow better.)
Again, a highly recommended game for everyone! (disclaimer: not really for everyone, but absolutely it will the kind of game that makes its target audience hold it up as their Game of All Time)
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I think I could file off the serial numbers of that post, change a few words here and there, and recommend La Mulana 2. So let's pretend I did that.
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Djinn just finished RS2?
I am disappointed.
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Yeah, apparently I'm working through the Romancing SaGa games backward, from least translated to most. Next time, I'll be taking on RS1/Minstrel Song.
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:D
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Kingdom Hearts III- I finished this last monday (2/11 for my own purposes), but due to uh post-release patches because modern development practices I had to eat ~half my monthly wifi data getting the proper endings installed so I haven't had a keyboard to do this justice.
In that time I've been trying to parse out how someone would like the series and not love this game, because it seems like a completely nonsensical position, and indeed a lot of the complaints feel... completely off? Like a common one is that the Disney worlds feel pointless and um... I hate to break it to some people but that's always been true, and indeed I felt like the KHIII world set was a lot more considered and contributed more thematic heft than any previous game.
Now that said the more nuanced take of "I didn't like that half the worlds recreated shot-for-shot scenes from the source movies instead of making new spins" which... I will grant you Frozen all day, but... pretty much just Frozen? Let It Go didn't add much to the game, but replaying Disney.txt from Tangled? Nah, that scans.
And I think you can tell Pixar's liaisons were really into this because Monsters and Toy Story worlds were aces.
I should actually go more into how the series has used world selection, because I've had Thoughts, but basically I think only Pirates really feels extraneous? It does go with Nomura's stated theme of "Resolution"... but not with the actual throughline of the plot (belief/love giving things life and making impossible things possible, although even Pirates starts in Davy Jones' Locker...) nor with Sora's character journey (KH1's worlds are typically about, or the original movies were about, the joy of exploring new worlds. KH2's were largely about coming into your own and rising to the occasion to be a hero. KH3... is about being a hero and inspiring others to meet your example.)
And while you can certainly say that Sora's always had a clear character and did a Campbell journey in KH1, KH3 has a handful of scenes that are the first time I felt like he really reckoned with himself and his own identity. Like... I don't want to go into tiny text here, but there's a moment Riku says "You don't really believe that". And that entire scene, and Sora's growth from it, is probably the biggest moment he's had in the franchise I think, with POSSIBLY the exception of jabbing out his heart in KH1.
But honestly I will grant people one thing: there is a HARD dividing line between Disney Fun Times and The Real Plot in this game, in a much more unbalanced way than previous entries. Like the plotty plot during most of those is almost 50% "setting up KH4" stuff that I'm ignoring for purposes of this writeup, and the rest is often summation/setup for the plot mechanics that will go into the emotional beats in the end.
But thematically and emotionally it always scans. This game is about resolution in the sense that it's bringing everything down to exactly one dangling thread of what came before Sora's fate and finishing off the rest.
So at last here's the important part.
After softening you up with the above-mentioned "You don't really believe that" and Sora really pulling it off, the entire rest of the game is the most finely crafted emotional whiplash I have ever seen and I adore it. The rest of the game from that point is using complete awesome to soften you up for melancholy, melancholy to set you up for reclaimed identities, reclaimed identities to set you up for the sort of brilliantly obvious retcons that just WORK emotionally even if maybe don't question them too long, followed by a one-two punch of the actual 'resolution' the entire game was building up to. The reunion of the Trios. "One day, I will make this right." "Many people made my return possible" It's okay to cry: you will not be erased.
Even as Nomura gonna Nomura with how absurd some of the twists and turns getting to those points were (Like fuck, the mechanics of the immediate before and after of the place where hearts return is nonsense), that's the point. I mean yeah there's a final boss after that. But those were the point.
Also not gonna lie these slightly-toned-down final boss tag teams, as a more-or-less bosh rush to end out the game is just... *chef kiss*
Which also is the only other thing worth saying: I want every. SINGLE. Kingdom Hearts game from now until time stops to give me Remy. You can cut the cooking minigames if you want, just make him and Scrooge a travelling crew. It's fine. It's all fine.
For a long time I've sorta punted on thinking about the original Kingdom Hearts. While I think I do like it more than KH2 in a vacuum, it's aged very badly mechanically and a lot of why I ranked it among my absolute favorites is because it most distilled the essence of why I loved this series, the precise way it mixed nonsense, cheese, Disney, Square, and everything else. KHIII, to my everlasting surprised, has at last captured all of it in a smoother, more emotive, and more lasting way. So... yeah. Hello #3.
10/10
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Kingdom Hearts 3:
So... I don't really consider myself a Kingdom Hearts fan, despite playing all of the games and being pretty up-to-date on the lore. It's never quite clicked with me on any level, and I always kind of played them out of morbid curiosity of how weird and avant-garde the plots could get.
That said, I really liked KH3!*
*with some caveats
The Gameplay, pacing, music, art direction, Disney Worlds, and general narrative thrust are all outstanding. The plotbeats are surprisingly easy to follow and un-avant-garde this time around, which is kinda nice. Nomura might have hired some editors!
*My main issue with the game is rooted in KH2, actually...
KH2 SPOILERS
There's the whole concept of Sora's broken heart, which became Roxas, who had all these experiences, but Sora couldn't live while he was out there living his best life. So Roxas agreed to rejoin Sora. Likewise with Kairi and her Nobody, Namine, who very explicitly wanted to return to Kairi's heart. Game frames all of this through the lens of 'completing a broken heart' or 'accepting all sides of yourself' in a metaphorical sense.
Flash forward 10 years and Roxas ends up BY FAR one of the popular characters in the franchise (having a personality and some pathos helps that).
KH3 SPOILERS
And KH3 is basically all about bringing him (and the other Nobodies) back to life as separate people who can live freely and with full hearts of their own. (They reframed the reunion-merge as 'giving the broken hearts time to heal', so I guess now they can move on and become a Real Boy)
They even strongly repudiate KH2's themes under the idea of 'I thought since she originally came from me that everything was okay now that we're one again, but it's not. She should be able to live her life, feel the sun on her skin, etc. etc.'
So KH2 framed its themes as 'accepting all sides of oneself' in a metaphorical sense, but KH3 takes a VERY literal approach of 'oh shit, we basically unpersoned a sentient being, that's a bad look, fuck metaphor, let's bring 'em all back!'
And the disconnect between the very metaphorical reading of KH2 and the painfully blunt literal reading of KH3 bothers me.
For all that I kinda agree that KH2's literal reading is uh... an awful message given the sociopolitical landscape these days and actual un-personing going on in the world and I love that KH3 is schmultzy and happy all around. I guess I'm happy it's willing to look at its past mistakes and move forward, but the shift from metaphorical reading to literal was jarring.
Good game. Play it. Skip KH2.
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I felt like the KHIII world set was a lot more considered and contributed more thematic heft than any previous game.
I really like how all the worlds this time (possible exception Olympus) really tied in with the theme of hearts. Davy Jones's heart, Anna's heart, etc. World selection was really excellent.
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Good game. Play it. Skip KH2.
Lies, KH2 has the best gameplay in the series okay.
Only DDD came close.
KH3's end game boss rush is nothing short of a disgraceful disaster after KH2 has set the bar for the Organization fight so high.
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Ys 8: nearly done with my inferno, no healing challenge. Beat the true final boss, now all that's left is the final bonus dungeon and its out-of-place smooth jazz background music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIK738WVSqw&index=61&list=PLzFTGYa_evXi6iVzAPRg4_kkNphkGXG7c). The bosses in the bonus dungeon pale in comparison to the true final boss though, so I'm not anticipating any major problems. Beating the two phases of this boss without healing (or status cures, which proved to be quite challenging to manage in phase 2!) is among the most difficult things I've done in a videogame.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/383673772
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/383677729
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I play things, really! Just kinda bouncing around between games as I do.
DQ11- Old Man and Kung Fu Princess get. While Jade's identity was easy enough to guess, I did not call what Rab's relation to the plot was. They also preeeeetty cleanly outshine the other characters at least right now. Rab can replace the twins on his own, leaving Hero/Rab/Jade and one of either Eirk or Sylv seeming like the optimal party for most situations.
I have also slain a squid and am currently dealing with the creepiest mini medal collecting king yet.
Infinite Adventures- The ramp in this game is so very real. Unlocking new skills really adds to the gameplay experience in bigger ways than I'm used to EO likes doing it. I really can't recommend this enough for EO fans.
Tokiden: Kiwami - Pulled the vita back out to play an actiony thing, and this has scratched the itch nicely. Sadly one of the few games that have a Fist type weapon that I just can't use. Too slow, too cumbersome, too lacking in mobility or defensive options. Knives, Naginata and Rifle are my usual go to weapons, basically I have a different weapon for each element(though lacking a good Water one so far). If I don't know what to use I go knives, super fun to just jump on a giant oni's head and combo it into ribbons.
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DQ11- Old Man and Kung Fu Princess get. While Jade's identity was easy enough to guess, I did not call what Rab's relation to the plot was. They also preeeeetty cleanly outshine the other characters at least right now. Rab can replace the twins on his own, leaving Hero/Rab/Jade and one of either Eirk or Sylv seeming like the optimal party for most situations.
One of the things I enjoyed the most about DQ11 is how, once you have the ability to respec and enough money to disregard the cost, characters' individual builds and utility is constantly shifting around as you gain enough points to pull off X, Y, or Z build with them. So whoever's benched, they'll be back in time.
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Ateleir Ayesha:
Would rather be playing than writing about it but hey, need to let the controller recharge now and then, deal with real life, invest in real relationships, and all those other things. I enjoy the item crafting and time management more than the combat side. Randoms are the sort of things I'd rather avoid except to go for exploration bonuses. While I started off being fairly aggressive with the attack items, it quickly shifted towards wanting to keep my item use down since there's a cost in time or money to replace them. Level ups feel so empty though it turns out they do add up.
Library was the first big difficulty spike for me. Earlier areas I was able to evade encounters with little trouble or just overpower the opposition through stat dominance. This was a faraway location with a compulsory fight as well as narrow passages and enemy density high enough that I was guaranteed to run into a few. Escape isn't easy like, say, Final Fantasy 4. Equipment hadn't improved for a long time either which made the beatings hurt more.
Soundtrack is excellent. Not much to add in the way of specific comments. Having multiple battle themes for randoms is welcome.
Cast is mostly friendly though sometimes mixed in with eccentricity. It felt surprising the times where a character is being mean or jerky given how infrequent of an occurrence it is. I had looked up a bit about Ayesha's personality before playing the game. Game lives up to my hopes of embracing its girly-girl protagonist. There's something very endearing about Ayesha's personality and mannerisms. Being cute helps too (her character design is what got me to check out what the series was about) though for anyone who has seen lots of anime, cute characters are probably a dime a dozen. I'm not going to peruse a script dump to check but I think Vayne Aurellius says "I'm sorry" more than Ayesha. There's a part of me that wants to gush about what a great character she is; will restrain myself from going on
Paying a little more attention to synthesis results now. I'm giving notice to undesirable effects on items and equipment and adapting my usage to them. Fill Stomach items I only use for out of battle recovery; being stunned is bad but since it's an in-battle effect only.
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KH3 - finally got the A rank on Schwartz Geist. For hours I was like what did I do wrong? When I couldn't get the A Rank?
I was dishing out over kill damage and finished it off its first form when the multiplier is still x3 and ends the fight with no damage bonus. Just what went wrong?
And the problem turns out the boss does not have enough HP to grind enough points out of it to hit the A rank.
I have to purposely drag out the fight to grind the points on the grunts to get enough points....
Gaaahhhh, why does the gummi ship this time kept on having stupid design like this!?
I actually like the gummi ship this time. But, ugh, stop it with the crap like this.
BTW, here is the original Schwartz Geist if anyone is interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQhOIIrRkQM
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@Niu, there's an ability which gives you extra points until the first time you get hit.
KH3: "Finished" the game by which I mean I beat Rutger Hauer. Still have a million minigames and such to do. Almost 100% on gummi ship stuff, just need the blueprints.
Good game. Combat/Flowmotion was smoother than in previous games I think. Voice acting, with few exceptions, was outstanding. Story was the usual Nomura nonsense, but the actual dialogue writing was top-notch. Characters banter with each other a lot and it's quite clever.
As I mentioned before, I think the worlds chosen were great for the storyline, and the individual plots for them worked well.
Zettaflare, bitches.
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I would argue that flow motion isn't as good as DDD.
The invisible wall is a lot worse this time. The wall climbing didn't work as well either.
But I guess that's the natural down side when you have bigger maps with more complicated designs.
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The Last of Us: It came with the used PS3 I bought so giving it a try. It's the sort of thing that I can only handle for about 15-20 minutes in a sitting. No manual so the gameplay reminds me of the Dragon's Lair arcade game in its setup. Post pandemic world doesn't appeal to my preferences. I made it past the prologue at least (after dying a few times). Will give it a few more tries but right now leaning towards giving it up. Doesn't seem to be the sort of setting and gameplay that appeals to me and fighting the camera isn't improving my perception of this.
Atelier Ayesha: further adventuring in the land of Dusk
Forgot to mention in my previous update that I picked up several useful adventuring upgrades within what felt like a short period. The game also feels slow paced and it was a rather long time from start to first treasure chest. (FF8 actually has a longer period by the metric and that's with treating the boxes in D-District Prison as treasures but isn't really an even comparison.) Whereas earlier in the game, I was pursuing possible leads and helping out other characters along the path, the game has revealed a definite goal of seeking out glowing flowers. First visit to Salt Desert resulted in a party wipe with little progress. It lives up to the salt part all right, in addition to the salt that's found there. Scurried away to chase down some of the other leads which are hopefully less suicidal. Unlocked a base at Hornheim so the trip down there wasn't a total bust. It was a bit of a headscratcher how to do it and still not sure what the actual trigger is.
Was reluctant to let go of Ayesha's starting weapon even though there's no mechanical benefit to hanging on to it. But it's iconic (in the artwork) and it's cute. Far different from my usual pragmatism. Felt better about letting it go after getting 3 more from drops.
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DMC5's coming out soon so I figured I'd dip my toes back into the franchise. Previously I'd beaten 1 and played a couple levels of 3 but that's it. So I'm starting from 1 and we'll see where it goes from here.
DMC1: haha thought this would be easy since I think I'm pretty good at action games now. Not...so much. Getting back into the kinda janky mindset of 3d environments with fixed camera angles takes some work, and managing those extra lives ain't a walk in the park either. Currently up to the black knight. I don't think it's gonna be a serious impediment but the way the game works is pretty unforgiving, so just wiping twice is a bit more than I want to deal with. Looking forward to getting past this and moving on to DMC3. It's really weird how there was never a DMC2 tho.
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KH3 - Nomura spoilers
Sora vanished at the end of the ending from the rebound of using the Power of Waking inporperly. Such as the time rewind after the TerraNort wipe etc. Sora arrived into that world in the Secret Movie after he vanished.
Nomura hinted that world is a Wonderful World. The black coat there is Master Sugita Tomokazu himself, the real chess master behind everything.
FF characters are missing they ran out of place to put them in. The new character models are already made and everything. So the development team is pretty angry that they can't put them in game.
The nameless star is a brand new character, thus she cannot Marluxia's sister.
And the Final World is a world right before death. Connected to the Garden of Waking
The Stairway to the Heaven is built on top of of the ruins of Daybreak town. The building in the ocean during the Xehanort fight is indeed what's left of Daybreak Town.
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Suikoden V - Finished in about 45 hours. Ended up not getting all 108 stars, because Norden died in an army battle and I was like “fuck it, this is war”. I ended up also losing Zegai later in the game, which was irritating because he is the skills tutor. I decided to skip some annoying recruits (Richard/Genoh, and a lot of the useless characters like Shun Min and Retso) and more importantly I decided to go for the Roy path. The Roy path has the Prince not taking Lucretia’s advice and deciding to defend the castle instead of running away. First of all, as Snowfire pointed out, it is debatable to whether this is actually a bad plan. Anyway, the game warns you four times??? to make sure you know what you are doing. It’s really striking because Roy basically saves you from making a really fucking dumb decision by going out and challenging Childerich to a duel, and then gets shot with a trillion arrows once you win the duel. To top things off, Childerich kicks Roy’s body into the river, like the dick he is. I feel like the Roy path really makes you hate Jidan and Childerich even more than you already do.
Otherwise, I generally enjoyed the game. I think I like Sialeeds and Georg even more on the second run now that I am older; both are excellent serious characters while still have a human/funny side to them. The writing is as good as I remembered. The gameplay … well I FAQed deep twilight forest, skipped most of Doraat (you can finish this dungeon in like ten minutes if you skip everything, you can go back and get it later), and generally overtwinked my people to crush the game efficiently. Team was Prince/Lyon/Miakis/Cathari/Georg/Zerase/Bernadette (there’s not much overlap between Lyon and Miakis which is why I listed seven folks). It’s definitely an experience worth revisiting, as long as you take care to make the gameplay as painless as possible. Reading about the abilities in the war battles also helps them be more enjoyable.
Should I play Suikoden IV next????
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DMC1: Beat. I beat this when it first came out but somehow had completely forgotten the entire final boss sequence, which is kinda funny because the boss' design was really cool. Game definitely drags in the second half but it was a pretty breezy 8ish hours, not counting game overs (which I had like three or four of). Remarkable how well they had the combat figured out for a first entry. I wonder if they would have had the guts to make enemies so tanky if they hadn't originally been planning on a RE game?
DMC2: "The internet has a way of piling on. I'll give it a chance. Maybe it's not as bad as people say." Friends, it is as bad as people say. (Based on about two hours of play.)
DMC3: Guys stop me if you've heard this before but the game's awesome. Nearly done with it, prolly twoish missions left? The plot and gameplay mesh perfectly, and both the cutscenes and the gameplay have been a joy. I really appreciate how, no matter how inhumanly awesome and self-absorbed Dante is, the game finds these hilarious ways to knock him down a peg - it's endearing when it could easily have been insufferable. Boss fights are excellent, beating up on randos hasn't gotten old yet. It's kinda weird to me that the human-size bosses have been easier in general than the big boys - years of Dark Souls games tell me this should not be so.
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Fire Emblem Fates - Revelation
Beat Lunatic. I did almost no paralogues; ended up getting Shigure and Asugi for extra support near the end. Neither really did much, so maybe I shouldn't have bothered and called this an official No Paralogues run.
Once enemies promote, their damage becomes very high and basically stays there. The highest-atk enemies such as berserkers and the final boss have OHKO to average defences (rank Generic Revelations Lunatic Berserker!). It's interesting how all the routes take a bit of a different approach to their difficulty - Birthright goes for overwhelming numbers, Conquest for tricky enemy setups, and Revelation for stats, mostly Atk. Rev might end up the easiest of the three at the end, though Birthright's midgame is certainly easier than anything in Rev.
Not much to note with units, I generally used many of the usual suspects. Of note, Xander died during the replicate map, and doing things without him is unfortunate. Camilla and Ryoma were invaluable as usual. My respect for ninjas slowly grows as time goes on, because shuriken are such ridiculous weapons.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
Replayed this for stat topic purposes but also it just being generically good. This time I did all the challenges - some get pretty tough but I feel like I know this game really well so I was clearing most things on the first try anyway (certainly not everything though!).
Tier list time!
R.Luigi > R.Peach > R.Mario > Peach > Luigi > Yoshi > R.Yoshi
Rabbid Luigi is extremely difficult to kill (and to top it off his barrier is the only one which stops status, sometimes invaluable) and can often become an outstanding healer, and at various points in the game has super-reliable stone (including the aftergame which gives him 100% stone for some reason. Fanboys). His biggest weakness is that he's unimpressive when he can't use Dash (giant enemies, or enemies starting outside of his range) but oh well.
Rabbid Peach has great dashes and good healing which alone wouldn't get her to #2 but oh hey sentries are kinda amazing when you're fighting Ziggies or other villain-sight enemies and the rest of the time they're just the best secondary weapon.
Rabbid Mario and Peach are cut from the same cloth. They aren't as suited for just any battle as the starting team but they mow down enemies like nobody else, sometimes you just want offence offence offence and they deliver. Rabbid Mario has the edge because being a rabbid offers more team flexibility, and Magnet Dance is great. Peach has better options when they're far from enemies but if that's a frequent issue you shouldn't use either. Healing Jump is nice though. Honestly a lot of the time I was either using both or neither.
Luigi is a weird character, definitely a late-bloomer. He badly needs some serious orb investment into both his techniques (his overwatch starts bad but becomes amazing, and Itchy Feet is a move buff with expensive upgrades needed to take it from +1 to +3). That said his fully-developed techniques are amazing, and see Rabbid Peach for sentry hype. Terrible HP and being unimpressive early are weaknesses though.
Yoshi... honestly if your goal is to beat the game, you shouldn't spend any money on him. He absolutely needs weaponry to take advantage of Super Chance and you only have him for a few maps. If you're doing aftergame, he's got some good move-based damage and Super Chance on the Ink Rocket Launcher is neat for disabling a bunch of enemies at once.
Rabbid Yoshi is... not awful but he was not balanced properly against Rabbid Peach. The two are similar, as they both can dash lots of enemies (Rabbid Peach gets 4 hits of 100, Rabbid Yoshi gets 5 hits of 90, similar enough). But where Rabbid Peach gets useful MT healing and amazing sentries, he gets Scaredy Rabbid, which is largely trash, and mediocre grenades. And otherwise he doesn't really have any meaningful edges on her, so the only time you'd want to use him is when you're using both and honestly if there are THAT many enemies to dash you might want to consider Rabbid Mario or Yoshi for their AoE options anyway.
Mario you may notice is not tiered above, since you can't actually choose whether you use him, what does it matter? I'm pretty confident I'd rate him above Luigi (both overwatch specialists, but M-Power is bigger than anything unique Luigi brings) and pretty confident he's below Rabbid Luigi and Rabbid Peach but beyond that I'm not sure. Kinda low on mobility (tied game-worst move and outright game-worst team jump range) and not really special at anything except those techniques, but man they're both good.
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DMC3: beat normal mode. may or may not try harder difficulties - feels like they're worth it, but it'll also take forever and there's a lot else I want to play in the same vein, notably DMC5 and also Sekiro, when it lands later this month. Final boss was hella cool but also pretty clearly demonstrates the games' camera issues, which are exacerbated by direction-specific controls mapped to the same button. So, we'll see.
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Atelier Ayesha
Plot progress. Got a solid lead on Nio unless the game decides to yank Ayesha's chain some more. Also encountered my first real boss battle. Just barely pulled through since my item loadout wasn't the greatest. Lesson learned and I loaded up with more of the better healing items I had access to. Also, game was nice enough to tell me to prepare before going in. This one has "final confrontation" written all over it unless the game pulls a "your princess sister is in another castle location, ha ha" tease.
Main objective completed just under the two year mark. Didn't need more complicated strategy than having enough healing to keep the companions upright and bashing away. Felt warm and fuzzy and also weary after a long fight. Now to tie up some low hanging loose ends and then jump to the credits and save the hard optional fights for a replay... Oh come on, there's no "hop to end credits" option? I just want an ending for unlocking extras menu. Found barrel while poking around for a way to quickly jump to the ending. Looks like it's going to be the long way to the end.
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So I am finally getting around to playing Breath of the Wild. Played it a bit when we first got it, but Kier was binge playing it(and other things) and thus hogging the switch and I drifted off. With Tax Return Dollars the sprog now has their own switch, because we both use it as a handheld more than a console anyway, and I can now play things at my leisure.
Muddled around until I found the zora domain and started up the Vah Ruta segment. Because I did not have the shieka outfit for stealth, getting all the arrows from the lionel was harder then clearing the divine beast! Four deaths to Waterblight Gannon, though only 2 of them really count imo. The first two were on the first form where I just had it stuck in my head that I was supposed to hit the eye with shock arrows and I got butchered. Then I just...went in and his first form melted pretty fast under the attacks. Herp derp. Second form killed me twice due to my horrible depth perception and missing the iceblocks, but eventually I got him down.
Now back to muddling around. Found a birdbard and solved a wind "puzzle" (blow up all teh blow-up-able things, sail away to victory~), found a bunch of korok seeds. Guess I'll head off towards Death Mountain next, since there was a goron in the zora domain talking about it??? Saika and Open World games don't mix well, tbh. I'm trying to avoid looking up a guide, but for me "you can go anywhere!" tends to wind up with me going nowhere.
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Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright-
Mm. This is... very much a Fire Emblem? It's very strange after playing Conquest first how much this... just... feels like Fire Emblem doing Fire Emblem things. And to a degree this definitely has me thinking that, contrary to marketing, you are very much NOT meant to play whichever game style sounds more like your speed. A lot of stuff in Conquest happens only as a direct riff/payoff to stuff you learn in Birthright, and in Garon's case what you DON'T learn.
There's.. more to say, but gets in depth so that'll be a separate thing.
The Squad:
Corrin- she spent a good chunk of the game just playing support really. Jumping out to early level leads made her better at that generally, and as a rule she just wants to smack things with Yato so weapon levels aren't a thing. She's... alright? Yeah.
Sakura- I think on paper she'd have been my best mage if she had weapon levels. Clearly shoulda fed her that pile of Arms Scrolls. Oh well.
Azura- Sure is Azura
Hana- I actually asked about her in chat, and it turns out no, she IS typically your squishiest. This is kinda bad given Fates' design quirks because the retainers and other PCs are already at a huge disadvantage, FE14 has the best late-join characters and prepromotes in the series because they really wanted your siblings to be awesome and used. BUT. Swordmasters really are that point-and-click-and-kill as units, so if you BOTHER she will start murdering things. Y'know, in 20 levels.
Orochi- Really good for someone that damned slow? Part of the "FE doing FE things" feel of the game is how archetypal a lot of the units are, Orochi being the prime example.
Oboro- I kinda hate that her support with Orochi is literally "smile more" *cough* anyway she's pretty much in the Neph mold, except sans Wrath, so... fine. Not great, but fine.
Hinoka- Starts pretty amazing. I went Falcon Knight, so she ended up doing more flying healer things towards the end, she often couldn't quiiiite one-round things where other units could. Oh well.
Setsuna- Definitely my worst unit. 14 strength at 20/8, AND tended to have accuracy problems. Yikes. Granted a little bit of this is how Fates handles bows vs tomes, there's probably a special bow for that that would have helped.
Rinkah- Ups and downs throughout but overall solid. Surprisingly so for a club girl.
Takumi- One of the better archers in the series frankly? Fujin Yumi being a ridiculous weapon helps, but he was very point-and-delete in a way most archers outside FE4 never are. Probably not quite as good as FE10's archer duo? But purely because he lacks that endgame 1-3 bow option.
Jakob- He decided to get screw in speed AND strength, but good support bait throughout.
Ryoma- Xander's probably better.
Kaden- never really got good. Sad.
Scarlet- Filler more or less? But killer axe is a nice tool in that role at least.
Shura- better filler than the other ninja I didn't level up. Pity there was only one map with treasures on it after he joined.
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CK: For what it's worth, weapon ranks do matter a little for Corrin because higher weapon rank = more bonuses in combat, at least when you aren't at weapon triangle disadvantage. Not a huge deal but it's something.
I agree that I actually like BR's plot better despite CQ's vibe theoretically being more SF-friendly. Ah well, that's been ranted about plenty already. I forget, what bit of Garon plot did BR have that CQ didn't? I seem to recall Garon's plot being stupidly far more hidden than it needed to be, e.g. the bit about Young Garon imbibing way too much dragon's blood as part of a ritual which drove him crazy and rendered him susceptible to demonic dragonic possession or something. You'd think the story could be more open about that.
Rinkah & Scarlet are both more useful than they "should" be because Birthright has a weird paucity of axe/club users. Basically just those two, and a few people who get it on promotion but have a low cap on their max weapon rank (e.g. Master-of-Arms Mozu, Great Knight Silas). They're also some of the rare tanks that the BR team has, along with Azama of all people, and Ryoma for an evade-tank. Scarlet's also pretty cool on Leo's swamp curse map, since the curse doesn't affect Nohrians or something, and she's a flier in a swamp anyway.
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SF's Fire Emblem corner! I've played a little bit of a bunch of FE games for, I dunno, reasons. The one true series.
FE8: Was playing a scrub team vs. Eph mode a few months ago, but after clearing the Eph side, eh, I guess I funneled XP too efficiently or something, but the game was getting too boring & easy after the desert at Renais castle. Clearly I should challenge myself! I should try...
FE12: I tried Lunatic with a Female Archer naming Chris/Kris "Clarisse" and deciding that both Katarina & Clarisse were sent on the infiltration mission, but Clarisse had some multiple personality breakdown that resulted in her working for both sides, with "Klein" her evil half. (Yeah, I don't blame the FE Heroes localization team for changing this one up, the German players would have laughed way too much at the evil assassins Eine & Klein.) Sadly FE12 Lunatic Paralogues are really not balanced around you picking whatever crazy stylish set up you want, you just flat lose the stats war, and get told on Discord that neener neener people have done it with 0% growths on Lunatic Reverse (sure, with super-optimized setups and the occasional bit of save/reload abuse). Note that evasion is not really much of a thing in earlygame FE12, so hoping for lucky dodges is not a great strat. Started again one difficulty level lower on Maniac, and... holy shit this is still hard, but at least vaguely doable as a Female Archer (rather than a Cavalier, which is apparently the usual "best" Avatar unit for the Prologue). Like, we're talking eat casualties with massive cheating via the emulator load state button in Prologue 8 vs. Katarina. Okay, maybe later.
FE6: Well there was just a FEH banner for this recently, and I never played it on Hard. Played a little, and the enemy layout is not particularly inspired still with them making it a bit too easy to bait just a few units out at a time too frequently, but the enemy stats are definitely notably better, especially in bulk. Enemies now sport big tanky HP & Def values so they can sustain a pretty decent amount of beatdown before dying, which is okay when dealing with just 1-2 units at once (which the game usually lets you do), but might be dicey later. Also, Marcus is actually useful! Dang if giving him an Iron Sword lets him both hit, and also chip enemies down to single-digit health to feed the kill to real party members, and also help out for boss kills in C1-3. We'll see how C4 goes, with the hordes of cavalry in the open, and attempting to not get owned by Rutger...
FE Fates: Seeing Elf & CK's recent playthroughs, finally started up Lunatic Conquest (I played through Hard Conquest before), Branch of Fate start, and... promptly got my ass kicked on the first map, Faceless in the swamp. It was a pretty legit difficulty map even on Hard, and now the Faceless are sporting Grisly Wound and a few have the extremely horrible Seal Speed. Restarted, broke out the Path Bonuses, gave Corrin 2x Dragon Herbs (+2 to all stats) and a Boots (+1 Move), broke out Tonics for nearly everything for Corrin and a few for Jakob (F-Corrin this time, I did M-Corrin on CQ before, so Jakob time), and attempt #2 went much better via having Corrin just murder the Seal Speed units with a 2x Yato strike, which stops it from ever proccing. Still. Grabbed Mozu, Ice Tribe next. Will probably go Archer Mozu this run, that build seems helpful for boss-killing on Lunatic.
Wargroove - Okay, this isn't Fire Emblem, it's Advance Wars. Still. Nearly done the main campaign I think, on the fake final battle which is obviously not the final battle in C6 because you haven't settled up with the assassin who killed dad from stage 1 yet.
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KH3: Got all achievements and the platinum trophy.
Hardest trophy: 70,000 points on Rapunzel's dancing minigame. There's very little margin for error.
Easiest trophy: 12 million points on Verum Rex: Beat of Lead.
Kind of miss the uber endgame fights of the first two games. Battlefield 14 guy is just not the same.
Supposedly they have the models for all the Final Fantasy characters done, just didn't have any good spot to put them in the game. Maybe they'll release a Dissidia DLC where you can fight all of them.
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KH doesn't really do DLC. They'll just re-release KH3 as Kingdom Hearts III.25 First Fractional Increment (Final Fantasy Included), with like 2 bonus fights where Cloud and Leon and Noctis are your teammates and bundle it with a slight graphical upgrade of Re:Coded or something. Sell it for $50.
This is the Kingdom Hearts method. None of that fancy DLC price-gouging. This is old school traditional homegrown gouging. Keeping Kingdom Hearts Great Again.
Can't wait for the inevitable announcement of Verum Rex: The Game at the next big press release.
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Nomura said he has no plan to realease a separate KH3 Final Mix.
New story content is most likely be free DLC.
New playable content will be paid DLC.
Not ruling out that the paid DLC pack will be KH3's Final Mix.
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Yeah my working assumption is that twoards the summer or so we get KHIII Final Mix as a ~$20 DLC thing.
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I remember feeling that Birthright and Conquest completed various parts of each other's stories but I never really got the vibe that you were supposed to play a certain one first.
(I preferred Conquest's story to Birthright's myself; Birthright is indeed Fire Emblem doing Fire Emblem things and I find that so dreadfully dull. The Nohrian siblings are each and every one great in BR though, so there's that; Xander is easily the best "loyal general working for the bad guys" in the series. Basically I enjoyed that route's writing whenever one of them was on screen, and was put to sleep otherwise.)
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse - Decided to replay this after CK played it earlier, finally got around to doing so now. This time I got 100% of the heart squids (had to FAQ one in the desert ruins) and I actually beat all four forms of the Pirate Master without using an item (and in general did an itemless playthrough aside from Pirate Flares which are just time-savers). That was pretty rough! Did eventually figure out how to reliably avoid the cannonball attack of the second and third form, crounching right beside Risky is the key to letting you dodge the first half of it, how cute. Game's still an enjoyable romp.
Also playing around with Smash Ultimate and unlocking characters. Some of the spirit board/world of light matches seem pretty rough.
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Hardest trophy: 70,000 points on Rapunzel's dancing minigame. There's very little margin for error.
When I saw this, I don't know what happened.
https://youtu.be/ULCgq43s-iE?t=758
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New Super Mario Bros U DELUXE edition - I decided to play as Toadette because woo hoo, they put in a playable female character. The game adds both Toadette(tagged as ‘Easier’) and Nabbit (tagged as ‘Easiest’). So what’s easier about it? Toadette gets access to a special crown powerup called Peachette, which I guess is their way of putting Peach as a playable character without changing the regressive, retrograde plot of the game where Peach exists primarily as a plot device. It replaces the Squirrel suit in most circumstances but there are a couple of differences that make it a little better.
1. floating is a little smoother and more controlled
2. boxes with crowns always spawn crowns, even if you are small (normally it is just a mushroom)
3. when you fall into a pit, you shoved out of the pit by the little boost that squirrel/peachette has normally, even if you’ve already used it
You might think 3 would be the most powerful but it’s not as useful as it sounds because pits that you fall into are often quite far from any place to land. I found that 95% of the time I fell into the pit after the boost anyway. Maybe if I remembered that it existed more often I could have utilized it better, but I wasn’t really playing with the intention of using that to cheat. I also feel like the game has a lot more death by damage than falling into pits overall, so I think 2 ends up as a more powerful bonus than 3 does.
The other thing that Toadette gets is more lives. All 1-ups in the game are turned into 3-ups in her mode. If you know anything about the NSMB series you know that this is a joke of a bonus because it a) gives you excessive lives anyway and b) the only punishment for game overing is that you lose your halfway point within a stage. That’s it. I guess this is useful if you are really bad but not really useful otherwise.
Overall I don’t think that the mode is that much easier than the regular game. I had a lot of fun replaying the game. This time I decided to collect all of the star coins, which was a good romp. I did SUPERSTAR ROAD which is kind of the set of super stages. The second one is a hellish nightmare, kind of in the tradition of Super Mario World where the second Special stage, Tubular, is the most horrifying stage of all time. I think I probably lost 50-60 lives on that stage, but thankfully the stage supplied infinite lives to cover my shame! The rest of them weren’t as bad, but trying to get this coin was v. fun.
(https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/new-super-mario-bros-u/9/91/NSMBU_8-PendulumCastle.Still003.jpg?width=325)
I think I'm gonna try out Super Luigi U after a small break.
Bayonetta 2- I wanted to buy this for the Switch, but it was still 60 bucks on the Nintendo store for just the second game, so I said "fuck it" and I'm playing the WiiU version. I started it up a few months ago but never finished it. So I started again on Chapter 8 and immediately got dunked on by Golem, who is a huge fucking jerk. I can't wait to fight this guy with other enemies. ::) "Look at it this way... coulda been worse!" indeed. The plot is insane and I have no idea what's happening. Bayonetta is still a queen, though.
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Been hooked on Gems of War lately, which is a few-years-old multiplatform match 3 game. It manages to evoke that collectible card game feel well. I just got this card... OH! I can combine it with this card and... oh I need to obtain this item to make it better... grind grind.
It also got released on Switch this week (I'm playing on mobile because I'm too poor to afford French Riviera apartments and a Switch).
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I Am Setsuna- fin
You can really tell this was a first project for most everyone involved. Funny enough it ends up with this very PS1-jank kinda feel in some ways.
In that light I hate to dwell on the shortcomings because they're all consistent with this. There's a clear tension between their clearly being tasked with creating a Crono Trigger-like game, while their core concept and mood were a bit of a twist on FFX. In principle there's no reason those two things can't go together, but the way they arrange the details and which aspects they highlight clash. The way CT's maps, movement speed, and animations work were all designed in a way that makes sense in Chrono Trigger, a game with five extremely distinct settings built with sprites. So when you transpose that onto Setsuna's snowfields, it feels slow and same-y. Making you choose which abilities to equip, and making it possible to miss them if you don't get some of the drops for whatever reason has some of the same problem, especially since that means on paper all the abilities should have clear niches throughout the game, so you never see a big improvement to your overall performance in combat.
Well except Luminair. It's nice.
They did a credible job with the characters relative to the amount of dialog in the game. Endir as a silent main cuts the legs out of the early game, and I think Setsuna's blend of naivete and... acceptance about how the world works doesn't land very well because they try to couple all of her character moments with Endir and... y'know, silent main. But once there's other characters for everyone to talk to it does more or less work. Although I wonder if they didn't take on more NPCs than they knew what to do with.
Also Reaper never works. But eh, that's fine.
Honestly though that's more analytical brain just kinda going over ways the game could probably have been better. The actual flaws are more like...
Why don't spells show area of effect when they have them
Where's the world map.
Like those two things are PRETTY IMPORTANT to an RPG designed like Chrono Trigger! Especially when it's all snow!
But nah, it's alright. Manages some real moments here and there. 7/10
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Sekiro - You know parry mechanics from Dark Souls and how it was a cool idea but never really necessary to beat the game? Well, now it's time to git gud and learn to parry because the game is impossible otherwise. The first boss in the game is more difficult than Lady Maria in Bloodborne (a lategame DLC boss fyi), same idea and fighting style but in Bloodborne you're not made of tissue paper. Getting hit once means 90% of your health bar is gone and it takes two healing items to refill it. You come into the fight with three healing drinks. You also get to revive once when you die, with 50% HP. This means you get 3 mistakes, against a boss harder than 70% of Dark Souls/Bloodborne. THIS IS THE FIRST BOSS IN THE GAME.
Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit but I don't have the twitch reflexes to parry 5 attacks in a row. In Sekiro you kill bosses by depleting their posture gauge. How do you deal posture damage? By parrying. Oh you have to keep on the pressure because the posture gauge recovers when not taking damage or blocking. There is a health gauge but all it does it make the posture gauge refill slower the less health you have. You also have posture that bosses deplete in 4 attacks unless you perfect parry everything.
The game is the literal definition of get good or die. There's no way to increase your attack power or health without defeating bosses so there's no grinding. Also it's an entire single player game, so no summoning either. Probably the first time I regret buying a game because of it's shitty difficulty. It's a shame too because the rest of the game is great. You can actually use stealth to pick off enemies one by one and even weaken minibosses by using stealth blows. When it comes to actual dueling, the game is shit unless you have great reflexes. I suck at fighting games and bullet hells. Sekiro is the Touhou of Dark Souls.
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You can make it through through most of the game while being a mediocre-at-best parryer - take it from me, a mediocre-at-best parryer. Some advice: HP-killing bosses is viable like 95% of the time so don't feel like you need to play the parry game on everything. Dodging out of attacks using circle seems like a natural thing to do, especially if you just played bloodborne, but bosses in this game are really good at punishing it. If you mistime your parry, keep mashing L1, or just hold L1 to block. Unlike enemies, getting your posture broken isn't instant death (although it might be in the fight you're in) so you can look at your own posture meter as a renewing resource to spend. If you are standing still in front of a boss and it does a sweep attack and you successfully jump over it, hit jump again to kick the boss in the head. Although dodging gets you hit a lot, circling around the boss at a full run tends to be a pretty good idea that lets you see its attacks better, and most bosses are a lot easier to do HP damage to when you come at them like this. As a related note, circling around the boss at a run and then transitioning into a thrust by holding down R1 is a good hit-and-run strategy that works on a lot of enemies if you have the space for it. Finally something to look forward to: the game starts you off with dismal resources but they get considerably better with your first couple upgrades - in particular once you get 4/4 prayer beads you can increase your HP by about 50%. And you can pick up a couple extra charges of healing relatively soon as well. It helps a whole lot (and healing scales to HP).
(I will have Thoughts on the game when I beat it. For now, my opinion is: this is an incredibly fun combat system that is well-balanced and makes you feel extremely cool when you do well. It is fundamentally sound. It is also just too damn hard, and 100% of the solution for that is to just tone down boss damage. that's all it needs, but it needs it pretty bad.)
(As a second note re: difficulty, after the first boss and for basically the rest of the game there are multiple paths to pursue. so while there is basically nothing you can do but beat bosses to get statistically stronger, you DO have the option to pick and choose the order you do bosses in.)
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After 50 tries I barely beat Lady Butterfly, who I find out is NOT the first boss but rather the first one you can encounter. The real first boss is some dude on a horse. He actually wasn't too bad because you can learn a skill that directly counters him.
Then I fought a flaming bull. Kills you in one hit but directly countered by throwing firecrackers at his ass, so slow and steady wins the fight. Shit fight because how how little fucking damage you do. Then a split path opens up. One path takes you vs. a ninja that oneshots you and has insane health, one path has a spearman who oneshots you and has insane health. You can counter the later's thrust attacks but it does fucking nothing but leaves you open to another attack. What the fuck are these mechanics.
I hate this game so much. You are allowed no mistakes vs. minibosses tougher than anything From Software threw out. Limited moveset, shitty dodge rolls with no invinciblity frames (on a engine where enemies track your movement with precision), no health with limited healing items that don't heal for shit.
I think I understand how the game works now at least. It wants you to be aggressive as much as possible. You attack an enemy twice, they block them, your third strike is parried which means you must stop attacking and react to their attack. The issue is they can put out 4 or 5 different possible attacks with different start up times and properties. Guess wrong and you lose 90%-100% of your life. Is it a thrust or sweep? It's a guessing game where you you need twitch reflexes. Everything can be solved if you had more health and enemies did less damage because certainly every single non grunt enemies have large life pools and without 10 straight perfect parries you cannot deplete their posture bar. The only two bosses I had no trouble with seem to ignore this and instead have gimmicks that are easy to figure out.
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Not that it'll necessarily change your mind about the game but: there are other directions you can go from the castle entrance and basically all of them are (in my opinion) easier than the direction with the ninja and the spear dude. I really appreciate this point in the game for that - once you beat the bull, you can pick your fights for a good long while.
Sekiro update: got to the final (?) boss and got my ass kicked a whole bunch. I think I have a workable strategy for its first 2 phases but making good decisions and being patient enough to get to phase 3 without serious injury takes some real effort and concentration. For me, anyway.
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Sekiro: beat. I will have a lot to say about it later but for now: I liked the game a whole lot, and it felt great to play 95% of the time (basically any time you aren't fighting those dickhead ninjas that use a lot of kick attacks, or the final spear miniboss that comes with an extremely dangerous and annoying add). As a videogame it's fantastic. I am playing it again for the dual purpose of seeing how much I have improved and seeing some rather obscure content I missed, that I need to see in order to fully appreciate the story.
Sekiro's final boss sequence was remarkably difficult but also, in the end, extremely satisfying. (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/407747721?filter=highlights&sort=time) In particular, its second phase handed me my ass over and over, and I devised a slow, safe way to chip away at it from a distance. Then I picked it up again the next day and discovered that the time I'd spent circling around it and learning its tells allowed me to take a much more aggressive approach to the boss than I had thought I'd ever be able to. This is the kind of feeling you hope for from a hard game, though in general the game is still too hard on base (especially the very beginning, that starts you off with too little health and healing compared to enemy damage).
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Ephraim, did you play Stella Glow? Seemed like an Ephraim kind of game. Aside from usual Nonsense Vaguely Haremy Anime embarrassing, that game's combat is too damn slow, despite being somewhat interesting? Maybe I'm impatient now that modern Fire Emblems have things like "skip enemy phase" and failing to protect the dumb AI guest means time to start from scratch.
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Speaking of Fire Emblem, Percy's recruit map is the hardest to do legit with no casualties, don't @ me. (okay sure maybe Iago/Ryoma/final maps in CQ are harder but you could hypothetically accept casualties there since there's so little game left.) You have to be moving really aggressively, splitting up, and player-phase ganking the formations before they can all clump up, but the final set features cavalry with weakness-hitting weapons and Percy's Flying Squad of wyverns which are very easy to accidentally let clump up into a roving deathball that you can't safely bait on enemy phase and will run you down. Yikes.
Anyway, doing the cave ninja map now, although I wasn't able to save poor Saizo so far. I also opted for the pair of boots rather than Shura (sheesh the game doesn't communicate this well) since I'm trying to use Anna this playthrough. Got a bit of an issue, though... Archer Mozu + Charlotte + Camilla + Percy + Anna = I'm way overstuffed on greens. Ah well.
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I finished Wargroove. The last map was pretty cool ignoring the dumb cliffhanger ending, but I dunno if I'm persistent enough to unlock the epilogue. The second-to-the-last map was a little odd... it's extremely fair. Problem is, "fair" means the enemy will get totally wrecked; there was a side mission earlier where the enemy starts with a whole continent and some badass defenders for free while you've got a single dinky island, and that was still doable. Equal-ish towns & army and an enemy hero AI who boldly charges forward is very 1v1 me sis epic but also a bit of a curbstomp. Oh well!
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There's another game I finished recently which I'll have more thoughts on to share, but maybe later, since I need to "really" beat it as well and get yon better endings.
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Sekiero or how I embrace the cheese:
I've cheese about 3 minibosses by abusing slopes and just chip vitality damage until you can safely land a deathblow. I also found the poizn knife to be really good at dealing with a lot of the stronger samurai and spearmen. Funny enough the Armored Warrior, a typical dark souls boss, wasn't too bad. Making through Mibu Village was easy but man the two bosses there are ridicious but learning patterns and hit and run tactics seem to work. Fuck Corrupted Monk. That guy had waaaay too much health and near instant posture recovery means it's a 40 minute fight where you're allowed four mistakes by how much damage it does.
I'm up to 5 prayer necklaces and the health boost is something that should have been the default. I went though so long without dying until the goddamn guardian ape and it's bullshit instant lock grab brought another rage quit for the day.
Ephraim, did you play Stella Glow? Seemed like an Ephraim kind of game. Aside from usual Nonsense Vaguely Haremy Anime embarrassing, that game's combat is too damn slow, despite being somewhat interesting? Maybe I'm impatient now that modern Fire Emblems have things like "skip enemy phase" and failing to protect the dumb AI guest means time to start from scratch.
Is that the 3DS game with the singing witches? It's non-offensive aside from the issue you said that the enemy phase takes too long. You want to use characters that don't have movement restrictions or the sand levels are unbearable.
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Re: Corrupted Monk, snap seeds damage and stun her, so that helps (only works twice, though, so you've got to choose your spots). I found the boss a lot easier on my second playthrough - her HP is bonkers and playing the posture game doesn't get you that far, but you can play keepaway well enough to learn her patterns and capitalize on the meager punishes the game gives you. It's a weird fight because unlike a lot of troublesome bosses, she doesn't pressure you that hard, it's just very difficult to find an entry where you can actually deal damage.
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Pokemon Let's Go Eevee- This game is surreal sometimes. It's faithful to the original Yellow to the degree of retaining trainer dialog word for word 90% of the time, but then it reminds you this is actually bizarro sequel land where Red and Blue did their journey a year or so previously.
Mostly though it's adorable. I can't imagine Sword and Shield will be able to replicate what Partner Eevee does on that front, but everything else? Gimme.
Team-
Marowak- Poor poor Marowak just never came together. Didn't manage to get anything done in the E4, which is a pity.
Raichu (Alolan)- ended up way underlevelled due to the way I ended up playing it, but still got some KOs here and there in the E4. I almost wish I'd used it more heavily just to get a sense of it, but given the way you get it (you can trade an evolved Raichu for an L30 Alolan) means that wasn't really an option.
Kabutops- So in Let's Go the fossils are revived at level 44 and immediately evolve on level up, which is nice! Actually solid despite this not being Gen 1 anymore, albeit in part because hey, Rock Slide is pretty good.
Partner Eevee- Apparently Partner Pikachu is pretty good, but this thing.
The gimmick is that partner Eevee can't evolve, but has stats in line with a fully-evolved pokemon and rigged IVs (pikachu is the same way) and has a bunch of dedicated move tutors. Eevee's gimmicked around moves of its evolution types (so Fire, Electric, Water, Dark, Psychic, Grass, Ice, and Fairy). They're all 90 power, 100 accuracy, and have a 100% chance of a bonus effect. Those being Burn, Paralyze, drain-effect, Reflect, Light Screen, Leech Seed, Haze, and Status Cure.
100% burn on a 90 power fire move. The fuck y'know? So aside from amazing coverage, an endgame Eevee will toss up some screens, burn the opponent, then drain to top off HP so even against neutral foes it's pretty ridiculous.
I kinda love how unapologetically unbalanced it is.
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Beat SPOLIARS at the top of Ashina Castle after the ninja invasion. Only took me two tries. It's absolutely amazing what a large life bar and tons of drinks do to make difficult bosses manageable. Come to the conclusion that Lady Butterfly is just a very very poor introduction to the game and everything else seems within reach. I came back after multiple attack upgrades and dunked on the spearman boss at the Outskirts. Even the 2Apes1Shinobi looked insane but the brown ape can be stunlocked with firecrackers turning the fight into another Guardian Ape 2.0 but without the bullshit grab attack. I have no idea how you're suppose to figure out to use the spear after deflecting a certain attack but once you learn about it, the ape takes insane vit and posture damage. Probably the hardest boss since Butterfly has been oddly Headless, simply because you need to use a buff that is in very limited quantities and the fight is not possible without it. If you die you don't get those consumables back. THEN I learned you can upgrade the umbrella to cheese them. If spirit emblems' cap wasn't so low, the umbrella might as well be cheese mode it makes parrying so much easier with a larger window to do it.
Overall my opinion of the game has skyrocketed once you escape the early game. You don't die in one or two hits, deathblows restoring 1/5th of your life makes saving drinks during fights with normal enemies, and prostethics open up a rather limited skillset once you start upgrading them. I'm also surprised on how many idols are right next to boss fights, not that the higher mobility of Sekiro makes dodging enemies easier to challenge bosses again faster. My favorite upgrade is the whistle that makes dogs go berserk and attack their ninja masters. Some dogs later in the game wear cute little Naruto headbands and I just can't kill them recklessly.
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Sekiro: beat the optional boss for one of the endings that I missed in my first playthrough because the sidequest is so obscure. It was maybe the hardest boss in the game? Maybe the final boss is harder. Of the maingame bosses it was certainly the most oppressive, and its best punish opportunities were also very high-risk if you mistime them. Cool fight, for sure.
Eph there is a narrow window to do the steps to unlock this boss, and you're in it. So if you want to be as much of a completionist as the game will let you be in 1 playthrough, go ahead and FAQ it.
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Pokemon Let's Go Eevee
Indeed. Everything CK just said about the game is valid, but I just finished it too so I might as well give my rundown.
I will very much miss the roaming pokemon. It's adorable to watching them wander about the map even if it isn't super complicated. I won't miss the catching. It is harmless for 90% of the game, ditching random encounters for just straight catch mechanics makes some sense tying into Pokémon Go. For the first half, it's great honestly. Reduces the tedium quite a bit since it still gives you XP. But it catches up with the game. Most status movesets become pointless on most pokemon because you don't need them for wild catches. And endgame/aftergame you're just tossing a dozen Ultra Balls for each catch and it doesn't feel like berries do much to help, so it becomes actively annoying and flips to an exercise in tedium. The sole exception to this is the rare encounters like Snorlax and the legendaries, you have to fight and KO them first before going into the catch mechanic- all with a 5 minute time limit. This worked honestly! But I don't want to get frustrated throwing Ultra Balls at an Electrodude for 5 min.
While as CK noted, the game is super duper easy, the mechanics updates really bring the charm back to the RBY formula. It's a great nostalgia trip.
Team:
Partner Eevee: What CK said. I found myself running Psychic and Dark, with the third slot for whatever gym or dungeon I needed. Ice for E4 Dragonslaying. The only move I kept after the move tutor became available was Swift for neutral damage. They also make sure Eevee is goddamn adorable.
Victreebel: Almost all Grass and Bugs are Poison, one of those Gen1 quirks, so the Poison side not much use, but for a Grass attacker worked very well. Power Whip is pretty great.
Nidoqueen: Works quite well as a Ground attacker once she evolves, even if she relies on non-STAB attacks mostly until she evolves. Have wanted to eventually use one of Queen or King, so it was good to finally have the chance. MVP of mid-late game since I gave it the Mt. Moon Moon Stone, but didn't get to do much in E4.
Clefable: It does take a bit to really notice the tankiness (after it evolves, an issue since the second Moon Stone is a bit into the game), but it does its job. Very few Steel types to threaten it and non-STAB damage generally isn't a worry, so you're only looking out for Poison damage, which only really gets threatening in late game. Moonblast is pretty strong and works as a Dragon slayer.
Raichu: Very useful, even if there aren't quite as many Water types in play still plenty of Flying as well. Considering I didn't use a Psychic type and ran it on Eevee, maybe I should have gotten the Alolan Raichu, but it would've been a huge level hit so I just skipped it. I committed all my Rare Candies to...
Omastar: Of course I'm running Lord Helix. As CK mentioned its great that it joins at a much better level and evolves immediately, but I still had to invest a decent amount of Rare Candies into it to catch it up to the rest of my team. Mostly used it as a Water attacker honestly, I didn't need to use the Rock side much.
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If it's the boss I think you're talking about it only took me about 12 tries which is pretty good considering how fast you can actually die. You can sort of manipulate the first phase by maintaining distance, baiting one of three attacks that are easy to dodge then counterattack for three hits. Found out the hard way you do not want to do thrust attacks, they don't get deflected, they get countered, for all your health bar. Second phase was much harder simply because of how hard it is to get posture build up to stick.
If you're talking about the boss you fight at the same spot you fight horse dude, then I think he's hardest boss in the game. So much life and so many attacks that deal 80-90% of your HP, but a lot of them are dodgeable. It's just a dumb attrition fight. Reminds me of chalice dungeon bloodborne bosses.
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Cleared Adventure Mode, Hard Mode all the way of course. Surprisingly rough; I needed over an hour to git gud enough to overcome the final battle (both the boss rush and the final bosses themselves) and there were a few other trouble spots throughout too (Akuma for a particularly memorable one). Anyway I had a good time. Smash isn't really optimized for platformy bosses due to the controls, so it's never gonna be among the best at this, but I still enjoyed it more than I was expecting to. I also like how Smash has increasingly become a love letter to gaming in general. It's a game which is filled with joy and positivity at a hobby whose own fanbase is often the opposite.
Game is otherwise Smash 4 Redux, technically there are a few new characters but the only one I care about as a character is Chrom and he's just Yet Another Variant On Marth. It simultaneously obsoletes Smash 4 and isn't that notable in its own right. I've long since accepted that they'll never fix what I consider to be Smash's flaws (a bunch of control-related things) and flipside it can hardly get better at what it does well, but what it does well is enough to make it a consistently solid game. Probably around 7.5/10 or so.
Wargroove - I am generally enjoying this. Except fog of war, fog of war sucks. Not too much to say, I was definitely having a good time (and overall still am, to be clear) but three fog maps in a row has dampened my enthusiasm, and I've been playing more of...
Virtue's Last Reward - So it turns out the Prisoner's Dilemma is really cool and sure you can make a game about it. You just can't talk about these games without spoilers, y'know?
I teamed with Alice first and explored that route as much as possible, now going through the route where you team with Tenmyouji, only done the Dio team subroute there so far.
Zero Jr is great. More please, I like my evil tormentor using rabbit puns non-stop. Best voice acting.
Phi obviously seems to know a lot about what's going on. I suppose she's my prime candidate for Zero just because it kinda fits? Especially if this game is, as is my going theory, some sort of test of morality to see if we deserve to be let out of our quarantine zone. Is the series willing to play the "female lead is Zero" twice in a row? We'll stay tuned, I guess.
Dio is a dick. Ace Attorney taught me to never trust a circus performer and taught me well. His plan is a bit of a frustrating one because I feel like Sigma and Clover could have done a lot of things better about it than they did.
K is interesting so far, I enjoy the fact that he's good but also rational to the point of being villainous in a prisoner's dilemma simulator, how appropriate. Him being masked is also of course interesting; assuming the writing isn't dumb (and this series generally isn't) then he's masked either because someone doesn't want the others recognizing him, or at least the player not recognising him. Which makes me think he's someone connected to the 999 Nonary Game. He does remind me of Seven, because both are big guys with (claimed?) amnesia, but I'll be even more amused if he's Ace, because he pulls the "I am very moral and wants what is best for everyone" act really well. Plus I'm always up for more Ace. Or it could be someone else entirely, of course. We'll see~
Not sure what's up with Tenmyouji/Quark, there are implications it might be something really weird (Quark is a bodyjump of some sort?) but maybe I'm reading too much into a couple lines.
The totally redone artstyle makes Clover hard to recognize, to the point where I wasn't 100% sure it was the same Clover but yep guess she is. Alice is in a weird space in that obviously she's riffing on the hints dropped throughout 999 but I'm not sure if the game is going Full Sci-Fi/Fantasy or if they're just playing with us. Both are fine character-wise in this game, obviously they have some connection with some deeper goings on but it's not clear what. Clover's insistence that she doesn't know what's going on seems honest at least.
Luna seems generically nice and quietly competent.
Sigma not being voice acted is kinda odd in a game where everyone else is. If the point was for immersion then it's at odds with making Sigma... not very self-insertable? He has a very clear personality (the extreme perviness stands out as something that self-inserts don't do in particular). I was wondering if there's going to be some big twist with him; I notice the game hasn't actually shown him yet (even in the ensemble shots such as when everyone gathers in front of the screen) outside of the one flashback before he was captured, which made me wonder if it's all misdirection and the Sigma we're playing with is actually someone else (or body-jumped, etc.). But then I watched the opening video again and noticed he does show up in a couple still shots there, so... maybe not.
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If it's the boss I think you're talking about it only took me about 12 tries which is pretty good considering how fast you can actually die. You can sort of manipulate the first phase by maintaining distance, baiting one of three attacks that are easy to dodge then counterattack for three hits. Found out the hard way you do not want to do thrust attacks, they don't get deflected, they get countered, for all your health bar. Second phase was much harder simply because of how hard it is to get posture build up to stick.
If you're talking about the boss you fight at the same spot you fight horse dude, then I think he's hardest boss in the game. So much life and so many attacks that deal 80-90% of your HP, but a lot of them are dodgeable. It's just a dumb attrition fight. Reminds me of chalice dungeon bloodborne bosses.
I was talking about first boss, and yeah wow 12 is real good. I eventually settled on an aggressive strategy for phase 1, getting up in the boss' face and trading hits - and that worked well but also made it tough to manage my own posture. I think it's probably the hardest boss in the game (outside possibly the final boss) because the punishment window is so narrow, and if you fail to punish you get hit for like 90% of your health.
The second boss I liked the design of a lot but it's a real mental shift because it feels so much more like a Souls boss than a Sekiro boss - getting close and wailing on it is pretty safe, but it likes to make distance and blast you with tricky long-range stuff.
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Sekiro beaten. The intended final boss is deservingly the toughest yet but my good friend Mr. Umbrella and projected force is extremely useful in stage 2. The whole lightning counter gimmick is annoying to get used to but there are random enemies to practice the mechanic and once you get it down stage 3 is actually the easiest part of the whole fight. I like how they throw another boss before just to try and drain resources before the main fight. I had to learn to perfect him so I can go into the final fight with full resources.
Once the game clicks with you, you end up dying a lot less and having a lot of fun. In the end I think the game is actually a bit easier than Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1 (no friendly summon condition only), but it's probably the worst From Software game because of how limited repeatability due to a shorter main quest and lack of customization. DLC to expand Seikro's moveset or offer another playable character would be something I buy. I don't think there should be any changes to the game except make Lady Butterfly a bit weaker to encourage less rage quitters because the game is great once you escape the early game.
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Virtue's Last Reward - Part 2 of Speculathon 2019
Progress update: done all of the Alice route, and all of the Tenmyouji route, then the Luna route -> team with K sub-route. Still have to do the other two sub-routes of the Luna path. Have progressed past locks to get the Tenmyouji ending and K ending, and also have gotten the Clover ending.
Still putting things together, lots of fun.
Junpei = Tenmyouji? Heck is that just his full name? I mean they’ve done everything short of spell it out, he knows Clover + Clover trusts him deeply once she figures out who he is (and he’s not Snake) + he’s been searching for Akane which Clover said Junpei had left to do. The artstyle shift makes it even harder to be sure than normal but yeah it’s possible they’re the same person separated by four or five decades based on appearance too.
Akane = K’s “mother” / the murdered woman? I kinda want to go back and watch the scene in the director’s room to see if he talked as if he knew/suspected the woman they’d found was her; certainly he was upset enough for this to be possible. Buut her mentioning to K about being aware of different timelines + the age checking out if Junpei is Tenmyouji strongly indicates this.
Much more of a reach, but K’s father = the “Zero” who talked to us in the Tenmyouji ending = Santa would complete this trifecta of references to 999 characters. Evidence of this one is certainly sketchier at the moment though. 99% sure about the non-Santa part of that equation though.
Dio is still a dick. I’m susprised you can prove he’s the murderer without going through a lock in the flow, would be pretty funny if anyone did that as their first route.
The K ending is great because it both answers a lot of questions and asks some really good ones too. Who destroyed Dio’s bracelet and/or took Quark’s? Just where are Tenmyouji and Clover? Both Tenmyouji and Clover don’t seem that sinister, which leaves Luna as my primary suspect (yeah, yeah, the game wants you to think she’s dead, but we know there are ways to get your bracelet off without dying; it’s quite possible she used medicine to enter a coldsleep-like state?). Quark’s 9 bracelet would het her escape, or anyone else who could remove his or her own bracelet. Not sure if Alice’s death on this route was a suicide or not, be interesting to see if the last remaining routes shed light on this.
It’s strange how we don’t find the murdered woman on the Alice route. At the moment I can’t see any reason for anything to be different? I’m not really clear on when Dio would have killed her and why her body is found where it was, though. Kinda surprised we didn’t pull that out of him buuut we did have bigger problems at the time.
K is a clone (?) of Sigma who was created as part of research which the Nonary Game seems to be part of which is presumably part of a plan by Zero(?)/Akane(?)/??? to avert some shitty situation for humanity via multiple timelines. Don’t feel I yet have enough information on the parts of the mystery to really speculate. Since K isn’t Zero, though (unless I got misdirected hard by the K ending), it’s hard to reconcile the statement that Zero is one of the players with other evidence such as Tenmyouji's desire to get out and get revenge on Zero whose identity he knows. Of course, it would explain a fair bit if Zero isn’t one of the players, or if it’s somehow only a half-truth (and in a game with information jumping across timelines, there are a few ways for that to happen).
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Elf: Neat stuff. Mostly not going to comment, but a few comments on sufficiently safe / in-the-past issues:
* Yeah, I was a bit frustrated with Sigma's actions in the Laboratory route too, where Dio is trying to use the Axelavir as a bargaining tool. Simply telling everyone else and threatening to beat his ass down if he's a jerk seems like it'd be a fine alternative, or lying a different way and telling everybody about the Axelavir that Dio has and how he'd nicely agreed to share it with Quark, and letting Dio pick if he wanted to make an enemy of everybody or to just give up his leverage. That said, I sorta see where that scene came from: backwards reasoning, we want a path where Sigma goes to a negative score. Okay, that means he needs to be betrayed round 1, then both A) bravely press cooperate for some reason, yet B) have an opponent sufficiently heartless to betray someone at 1 point. So they concocted a contrived situation where Sigma would feel pressured to do this. I'm sort of okay with some sort of "Sigma makes bad choices" option, but I wish the betray option went a little better even if it was still a game over. Have some cathartic beatdown of Dio, say.
* I loved "Zero"'s speech about termites in Tenmyouji / Quark's ending. Just sayin'. (I'm not so sure Tenmyouji wanted vengeance against Zero in that ending though, just claimed that he knew who they were, and also see y'all.)
* FYI, if you didn't know already, getting all the 2nd safe code bonuses unlocks an extra scene after the ending in addition to the help/journal files. That said, you can YouTube that scene if it's a bother. (Some of the 2nd answers are definitely FAQ-bait, although IIRC the Archives is the reverse, with the 2nd code being obvious and the 1st code being quite difficult.)
Fire Emblem Fates
Still doing my Lunatic CQ playthrough, although it's a bit stalled. Alas that so many slots are basically guaranteed eaten on Hard/Lunatic CQ; not running Azura & Camilla is suicidal madness. You probably want 2x healers / damage prevention auras so that means Elise & your servant are guaranteed in. That's 5 slots right there. While I guess Xander & Leo are replaceable, it hurts to do so, so call that 7 slots. That leaves just ~5 empty positions on your team. I'm running Archer Mozu, Sky Knight Selena, Charlotte, Peri, & Anna to mix things up (never used the last 3 seriously before, and not used the first 2 in those classes).
Currently on C18, Black & White, the chapter where you have to fight the smartest and most sympathetic character in the game, Zola. Alas that he gets punked unceremoniously in Revelation, I was really rooting for him. He's got a plan to end the war for free, and yet rather than order him around as the Crown Prince, you have to fight him (and actually kill him for realz). This chapter is weird because it feels like it comes from an alternate universe where it's a cartoon TV episode where the two feuding sides have to work together against a sneering unnoble guy and then shake hands afterward, which would be fine if the game's tone was pretty light (maybe in Birthright route?) but is jarring compared with some of the chapters around it (soldiers slaughtering innocent civilians? eh whatever, do nothing. soldiers kidnapping enemy generals who most definitely were trying to kill you & your friends very recently? Sacrilege, let's kill 'em!). Oh well, we all know it was an excuse to fight up some Nohrian enemies too, but still, the alternate history Conquest that actually takes this plot point seriously, imprisons the Hoshidan royalty, releases Sakura or something so she can order the Hoshidans to surrender, finds instead that she fights on with Yukimura and deploys some sort of ninja rescue mission, etc. would have been pretty cool.
Blaster Master Zero
This is why the above is stalled. Playing the 3DS version, although the sequel, helpfully titled "Blaster Master Zero Two" just recently came out for Switch (Blaster Master One was apparently misleading). It's a fun Metroidvania. Surprisingly enough, it's actually a close remake of the original NES Blaster Master in many ways, just with more content for the jumping tank to conquer, dialogue, etc. Oddly enough, this is apparently a rare time where the old Worlds of Power Nintendo Game novelizations was used to make a plot for a game that was originally really darn plotless... most notably by giving Jason someone to talk to, even if she has the usual Video Game Amnesia so that she doesn't spill the plot points too early.
Main issue is that the difficulty level is at Symphony of the Night level or so - sure, some early stuff can maybe kill you, but once you get rolling it's mostly a curbstomp. There's nothing stopping you from maxing your gun level very early, so imagine if you could get the Crissaegrem in Area 1. Similar to Cave Story, taking damage reduces your gun rating, but you quickly get a regenerating shield that allows the first hit to not reduce your gun level, and more generally the ultimate gun is just so ridiculous you aren't really threatened any more - penetrates walls, amazing range & breadth, stunlocks enemies, etc. Oddly enough, the original game was considered brutally tough - but that's because it had no save points, no passwords, highly limited continues, and a number of areas that offered some nice instadeath. Add in friendly save points that don't even reduce your gauges when you die, and, well.
Two main areas of difficulty:
* In the very first area, there's an underwater sector that starts beeping at you when you go in. Having played Sonic the Hedgehog, I promptly got out. Turns out the beeping was the radar saying I was getting close to the objective. Trollin'.
* In the fourth area, there's a section where you have to make a suicide jump and grab onto a ladder as you fall, and the controls for grabbing the ladder are very finicky. This was in the NES JP version, but the US staff hated it so much they took it out of the US release. Well, it stayed in the 3DS/Switch version, but right next to a save point with unlimited continues. Except I still haven't managed it after like 15 tries. Ugh.
Other than that, it's a nice palette cleanser.
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Leo's decent but far from required, same with Elise honestly (more healers are nice and she's a good one but there's nothing she does that is irreplaceable). I tend to agree that Azura/Camilla/Xander are no-brainer picks, and the first servant is close just because early Inspiration is amazing. Still, that gives you quite a few slots to work with. Also, every map from the time Xander joins onward has at least 13 deploy slots, except some child paralogues.
Re the Dio/Axelavir route... yep, was definitely hoping Sigma and Clover would do something more like that. They seemed to underestimate the leverage they had, since as long as they don't let Dio hit 9 BP his threat would utterly ruin his credibility, and kinda key to an iterated prisoner's dilemma is that you have to have credibility! Like on many of the routes we see that nobody trusts Dio, he gets to 6 points and then stays there as it's double-betray the rest of the way.
That said I kinda get that if you think Sigma cares deeply about not letting a child die that he might be pressured into this. Just... grah, you'd want more assurance. What's to stop Dio from walking out of there with the medicine? Someone as selfish as that might want to keep it for himself in case he comes down with a case of root6 after all. But yeah I think you're right, there had to be a plausible way for Sigma to hit -1 BP without him looking like a complete idiot, and they didn't want to waste someone's villain reveal on it.
Hm now I want to watch Tenmyouji's ending again, I really thought he said something about "wanting revenge on that bastard".
On a gameplay note... I've got all the gold archives except one (the garden which mystified me). Either I'll go grab it later or watch on YouTube. Have had to FAQ the game once, which was the board game puzzle in the treatment centre. I figured the starting square surely didn't count because that would be stupid. After getting a number of variations on possible guesses at the rules (since they're only vaguely implied), I figured maybe it did count and tried again but still got it wrong. FAQed it and apparently it not only counts the first square but assumes you do the minutes before the hours which is not how clocks are usually read, not even in Japanese...... okay.
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Shantae and the Half-Genie Hero (4) - I decided to play this on the Switch during Spring Break. The game is decent and fun, but it definitely isn’t as good as Pirate’s Curse (3) which I consider quite a good game.
Things I liked:
-the transformations are cute and fun and add variety to the game and unlock secrets
-the platforming is much more intense much more quickly than 3. It feels more like a Megaman and less like a Metroidvania.
-boss fights were generally fairly enjoyable, especially squid baron
-very nice looking game compared to the previous ones!
A few things I liked less than 3:
-The game leans very heavily on backtracking and fetchquests to progress the plot in any way! I felt like the game was trying to cut down on the number of areas that it wanted to design or something and it just felt so tedious to have to backtrack constantly.
-Some of the triggers for plot events weren’t obvious, even with the in-game help. Felt like an older game than it was as a result.
-Platforming tricks aren’t as interesting with the transformations as they were with the items in 3. I felt like 3’s platforming was very fluid, whereas the things you do in this game feel less so.
-The game goes with an episodic plot structure, which is overall less effective than a regular storyline.
Still, the game has the decent humor and platformy goodness that drew me to the series. And there are so many women in this game!
Next is I Am Setsuna. Not really feeling it so far, but we’ll see.
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Virtue's Last Reward -
Getting towards the end now. Most of the plot pieces are falling into place nicely.
Things I’ve not yet done:
-gotten Phi’s and Quark’s endings (assuming those are things)
-done whatever escape is behind a white door that ISN’T the director’s room or the security room
-defused the bombs, stopped Phi, survived at -1 BP… probably some other lock I’m forgetting offhand
Dio. Is. A. Dick.
How good was the Sigma ending -> Luna ending sequence? Hell, just the headfake of “Sigma - End” totally threw me, since we’d just had an extended scene with Luna and I’d assumed we’d gotten her ending, but nope. Used the info there to dive into the Luna reveal right after - in and of itself, not too crazy, I’d already been expecting Luna was somehow not dead as a way to explain things in the murder route - but the sequence where you get a choice to ally with her not for any gameplay reason, but as a symbolic gesture of trust… that was deftly done.
(Except that I’m still not sure who destroyed Dio’s bracelet on the K ending subroute… Luna had been my main candidate but that no longer seems possible... Quark? But why?)
With that I’m pretty much now willing to say that barring some major collapse this is definitely a better game than its predecessor. The outstanding voice work is also a pretty big help (seriously, it’s really good), as is how the different plotlines feel more like an organic exploration of possibilities based on the player’s actions. Not sure where this game is headed for rating-wise since gameplay meh whatever but… it’s definitely good.
I remain sad that Zero Jr. doesn’t get more, although going back and watching some of his earlier scenes again is a gift that keeps on giving. The best:
<Dio> How do we get the bracelets off?”
<Zero> Ohhh, B.O., I think you already know the answer to that~
Updated “big theory” speculation is that Akane was the masked abductor of Sigma in the opening, but that the player Sigma is some sort of clone of him (“I was you will be me”), and that the original Sigma became the scientist / architect of the AB game / Akane’s conspirator / “Zero Sr.” (not sure if the face he showed us in Tenmyouji ending was just too old for Sigma to recognize or if it was faked). Presumably OG Sigma also had the power to maintain memories across timestreams (which is why he was abducted + what his life’s work since has been on) but player Sigma’s are either enhanced in some way or it was necessary for him to be a blank slate for the game. Not sure why player Sigma has a human body and robot arms. Maybe the end goal is somehow to jump back to 2028 and use some improved knowledge to avoid the Radical-6 calamity then.
Of course if Sigma is indeed a fresh body that frees up a stasis pod for there to be a third person besides Alice and Clover who is legitimately from 2028. But since Luna / K / Dio / Tenmyouji / Quark are all explicitly from the current time, the only person left is Phi… and I have no idea what’s going on with Phi. That’s obviously the biggest missing piece of the puzzle, since I don’t have her ending. (Quark’s either, but I don’t feel like Quark’s reveal will be as big… could be wrong!)
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Detective Pikachu- Well this happened.
This is such a strangely designed game. There's 9 chapters and in gameplay terms it's reasonable to call chapter 7 the climax, with it being the most involved and dense. But then the core story beat... actually the core story beat simply isn't resolved, but the meat of what happens peaks in C8, while C9 is this weird scenario where the stakes are technically high but it's also probably more straightforward mechanically than the first chapter. It's weird.
The actual design chapter to chapter is fascinating because each chapter contains episodic content (and in about half of them there's an element of "this has no bearing on the larger quest to find your father but you're here so what the heck") while not actually being especially episodic. In fact I'd almost say the game is best played in a single session, except it's just a bit too long for that. At a minimum I think Chapters 6-9 should be played together. ANYWAY, a lot of this is because each chapter has a similar structure of the main characters encountering a problem, that problem being the result of a specific Pokemon, and having to use the particular quirks and abilities of that pokemon to explain whatever the Mystery of the Day is.
Like basically the game is more of a showcase of how Pokedex Entries manifest in the day to day lives of Pokemon world people. I've read the game spent some 5 years in development, which explains this nicely: it was originally in production before Gen 6 came out, and a lot of the game highlights Gen 5 and 6 pokemon, although later chapters highlight some Gen 7 stuff and one or two heavy hitters from earlier gens get some screen time. Point being it almost feels like more of a primer or exploration of Pokemon as a setting to hook in newer players than a story the writers were really invested in.
In fact I dare say this game might actually exist with the specific intent of being *extremely adaptable*. Like based on the trailers the Detective Pikachu movie uses the same main cast and core plot of this game while changing every single other detail, but always in a way that makes it more marketable: way more Gen 1 Pokemon, action scenes that play up Pokemon battling, so on.
(of course I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I mean I fired up the game specifically because I wanted to play it ahead of the movie.)
It's not great if I'm terribly honest but I also find it utterly fascinating in a weird way. Oh, also it's a Pokemon game with high levels of voice acting that's mostly good. Also I may want to know where to meet reporters that know how to class up for secret black market auctions. 6/10.
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Blaster Master Zero
Finished. It's okay, and nice & short.
* There kinda isn't a satisfying final enemy for SOPHIA (your tank), the Area 7 miniboss fought in the tank is way too much of a wimp. I never even ever fired my big ultimate shot. Would have liked a little more variety in enemies, it is very consistently "tons of wimps trying to overwhelm you" with almost no "one big dangerous threat."
* The final boss has a way less cool name! Apparently he was the Plutonium Lord in the NES novelization, which is a totally metal name, but they went for "Mutant Lord" / "Underworld Lord" / "Multidimensional Overseer" in this version (yeah, they couldn't just pick one). Sorry Professor X, but I gotta kill you.
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Elf: Yeah, the Luna ending was pretty great. As a random comment... did you notice she always spams ally and never ever betrays? Which is totally the ethical thing to do when lives are on the line!
Also, it helped that "Bluebird Lamentation" was one of the better pieces on the soundtrack, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFJ1r6_4mW4 for those that haven't heard it. (One of the minor complaints about Zero Time Dilemma is that it includes a remix of Bluebird Lamentation in it, but it's worse than the original and it doesn't use it all that well - it'll play in just kind of random situations, rather than saving it for only once or twice.)
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Fire Emblem Fates CQ Lunatic
Forgot, but I somehow left Kaze & Percy off the above list of used characters. As a side comment, the default Heart Seal classes for a lot of Fates units are pretty darn underwhelming... units with 0 Magic having Troubadour, units with awful Strength having Str-based classes, etc. Makes it a little trickier to mix things up with non-meme builds.
Anyway, here's my whining for the day: https://photos.app.goo.gl/bruHrkwGNKu9daoG6
Yes, that's 14 Str Selena, when she starts at 10 Strength at L10 upon join. She gets +2 Str on promotion to Falcon Knight and has +1 Strength from a meal, so that's +1 strength from level-ups after 12 level-ups.
Just about to do C20, the infamous wind chapter. I went ahead & got Kaze hitched beforehand not so much to use Midori as to have another map for a bit o' grinding as well as the Dragon Herbs you get as a reward. C19 was as usual a bit of a frustrating map; I didn't have a Benny for the free win, so you get to build cowardly formations you'd never ever use anywhere else against the dang un-attackable camoflaughed Kitsune, with people crammed into dual-defense all in a big corner hugging a mountain and the like. Since I benched my cavalry for obvious reasons, late-joining Felicia proved solid filler though, being able to support just fine despite being a bit behind on level. (Also the dodgy C19 Kitsune was another reminder at Fates's off weapon balance... you want Bronze & Iron anyway so you can hit shit reliably, the fact that they upgrade cheaply and better is just a bonus.)
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Virtue’s Last Reward - fin. All the fin.
Non-spoiler version: that was quite a lot of fun. Virtue’s Last Reward spins a mystery yarn which is compelling to unravel, with some very good character work and outstanding voice acting to help it along. It’s a very ambitious story and more than a bit crazy at points, but it all holds together remarkably well? Like despite having even more moving parts and big twists than 999 it has fewer plot holes. It tells a bit of a different style of story as well, which is neat, it’s a huge sprawling “what if” based on your decisions and that alone is pretty cool, as you use information from different possible timelines to inform yourself of what’s really going on.
The negatives are that the gameplay is kinda variable (you’re basically just solving various puzzles. Some are good fun… mostly just various games and logic puzzles some of which I’m familiar with and some of which are new. And some are kinda finnicky and annoying (sadly one of the very last puzzles I did was one of these). It’s not really a game to play for gameplay really at all. Fortunately, unlike 999 you don’t have to redo gameplay you’ve done before in order to get extra endings.
Spoiler thoughts:
Well, let’s break down the lategame plot twists.
-You’re in the future after Radical-6 has wrecked shit: duh. Junpei tries to hit you with a wham line about it in the Phi end but duh.
-The identities of Tenmyouji and the old woman: straightforward, had been telegraphed plenty already. Have I mentioned that bringing back Junpei in a supporting role that takes the player by surprise but have still be recognizably Junpei instead of cryptically mysterious is great? Because it’s pretty great. I wonder if he figured out that Sigma really didn’t have the memories of Dr. Klim on his ending. It does explain his generally suspicious behaviour around Sigma nicely.
-Akane is a magnificent bastard master manipulator of everything: I mean this isn’t really a plot twist per se, it is consistent with what 999 suggested but it’s nice to see VLR totally own this plot point. I wasn’t sure what to make of her after 999 but she’s really great in this game.
-Sigma is bodyjumped into himself as a 67-year old: I kinda called this one way near the start (Sigma’s face never being shown in cutscenes + no voice acting) then started to jettison it over time, shoulda stuck to my guns! This one is more just plain FUNNY than anything else. I love how there are actually like a dozen plus lines of characters calling him old in one way or another and they almost all flew over my head. Also his penchant for making perverted jokes is now super-funny in hindsight. Not to say the utterly disgusted looks Phi and company give him weren’t already justified, but maaan those looks make even more sense now. For an actual plot twist it’s actually pretty clever although I’d have ditched the obvious fake eye, since it seems unlikely that nobody would ever comment on that and also unlikely that he wouldn’t notice.
-You’re all on the moon + you all have a magical disease which slows your reaction time so gravity “looks” normal: well this one is slightly harder to believe honestly but you can kiiinda handwave it, I appreciate that it’s vaguely plausible if you squint. The game did basically tell you you all had Radical-6 as well as what Radical-6 does so it’s not an asspull, and does nicely cover Sigma’s otherwise presumably considerably weaker muscles. Though some of the other characters (besides Phi, who obviously did and concealed it) might have noticed they’re now incredibly good at lifting things etc. Now I wonder if there are any lines of characters noticing that which I missed…
-Akane is K in one of the three routes: Man I want to compare her lines with Kyle’s now. Though obviously she’s trying to play Kyle so there’s probably not much there. I did think it was rather surprising when K became very chatty during the Phi ending so that at least makes sense. I guess that suit has a voice modulator, which makes sense since Kyle presumably sounds like Young Sigma, though Akane would have to tune it carefully so that the modulation is the same with her higher-pitched voice. Also I guess she’s quite tall? She does kinda look it in some of the art shots in this game I suppose, and I… actually don’t recall any shots of her in 999 with other characters on screen when she’s not lying down.
-Phi is… actually we don’t know! I mean if there’s a disappointment with the lategame it’s that we don’t learn more about Phi. I assume ZTD goes into this more. VLR did reveal so many of its mysteries that I can accept it holding one or two back. I enjoyed Phi anyway, her snark + Getting Shit Done quotient are both welcome.
-I liked pretty much all the characters which is great, definitely something I think is an improvement over 999. Luna, Dio, Phi, and Akane are the favourites in some order, I think, but really everyone is good. Quark is relatively forgettable I guess, such is the fate of the character who spends most of the time incapacitated by Radical-6. And Dr. Klim ends up relatively undercharacterised due to not being able to appear on screen but so it goes.
-One thing I never figured out: what was up with Sigma’s fast-forward-like freakout in the security room? I assumed it was a symptom of Radical-6 at the time buuut if he’s constantly suffering from those symptoms at all times that can’t be the reason.
-Just for reference, I had to consult a FAQ twice: once about the board game puzzle in the treatment centre and once for the clue to the gold file in the infirmary. Don’t really feel bad about either, neither was well-communicated in-game. Also, I did not enjoy the “get the dice to be face up on the right squares” puzzle, especially the supercharged version in the Q room. Maybe someone with better spatial reasoning than me can do those with something besides trial and error, but as is, not fun. Especially since the 3DS screen interface for the puzzle gave me some troubles on its own.
-I don’t really like ending on a negative note so yeah, game was good. Not sure where it’ll fall in overall ratings to me since it’s hard to compare even to other writing games; there’s not much else I’ve played quite like these. (And I’m not really dying to find more of ‘em, since any significant falloff in writing quality would result in quite a bad game… but yeah, I’m on board the hype train for this one.)
Zero Time Dilemma? At some point, certainly, but I’ll play some other stuff for now.
EDIT: More random thoughts.
The prisoner’s dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma) is, of course, really cool. I enjoyed the way the game explores it. The Nonary Game feels well-planned to prevent the situation of full cooperation, which is the obvious strategy to an objective outsider. If Zero Jr. had outlined the rules while everyone was still together, they’d be able to form several group strategies to ensure everyone always chooses Ally… a simple pact of “I will choose Ally except against someone who has previously chosen Betray, then I will choose Betray” would leave it so that it was in no player’s interest to betray. But of course, the rules are introduced when the players are isolated from each other and forced to choose immediately, so no such strategy could develop in the first round, and there is good, strong reason to choose betray in the PD absent such a pact. And then of course, from the next round on, the threat of death from some players being at -1 makes cooperation harder and the asymmetry makes pacts all but impossible to make. Clever!
The only strategy I’m a bit surprised didn’t come up was the idea of purposefully having only one person vote from each trio, which would allow that player to make the Ally vote more safely (since the payoff for choosing betray against someone you know is going to ally is lower). Also much easier for the others to just punch that person in the face if they do betray.
Snowfire:
Yeah, I caught that Luna always allies. First law of robotics and all that! Similarly that Dio (almost) always betrays. It’s interesting to note that Luna’s strategy never results in her escaping (outside of the Phi end of course) but Dio’s, while it generally involves him failing as nobody trusts him again, does work out once… when he faces Luna in round 2. (And also in the blackmail plot of course, but that doesn’t count.)
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I Am Setsuna - Finished!
Some random thoughts about the game:
-gameplaywise, the game feels like a watered down chrono trigger? the randoms are decent early and the bosses are sometimes good, but mid-lategame I feel like the randoms just become pathetic (too much ability to just spam Supernova/Blowbeat, the combos in this game are hella broken). I could forgive this more if the bosses were a bit better than they were and more consistent. The final boss in particular just really sucks if you kill his support first. I guess I could try him without killing the parts, but I don’t care about the game that much.
-Characters:
Endir: Has MT healing and the random-slaying Blowbeat combo with Nidr. To be honest, I don’t think I would have used this character much if not for Blowbeat. Blowbeat is just broken as fuck though, especially if you ambush randoms.
Setsuna: Solid healer/mage character, a variant on Marle. Lategame, she has Luminaire, which on Momentum inflicts Auto-Revive and heals for like 300 damage. As if that wasn’t stupid enough, she has a combo with Kir called Supernova which destroys most randoms and does a pretty big chunk of damage to bosses as well. Earlygame she’s not as good because of Blowbeat + Aeterna being overpowered, but lategame she’s probably the second-best character.
Aeterna: The once and future queen. Slow, Protect, and later Haste are all great tricks to have vs. bosses, and Demi is really good against randoms, especially when you aren’t using Blowbeat for whatever reason. Haste in particular is just dumb thanks to her already very fast speed. She has some decent combos midgame but that’s not really what her game is about.
Nidr: See Endir basically, without the MT healing but with more single target damage.
Kir - slow and fragile with high damage. good vs. randoms that the party ambushes, pretty bad early vs. bosses, but lategame Supernova is just too good.
Julienne - Underwhelming PC without much going for her besides Antipode, which is like a poor man’s Blowbeat, and is later replaced with Supernova.
-Plot: a watered down ffx? There are interesting things there, but the game never hits it perfectly with… any of its characters? The best is Setsuna, who is a Yuna with a martyr complex but, due to the game’s less involved plot and less well-written script, she never hits the same highs as Yuna does. Aeterna is also decent but she holds on to her secrets for waaaay too long. FFX and Xenogears teach us that we can have big secrets earlier in the game and it works better than info dump at endgame! Both Endir, a silent main who is slobbered over, and Julienne, who is boring and ineffective, are both less good characters. NPC cast is abysmal.
Music’s pretty lackluster. Graphics are okay.
Overall, the gameplay has some highs and there's a couple of endearing characters but nothing amazing. 5/10.
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Time for another FFT war story.
Before moving on after Yardow, go shopping for new equipment. Also make my way down to Goug for the proposition there. It's a welcome detour since I get some training in weaker jobs along the way as well as gathering the last JP I want for my Riovanes setups.
Yuguo Woods: When is this genuinely hard. I have a self-imposed challenge to not allow the enemy wizards to resolve any lv3 black magic. Between Mustadio using Seal Evil and PA focused Agrias, didn't experience much difficulty. The only tricky part was getting enough actions in for everyone. Rafa was close enough to unlocking Thief with shared JP that I want my Archer to land enough shots.
Riovanes Gate; The enemy Archers have a massive position advantage and to make things worse, they have the ability to spawn with the Windslash Bow + 108 Gems combo for more hurt. The knights are well positioned to make advancing on them a hazardous venture. There are ways to shut them down but I didn't have the inclination to grind for them. Still, the enemies can only attack one unit at a time (barring Malak getting lucky or Knights being able to use geomancy or Earth Slash), so while appearing intimidating, still very manageable even with what I had access to.
This is the first battle all game where I use a reaction ability other than Counter Tackle, Weapon Guard, or Ramza's Damage Split. I fielded a male Ninja who had enough spare Time Mage JP for MP Switch. Along with someone with Chakra, this provides an extra layer of protection from the rain of arrows. Of course early on, Malak connects an Asura Back on him that exactly wipes out his 30 MP so the battle is off to a bad start.
I generally turn Rafa into a Knight for this fight. If she can use Steal Heart, that's her secondary of choice. She did have the 150 JP to learn it this game so I have her learn it. Charming Knights is fun and helps shift momentum. Also keeps them from body blocking anyone trying to storm the ramparts. Other than that, Rafa has evasion to help draw attacks from my team. Yes, this does mean Malak sticks around longer but that's how I enjoy approaching this battle.
With my crazy luck, all three of the Archers are Aries which gives them best compatability with my Libra Ninja. He does get dropped once but I am able to recover. Even one dodged arrow is enough to have him reach the top where he takes out archers from full to zero HP in one attack. While this is going on, I'm stealing Crystal Helmets off the knights and without their archer support, lone Knights aren't able to endanger my team.
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https://startingoverinraccooncity.blogspot.com/2019/05/peering-in-on-spyparty.html
I've been playing SpyParty a lot lately.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/423687973
Sometimes, it is very fun.
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Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - I’ve played every game since 6, so I feel like I should complete my FE experience at some point. Because I already played the remakes of 1-3, I’m not gonna bother with them, but I’ve decided to try 4!
A few impressions:
PC balance:
-Sigurd is really really good. He’s like the best parts of Quan and Finn put in a blender to make a fantastic PC. Having Sigurd required to seize all the gates make the game a little harder, but not as bad as it could be with an infantry unit.
-Pursuit / Follow-up is an overpowered skill. It pretty much makes every unit with it good and every unit without it feel underwhelming. Lex and Quan manage to be decent anyway despite it because of high STR/DEF
-Azel seems like he should be really good, but with the dominance of horses, he often fell behind.
-Lewyn seemed a little underwhelming and then he got Foresti and HOLY SHIT THIS CHARACTER. So much dodge tanking.
-Lachesis also peaks late due to her overpowered promoted class.
-Noish is terrible. Alec is better but still not great. Definitely a bad showing for the green/red cav.
-I let Arden die when he was Astra’d by enemy Ayra. And nothing of value was lost.
Gameplay:
-The maps in this game are holy shit big, and there is way too much walking between places and other things that do not involve meaningful combat. I think this is the #1 problem with the game.
-Some of the formations are very tricky and interesting to deal with. I think that’s when the game is at its best.
-Chapter 3 and 5 are both fairly enjoyable on this front, although not perfect (those Meteor users vs. my flierless team is a bad time). I really enjoyed the assault of Eldie (died once to him) and Travant’s army of Horseslayers. (Sadly, Lewyn’s evade was TOO POWERFUL for them to attack him. :()
-Chapter 2 and 4 are miserable and require so much moving from place to place. Chapter 4 also has the ridiculous bridge thing and the cinematic battle which went on for so long. I know it’s partially an excuse for you to get your characters back, but they could have just made that part of the map adjacent to the previous one to start with. Stop wasting my time. >:(
-Legendary weapons are so so dumb.
Plot:
-The game comes off much more as a war documentary / story than most of the other Fire Emblems, which go more for the anime-style rivalries and conflicts.
-I feel like I need a flowchart to figure out WTH is going on and who is related to who
-You can tell very accurately who will join the party and who is evil by their portrait. People who look attractive are PCs, people who scowl and are generally ugly don’t.
-there is a lot of reference to rape in this game.
-Eldigan is unceremoniously killed by Chagall in what later ends up being a harbinger of things to come.
-THE LAST CHAPTER IS SO DARK. Arvis, while not a great or compelling character, is such a magnificent bastard that you can’t help but admire him. This game definitely delves into GoT-tier of killing nice people. Also, Quan and Ethlyn is sooooo horrible.
-Honestly, the game’s writing is a little flat. Lots of interesting setting ideas and plot threads, but the writing is just not very deft. I don’t feel like the characters really jump out at me. Arvis / Eldigan / Sigurd are fine but none reach anywhere close to exceptional.
Other stuff:
-Art and music are both fine but not great.
The Thracia phase music in Chapter 5 is weirdly whimsical for the extremely dour tone they are going for with the arrival of the Thracian forces. I found it very jarring.
I finished Gen 1 and the first two chapters of Gen 2. Shanan has turned into a bishounen, Oifey is now a porn star. I have an amazing amount of sword users in my party. I ended up letting Dermott and Arthur die because Chapter 7 is brutally long (65 turns!) and therefore I missed Tinny. Oh well. None of them have Pursuit so who cares! I didn’t delve into eugenics so my characters are suboptimal. Oh well!
Also, does Chapter 8 have a CHAGALL PALETTE SWAP? That's really weird.
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I forgot to report the death of JOHNOLIVER, i'm sorry
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PC balance:
-Sigurd is really really good. He’s like the best parts of Quan and Finn put in a blender to make a fantastic PC. Having Sigurd required to seize all the gates make the game a little harder, but not as bad as it could be with an infantry unit.
-Pursuit / Follow-up is an overpowered skill. It pretty much makes every unit with it good and every unit without it feel underwhelming. Lex and Quan manage to be decent anyway despite it because of high STR/DEF
-Azel seems like he should be really good, but with the dominance of horses, he often fell behind.
-Lewyn seemed a little underwhelming and then he got Foresti and HOLY SHIT THIS CHARACTER. So much dodge tanking.
-Lachesis also peaks late due to her overpowered promoted class.
-Noish is terrible. Alec is better but still not great. Definitely a bad showing for the green/red cav.
-I let Arden die when he was Astra’d by enemy Ayra. And nothing of value was lost.
Yep.
Gameplay:
-The maps in this game are holy shit big, and there is way too much walking between places and other things that do not involve meaningful combat. I think this is the #1 problem with the game.
-Some of the formations are very tricky and interesting to deal with. I think that’s when the game is at its best.
-Chapter 3 and 5 are both fairly enjoyable on this front, although not perfect (those Meteor users vs. my flierless team is a bad time). I really enjoyed the assault of Eldie (died once to him) and Travant’s army of Horseslayers. (Sadly, Lewyn’s evade was TOO POWERFUL for them to attack him. :()
-Chapter 2 and 4 are miserable and require so much moving from place to place. Chapter 4 also has the ridiculous bridge thing and the cinematic battle which went on for so long. I know it’s partially an excuse for you to get your characters back, but they could have just made that part of the map adjacent to the previous one to start with. Stop wasting my time. >:(
-Legendary weapons are so so dumb.
Yep.
-You can tell very accurately who will join the party and who is evil by their portrait. People who look attractive are PCs, people who scowl and are generally ugly don’t.
-there is a lot of reference to rape in this game.
Yeeeeeeeep. Although the the first is pretty much fireemblem.txt it's still pretty yep. also burn down the kagatopia
I didn’t delve into eugenics so my characters are suboptimal. Oh well!
Good news! The most optimal parings are more or less the fastest ones anyways!
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Fire Emblem 4 - Aside from Lene who refreshes four people, Ares, Shanan, Oifey, and Finn are generally my best units. Nanna is Lex’s daughter and has Paragon, so she will promote very soon. She is extremely tanky and has high HP, which is funny on a healer. I never recruited Gen 1 peg knight (which made the Meteor mages on Sig’s last map so painful) so I have Femina, who kind of sucks. It’s interesting how you have these sub characters. Leif is such hot garbage. Apparently he promotes to a godlike class like Lachesis, but he has no staff and thus is more painful to level. Seliph is fine but I was surprised to see him rated so high on tier lists. Larcei and Ulster are both quite competent as well.
After the hell that was Chapter 7, 8 seems relatively breezy. I just got done fending off a swarm of wyvern knights who were trying to kill Hawke and civilians. Leif is an excellent civilian rescuer, good work pal. I generally have to do four sessions to get through a map, and I just finished the third.
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Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - Just finished, hooray!
Gen 1 Pairings: LewynxSylvia, LachesisxLex, BridgetxJamke, AideenxMidir, AyraxAlec, TailtuxClaude.
Dead/unrecruited people in Gen 1: Arden, Erinys, Holdyn, Beowulf, Dew(got better)
Gen 2 pairings: SeliphxLana, LarceixShanan(gross), LesterxFemina, AresxLene, LeifxNanna.
Dead/unrecruited people in Gen 2: Arthur, Tinni, Dermott, Oifey (RIP)
Map notes:
Chapter 8 is pretty damn trivial for a non-prologue chapter. It feels very paint-by-numbers and doesn’t really offer any major challenge, especially since Altena won’t attack you. I mostly used Oifey to bait a whole bunch of the Wyverns with the Flame Sword and then their collective lives were sad. The only really interesting thing that happened was Ishtar running toward me and me running from her, and then Julius shows up and says “Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?” and she’s like cool I’ll come with you cute evil boi, sry daddy.
Chapter 9 was hilarious because Travant is such boring and unexciting enemy, and then you liberate the castles and the 11 THREAT RANGE MAGE BOSS WITH 18 SPEED Musar appears as a NINJA REINFORCEMENT and TRIES TO MURDER ME while I am liberating villages. Due to sheer luck pure skill Finn managed to dodge the following:
4 lethal shots at 45% hit
and
2 rounds of being doubled and kill with 2 hits at 45%
Life is pain, Highness. Until it isn’t.
Anyway, Altena kills that douchenozzle and we survive other very rude things like eight ballistas and one siege tome and then we have to fight Arion, the dumb anime son of Travant. Gungnir is very dickish and hurts really bad, and he has a bunch of friends to boot. It took me a few tries and I had to tinker with my setup but I managed to survive without anyone dying. It was a team effort.
Meanwhile I grinded up Caipre, who is the small child who inherited Forseti and a Paragon Band, but is Level 1. I just did Arena with my shit character Femina and healed her once a turn until I got to 20 on that map. I tried to marry Femina off to him because she had lots of money due to villages but it didn’t work. Oh well.
Chapter 10 is pretty typical FE map until the Julius / Ishtar appearance. I baited Julius with Shanan because he didn’t get doubled, was evasive, and had high speed to avoid Charge. I ended up killing Ishtar rather than Julius because he’s really really hard to kill. Apparently you can get one of your units killed and then he leaves as well, but that’s not any fun. Julius tells his daddy to bite his shiny metal ass and leaves. Last past is a bit of a rush because you are trying to make sure that Seliph can get Tyrfing. It ended up being fine because Ares baited all of them (and has mad RES to not die). Arvis seems very unenjoyable to kill without Tyrfing, although Altena ended up doing most of the damage to him.
Final Chapter is again kind of typical until the Ishtar / pegasus of doom brigade. Did they really need Leg Rings? ;_; Ishtar herself is a doozy, although the unholy wall of 75-HP/27 RES called Ares manages to tank her Adapt Mjollnir. Oifey is tragically slain by the peggies but the show must go on. Scorpius was hilarious inept in the face of Faval, who killed their whole army singlehandedly. No range 1 weapon? NOOB.
The last part is interesting. I baited Julia into a place that she could not move out of and then worked on killing Manfroy and recruiting her. The plan almost failed when Altena’s new buddies tried to kill her; I had to reset and then surround Julia to prevent her from being attacked by them. As it turns out, this was a really good idea because the final boss would have been so so so painful without her. The Deadlords were pretty inept and didn’t threaten the army of darkness at all. Caipre killed like half of them with Forseti. Final part was very dull and took far too long, but Julius ended up activating multiple Accosts in one turn and thus killing himself. What a moron.
And thus, we win.
Plot notes:
-Manfroy is a pretty big idiot. He decides to possess Julia because… it’s funny? Julius tells him “no way” but he does it anyway
-They try a little bit with Ishtar and Alvis but the rest of the characters are LOLNO
-Gen 2 plot really suffers from not knowing exactly which kids will be present and which will not. It is a very paint-by-numbers adventure of smiting rich people who are dicks and demon worshippers.
-Sigurd has a bit of the tragic hero figure going on with him, but Seliph really is the most generic lead ever.
-The endings are very bad. All of your friends became kings because they have holy blood and everyone loves them forever, holy shit wow. They even love Ares Dark, who is clearly too edgy for this world. Of course, a woman might inherit a duekdom if there’s not a DUDE to do it.
-Is Lewyn a dick or what? The ending features him trying to foist his responsibility off onto a small child, and he spends the whole game doing literally anything besides ruling. Asshole.
General character worth:
Lene (refreshes four people, wow) > Ares Dark > Oifey > Shanan > Finn > Seliph > probably some healers IDK. Honorable mention to the fact that Seliph is really good late, especially after Tyrfing, Leif is terrible and no good until he promotes and then he is great, and Altena/Caipre (Lewyn) are both quite good but join late / take some babying to move along. Larcei was pretty good early, especially with Brave Sword and Leg Ring from Ayra, but her durability hurts. Finn and Oifey were definitely not so good late, but I leaned on both early so they count. Finn has the whole section in Chapter 7 where he kills every enemy on the Leonstar side. Faval and Hawke are also quite good but suffer from low move.
Comments about the game: The maps are extremely long and sprawly and you spend so much time moving from place to place. It gives it a very warlike feel I guess but man is it grueling. Gameplay is recognizably Fire Emblem but is less polished and refined, I feel. Some of the bosses are just ridiculous and can really just bullshit you. The good thing about the game is that you can save every turn (and should).
Favorite map: Probably Chapter 10? I enjoyed the stuff with Ishtar and Julius, and there are other interesting strategy things to do. Last map is cool too, for all that the final part is dull.. Least favorite: Chapter 4. That map is so fucking stupid; it makes you backtrack a bunch and has the Dew thing, as well as the extremely long phase of watching the enemies fight each other which is beyond boring.
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Mortal Kombat 11
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Cosmic Star Heroine
After finally replacing my Vita on the cheap (my old one's controls had gone all wonky), I could finally finish this (I'd stopped in C11, just before the Asteroid Ruins). I did, and the final bosses were even reasonably interesting, although the Mecha Dragon rando was actually a little more dangerous as far as forcing a reset. (Not SUPER dangerous, I would have reloaded & re'spec'd if I was seriously under threat by it.) The gameplay is still great, and I definitely respect Zeboyd releasing a belated Vita version despite there probably being not much of a market for it out of obligation to the original Kickstarter back in 2013 when they thought the game would take 2 years to make rather than 4 years and the Vita was less dead. (If you didn't read why it took so long, part of it was that Microsoft discontinued support for MS XNA, what the older games were built off of, so it was time to rip the band-aid off and rebuild everything in Unity. Which has much less efficient memory-use for the Vita's tiny RAM.)
However, who cares about praise? We're here for wacky story fails and Jo'ou laughing at me expecting anything from a Zeboyd plot! Sure enough, there are some bizarre dropped balls. To set this up properly, let's talk about an understandable dropped ball for comparison:
* Otter was instantly repelled by the first chapter where there's some computer going haywire, Alyssa needs to hack it but says she's just a novice, then... she just succeeds off-screen, wrapped up, yay! So a bizarre "hey check out how awesome our protagonist is" that doesn't work. But it seems obvious to me what happened: there was obviously supposed to be a hacking minigame here, Alyssa was being self-deprecating because it would have been new to you-the-player and thus expected for you to be fumbling around, but it got cut before launch, so it's just this. I get that.
Less understandable that could easily, easily be fixed:
* The big villain is built up as a "master class gunmancer." You never fight him with him using gunmancy skills or having a skillset remotely similar to the gunmancer in your party, and she never even attempts to build a rivalry or anything. The final showdown is just him becoming a Big Dumb Monster. The characters never even jibe him for this and talk about how pathetic he's fallen or anything (i.e. own this, like killing a swordmaster by stealing his sword or poisoning him or something).
* There's one of those obligatory scenes where the new villain gets the McGuffin, except also involving a fade to black, and done in a way that makes zero sense both in-setting and from a drama writing perspective? It's really unfulfilling, "Hahaha I am an evil" -> fade to black -> Huh the MacGuffin got stolen and she disappeared. You have three options here: A, just have her not say she's evil yet. She's a member of the team, she has a perfectly good excuse for inspecting the McGuffin. B, this whole plot point was a mind control device, but basically nobody ever gets mind controlled aside from the users of said device themselves. "Hey, can I have X" => "Okay sure WAIT NO SHIT". Remind people what the dang plot point is. C, if you insist on the reveal first then stealing it, this is usually done as a show of power for why you are so helpless thing, so if you must do it this way, you have an unwinnable boss fight followed by the boss forcefully taking the goods then letting you off for some excuse. Anyway, A & B are both fixable by just changing the text, it'd have taken 30 seconds.
* I'm gonna call this a "nitpick" rather than a real complaint, but there's some wackiness going on here plot-wise anyway. There's the usual "this traitor could have done far worse things earlier that would have ended our quest" as well as "this traitor is actually a big deal and seems like she could have taken some people with her". More to the point, I guess this is supposed to be a dueling servants of the dark god thing where they hate each other but solely because they want Cthulhu to do different things? You'd think they could have owned that plot point a little more, but the game acts like they're both pure puppets at times, in which case it seems like they should have been working together more.
* The final boss is alleged to be weakened by some sort of virus. If there's any gameplay impact to this whatsoever, I missed it (= Tidus using Talk on Jecht?).
And oh yes. I went through the $%%^ Rhomu lab THREE TIMES searching for that damn sidequest door and never found it. Oh well, YouTube to the rescue.
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Picked up Fate//Extella Link on the Switch. It's basically better than the first game in every way except maaaaaaybe plot? The plot in Link is more clear and less Nasu Dot Tee Ex Tee so whether that's better or worse is up to you~
The biggest improvement is that you can now use NPs more than once per battle and you don't have to collect items to do it, the gauge fills up by getting kills while using Moon Drive. Also Active Skills now exist, kinda like teh R1 moves from Warriors Orochi except you get 4 of them, which are neat additions. Also also, the AI allies are actually useful and can kill enemy officers on their own, however the enemy AI is also very good and will take over your sectors if you don't defend them! So it actually hits a balance that musou games rarely do, your allies can be useful but you can't count on them to always win. It's nice.
Medusa is probably my favorite character to play as so far, but I haven't unlocked everyone yet. Drake is also a lot of fun. Sadly the other rider, Astolfo, is basically the Dan Hibiki of the game. Still adorable tho~
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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Got a digital copy of this for essentially free due to Black Friday deals last November, then promptly ignored it in favor of other games more immediately interesting to me, like Smash Utimate. Finally got around to playing this about a month ago. I haven't played a Mario Kart game for more than a few minutes since the SNES original, so I started with 50cc.
The game is quite good technically and in terms of track design, both in terms of quantity and quality for the latter. Watching a few GDQ VODs has convinced me that MK8D blows away the previous games for track quality, and a grand prix run even convinced me that Nintendo actually toned down the item nonsense that some of the past entries had spiraled into.
With all that said, it's clear now that Mario Kart is a franchise that just doesn't excite me, at least as a singleplayer game. After finishing all the grand prixs a few weeks back, I've had no interest in going back to the game, even though I did enjoy my time with it. It's just that other games interest me more, even ones that 99% of the planet would consider worse. For instance...
Nights of Azure 2
I'll be honest up front, the main reason I had any interest in this is that I heard that NoA was a series that had actual canon yuri relationships, and not of the "let's write the player character as male, then add a female option with bare minimum edits to the dialogue" kind. That puts it on an extremely short list with... um, I'm not actually totally sure what games actually count here. Most people on Gamefaqs seem to prefer the first one, but I don't have a PS4 and I've heard the PC port has some issues, plus my current computer only has integrated graphics. Meanwhile I got a new copy of the NoA2 Switch for only $23.
Gameplay was pretty much what all the reviews said, an arpg that is generally so easy there's no reason to do anything but mash the light attack button and use special abilities when the activate. I actually had one loss to the very first boss because I didn't bother to block or evade its attacks at all, because I had no reason to do either up until then. Second time around I put in some actual effort and won with no serious issues. After that, the bosses were pretty much trivial except for the DLC ones (whose difficulties are variable depending on when you fight them) and the final boss, whose third form is a huuuuge spike in damage output.
The combat system was still fluid enough to be decently enjoyable and never offensive, which is a good thing since I had to play through the game twice to get the true ending with all the epilogues, which involved a lot of repeating the same areas over and over and over again to fulfill quests. That got kinda tiresome, even though I liked the game's atmosphere and music in general.
The game has a time limit system similar to some of the Atelier games (same developer as Nights of Azure - Gust). I don't think it's as well implemented as the Atelier games that I'm familiar with, though. Those tend to have lots of endings, but this game only has two + epilogues for the true ending, and it is literally impossible to get all of those epilogues on a first run. Then on NG+ the time limits are removed, which combined with some clear bonuses for having both endings result in a obvious route to go through the game: get normal ending on first run, then grind out all the sidequests for true on NG+. The only reason I didn't completely rush the first playthrough is because I was forewarned ahead of time about the difficulty spike for the final boss.
The absolutely worst thing about the game is the way it periodically crashes to the home screen. That's just inexcusable for a commercial game from a major developer, and I would be far more pissed if I had paid full price for the game, or even worse, the collector's edition. The one mitigating factor is that the game only ever crashed on me during the hotel, so as long as I went to save ASAP anytime I came back from combat I would never lose meaningful progress, but it's still an obnoxious problem to deal with.
Now for thoughts on the story and characters, since that's what I really cared about to begin with. Spoiler tagging everything just to be safe, even though not all of it is spoilertastic.
The much-publicized lily system felt like it was kinda bait-and-switch in the end. There's some kinda flirty lines in the game when you build up affection with your AI partners (and I am kinda impressed at the developer's lack of subtlety in labelling the party members as 'Lilies'), but I didn't really get the sense that anyone except for Lilia and Rue had outright romantic affection for Aluche, aka the childhood friends whose relations had already developed before the story started. I still liked having an extra party member to fight alongside, including non-romantic options, so I'm glad Gust put them in this game. I wonder if the pre-release marketing caused some backlash when the game shipped with only one predefined pairing, though. Speaking of which...
In the end, Aluche and Liliana's relationship was pretty straightforward: they were childhood friends who were already in love when the game started. You see them interact in various story scenes plus the blue lily quests, but there's no major conflicts or development in their relationship throughout the game. That's fine in a vacuum - I enjoyed what was shown of them, and the lack of melodrama was, in some ways, a relief. The issue is that I don't think Gust built them up sufficiently for what happens during the true ending.
On paper, I quite like what happens there- Aluche uses Rue's power of transforming thoughts into power to fuel Lilia's time slowing. So long as she holds onto Lilia and their love remains true, Aluche can maintain the localized time stoppage forever. That's a rather beautiful image to end a story on, and considering why Malvasia turned to villainy it is quite fitting that she is stopped by an act of love, rather than one of violence. It is doubly fitting that two people who are effectively Alstromeria's reincarnation and successor combine to stop the plans of her tragic ex-lover. The most insightful review that I've read of NoA2 (http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2017/10/review-nights-of-azure-2-bride-of-new.html) compared both this game and its predecessor stylistically to opera. That's a fitting comparison for how the true ending unfolds, but I think the buildup to it wasn't convincing enough. Personally, I think an ending like this (two lovers frozen in time eternally, to save the world) as a conclusion to a story that tries to convince the audience that this is the grandest romance ever, with two lovers who would move heaven and earth to be together. Something like Beren and Luthien, or hell, Arnice and Lilysse from Nights of Azure 1, based on the descriptions I've read of that game. Instead, what we got with this game was a kinda understated relationship that didn't get super built up or emphasized in-game (since a lot of screentime went to the other lilies). Looking at places like Gamefaqs, I've seen a lot of people who didn't care much for either the AlxLilia romance or the true ending, and in hindsight I think that's understandable.
That said, as someone who's kinda jaded by the heavy presence of the "love is beautiful because of its fleeting nature" trope in Japanese yuri works, I appreciate the fact that this game essentially went in the opposite direction, with two lovers united for eternity. Maybe I'm being optimistic here, but I get the impression that Aluche and Liliana aren't cryogenically frozen in a near-death state, but that their time together is warm and loving, even if it feels like they are trapped in a prison to their friends back in the world.
On the whole, I found the backstory of Malvasia with Alstromeria to be the game's better executed love story. That is operatic to the bone, a doomed romance with beautiful highs that ends in pure tragedy. It's a pity that DLC2 doesn't have any voice acting, since the flashback scene in that was the most emotional moment in the game for me.
As for the rest of the cast, I wound up liking pretty much everyone except for Eleanor well enough to enjoy their screentime. Everyone else has a backstory that helps flesh their characters out beyond the surface-level anime tropes while expanding on NoA's dark, gothic setting. It's a pity that it came in part at the expense of developing the main romance, but the time certainly wasn't spent in vain.
One other notable thing is that *all* the authority positions in this game are filled by women, even the assholish and villainous ones. Every known knight is female as well, although that's admittedly based on a sample size of 5. That's a lot of traditionally-male roles occupied by women in the setting. The game never draws any attention to this, but it does subtly influence the game's gender and power dynamics that feelly pretty signficant to me as a laymen, although I'm not really qualified enough at either lit crit or feminism to say definitively. But he whole knight protects damsel from villain trope just feels different to me when all three roles are filled by women, and that's before we get into the ways the story winds up subverts the initial dynamic. The fact that the villain is essentially a lesbian who turned heel due to her lover's death is something that might have felt really problematic in a different story, but the fact that her grief is portrayed sympathetically (well, at least once we got the full story from DLC) and she is far from the only lesbian in the story ameliorated that concern to me. This kind of all-female cast is fairly common in bishoujo anime and manga, but less so in a video game, and especially one with such a dark tone and aesthetic.
On a related note there is absolutely zero homophobia in-universe, although human bigotry towards demons serves as a suspiciously similar substitute during the backstory. But AlxLilia for instance face absolutely zero social stigma, which I understand is the same as the first NoA.
On balance, I can't say that Nights of Azure 2 is a great game, or maybe even a good one. Both gameplay and storytelling have serious flaws. Nothing deal-breaking to me, but a lot of fans of the original online seem to have been disappointed with it, and the sales numbers dropped pretty badly in Japan. But with all that, there were elements of the game that I found really interesting, and which I really enjoyed, so I don't regret my time spent on it for a second. Canon yuri relationships are so rare that even a deeply flawed game with one feels noteworthy to me, and this game handled its romance with enough sincerity to keep my attention. I'm probably on-board for any sequels/follow-ups that Gust makes, although I'm really not expecting one considering the sales numbers.
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Suikoden - I replayed this. It's the game we thought it was. The start is strong and it kinda loses its way a bit as it meanders in the midgame (Milich arc in particular is not great). It's very unpolished. Still, nice to retread, I hadn't played the game in 16 years.
Suikoden 2 - Obviously better, still holds up very well as long as we don't talk about the translation which is somehow more of a mess each time I see it. I am up to Tinto. Shu remains a lot of fun to watch! Just a solidly-written game with gameplay which manages to hit some solidly fun notes for something which isn't the point of the game.
Wargroove - Beat this, and as the actual new game, it's the one I will talk about.
I'm disappointed I didn't take to this game more. SRPGs are good and this one has some neat mechanics which make it play differently from many others (yes, I somehow never played Advance Wars). Damage being based on HP makes the whole countering paradigm feel completely different from Fire Emblem and games like it, as do the complex matchup mechanics. Forget the weapon triangle, you WILL have your dragon unit own the hell out of puny land and water units while avoiding harpoons/ballistas/witches/mages like the plague, and if you screw this up you may well lose the entire battle, since one hit puts you in the hole 1000 gold (their repair cost/new unit cost) plus the lost combat opportunities of using this unit further while you go reinforce them or get a replacement back to the front lines. And so on for all sorts of other complicated matchup possibilities.
By default I feel the game with its interesting SRPG gameplay that keeps you awake should have grabbed me more, but a few reasons it didn't:
-Fog of war is really terrible, fortunately it goes away after a brief showing midgame. It's already a bad mechanic in FE, I didn't need a version where your vision is even more restricted and a unit taking a hit from a bad matchup cripples them completely.
-The game really badly needed threat ranges to be toggled on like Fire Emblem does it. Earlygame it's not a problem, lategame avoiding hits from key units with huge threat ranges (flyers, warships/harpoon ships) is just far too crucial and I did way too much going back and forth between lots of different enemies and trying to remember exactly how far they move.
-The AI in this game was occasionally a bit frustrating. It's kinda clever in that it knows how to kite your threat ranges too, but it turns out this just isn't much fun? The worst is when you get flyers kiting you over the ocean before you get your own flyers. This doesn't even help the enemy win!
-There's a shortage of really clever map design, and challenge feels very inconsistent, and unintentionally so (some maps which feel intended to be hard really aren't, and vice versa).
Plot barely exists. That's fine, it is what it is, but it means the game coasts entirely on gameplay and it just didn't do quite enough.
Still I had a pretty good time, it was fun to toy around with. It just consistently held my attention less well than everything else I have been playing recently. VLR smacked it down pretty bad and that's definitely going against my genre biases! Might come back to it at some point and try Arcade Mode or the Epilogue, I dunno.
Probably 5-6 range.
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Beat all the maingame content in Fate//Extella Link, and unlocked all the cast(except maybe DLC chars? There's empty spots in the barracks but my character list says 100% sooooooo...). Definately a step up from Extella across the board, and I've played with all of the cast now so I have some room to talk about how they are.
EX Tier: Darius III, Artoria, Alexander the Great/Iskandr, Medusa
So Darius III is just flat out busted as hell. Great damage, great range on his normals including a C3 that hits a HUGE line in front of him, and a buff Active Skill that increases his attack range and damage further. What really puts him to EX Tier though is his complete lack of janky movement in a game that's full of it. The power and ease of control combo is just unmatched.
Artoria and Iskandar share wide reaching normals with strong Active Skills and no real downsides. They aren't slow, they also are very stable in movement, and very strong. The big difference is that their big money move attacks come out later than Darius's C3 and thus are easier to interrupt.
Medusa does have some janky movement issues, but her claim to fame here is being the single easiest servant to trigger Rush attacks with that I've seen. Rush attacks are vital for killing boss servants fast(and clearing many bonus missions). Couple this with her great crowd clearing Active Skills and she rounds out the highest tier.
A Tier: Charlemagne, Gawain, Altera, Lu Bu, Nero, Nameless/Emiya/Archer, Karl the Great/Rex Magnus, Karna, Scathach, Francis Drake
Definitely the most packed tier, A Tier is where all the servants who are Really Good(most of them, it's a well balanced game) but just don't have that edge that drives them over the top go.
I'm sure you'll notice that every Saber that isn't Artoria is in A rank. Sabers are just generally strong in this. Nero is easily the worst of them and she's still Very Good. Charlie is a bit better than the others, but not enough better to go up to EX.
Nameless is alllllmost good enough to be EX Tier, frankly. But he just lacks that one big holy shit standout thing to put him up there.
Karl the Great is naturally super strong, but is just a bit slow without having the advantages Darius does to make up for it. He does however have the Single Most Extra As Hell NP Attack In The Game.
Lu Bu and Karna have similar strengths, lots of area covered and lots of damage output. Karna has worse ASes but Lu Bu is slower so it's pretty even.
Scathach and Drake are masters of jank, with attacks that just keep them moving all the time everywhere, but manage to make it work by having a good enough area on their attacks that they don't let up on the damage even while whirling about everywhere. Very fun to play as~
B Tier: Tamamo no Mae, Robin Hood, Arjuna, Gilgamesh, Cu Chulain, Li Shuwen, Lancelot
This is where the servants who aren't bad but take some understanding of their gimmicks to make them work go. All the B servants definately have some weakspots but can still be very good if you play to their strengths.
Tamamo and Robin are here for the same reason. Bad normals but amazing ASes. Tamamo can wreck entire fields and lock down aggressors with her skills while Robin also has good area damage and a very easy time starting Rush attacks. But their lackluster normal attacks make them just too meh for A Tier.
Arjuna is the Absolute King of Jank. His attacks take him all over the place and he's not all that great at connecting with them. Also his Rush animation is slower than other servants so he seems to do notably less damage with a Rush attack when you can trigger one.
Yeah, Gilgamesh is down in B. The reason? The startup on all his attacks is Slow As Balls. He is so easy to interrupt. Really he wants to fight at a medium range, starting his attacks on lone enemies on the edge of a crowd and then firing his charge attacks into the crowd itself for maximum results...but the enemy has no desire to let him play at that range sooooo...rip his gameplan.
Cu is basically just Scathach minus. He's still good but just a bit worse all around then everybody in the A Tier.
Lancelot has a similar issue, just being not as impressive as the other Berserkers. However he has the single most fun Active Skill in the game: Mimicry. He just transforms into a random other servant on the map, getting their entire moveset(including their Active Skills) for a short period. He may be B Tier for power, but he's EX for fun~
Li Shuwen, the sole Assassin in the game(...really guys? You couldn't add a single Hassan or Carmilla or Kojiro or anyone like that?), is mostly here for the very short range on his attacks and his Active Skills being....eh. In particular his one Close Range AS(which is teh Assassin class specialty...which he only has one of...) has a "fun" feature where it likes to act like you're aiming litterally anywhere other than where you are aiming. Awesome!
C Tier: Archimedes, Gilles de Rais, Elizabeth Bathory, Astolfo
So the casters that aren't Tamomo are basically just bad. Gilles is easily the best of this Tier with his Active Skills being fairly strong, but his normals are super meh and he's not quick at all. Archimedes is basically just worse across the board. I'm all kinds of Not Impressd with the supposed Great Scholar.
Elizabeth is basically Cu-. She's ~okay~ at everything with only one real standout and that's her one HP draining Active Skill. Too bad healing is super plentiful in this game so it doesn't really mean that much.
Astolfo is...the Dan Hibiki of the game. Comedy Option supreme. Normals are sketchy, ASes are equally sketchy, but he's adorable so we forgive everything and give him the honorary EX in our hearts that he deserves.
Jeanne Tier: Jeanne d'Arc.
Let's talk about Jeanne. She's got a great normal moveset, including probably the best C4 attack in the game with its immense range and spread and being multihit. Her Active Skills are all fairly strong, if a bit bad at starting Rush attacks, and even her close range ones cover a nice amount of ground. So why is she in her own special tier of failure as the worst character in the game? Because using her Noble Phantasm, La Pucelle, kills herself. Yeah. Now, there is an Install Skill you can use to give her a shot of Auto-Life so she revives afterwards! But even that means 1/map at most. Also the Drive Skill she can use in her Moon Drive(a sort of mini-NP?) damages herself. Not too badly but still there.
So why is this still so bad if both the NP and the Drive Skill are mitigatable? Because your map ranking includes a Damage Taken category. And her self damage counts against that. So use her Drive Skill a couple times, or her NP even ONCE and you can kiss that EX rank(needed for unlocking new Mystic Codes) gooooood fucking bye. "Oh Lord I offer this EX rank up to you" *BOOM*
So this has been Saika's Rant About A Musou Game. Haven't done one in a very long while. Hope it wasn't too boring or made no sense to anyone who hasn't played the game~
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After playing a few more maps as him, Arjuna is worse than I thought he was and gets dropped to C. God dammit Arjuna. How are you this bad.
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Wild Arms 4 - Decided to pick up a short, breezy game after the slog of FE4. So far I’ve done up to Wunderwelten and defeated Belial. Most recent event is running into Gawn. What a douchebag. He needs to be punched in the face for stealing food from children. We’ve transitioned from rolling my eyes at Arnaud to rolling my eyes at Gawn. The game is still great. I’m really enjoying the bosses and the speedy pace of gameplay and plot. It is of course very cheesy, because Wild Arms.
FEF Conquest - Nothin’ too fancy, just a new Hard mode run. The degree to which this game’s gameplay is better than Genealogy is truly amazing. I think I’ve completed the first ten maps in the time it would take me to complete 1.5 maps in FE4, and there are way fewer turns that you spend not engaging the enemy. This is why I am anti-nostalgia, once and forever.
<3
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FF 7- Beat this a few weeks ago. Good reminder on why it's such an iconic game. The setup of disk 1 works incredibly well, and the game is bursting with iconic scenes, mini games (iconic doesn't mean good though!), music and locations. If the battle system wasn't a complete steamroll it would be a great improvement. They have just made HP Plus a materia you found in a dungeon that way you'd really have to grind it to make it very effective.
Xenogears- Up to Zeboim. The plot is really well structured in these sections!
FF 5- Starting this, up to Karnak
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4 Dudes. 1 Car. -
Uh, so it took like two hours of updates to actually START the game?
Uh, so this game has like no plot and bad gameplay? What is even the fucking poi-
*discovers the ability to aim the camera directly at Gladiolus's ass as he pushes the car*
Ooooh I get it.
The only bit of plot/character development we get is the tension between Noctis and his dad, and poof he's gone. These three other dudes... who are they ? What do they stand for (besides yaoi)?
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I'm currently playing SaGa Frontier, a game for which I made an editor. I came here to make a thread (I heard there are some SaGa fans here) for it but it appears I can't make threads yet so if someone could rectify that, I would appreciate it.
Editor is here, download the version with the largest number:
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/snakeoil/downloads/
Source code:
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/snakeoil/src
Readme.txt:
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/snakeoil/src/default/readme.txt
Waza, the SF data project is here (necessary to understand some of the editors, like the skill editor):
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/waza/src/default/
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Super Robot Wars V: Why didn't anybody tell me these got English language support. Anyways starting with V first over T.
Complete forgot how absurdly dumb these games are. The game first starts off in a ravaged Earth where all the wars from the various series completely wiped out the sea and humanity's last hope is a battleship designed to look like a World War II navy vessal. Then stuff happens and Crossbone Gundam and Gundam 00 is like "can we be in this game but have no plot relevance" and it's k. Then they remember to throw in Getter and Mazinger so here have them too with no explanation on how they got here. Then wormholes open up and now we're allies with a corporate president that has a mecha combine with a train. So far we're lacking in half naked female mecha fanservice so they put Cross Ange in the game. Yuck. At least 7 female characters already want to bang Arthrun, who happens to show up at the perfect time when Cross Ange is introduced.
Apparently T has Cowboy Bebop. It is a mecha show now. Can't wait for Ein to pilot a mobile suit.
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So you know that new Persona game? The one with the new female character? No not P5 Royal, that's not out yet and doesn't look like that interesting an addition anyway. No not Q2 New Cinema Labyrinth either. No, I'm using my replacement PS Vita to finally catch up to the DL circa 2009… for some blistering new 2011 action...
Persona 4 Golden
First, the important thing: When doing a remake, why on earth would you downplay one of the *best* things about the original in the battle theme? I mean, sure, it's time to make history yeah is okay and reasonably catchy, but it's up against tough competition. This isn't P5 where getting player advantage ambushes is common, either (which does still play Reach out to the Truth).
Anyway, I figure my tolerance for creepy social links where people talk to themselves about their problems then credit a silent main for fixing everything about their lives was deep enough these days to trudge through. (No, I never played the PS2 version.) And hey, the localization is legit very good. For the most part -Marie's fsteak reference is a wee bit forced.
Currently on Kanji's dungeon. I beat Shadow Yukiko at L12 on Our Hero, L11 on Yosuke/Chie. Hard difficulty. Quite the slugfest, that - Terror Voice -> Shivering Rondo is a OHKO and she has insane HP in Golden to compensate for her new ice weakness, so if you take too long, she will run you out of fear healing / revival or will get lucky on Double Fang crits. Scary fight, I had no revival / fear healing left and Yosuke was dead as I won.
Thoughts compared to P5:
* Shuffle Time is a way smoother method for getting new Personas than shadow negotiation from P2/P5, which is slow and dumb. It rewards winning efficiently and doesn't have a swingy "roll a die and find out if the battle is over for free or if you just gave up a key AOA." idk why they went back to the old dumb method in P5.
* Related to the above, since you're not directly fighting / recruiting the same entities you get as Personas a la Pokemon, the game *should* be more sane to balance, since having a really busted enemy doesn't mean you can just recruit it and then have a really busted main character Persona. (Okay, sure, P2/P5 has the occasional unrecruitable random enemy, but it's not common.) Whether it'll actually take advantage of that, who knows, but I prefer the flavor anyway - having a whole ton of Shadows lying around that all claim to be clones of Queen Titania or whatever is a little strange, while having just a bunch of evil wizards wandering around is fine.
* Skipping Gun elemental is good by me. If you must have a 2nd flavor of physical, don't give the entire party access to it for free, it's not really an interesting distinction then. (Like, if ONLY Haru/Naoto had it, then it'd be interesting.) Loss of Nuclear/Psi elemental is an either/or thing, but probably fine; too many elements tends to overcentralize the Wild Card ability's flexibility more than it already is.
* Bland rando-dungeons is quite a step back after being spoiled by P5's amazing dungeon design, but eh, originally on a PS2, I get it.
* The Hierophant SL is very absent in both early P5 & early P4 - but this is because the relationship is rather hostile at first in P5 to explain it. You're supposed to like & sympathize with P4 Dojima, though. Now, police officers legit do work crazy hours in real life sometimes, which leads to sky-high divorce rates for cops and such, but seriously, he's around crazy rarely at the start, to the point that it transitions from "harried overworked dad doing what he can" to "child neglect" a little. Is there some kind of a crime wave going on in this sleepy small town?
Other thoughts:
* Marie, the new Golden character, seems like crystallized Japanese shut-in fanservice - extreme tsundere for no reason, into the main character, and somehow so clueless that even telling her even basic stuff counts as some amazing sensei lesson about life. I just might have to date her to annoy Sopko and see how deep this nonsense goes.
* Speaking of mocking Sopko, I know he said that he thought the game should have played up the possibility that Yosuke was the killer a bit more. I'm not seeing it; Shadows are all extreme oversharers bent on embarrassing their normal selves as best I can tell, so if Yosuke used normal mortal means to kill Saki, you'd think his Shadow would be eager to guilt-trip him.
* As another silly bit of trivia: if you start Marie's social link when it's raining outside, it's mysteriously not raining anymore. Some might say this is clearly a budget issue where there is only one version of the scene, but cultured people realize it means that Marie can control the weather, and is just cruelly not using that power to make it never rain.
* I really like that there's only ambient sounds and no music for when it rains. Really makes you notice it and be properly scared.
* After Sopko said that P4 Golden eliminated most of the remaining vestiges of Challenge, I actually started on Very Hard (blind). I sadly had to give that playthrough up and restart because the first dungeon is just that stupid. Knowing SMT difficulty curves, it's probably fine later, but while the bosses are quite beatable, the randoms post-Yukiko's Knight (Floor 6 & beyond) are just insane; when you're level 5-6, L13+ randoms have some level difference crazy damage modifier such that Magical Magus's hysterical slap will flat OHKO anybody barring Yu with a phys-resist Persona, and yes, that's with getting lucky and having the HP +50 Gentleman's Tux on both Yu & Yosuke. Very Hard removes the "retry from start of floor" option and you have punishingly little money so you can't exactly spam Goho-Ms. It makes roll-the-dice failures like "whoops both Chie & Yosuke missed the final shot on this charged up Magus, now Maragi deals 200 damage to the team" very throw-the-controller. At the time I assumed that there were 10 floors to Yukiko's castle (midboss on Floor 5, right?) so getting to the top seemed imposing and frustrating, but probably best for sanity's sake to give it up anyway. Plus no money seems like a less *fun* way to play the game anyway, it means you can't experiment or spend up to equip reserve party members or fuse fun Personas from the Compendium.
* For a fitting name, I went with "Ultra Narakumi" over rivals like "Pope Narakumi" or "Master Narakumi". Seeing the Good Omens miniseries makes me consider going with "Warlock Narakumi" though. Ah well.
* I started the Jester SL with comic relief sidekick Adachi, which I understand to be new to P4G. Uh.. I dunno how this one is gonna work. Dangerous territory here game. We'll see!
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IIRC Dojima doesn't even appear as a SLink until you solved the mystery for the month. So the worse you are at doing your job, the harder he's working to crack a case of missing persons that would basically be impossible. It's a nice little touch, but he's around a lot more often if you are clearing dungeons in 1 day.
Also - is this your first time playing P4? I thought you had already played it on PS2 so some of this stuff shouldn't be that surprising?
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(No, I never played the PS2 version.)
I mean. I did spoil myself on P4 back in the day via watching some YouTube videos of the plot (nicely skipping the S Links which I'm generally leery of), and I know the soundtrack of course. But you'll note I never voted on Persona 4 outside Nyarlie's Dungeon (wherein everybody votes everything).
Anyway that sounds right, for the first dungeon Dojima is basically never ever around and Nanako is being raised by a television. Which is accidentally extremely on-theme, granted.
(One other side comment as someone for whom a lot of the game is pre-spoiled: I respect P4 not spoiling itself by not giving names to certain shady people, like that gas station attendant telling people about the Midnight Channel when it rains, or the random other student who propositions Yukiko out of the blue. In Suikoden games, if you talk to the random store attendant and they have a portrait while everybody else doesn't, there's some inherent meta-spoiling going on here, which sure whatever in Suikoden, but bad in a mystery-themed game.)
One bit of plot weirdness: why the hell do silhouettes of future victims show up on the Midnight Channel? I get that once people are forcibly tossed in to the Metaverse their Shadow gets to star on the Midnight Channel, but silhouettes showing up early makes no damn sense. (Answer: It gives Our Heroes an excuse to interact with Kanji before he disappears I guess?! That's a narrative reason, though, not an in-universe one.)
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Ah, okay. I skipped over that line apparently. P4G balances out a few things, adds a few things and steps back on a couple of others. One of the key things that strips the challenges are the Golden Hand encounters. I'm sure you've seen one already but if you kill these dudes, they drop an insane amount of EXP. So much so that the routes in Speedruns basically avoid fighting anything else and just hunt Gold Hands of that dungeon.
The New SL don't really add much. Marie is pretty bad yes. Adachi is amusing but ultimately doesn't do much. You do get an option of going for a bad bad end though if you max out that S.Link. Kind of cool since they wrote an entire scenario for it, but it doesn't reveal much else about him (and kinda makes the end deduction easier really; that is, if it was difficult in the first place).
I think the reason for why the silhouettes are shown is later explained. I don't remember if it was a plot point or if you had to find some NPC to explain it. If you're interested, I can spoiler tag it since this is one of the few things you don't know about.
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* Speaking of mocking Sopko, I know he said that he thought the game should have played up the possibility that Yosuke was the killer a bit more. I'm not seeing it; Shadows are all extreme oversharers bent on embarrassing their normal selves as best I can tell, so if Yosuke used normal mortal means to kill Saki, you'd think his Shadow would be eager to guilt-trip him.
Yukiko. Yukiko was the killer early in production.Don't think I ever pitched the theory it was Yosuke.
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Atelier Ayesha:
I've finished the first playthrough long ago; just haven't gotten around to putting my thoughts down here. Got around half of the optional fights and didn't worry overmuch about the others. Went for an ending to unlock the Extras; can try for the fights I skipped on the next go-around with more knowledge of the alchemy system. Triggered all but one of the character specific endings.
With two game months to go, finally experimented some more with alchemy and created a higher capacity handbasket. That would have been nice for all those optional fights earlier. Money got tight at the end given my spending habits and the delivery jobs drying up. Rolled over the calendar at the workshop just because.
Really liked this game. Liked playing around with alchemy. The time limit gives weight to my choices and it feels generous enough for some flexibility. Combat sometimes felt like a chore; the small number of character skills don't do a lot for variety. Would have enjoyed the core gameplay even if Keithgriff had been the main character; he's got more of that main character persona. Of course, with a more conventional main character, the game wouldn't have attracted my attention as much. Ayesha is one of the least badass leads I've encountered and I wouldn't have it any other way. Already had enough badasses and wannabe badasses so I was ready for a change of pace.
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Playing Bloodstained. Is ver. gut. Will ramble more in detail at some point but posting right now mostly because I have no idea where to go. Have run out of new places double jump can get me and now just have a wide array of "need additional movement upgrade to bypass this" spots all over the map. Last boss I beat was in the library-ish tower.
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Octopath Traveler- God is dead, so the RPG is complete.
There is just... a lot to talk about in this game and I should really really have made an earlier post to wrap up each individual story honestly but I think I can remember those with some light reference to LPs or something. I need to get down some thoughts I"m having on the overall way it fits together. Which is... much better than I thought it would before playing the game, when I became profoundly disappointed it wasn't a SaGa Frontier-esque collection of smaller games with a nice bonus boss.
So to my surprise they tie up the lore and the gameplay in a way. 13 gods is pretty mythological, but the repeated idea is that the other twelve had to team up to seal Galdera right? Well... the eight travelers each fall under the domain of a separate god, which is a hard thing to make happen by accident. But of course, it wasn't accident in its way.
Ophelia, Cyrus, Olberic, and Primrose are all pulled into the plot as casualties of Lyblac's agents. Tressa, Alfyn, and H'aanit are all in at one level or another chasing after Graham Crossford, her biggest victim. Therion falls inbetween, trying to clean up another Lyblac-created mess. So aside from the usual "villain created their heroes" thing, there's still a divine spark there: these are Champions, brought together to replicate the tales of old, embodying the 12 gods as benign counterpart to Galdera's possession of Kit.
But considering how reliably the game is topical, it's got another layer. Everyone has things only they can do, and the underlying ills of society only become clear and something you can tackle together by fighting the battles in front of you first.
You're not just the hero of your own story, your story is key to weaving together the fabric of a better society.
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Going retro for this segment.
Made progress in my FF4 file beating Bahamut and the Giant. Bahamut is more nerve wracking than difficult. I did clean out the fixed Behemoths and warp out to rest before coming back in to challenge him. It's still quite a trek with time consuming fights though and messing up at the boss can cost 20-30 minutes of progress. Got it on the first try, thankfully.
Had a Thunder claw on Edge for Giant randoms. As unintuitive as it is to do so, it boosts his damage a lot there. The machine weakness makes up for the significant drop in listed attack power. Giant takes a while to actually complete since I steal 99 Alerts while I have that chance (spread out over multiple fights for sanity). No D. Machines which suits me fine. They are neither dragon or machine as far as hitting racial weakness goes.
I have fought the Elements boss honestly in the past. This time around, I don't try to play fair and destroy Milon with Reflected spells. Rydia tosses out a Bio early before Elements HP drops below 40000. Don't use Slow at all (intentional) Totally dominated. Milon either hit Imaged people or Cecil or Fusoya who have Priest hats and thus take only about 150 thanks to Undead resistance. CPU is a joke as I remember to Slow the Attack orb.
Seiken Densetsu 3
Inspired enough by recent releases, I go track this down after having not played it in a very long time. Mostly stick to a direct path with the occasional tactical retreat if I feel I'm getting too beat up early or have rotten luck with traps. I run with a Kevin, Riesz, Charlotte team to have an easy trip. Volcano nearly drained me of resources. Since I'm not battling every formation in a region, my levels are a lot lower than they were in the past. Used to be right at 18 after the volcano. This time, the party was only at 15 on completion. Did the snowfield and was still 1000 EXP short of the first class change after returning to Elrand.
in hindsight, really should have grinded to 21 for Lugar so that Riesz could have Power Down. Still won but that was an unnecessary risk. Another side effect of not fighting as much is that I ran short of cash for equipment upgrades after the first God Beast. And it would have been earlier except I forgot about the new equipment shops after the Holy Land visit. Flammie Drum in hand, the path is open to Flammie glitch Kevin's attack into broken territory.
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Persona 4 Golden
Movin' along, thanks to long plane flights.
* Shadow Kanji: Actually wiped me on my first try. One of the support (Tough Guy I think) got Tarukaja'd then Rampage'd for massive physical multitarget damage which was extremely horrible. Second try was a win though, both with knowin the weaknesses to clear the support faster plus better luck on the support not using Red Wall / Blue Wall to stall with. Once the support is dead it's mostly clear sailing, but good fight otherwise.
* Shadow Rise: Is awful.
* Shadow Teddie: Well that's some HP bar alright, but ultimately a single-acting opponent who announces all their ice attacks to let Yukiko defend and Nihil Hand being completely nulled by guard is not really gonna threaten. Bosses need to learn and accept that they are going to spending most of their turns under Tarunda, and need some way to threaten regardless.
(Side comment: Yukiko didn't get an early Divine Grace & Mudo in P4 vanilla? Well that might make things trickier, although maybe just more expensive if you're stuck using Value Medicine healing rather than Divine Grace boosted Media.)
* Shadow Mitsuo: Actually kinda dangerous. While if Shadow Teddie gets a Heat Wave crit he mostly just wastes the One More with Spirit Drain, Mitsuo follows up weakness-hitting MT magic with a fuck-off Megido, and he double-acts and seems to like hitting the weakness of someone downed again, so you better hope you were full-healed before and he was Tarunda'd if you want so survive that combo. He's got lots of MT element damage so tricky to play around all of it unless you're willing to grow & huff a ton of Paprika for Walls, which will also slow down your kill and leave you open to status hax losses, so choose your poison. I lose again the first time, although definitely due to SMT bullshit: during the first rebuilding phase, he Stagnant Airs -> Evil Smile -> MY ENTIRE TEAM GETS FEARED. Normally, similar to chain revival, you can use chain status-healing with free status heals + item status heals + Yukiko's Amrita, but nope, all 4 of my team passed their turn shivering in fear, followed by Ghastly Wail for a total party kill. If I'd known this was coming, I actually did have a Yatagarsu Persona with Null Fear for Yu, but lesson learned. Realizing I'd want to kick my offense into gear some, went downstairs, found another lucky hand, and got Yukiko Mediarama which made my defensive game notably more efficient. 2nd try went much better; I did have to hack through 3-4x Mitsuo the Heros, but this time the Stagnant Air -> Evil Smile combo never came out, so there we go.
Minor whining: I ended up not liking Futaba's extreme cheatiness in P5, and I dunno if I'm a fan of Rise's upgrades in P4G either, suspect I would have liked P4 vanilla's version more. Definitely not gonna push her S. Link too fast so she doesn't start dropping random buffs on everyone, but you can't stop her from occasionally boosting All-Out Attacks, which.. they're already cool and iconic, you don't need to make them take longer, or suggest a fun cool chaotic rumble is being directed by your distant cheerleader or whatever. Boo hiss.
Social Links: Just as I tried not to rant again about FE Fates Conquest's plot, I'll try not to rant too much here. To be sure, plenty of these are inoffensive and well-written. However, I'll make one representative rant, and Yumi Ozawa of the drama club wins the award for SF rant inspiring S. Link so far. A few disclaimers first:
* There is a grand tradition of convenient coincidences to get the player to where the plot is. What are the odds that Zack's buddy fell into the exact church that his girlfriend was chillin' at, etc.
* The "style" of Persona 4 is to almost always be watching through Hero/Yu's eyes, with villain-cam scenes extremely rare, so Yu needs to directly be at any event (or watch it on TV).
Okay, sure. But Yumi's plot is basically that her separated dad is dying (whom she hates) and her mom is trying to arrange a family reconciliation with him, while Yumi would be happy to let him die in solitude . Heavy stuff. And there's nothing wrong with that. However the way they integrate Our Hero into this is *awful* lazy writing so far. He just straight-up follows Yumi over to the hospital uninvited and eavesdrops on super-personal shit involving Yumi's family. Wince. And then gets caught without Yumi having much of a reaction to the random guy from drama club doing this (this happens early in the Social Link, so it's not like her long-time boyfriend did this). No. If you must, have Yumi explicitly invite Our Hero along to the hospital because (insert BS justification here, needs emotional support, needs a scooter driver, idk). Or have Hero show up at the neighboring hospital room for a legit but coincidental reason, there to pick up his cold medicine or something. Or massively delay this event in the S. Link (probably not feasible). But yikes, this is super-awkward yet the narrative refuses to recognize it.
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Xenogears- Babel Tower beaten (as well as the next segment). Had to look at a youtube video to get the timing for the first room down (which means that it was a pain in the ass since I normally use my Vita on the metro). Will be lowering my score for the game 1 point just for that dungeon. Also, one of the enemies in Shevat Corridor (some sort of Wels?) was really nasty. Citan level speed, have a buff that gives them damage than can KO any PC if the damage focuses (And doesn't need much focus to kill Maria). HP isn't great, but they have enough evade to evade deathblows so you'll see some nastiness occasionally.
FF 8- Upon replay, it's very clear that there's no way a halfway respectable organization would have allowed Zell (or Selphie) to become SeeDs. If Zell qualified as passing solely by virtue of being attached to Squall, I'd hate to see whoever failed.
FF 6- Solely grinding towards the end. Only 3 dungeons (Ebot, Fanatic, Cyan's Dream) left besides the final dungeon. Seem to be a lot higher than the stat topic level wise. My main party (AKA: the only one I really run) is around 42-43. Minimal switching and no Moogle Charm use.
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Every enemy in that dungeon is an extreme gimmick to account for being locked to Maria and one of two PCs you originally picked for a gear dungeon. That one’s deal is it only powers up if alone, so Maria’s MT damage makes them way safer.
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Dhyer: FF6's XP curve doesn't really change much post-level 30. Checking, it's like ~8k XP to go from level 30->31 and 13k XP to go from level 40->41. Not really THAT different, so if you focus the same characters, it's pretty easy to hit L42 pre-Kefka's Tower. Of course, the way Kefka's Tower works strongly encourages at least some party rotation & XP spreading, which will move things a lot closer to "around L40 for everyone." (Definitely a good justification to let Terra/Celes grab Fire3 / Ice3 even if forced to only the reasonable-level automatic spells learnt, though.)
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Super Mario Odyssey, because I can. Also known as the game that makes it painfully obvious I haven't played a game with 360 camera control in literal decades.
My need to 100% games with achievements is warring with my desire to avoid tedium. Well, yeah, I could spend the next hour scouring this level for the last 3 purple coins, orrrrr I could go play something else. I could look it up online but what's the point of that? I like Talkatoo giving you the name of the quest without any further detail because it makes me think the devs spent a little bit of time naming the 500+ achievements since they do turn out to be related to the location or activity required to get them.
Otherwise I'm playing the non-raiding lines of Pokemon Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unlimited Unite, because I am a scrub that has gone full casual. Hunting shinies is way more fun than min-maxing even though every time I catch Pokemon I have to decide if they're worth keeping even though 90% of them have no use in battle and I have yet to use my TM scrolls because I'm waiting for the right one and
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Xenogears- Lol Shakhan. I mean, Vierge is nasty as hell, but Shakhan could have spent at least one turn trying to attack. I also feel like I need a timeline for Aveh. When exactly was Sigurd training at Solaris and how did he even get there?
Also, grah Margie AI. Use Elly to put someone to sleep, Margie wakes them up with a worthless 1 MT Damage attack!
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Bloodstained Ritual of the Night:
I felt like the developers looked back on the kickstarter disaster of Mighty No. 9 and realized that their goal is just to make a Metroidvania and make it good. Nothing fancy. That they did. Almost too safe. A lot of abilities, movesets, castle aethetics, powerups, and even boss design is straight up ripped out of Symphony of the Night and Aria/Dawn of Sorrow. If you love those games then this game is great as the physics engine and controls are the best of the bunch. Shards or "souls", your special abilities, are pretty well rounded and not a lot of garbage with one or two good ones. Weapon attributes are important now since you can look at enemy resistantes and weaknesses for proper exploitation.
Some bad things though. The game is incredibly buggy. Items get stuck in the walls, lots of menu lag, one boss turns the game into a powerpoint presentation, and too much loading inbetween screen transtions. The last one I heard is much better in the PC version, but I went with the PS4 one since there was a physical release. I like the cryptic progression path but the game will spoil you where to go next just by talking to the shop lady. Enough, I want to screw around and find my own way thank you.
However the worst part of the game is a kickstarter backer got to design an enemy in the game and made it a large disembodied dog head. Not like a evil looking dog, nope just a large doberman head. Not cool.
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So I found this Valkyrie Profile mobile game called Valkyrie Anatomia. It's a gacha game with all that entails. But damned if they didn't outright nail the aesthetics of VP1. The hand-colored art, the dour music, and the stories. Oh wow, the stories. VP2 had a lot of ball drops, but the biggest one was how the focus was no longer on the Einherjar. This game brings back the heart-wrenching, tear-jerking, punchyouinthenuts death stories, and it's wonderful.
In addition to story characters, I got Frei and Mystina. They made Frei badass. She floats in the air like Freya and does aerial martial arts.
Don't like what they did to PWS, but it does cut down on animation time I guess.
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Haven't had regular internet in a bit, and have been very busy with life things before then, so plenty of time to play games and think about them, not much time to post... until now!
Suikoden 2 - Finished a run of this where I counted up all the lines. Science!
Suikoden 2 is one of those games I tend to think of as one of the great video game stories. It’s not my singular favourite even in its own series (that’d be 5), but it’s still pretty darn good. Playing through the game again (for the fourth time in the last two decades) and reflecting on it, here are some of the things I think it does very well:
1. Very effective use of dialog to develop its characters.
It’s funny, because Suikoden 2 has, on one level, terrible dialog, thanks to the translation. Gratuitous punctuation marks everywhere, poor word choice, misattributed lines, etc. But where it matters, the game shines through. With Jowy, for instance, the game shows rapidly and subtly that he has intelligent and resourceful, that he’s willing to do some morally questionable things to attain his ends (e.g. lighting the fire in the mercenary fort), that he feels he doesn’t belong (to his family, his country, etc.), that he feels a strong desire to (over)protect those he loves regardless of their wishes, from Riou at the start of the game to the entire nations of Highland and Jowston later. Sometimes it’s even through lack of dialog; his ellipsis-filled pause at the Jowston Council scene certainly communicates his feelings on what he witnesses there. None of this is rubbed in your face, and a lot of the characterization is relatively subtle if you aren’t watching for it, but it’s remarkable how on a replay pretty much every action the character takes is amply foreshadowed by his earlygame characterization.
I don’t think any other single character in the game is this effective overall, but certainly the same broad strokes apply to other characters, mainly Shu and Nanami, who again receive plenty of consistent characterization which informs their choices later. Viktor, Flik, and Apple aren’t as major players, but again you get a strong sense of them. Luca Blight, though he does occasionally veer a bit into cartoonish (in spite of the praise of the game’s subtly effective character work above), is certainly overall effective and memorable; he makes sense in his own twisted way, as do the ways other characters react to him. And so on. All of this combines to make the plot flow more smoothly, and make the characters fan and interesting to watch even on replays.
2. A good, coherent setting which connects to the plot, characters, and themes of the game
This is of course a strength of the series generally (although it must be noted that 1 is not nearly as good at it… 2 really got the balled rolling). Jowston is a patchwork of city-states which don’t really see eye to eye, often suspicious of each other. Highland is fanatical and deeply patriarchal (they “sacrifice” their queen for fortune in battle!). And despite the temptation to paint any one nation as just good or bad (and there’s a lot of bad in Highland), the game goes to great lengths to show that things are complicated. South Window is kind but weak. Matilda prizes honour but is very self-serving about the way it does so. Tinto is industrious and pragmatic; quick to abandon its allies as Highland invades but equally quick to admit that doing so was a mistake and sending help once the Dunan Army does a favour for them. Through Annabelle’s competence and good nature we form a naturally high opinion of Muse, but the game acknowledges that its strength is partly built on the slimy actions of her predecessor. And Highland… as mentioned, it’s an unpleasant, patriarchal mess of a nation, doubly so as we realize that one of the most unpleasant, bloodthirsty true runes is at its core. But damned if the game doesn’t also sell you on how its ideology can be seductive; Jowy seeks to harness it to do good while also minimizing the bad. And you understand how the likes of Seed and Culgan can come to love the place as their home that they have always served, and how good people can be caught in its machinery.
My main knocks on the game are the same as always. One, silent mains suck. The plot really wants to draw a contrast between Riou and Jowy, but when Riou is an poorly-characterised player stand-in, it doesn’t work as effectively as it could. The Peace Conference scene is a hell of an effective scene just because of the gutpunch it represents and how it reframes the rest of the game. But it could have been even better if Riou had been able to articulate his own beliefs there, or the next time they met, and make the stakes of the conflict clear. The game tries to work around this issue by giving Nanami a lot of the dialog that Riou might otherwise have, but Nanami is her own person with her own ideas (in particular, she hates any conflict with Jowy while Riou appears sees it as sadly necessary, and a talking Riou would have done great service to this difference).
Two, far too much of the story is driven by men. Nanami has the most lines, but to a large extent she’s an observer, only rarely shaping events. Apple is largely in the story to be replaced by the thoroughly more competent Shu and then carry out the more menial parts of the strategist’s role. Jillia and Pilika are largely characters that things happen to, and at best we get their opinions on them afterward. Otherwise, this is the story of Riou and Jowy, of Shu and Luca and Leon, of Viktor and Flik. It’s a place where the game shows its age; I would like to think that the game would have a few more major female players and voices if it were made today, or at least that there’d be more of an outcry about this issue (it feels like it went virtually unnoticed when the game was new).
But it’s a great yarn overall, no question.
I have less to say about the rest of the game, obviously. The gameplay is quietly competent, which is better than I would say for Suikoden 4 onwards and certainly “good enough” considering the game’s other strengths, though not something I’d ever play the game for in and of itself. Enemies have enough teeth to be worth paying attention to and the rune system is pretty fun. The soundtrack is solid. I’m not a huge fan of the game’s sprite style but it does some great work with their animation details at times. Really, though, the rest of the package just rounds the game out in a nice way, leaving you with a very overall satisfying product. I was never the game’s number one fan back in the day (I’ve always preferred Suikoden 3), but it’s a game I respect a lot, and a game that has aged very well despite its obvious flaws.
8/10
Paper Mario 2 - Played through and beat this.
Gameplaywise it’s really rather shockingly similar to the first game. HP/FP/BP and the way you choose your levelups, the badge system, the partners (the first two partners are even the same first two from PM1 with a new coat of paint), jump/hammer and the way each upgrades, the enemy design... I’ve seen all this before!). There are just enough differences to keep me interested (the fact that partners take damage, and the action order of Mario and the partner determining who gets targeted more makes for some interesting decisions at least), but overall it’s more of the same. And that’s not bad considering PM’s gameplay was always a strong point in its favour.
There are a lot of badges which raise your damage, and naturally I used as many as I could. I feel like the game would be a lot harder if you didn’t; there were so many random formations (not to mention bosses who summon support) which I could take out in one round because of my power-twinking and I often feel like if I couldn’t I would have a bad time. As is none of the bosses killed me, though a few (Chapter 1 boss, Chapter 7 boss, and the final) came reasonably close. (Chapter 2 and 6 bosses stand out as bad on the other hand.) Certainly a game with lots of potential for challenge runs, like the first.
The writing is more engaging than the first game… and certainly more surreal. PM1 is honestly probably the most generic of the Mario RPGs writing-wise. This one isn’t anything amazing, but it’s probably in the upper half, and has more of those crazy moments I associate with Mario RPGs. Highlights (spoilers abound):
-The Peach sequences from PM1 are back but they don’t involve Bowser so to make things interesting her main interactions are with this computer (self-described as the perfect computer) which develops a creepy crush on her.
-After you beat a certain chapter boss (unusually early, too!), you get the big celebratory end-of-chapter music… and then Mario leaves the screen and you realise you’re in control of the boss’s old body now. Yes this game does Chrono Cross’s big scene better than CC does it.
-There is one scene where one character demands another says “I love you” 100 times. He actually does it, and the game counts.
-There is one sequence where you are told repeatedly not to look at a certain book. If you do it anyway, the game warns you three times to see if you are sure. Then it plotkills you. There’s also a non-standard game over in the endgame which amused me too.
-The main villain is unceremouniously crushed by Bowser who falls on him randomly, after the latter spent the entire game bumbling around ineffectively. (Bowser remains a joy in these games.)
The game does have some negatives compared to the first… mostly it feels a bit slower in a few ways (walking speed is too slow and the spinjump which allowed faster movement is gone, not enough fast travel / dungeon escape options) and some parts are definitely a bit gameplay-light for my tastes (such as the train chapter). But overall I think I enjoyed it more anyway, though both end up as 7/10 to me.
Partner notes:
Goombella: Benefits more than average from all the power-boosting you can do, tends to end up with incredibly high damage if the enemy has low defence. Later she can also transfer turns to Mario who has more damage still, so hey, that’s nice. Whereas Goombario didn’t really stand out, Goombella is in the running for MVP.
Koops: The other character in the running for MVP, just because he has a 3 FP MT attack. He also has 1 def, which is cool, and a crippling weakness to jump attacks, which isn’t, but doesn’t come up too often at least. Early on the defence is nice, later on his MT gets better and better relatively. The other character in the running for MVP.
Flurrie: Flurrie plays a role that only PM2 could allow, the party tank. Good HP and Lip Lock is an incredible draining move: high damage, works on spiky/flying/etc. enemies, ignores defence, so it has a pure offensive niche on top of basically keeping Flurrie alive indefinitely and allowing you to relentlessly troll enemies who can’t target your back character.
Baby Yoshi: Probably the weak link of the party, he appears to specialize in damage to zero defence but isn’t as good at it as Goombella. His real niche is probably Gulp which does def-ignoring damage to two targets, so when you’re up against exactly two high-def enemies, he’s your guy.
Vivian: They nerfed Outta Sight! And y’know it still manages to be quite useful in certain situations. Otherwise she has a 6 FP attack which can hit everything except fire immunes, so that’s good. The best partner against the final boss as both those moves were really valuable, which makes sense narratively I suppose.
Bobbery: Can blow himself up for the strongest MT attack available to any partner. It costs 9 FP but sometimes it’s just what you need. Also has high HP. There’s not much else to say about him, but he’s solid.
I missed the mouse PC. :(
Super Mario Bros. 2 - Also replayed this again.
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this.cannot.continue.
fuck. why haven't i played this sooner?
A GAME ALL ABOUT KILLER ROBOTS?
currently playing as 9S. hacking minigame is fun. i know what's coming and i am ready.
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Now playing Vandal Hearts 2, new (for me) PSX games in 2019 here we go. It's... pretty good? Better than the first game certainly. Plotwise, the child arc had some generally solid stuff (outside of Goddard's fufufufufu) though has been slower since, and Joshua seems like a good character so far. Gameplaywise there is very little which is more satisfying than moving a character behind an enemy who has just moved to attack you and stabbing him in the back while he ineffectively stabs the air you used to occupy, and I like the character customization, though a lot of the interface is certainly slow and clunky. Anyway it's not going to be an all-time great but it's proving to be a good use of time.
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fuck. why haven't i played this sooner?
it's so good!
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Felt like writing words about Trials of Mana.
Though I did stop to grind for cash here and there, for the most part blew through the God-best dungeons and entered Pedan at Lv 32. I'm fairly confident that some grinding is expected. Most equipment are stat sticks as it is so as long as I had the best available body armor, leaving something for later isn't a big deal between Charlotte's MT healing, Riesz stat-downs, and Kevin beating stuff up. Also, I forgot to Flammie glitch Kevin though the main effect of doing so is merely beating stuff up faster.
Got lucky and has all my desired class change items by Lv 34. Chose to be impatient and charged forth into the final area. Zable Fahr fell at Lv 35; a lucky Papa Poto claw drop helped Kevin punch it out decently quick. Deathjester was challenged and beaten at Lv 36. His physicals doing 90ish a shot is a bit intimidating to my 450-500 max HP. I did win the damage race long before I could get worried about Charlotte's MP. Ice saber Kevin punches real good.
This game really seems to hate mages sometimes. After the volcano, the next 3 bosses all counter magic and high level techs. Most of the God-beats have a counter for techs as well, sometimes independent of a magic counter. That doesn't come up much with this physical oriented team but it's a noticeable feature when magic is already nerfed from the last game by pausing all action (no free melee damage while something is getting hurt by spells).
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There are enough places where magic is super-useful to make up for that IMO, either for ripping through randoms quickly or hitting bosses who fly / go physical immune etc. Angela is generally regarded as a pretty strong PC.
High-tier techs are generally a bit more questionable, granted; the ST ones are basically pointless IIRC.
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Nier: Automata - Finished, got endings A-E and ended up deleting my save file…
There’s a lot to unpack with this game.
First, let’s state what I think everyone can agree on. The music/visuals/voice acting/dialogue are all so so so good.
Gameplay is really really fun. At first I was trying to limit my item use by just relying on the regen chip, but Eve broke me of that habit due to being very very tricky. I think I derived a lot of extra enjoyment from the combat because of my somewhat fake constraint on healing in the first 2/3 of the game. After that, all bets were off. I decided to channel the power of hate and rage toward the robots and went full cheese on them. Overclock + Auto-Item + regen was basically the end of the game. I also really got a kick out of the space shooter sections in the mech. I was at first lukewarm toward the hacking gameplay, but over time I warmed up to it, especially after getting good.
That being said, I think the game’s biggest flaw gameplaywise is that it has a very wonky difficulty curve. The beginning is just brutal because you can’t save for the first hour and the game just kinda tosses you into it without being able to buy healing items. Then the game is too easy for a long while, and then toward the late stages of A/B path, it gets harder again, cumulating at the final boss who is fairly brutal. The third path is also really hard in general, although the final dungeon is a little less hard than some of the stuff leading up to it. A few of frustrating bits in the game: 1. The part where 9S gets statused out in Chapter 11 as he’s trying to save the YoRHa from being attacked right before they all become mind-controlled. 2. The Soul Box, where there was a huge amount of hacking, no save point throughout, and then I died to the boss and got thrown way back. (I ended up leaving and saving after doing all of the hacking, but I only died once.). 3. The final form with Eve where you are staggering. I struggled with that a lot.
Gameplay is a bit same-y but I feel like the game does a good enough job at varying up things that it never feels too stale even with a relatively straightforward combat system. <3
Plotwise… man. It is damn good and really makes you think. It has some really good character work with 2B and 9S, and I really enjoyed watching 9S’s descent into madness and nihilism. There’s a lot of mysteries to uncover and every mystery makes the world make a little more sense. I really liked the way that the characters interact with the world and slowly begin to discover things about the setting as time goes on. I think it does a good job of setting building with pretty much every dungeon in A/B route in particular. The Bunker stuff and the part where the Bunker is hacked definitely does a good job of building psychological tension. Adam and Eve are pretty good as well, especially on 9S’s path, and I liked Pascal in general as well; I think a purely sympathetic machine does the game a service.
I enjoyed how Devola and Popola’s backstory tied into the first Nier, and it explains some stuff about the game, although isn’t tied to it too much. I know some people complain about A2 not having as much as the other two, and I agree, but I found her pretty effective. To be honest, she is the heroine we needed after everything that happened in the game at that point, and I LOVE her interaction with Pod.
On the other hand, I feel like the game is a little bit less clear on what exactly motivates the machines to be so malevolent toward the end of the game. In particular, I thought it was weird that the machine had so much malice for Pascal. I did like the very brief throwaway line idea that the machines kept around the androids for the sake of evolutionary pressure (to be honest, a very interestingly logical thing to do) but the game doesn’t really run with that or any other explanation to explain why they are so needlessly cruel, especially to 9S (21O fight and 2B clones fight being two examples of extreme douchiness). I guess part of the point is that the things that the machines do are meaningless, but that’s boring. The themes remind me a bit of I Have No Mouth and I must Scream; the idea of this obsessively evil machine that likes suffering, but I'm not even sure if that machine thingie does! It’s also weird how after all of the struggles, you kill the machine consciousness with some small tricks and beating up a big robot. I dunno.
The endings were a little brief, but I enjoyed the E ending even if the shooter part was totally nutso. Hahaha.
9/10. Had fun. Would play again. And I would definitely listen to the soundtrack again.
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On the question of why the machines are violent: that's actually their natural state.
The truth is the opposite of what the game made you believe. Machines are in a malfunctioning like state when they are showing intelligence and human like behavior.
By the end game, they just revert back to normal when N2 is exercising her influence.
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Rayman Legends - Partway through the fourth world at this point. The game is breezy and fun to piddle around with; after playing harder platformers like Celeste it seems pretty easy (not that easy, of course! It's still tough! But I feel a bit desensitized to its toughness). It's a fluffy, enjoyable game but nothing more than that.
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - Replaying this in anticipation of 3H. I think this is my fourth run through Conquest and it's always a blast to play. I just finished Sophie's prologue and now I am doing the Kitsune map. Now, if 3H is similar to this game except with a plot that is actually good, wouldn't that be a blessing? (I'll believe it when I see it.)
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Persona 4 Golden
Shuffle Time - P4 vanilla may have had the right idea with only handing out Personas here. The "upgrade a skill" card is pretty busted, notably. I got skill upgrades on my physical persona (Kin-ki) going to Brave Blade, then to God's Hand, at the Secret Lab. Well that's a thing. The Emperor "Persona +1 level" also helps keep old Persona relevant for a nice long time.
Shadow Naoto - Okay, in terms of fight design? A-. Spamming Mamudoon a lot would be lame-o. You want a smart tactician feel that wins via intelligence / trickiness, so give her good AI that aggressively attempts to hit elemental weaknesses and some realization that Buffing Is Good, but less raw brute power. In terms of actual difficulty? lololololol, at least as long as you don't make the Poor Life Decision to stick a Persona with an elemental weakness on Yu. But you have plenty of solid choices for personas that don't have one, or skill inheritance, so RIP. The Heat Riser One Mores are a nice thought, but nothing stops you from immediately re-applying Tarunda, which means Naoto ain't never killing you through your healing, even if she gets a little tankier & dodgier.
Skill cards- While on the above note, Marie's skill card prices are a little wacky. Tarunda, maybe the best spell in the game excluding late-game cheaty stuff like Debilitate? Oh no big deal, that's 5,000 yen. Bufudyne, a staple boring attack spell? That's 50,000 yen, we tossed a 0 at the end. P5 making skill card duplication essentially cost the same for any card was probably fairer, even if it was pretty weak as a result.
Kunino-Sagiri - Makarakarn / Makaracorn makes a mockery of the one potentially dangerous phase of the fight, the Quad Convergence phase. Reflect Yu when you don't know what the element is, then reflect whoever's weak to that element once you do.
P4 Quests & Rainy Day drops - Kinda don't like how this incentive to re-run old dungeons combines with the XP curve not being very tilted makes it very easy for the main character to go overlevel. Poor Shadow Naoto, a guide said a drop happened on a certain floor, which was correct in P4 vanilla, but the enemy was on different floors in P4 Golden, so insert some pointless accidental grinding. Even beating up the last dungeon's randoms seems to give decent XP unless you're really, REALLY overlevel, so for Kunino-Sagiri, Yu was L69, while everyone else was L60-63, quite a leap when level is the god stat.
Anyway, as a random takeaway: Teddie is quietly very good once his social link catches up and he learns some more spells, which is a little surprising after Morgana's stint as cast LVP in P5. P4 doesn't hand out buffs / debuffs to many party members, or waits a long while to do so, while Teddie can lay down a fleet of buffs as a support which helps takes some heat off of Yu. Cycle between Matarukaja, Marakukaja, Marakunda, & some backup healing, enjoy your broken buffs that'd been mildly constrained by requiring Yu's turn in the first half of the game. I guess if you went into Kunino-Sagiri at a lower level, the reduced offense could mean that Teddie would run dry of MP before the fight finished, but you'll live.
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Vandal Hearts 2 - Beat. Final time was around 38 hours, levels were just over 50. Good game! I think it's fair to say it exceeded my expectations.
Gameplay: The core paradigm of the game, that every time you move one of your PCs, an enemy moves at the same time, is a fascinating one. If the enemy behaved highly randomly, it would be very frustrating. But instead, the enemy moves according to a relatively predictable set of rules. Which means the game very, very much rewards you looking over the enemies and predicting which one will move and what they will do, and then, either moving their intended target away from his or her current location, or doing something to mitigate or prevent the enemy's actions (e.g. killing them with someone who has more speed). You can check enemy skillsets and threat ranges so you really have basically all the information you need, and as I mentioned before, correctly predicting an enemy action and exploiting it is a great feeling. It also plays differently than pretty much any other SRPG I've played as a result, and strategies such as deliberately moving less useful PCs first to draw enemies forward and then slam them with a big AoE later in the round are definitely quite specific to this game. It's neat. I wouldn't want to see this in every SRPG but it makes this one a unique and fun experience.
The PC customization side of things is pretty fun too; you can basically choose what to make everyone and the decision of what type of armour to equip (flying = high mobility but low HP/MP; robe = very high MP but not good otherwise; light armour = the Mario of armours, pretty good everything but never the best, heavy = highest HP but low move/MP) is a good one, though I think heavy armour is a bit undertuned because mobility is so important and it didn't need the extra problem of low MP since even fighters like having that.
Weak points of the gameplay include the transfer system, which is just needlessly time-consuming; every time you get new equipment (which happens often) you need to transfer your skills to them, since skills exist on equipment and not the PCs themselves. I feel like this could have been streamlined for sure. The skills themselves are fun though. The game also is hopeless at designing "big" boss fights (including the final boss) since they get a small number of turns early in the round and often can't move (and don't have uber range) which is a crippling combination in this system! Fortunately those are relatively rare, most boss fights are the more standard type against a beefed-up human or two and these are generally a lot of fun (boss HP is in a good place, high enough to make blitzing a viable option but not an easy one like it often is in FFT).
Also, for most of the game VH2 feels like it has learned from FFT's mistakes and lets you back out and save/buy stuff/etc. between fights in one location. Then at the very end you have to do two fights in a row in a couple places, okay fine. Then the final dungeon you have to do four in a row, with no saving or formation screen or anything. This would be obnoxious if the final battle weren't somehow an even bigger joke than VH1's.
Music: Definitely a weak point in the game, the composition isn't great and the same few tracks are reused a lot. There are only like 5-6 battle tracks. The final boss doesn't even get a unique one. Definitely an issue it shares with VH1 from what I recall.
Plot/writing: It's interesting at least! One of the better PSX plots, but certainly not the best.
What it does well is that most of the major characters are at least a bit complicated. It's a breath of fresh air compared to the black and white world of Fire Emblem etc. Most of the villains, even if they are bad people, are quite human and the game wants you to know how they tick. With a couple misfires, I ended up quite liking most of the major players, for whatever role they ended up playing, although there are certainly no all-time favourites here.
(some spoilers from here, the big ones are in tiny text as usual)
Joshua is definitely someone I appreciate. While the game is (somewhat) about him, it never wants to lionize him or talk about him (i.e. you~~) as the best person ever. He is secretive, runs from responsibilities, and impulsive. Yet he still gets some good scenes (the one where he calls Nicola on his whiny bullshit stands out). Pratau is kinda the co-main with him, and the revelation that his plan to rescue the prince turns out to actually be a plan to manipulate him as a figurehead for a rebellion definitely blindsided me because it's such a cold thing for an "honourable" character to do. The rest of the PC cast is minor and quirky, I don't have too much to say about them. They're better than VH1's at least.
Among NPCs, I liked Mahler, who pretty much splices the noble, loyal enemy general trope with a religious fanatic who believes that mass murder is justified to save people's souls. His character arc humanizes fanatics/cultists in a way that is very uncommon in media. Nicola, pre-Chapter 4, is very effective: the game initially paints him as this hero but, even though his heart is in the right place, he sells out and becomes a puppet and a broken shell of a man, which is not the direction I expected but a good one. Clive is pretty minor but his "what the fuck, Joshua" moment in Chapter 2 is great. Ladorak is your standard Tywin/Marscal/Charlton/etc., not the best version of those but I still liked him, Jacob torches villages but believes he is doing the right thing and has people he cares about, again a more human take on a character who could easily just have gone the direction of the bloodthirsty monster. The game even manages to salvage one of its least sympathetic characters, Agatha, whose long game to free her country only to be tragically derailed by the children whose lives she'd ruined as pawns in her end goal caught me by surprise in a good way.
Sadly there are also some very, very big misses. One of them, unfortunately, is the main villain. While I like the political manipulator Godard and would have enjoyed seeing more of him, his motivation is batshit nonsense and his ability to mind-control seemingly anyone is stupid and unsatisfying (I can accept his mind control of Graud and Mohosa and maybe even then Blood Knights though it's certainly a disappointing end to their arcs, but if he's able to walk in and mind control Kleuth, his enemy, why doesn't he just mind control freaking everyone?). But an even worse miss is Yuri. St. Nirvath is a bad person I am having a crisis of faith the only solution is to KILL ALL MY FRIENDS AND BURN THE WORLD DOWN what the fuck that character is a disaster. Ugh. Nicola also being randomly alive in Chapter 4 makes no fucking sense, I get that Ladorak did something behind Godard's back and that's cool and makes sense but why would he save the life of Nicola whom he has no respect for? And Nicola magically becoming competent and generically boring but also irrelevant is really weird.
Adele is the one character I will throw into her own special camp, the character who oozes potential but it's not realized that well. She has worldview which serves as an excellent foil to that of Joshua and the potential for dramatic conflict there is awesome. And the broad strokes of what they go for is good! She and Godard use each other to accomplish their goals, eventually bringing her into conflict with Pratau and Joshua. But unfortunately they never really make good on the specifics, and in particular her reason for fighting you at the Cathedral at the end is complete nonsense: why is she helping defend Godard's pet project instead of facing you down at her own capital?
While the game's overall plot is pretty good with some flaws, it struggles with moment-to-moment writing. Some of this is the scene-writing/direction. VH2 uses these absolutely tiny text boxes that often only have space for around ten words, and spends a notable chunk of time loading each one. Worse, it sometimes breaks sentences apart with characters moving around in between them. Awkward! Wouldn't be a PSX game without some woes here. And while I like most of the broad strokes of the plot, there are obviously some specifics that don't work, or needed more filling in (many of which are already ranted about in spoiler text).
The game is obviously inspired by FFT and TO and you can see plenty of parallels (Adele is Catiua if she actually made a lick of sense, Ladorak and Agatha are reminiscent of Larg and Goltana, etc.). Plotwise it's pretty clearly better than TO although not as good as FFT imo. It's a shame since it's pretty close to being better I think.
Low 7/10 maybe? As far as the TO/FFT line of SPRGs go (i.e. not Fire Emblem or XCOM etc.) it sits third for me overall, behind just FFT and XF, and that's definitely a good place to be, even if it is a bit old and clunky in a few ways.
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River City Ransom Underground: Started this up on stream the other day, using Provie(the breakdancer) so far. It's...it's very NES. Just super NES. Though it does have more polish than the average NES game, of course. The writing, mostly in the form of random grunt lines as you beat them up, is actually pretty funny too. The worst part so far is there is no way to share resources amoung the cast. So a large playable cast with no way to let your char that you've done a lot of fighting with toss money to a lower level char so you can vary up the gameplay without shittons of grinding. Ah well, so it goes.
Dead Cells: Still smashing my face into this from time to time. Even one boss cell active increases the difficulty enough that I've made it to the final boss all of...twice. And won neither time. I need to get better about just running the fuck away through enemies instead of killing everything, but that's just so counter to how I tend to play that it's hard to make myself do.
My favorite weapons so far tend to be the IMpaler for melee and the Heavy Crossbow for ranged. Or "ranged" as it's a short range weapon, but does enough damage that you usually only need the one shot. Need to get better with shields, but it's hard to care much about them when I do not think they'll be good agains the final boss at ALL. Shields do make Time Keeper pretty free if you have good parry timing, at least? But on Hard, he's actually the least worrisome of the bosses anyway.
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Fire Emblem Fates Conquest - Whew, the end of the game on Hard is pretty damn tough! Takumi’s map took me several tries, Hinoka took me a few, and Ryoma and his stupid spy shuriken/yumi bullshit took me too more than I am willing to talk about. Hahaha. Grefter’s fave is next. Nice eye makeup bruh.
Rayman Legends - Approaching the end, which is good because I know it’s gonna be sidelined soon.
FOUR dudes, ONE car - After the first two hours containing fuck all, finally we get to a meatier portion of the game. A major event occurs (for all that the cutscene without dialogue is really confusing) and we have some conflict and something catalyzed the plot. We met Cor, who for some reason thinks he can boss me around like I’m his pet or something. Explored a dungeon, and then we fought some evil spider. I almost died because I didn’t buy enough Potions like a foolish fool.
Now we’re going... somewhere, I’m sure my British butler knows
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Fire Emblem Fates Conquest - Complete. Everyone in my army died to the final boss except Xander, Niles, and Corrin. Awesome.
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...
so...
three way?
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I have a Tiki expy in my head, and she is a sassy bitch.
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...
so...
three way?
Look Xander only has one oversized dildocarrot
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I have a Tiki expy in my head, and she is a sassy bitch.
Anyone would be bitchy living in the head of a dope like Byleth.
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20XX: So this is a Megaman X Roguelike. Yeah. It's...actually pretty good. Normal mode is the right difficulty level for me(I have yet to beat all 8 bosses to see what lies beyond because the platforming gets harder and harder each stage). There's a buster girl and a sword boy, and they both have at least 2 alernate weapon forms(tri shot and 4-way shot for the girl, super long range spear and super short range holy shit multihit claws for the boy). I'd honestly reccomend this for the resident MMX fans in the DL, it's entertaining.
FE Triple Deluxe: It has brawling weapons and I really like the gimmick of them. Also multiple options for being a lesbian. 11/10 best FE ever.
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Three Houses: This is going to take the rest of my life to play to completion.
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yessss we're back
Anyway I've played about 1.6 playthroughs of Fire Emblem: Three Houses in this past month and I've had a blast. More words later!
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Worth noting on 20XX that you do unlock at least one more base weapon for each (a short-ranged fan-shot for Nina, a glaive that lets you do aerial spinslashes for Ace). Feels a lot better with a gamepad, I have noticed.
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Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Thoughts on the game.
One of the great things about being married to someone who's also a huge Fire Emblem fan is that I've been able to experience all four routes of the game already, despite only playing two myself. I've played Crimson Flower and Verdant Winds, and I watched my wife play Azure Moon and Silver Snow.
Gameplay
I really want to talk about the story, but I'll speak about the gameplay first. It's solid, as Fire Emblem usually is. It's not the best game in the series for this, but it's far from the worst. I'll assume anyone reading this is broadly familiar with FE gameplay, and just talk about what's new/different.
-The game adds enemy "aggro lines" (which is really just informing you who the AI will target and how much damage/hit they will have) and they are a wonderful QOL improvement.
-Like Echoes and unlike all previous games, the option to rewind time is present. I'm mixed about it. As I get older I really appreciate that I can play the game in such a way that I don't have to redo half an hour because of one mistake. At the same time, I think it does encourage me to be a lazier player, since the consequences for failure are less dire. I'd like to play the game without this feature at some point, when I'm not motivated just to get through to the end and see everything.
-Weapon durability is back and is kinda used as a balancing feature for legendary weapons (which are fairly powerful, and often have really powerful special abilities). It's probably the best implementation of weapon durability because of the "repair" option (in fairness, FE4 did this too, then it mysteriously vanished for nearly two decades). That said, after two FEs that didn't have weapon durability, I must say I didn't need it to return, even if it serves a purpose here.
-A skill system similar to Awakening/Fates returns. I like that it's easier to get skills; in Awakening/Fates it was entirely possible to never reach your cap of five equipped skills. And as soon as you get more than five you of course start having interesting choices about how to build your characters. I don't like that, for some baffling reason, when you learn a skill mid-battle you don't get a chance to equip it (unlike Awakening/Fates) and have to remember to do so between battles.
-The menu system is a bit janky and inconsistent (some important information like class exp and skill prerequisites aren't available in some settings, sometimes you can't scroll through characters using L/R). That said I did start eventually figuring out my way around things, and it does keep with the general FE tradition of making most info available somewhere.
-The game is pretty easy, even on Hard Classic, for a while, but does ramp up nicely as time goes on. It's never one of the harder FEs, so I'm glad a Lunatic patch is coming, but I definitely prefer its overall trajectory to the games which start decently difficult then get easier.
Finally, I should talk about the monastery / inter-battle gameplay.
Fates was taking baby steps in this direction, but Three Houses embraces it completely: a significant part of the game is spent wandering your home base, doing your shopping, talking to all your friends, doing quests, training your PCs, etc., etc. There's a LOT to do here, and it's the main reason the game's time (both runs took me 55-60 hours) is higher than most games in the series, even before considering multiple playthroughs for the different routes. And y'know by and large it's pretty enjoyable. Talking to everyone and seeing their thoughts after each battle adds a lot of characterization, the training part of the game adds a nice level of control over how you build your characters. Some of the other monastery interactions (quests, gardening, motivation boosting) feel kinda time-wasty or are necessary evils. Basically there's a lot of enjoyable content here, but I kinda feel like it could be streamlined a bit. That said, as a player you do have the option to streamline it a LOT if you wish (it's sub-optimal for character building, but you'd do fine) so I respect that.
Writing
The writing is the best in the series, to such a degree that I find dissenting opinions almost laughable. The setting is FAR stronger than anything the series has done before: the three nations of Fodlan, their cultures, and their relationships with each other, their neighbouring territories, and the Church, are very well-fleshed out. The character work is also easily the strongest; even the supporting characters tend to, on average, be remarkably multi-faceted. As I learned more about characters like Dorothea, Sylvain, Felix, and Lysithea, I felt like I was peeling through the layers of an onion, steadily learning more about what makes them tick, and often having to re-evaluate what I thought about them. And the main characters... I'll say more about them in the in-depth analysis, but wow. Edelgard and Dimitri are absolutely compelling and are not just the best characters in the series, but two of the best I've seen in fiction. Claude is a bit weaker but honestly only by comparison; he's still a remarkably unique character, and he like the other two commands your attention as a player.
The silent main is a choice which is awkward even though I can see why it was done. Obviously, it takes something out of some scenes and sequences that Byleth is not a fully-fleshed out character. On the other hand, sometimes s/he works as an observer; there are plenty of times where the game doesn't want you to know everything that the lord (i.e. Edel/Dimi/Claude) knows, and being able to walk around and talk to everyone and get their opinion on what the lord is doing is something that only comes naturally because you aren't playing as the lord. And from a more cynical standpoint, I rather suspect that the lords would never be written the way they were if the game wanted you to fully embrace them as a player stand-in, because they do some dark things which I think would make some players very uncomfortable. (That's arguably a bit of an excuse, though; this argument didn't stop Tales of Berseria being written the way it was, for instance.) Also fair warning that, like most games with stand-in protagonists these days, there are some awkward scenes of player worship. Please stop, games.
From here on I go into spoiler territory, as I'll talk about the main characters and the game's plot and themes.
Edelgard: The Revolutionary Emperor
It's a game about three houses and three lords, but there's little doubt that Edelgard lies at its core. She's potentially both the main protagonist and the main antagonist, and excels at both roles. I don't think it's unfair to say that the game is about her choice and what the player thinks about it.
White Clouds, the game's title for the first half of the game, plays out broadly similarly in all routes. While the characters are nominally at school, they're also very much acting as an arm of the Church of Seiros, stamping out threats to it. You get a close look at Rhea, the archbishop (leader) of the Church, a woman who, while not overtly evil, has an influence on the world which is unsettling. She props up a system in which people are elevated for having special bloodlines, and ruthlessly cuts down those she deems enemies of the church, likening opposition against the Church of Seiros to "pointing a sword at the Goddess herself" and executing her opponents without trial. You learn about the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, the most religious of the three nations, which is also a patriarchal mess of toxic ideas of honour and chivalry, and see Rhea's lack of concern for, or perhaps even awareness of, these problems.
Edelgard will have none of it. Though she spends most of part 1 quietly pretending to be a loyal follower of the Church, she is in fact actually working to undermine it. In a striking "heel turn" late in part 1, she reveals that she is in fact the masked leader of a group which opposes the Church of Seiros, has seized the throne in a coup in her home nation of Adrestia, and makes a declaration of war to rid the continent of Fodlan of Rhea and the Church of Seiros. Thanks to preparations she has made during Part 1 she is initially successful and seizes Garreg Mach, the seat of the church. How the rest of the story plays out depends on the route, though in all cases, there is a five-year timeskip before Part 2. There are four routes; I'll detail each one in turn.
Crimson Flower
In the previous section I mentioned that Edelgard makes a "heel turn", and I used quote marks for a reason. Is it actually a heel turn? The game builds the case throughout Part 1 for Edelgard's actions. There's little doubt that her declaration of war leads to much loss of life, because war sucks (and this is something the game does NOT shy away from). But to remove a caustic influence on the continent which has led to centuries of low-grade suffering, suffering which continues to this day and promises to stretch into the future indefinitely, is war justified?
In Crimson Flower, the player follows Edelgard on her quest to rid the world of Rhea and the Church of Seiros. The route is the shortest one; Edelgard begins the war in a position of strength. Her main antagonist is of course Rhea, who has fled to the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Rhea serves as the obstacle Edelgard must overcome. As the route winds on, Edelgard's thesis about the need to remove her becomes increasingly justified; we learn that Rhea is in fact over a millenium old and has secretly shifted identities to maintain her de facto rule of the continent. As Rhea is driven to despair as her close allies are killed, she becomes increasingly unhinged, allowing the loyal King Dimitri and his close allies to die in her service and finally burning down the Holy Kingdom's capital city in a last attempt to stop Edelgard, which serves as the stunning backdrop to the final battle.
Rhea's death on this route is cathartic, both politically for Edelgard, but also personally for Byleth. Byleth's importance stems from the fact that Rhea planted the soul of the goddess Sothis (who, it turns out, is Rhea's mother) into Byleth as a baby, essentially replacing Byleth's heart with the magically fossilized remains of that of Sothis. This left Byleth without a beating heart (literally and figuratively): an emotionless husk, and Rhea's most fervent wish is that his/her body would be taken over by Sothis who could thus return to the land of the living. Though this truth is revealed on other routes, Crimson Flower is the only route which truly seems to understand what a violation this is. In the ending of Crimson Flower (and only Crimson Flower), Byleth's artificially implanted heart disintegrates and his/her own reappears and starts beating, and his/her hair returns to its original colour, signifying his/her freedom from the goddess, which parallels the path that s/he and Edelgard chose for the world.
Was Edelgard right? Her own route would seem to justify her actions. At the same time, the game will constantly remind you that war is hell; you are forced to watch person after person whm you knew as a friend or ally at Garreg Mach before the war die opposing you, knowing that your (Edelgard's) choices led to their death. Although understated, Edelgard herself is obviously worn down by the weight of what she is doing. She believes she is justified, and there's little doubt that, if you were to ask her at the end of the game, that she would tell you it was worth it. Do I agree? I initially wasn't sure, but as I've had time to digest it, I tend to think that I do, which surprises me as someone who would usually favour the path of the incrementalist over the path of the revolutionary. But of course, others feel differently. (I won't speak too much about the fan reaction to the game, but suffice to say that the debates on the morality of Edelgard's path are both frequent and passionate, which in my view speaks to how well the game handled this issue.)
My favourite scenes in the route are the aforementioned ending, and the scene in which Edelgard kills Dimitri after his fall in battle, telling him that if he'd been born in a more peaceful time, he would have made a wonderful king, and then shedding tears while trying to deny the emotions she feels. But for more on that connection, one has to play Azure Moon!
Azure Moon
In Azure Moon, the player follows Dimitri. Each of the lords houses a secret, and Dimitri's is that he secretly nurses a burning drive for revenge against those who killed his parents a few years prior to the game (their deaths having being nominally and wrongly blamed on an uprising). During the course of Part 1 he meets an organization whom he (correctly) deduces is responsible for his parents' deaths. Then during the big reveal at the end of Part 1, he realizes that Edelgard is allied with those people and blames her for it. For Dimitri, the betrayal of Edelgard, who had been his childhood friend and, depending on how you read things, the first woman he loved, cuts him so deeply that gives into violent rage. Edelgard escapes his grasp, however, and puts into motion her plan to capture Garreg Mach.
When we next see Dimitri, he is a haunted wreck of a man. We learn that he returned to the capital of his Kingdom only to be deposed in a coup by Cornelia, an imperial supporter, who usurped the throne; he escaped captivity but now has nothing to live for but his revenge. Rather than seek out allies within the Kingdom, he instead roams near the border of imperial territory, hoping to kill as many imperial soldiers as he can to get back at Edelgard in some small way. The story picks up just as survivors of the Holy Kingdom's resistance (including all his friends from Part 1) have found him and hope that he will lead them against Cornelia. He is a terrifying individual to behold during this time, and the game does not shy away from this. He tortures an imperial general until a disgusted Byleth puts the general out of his misery. He forcefully assumes command of the resistance movement and directs them to attacking the Empire rather than helping his own country. He talks of having his dead relatives appear before him and telling him to kill Edelgard. He cares little about killing as many of Edelgard's followers as he can, and clearly hopes to die himself. This part of the story is compelling, not just because of Dimitri, but also watching those around him. They have pinned all their hopes for saving their Kingdom on him, and can not turn against him because his presence is their key to legitimacy, but can only watch in horror and try to guide him away from madness (often in futility) as best they can.
Azure Moon is a story of how Dimitri is able to find himself again. Unlike many dark points for characters in fiction, this is not a short one. No one event can be pinpointed in helping him overcome his own demons; it takes several. Certainly the return of a friend he thought dead is a help; so is learning that Edelgard was not, in fact, his parents' killer. But perhaps the most impactful one is when the sister of the imperial general he murdered attempts to take his life, instead claiming the life of one close to him. In that moment, Dimitri realizes that his fixation on revenge, even if justified, serves nothing but to bring more misery.
Dimitri pulls himself together (though to the game's credit, it acknowledges that he will be forever haunted by what he has experienced and done), and his plucky band is able to free the Kingdom and finally take the fight to the Emperor. There, in the best scene of the game, Dimitri and Edelgard explain their differing ideologies; Edelgard, the revolutionary, wants to change the world as she sees fit, while Dimitri believes that she has no right to make that choice and will oppose her, not for revenge, but to protect the people her path would trample upon. The Dimitri we see here is one who has completely forgiven Edelgard and wishes once more to be her friend, but can not allow her to continue on the road she is walking. When he extends his hand to her in mercy in the ending after his victory in battle, she for a moment appears to consider it but only to cover one last attempt to kill him (with the knife he gave her as a gift), and he is forced to kill her instead. It puts an exclamation point on the route. Dimitri, while capable of monstrous actions, is ultimately kind-hearted, while Edelgard was willing to do absolutely anything in service of her goal. People are complicated and there is good and bad in everyone.
My favourite scenes in this route are Dimitri's horrifying rant to the captured imperial general, and his confrontations with Edelgard both before and after the battle which I detailed above. There is just so much emotionally resonant stuff in this route. It's my favourite route overall, edging out Crimson Flower in large part because it has two amazing characters, while Dimitri is relatively minor in Edelgard's route. If it were the only route, I think it would stand alone beautifully, with at most minor tweaks.
But what of the people behind the death of Dimitri's parents? To get to the bottom of them, one has to play Verdant Winds!
Verdant Winds
Verdant Winds is, sadly, not nearly as good as the other two routes. My praise for Crimson Flower and Azure Moon is almost unalloyed; this will no longer be the case from here on.
Verdant Winds follows Claude, from the Leicester Alliance, smallest of the three major territories that make up Fodlan. As Claude is fond of reminding you, he is an outsider. This has two meanings: one, he was born outside Fodlan and has some different ideas about how it should be run as a result. And two, he's a bit of an outsider to the Edelgard/Rhea and Edelgard/Dimitri conflicts that lie at the core of the game.
Claude's route largely follows along the same path as Dimitri's (to the point where several maps are copy/pasted between the two); he opposes the Empire, rallies people against them, and ultimately invades them and puts an end to Edelgard's plans. But his reasons are very different. While Dimitri is motivated first by revenge and later by moral opposition, Claude's goals are much more self-serving, albeit noble. Like Edelgard, he wants to reshape Fodlan in his own image. He manipulates Byleth's connection with the church (being the vessel of the Goddess) into recruiting the powerful Knights of Seiros (despite the fact that he secretly despises organized religion). Through shrewd machinations he unifies the Alliance, the Church, and military support from his home nation of Almyra into a righteous war against the Empire, ultimately defeating them. And in the power vacuum created by the fall of the Kingdom (Dimitri dies leading his troops into a suicidal rush against Edelgard on this route) and the Empire, he plans to build a new united nation of Fodlan.
Claude is the star of the route and is kinda terrifying. On one level, he's obviously the "nicest" lord. Claude does not murder people! He's super-friendly! His war is reactive and just! The nation he plans to build is one with more social freedom, and in particular one where people (like him) won't face racial prejudice. Hard not to cheer for, right? But at the same time, he is so manipulative and controlling that it borders on sociopathic. He constantly pretends to be something he's not, he keeps secrets from everyone (even Byleth). His ultimate plan is to unite both Fodlan and his homeland of Almyra as a single borderless nation with him in control. In all three of the main routes, my wife or I ended up choosing to marry Byleth to the lord. Edelgard and Dimitri, in different ways, both make for very romantic pairings. Claude, even in this final, supposedly romantic scene, is rather clearly being sneaky and manipulative, setting her up as the ruler of Fodlan and in the epilogue returning to marry her as the ruler of Almyra.
Where the route, and indeed the game, goes wrong is with "those who slither in the dark", who serve as the final opponents of this route after Edelgard is defeated. We learn that they are an ancient race of evildoers (no, really. No route of the game expects you to have any sympathy for them as any more than that) responsible for many evils over the millenia of Fodlan's history, including many of the bad events in the game's setup. In a route about Claude's desire to build a nation without walls where none need fear racial prejudice, the presence of a race which objectively deserves a wall built around them (if not outright genocide) sabotages what would otherwise have been a key theme of the route. Also the final boss on this route, unlike Rhea and Edelgard, is both morally uncomplicated and a rather unsatisfying ass-pull; a big bad evil zombie general raised by the race of bad guys right before the final chapter.
But I have a lot of good things to say about Claude. About how he and Edelgard are both secretive people who desire control, but everything about their surface personalities manifest differently. About how he and Edelgard want strikingly similar things but approach them in opposite ways, and tragically could never have been allies because neither could have tolerated the other. About how he plays off his companions well and how this makes many of the "Claude and friends interacting" scenes fun to watch. And of course how absolutely charismatic (and gorgeous) he is, even if what this behaviour covers makes me at times uncomfortable.
Silver Snow
Silver Snow is bad and should feel bad.
You play part 1 as Edelgard's ally, but choose to side with Rhea instead of her, and from there the story follows Byleth as leader of the Knights of Seiros, with no lord character in sight. After that it's almost a complete carbon-copy of Verdant Winds, but without Claude, and if you read up and see how much praise I have for Claude, you can almost immediately tell that's going to be Bad Thing. You would think Rhea would be more present on this route, but she isn't. She does serve as the final boss though, as she randomly goes crazy at the end because I guess they thought they needed a different final boss from Verdant Winds? That's literally the only map that's different. The moment-to-moment plot of this route makes less sense because it was clearly written assuming support from the Alliance in mind. Instead the route seems to forget Claude and the Alliance even exist.
And the route ends with Byleth becoming Rhea 2.0, an immortal ruler of United Fodlan for an indefinite length of time. Great.
Conclusion
Despite my complaints about the Silver Snow route, this is obviously a great game. Fire Emblem gameplay is always a joy, the setting/chracters/supports are the best they've ever been, and there's a lot of good, thought-provoking writing in there. Since I didn't mention it anywhere else, the voice work and voice direction (special shout-out to the voice actors who played Dimitri and Dorothea, but they're far from the only good performances) are stellar. There are warts in there, but this is certainly the most complete Fire Emblem game, and as such, no other rating is possible than 10/10. One of the best games I've ever played.
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More or less the same just without an Azure Moon perspective.
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Fire Emblem Three Houses - Azure Moon
So far I’ve played Azure Moon and Silver Snow, and ended up watching Crimson Flower and Verdant Winds.
I mostly chose Azure Moon first because a) someone in the house was already playing Crimson Flower and b) I had already seen post-timeskip Dimitri and I love edgy bois.
The gameplay is pretty much straight up Fire Emblem, borrowing its mechanics from a variety of different places. It feels a bit like Echoes, Fates/Awakening, Tellius, and even a bit of GBA thrown into a blender. The biggest change is the change of the class system. All of your characters start as Commoners or Nobles and they diverge into specialties from there. All characters can start as using all weapons, but some characters are better than others at certain weapon types and can develop the skills using the class simulation minigame. In addition, you can make any character use horses, but some characters prefer it more than others. So there’s a lot of flexibility but there are characters who are clearly steered toward their respective roles (due to stats or preferences).The weapon triangle is less prominent, only really manifesting in specific skills that you can throw on characters. Weapon durability is back, which I don’t like, but at leas the shops are accessible and not clunky like… many other games. There are some extra mechanics like Combat skills and gambits that are interesting. The enemy placement and map design isn’t as good as Conquest, but that’s pretty high standards.
The game is ultimately a little on the easy side even on Hard/Classic Mode, although a few of the maps in late Part 2 were fairly nasty. I found the second to last map on Azure Moon to be quite tricky in particular. The Divine Pulse mechanic means that even if you make a mistake that you can take it back; I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it but it’s ignorable at the very worst. I think there’s too many uses but it’s interesting at least. It allows you to control your time lost from resets. I might play the game without it on some playthroughs for variety / old school feel.
Holy shit there is setting building. This is definitely a welcome change from all of the games after RD. The characters seem to exist in a social structure! There are nobility in the world that seem to inform us about the politics of their respective countries! Amazing. Trying to remember things from supports and then going back and reading them in the library…. yeah, this is definitely something that I love. I also like how it is going all in on a theme about the problems of inherited systems of government and the divide between the aristocrats and the commoners. The Crests also play an important role; they are a bit like the One Power; they run in bloodlines but aren’t necessarily inherited by the children. This fact causes a lot of tension in their social structure. It’s a bit like Holy Blood in FE4 except examined as part of the setting. There are definitely parallels between this game and 4, but this game actually knows how to execute basic setting building and character work (and has important women, holy shit).
I’m mostly just gonna talk about Azure Moon’s story and character work though.
The early game maps do a great job of building Faerghus as this dysfunctional, bandit-filled hole, between Lonato and Miklan, as well as a few of the paralogues. After the king’s death, it has been ruled by the regent, the brother of the king, who is incompetent and indolent, and there has been mass chaos there in the last few years. Of course, you’d think that the church would help them out more but… y’know. As the other routes taught me (Azure Moon is not really about the church), Rhea is kind of a selfish bitch who doesn’t really care about the well-being of the humans all that much, and mostly just wants to control them…) Viva la revolution and all that.
Azure Moon ends up being a very character-driven route and the Blue Lions has some quite interesting characters, and the culture of the country that they are from, Faerghus, informs a lot about the characters. Faerghus as a country is obsessed with chivalry and has a strong culture of fatalism, stemming from finding honor in death and dying for your country and cause. Many of the Faerghusian characters have weird and toxic relationships with death. Because of the disproportionate emphasis placed on patriarchal ideals of chivalry, the male nobility in the game (Dimitri, Felix, Rodrigue, Gilbert) are the ones who are affected by it the most, although Ingrid also, to some extent, has internalized some of these cultural ideas (as has Catherine, for that matter, for all that she isn’t as important in the Faerghus metaplot. But she is definitely zealous and unafraid of death). Sylvain has largely chosen to reject pretty much everything about his culture and is largely not part of this discussion, although you can see how it shapes his cynical, depressive worldview. I’ll talk more about that later.
The core plot event that happens before the game starts is the Tragedy of Duscur, where the royal couple (Dimitri’s father and stepmother) and one of the royal bodyguards, Glenn, are assassinated. Glenn is Felix’s brother and dies during this event protecting Dimitri. A lot of the characters’ lives are affected by this event, and it carries a long shadow through the story of this route.
The person most affected by the Tragedy of Duscar is Dimitri. At first glance, the dude is a square and a half. Very genuine, takes his duty very seriously, and in general is the gallant prince character that exists in many RPGs. There are a couple of major hints very early that he is more unhinged than he lets on. Felix dislikes him very strongly; the very first scene with Felix is him warning you that “He may seem nice and proper, but Dimitri will chew you up and spit you out”. We see in Dimitri/Felix support that discusses that Dimitri is very bloodthirsty in their first battle and that Felix finds him very distasteful (and Dimitri doesn’t deny his behavior). We later realize that Dimi has been harboring a huge grudge for the last four years and that his sole, life-consuming goal is to extract vengeance from the person or people who have wronged his family. He discovers that Edelgard is working with the people responsible for his parents’ death; he concludes that she is an irredeemable monster and ends up completely losing his cool in a scene which is a harbinger for the future. His fatalism also comes into play late in Part 1; he says he should never promise anyone anything because he might die at any time.
I want to incidentally note that Edelgard was most likely NOT responsible for the death of Dimitri’s family, but Dimitri believes that she was. He is not vey rational around this subject (and is in general by far the least rational of the three kids, as we learn in Part 2).
Post-time skip… god, this route is really tough to go through for the first few chapters. There is so much to dissect about this part of the game. So the war happens and Dimitri is slated for execution by an imperial usurper to the throne. Dimitri’s vassal, Dedue, helps him escape but loses his life in the process. By the time you find him, Dimitri has just totally lost it, completely overcome by grief and anger and hatred. He slaughters any imperial soldiers / bandits who come near the monastery, living like some kind of fairy tale monster preying on his enemies, killing them cruelly and violently. For five chapters you essentially spend listening to him rant about chasing ghosts and revelling in his blood-fuelled desire for vengeance, unable to see anything except that one solitary goal. He seems to see no value in his own life at all and has very little regard for the lives of his friends and country who need him. Dimitri and Byleth are NOT on good terms during this part of the game, which is a huge contrast to Part 1 where Dimitri is the most polite and friendly of the three mains. Dimitri does care very deeply for his friends and his allies but that attribute is what allows him to fall into despair and eventual madness.
Because of Crest-based aristocracy and loyalty to one’s liege being particularly entrenched in Faerghus’s culture, both Gilbert (a knight of Faerghus) and Rodrigue (the most powerful nobleman in Faerghus and Felix’s father) seek out Dimitri, hoping he is still alive so he can rally their cause and take back their capital, even going so far as to retrieve his legendary weapon. Instead, Dimitri insists on rushing in and murder Edelgard at the cost of whatever it takes. Gilbert plays an interesting role in this part of the route; he serves the function of main character/ tactician in this part of the game, but his actions are controlled by the whims of Dimitri. He is a former royal knight who feels, rightly or wrongly, that his responsibility was to protect the royal family and he failed. He abandons his family and goes to the monastery to atone for his sins. It is painful to watch Gilbert’s complete inability to challenge Dimitri on his madness because of his extremely loyalty to the crown (and his generally passive, depressive nature). Every single conversation with Gilbert outside of Dimitri’s presence is Gilbert lamenting what a terrible job he did in raising Dimitri and how foolish his behavior is. There is a sense that -no one- will challenge the future king on his actions and they just all live in this suspended feeling of horror as they watch their hopes of liberating their country go down in flames. A good piece of scenework in this part of the game is how Dimitri’s presence in scenes feels oppressive, even when he’s not talking. He is the tallest person in the party and his crosses his arms during all of the scenes, glowering at everyone as they try to salvage the plans of their delusional prince.
One of the outstanding scenes on this route is with this bit character from Crimson Flower by the name of Randolph. In Crimson Flower he plays the role of having people around that aren’t just the PCs to prove that this army is something besides your people. On Azure Moon, he is fought as a boss. When you defeat him, Dimitri captures him. With some interesting camera work, you watch the scene from Randolph’s perspective, as Dimitri rants about how all imperial soldiers are just monsters who pretend to be human (as opposed to Dimitri himself, who understands his role as a monster but he wants to rid the world of monsters. Only a monster can get rid of monsters!). From Randolph’s perspective, there is this giant, black-armored man ranting wildly at him, with bloodlust in his eye (because eyepatch, of course). As Dimitri starts torturing him, Byleth mercy-kills him, which earns Dimitri’s ire.
As much as Dimitri’s general violence and insanity horrify you as you watch the scenes, his complete abdication of responsibility as king of Faerghus adds another layer of reprehensible, and every single Blue Lion is just so frustrated when you talk to them, although they mostly express it in passive ways. He is literally dragging his friends into hell! They are upset but also recognize that their future king symbolizes something too important to their cause and that dissonance is very difficult for many of them to deal with! It’s like birthright and loyalty twisted to its conclusion.
A couple of maps later, Rodrigue appears, and he is less depressive than Gilbert and takes action more directly to challenge Dimitri, but even he refuses to truly pick that fight. Rodrigue isn’t as influenced by his deference to Dimitri’s royalty (Rodrigue is the second most powerful person in Faerghus) but because they are losing the war against the empire, they see that their only hope is the heir to the throne coming back and rallying the troops for a victory, but… they can’t force him to do the right thing or what they want. They both seem to bear a great deal of shame about their broken mess of a prince, since they both helped raised him. Rodrigue has a good scene with Byleth after he appears as well as a scene with Gilbert where Rodrigue expresses his true frustration.
So does this story just end with the main character being permanently overcome with hatred? No. There are two events that turn the corner of the story. The first is the reappearance of Dedue, who is Dimitri’s closest friend, and presumed dead as mentioned. They have a long backstory together; Dedue’s people, the Duscar, were framed for the murder of the royal family during the Tragedy of Duscar, and many of them were killed in retaliation. Dimitri ended up rescuing Dedue from the lynchmob, but he wasn’t able to prevent the overall retaliation. Dedue works as Dimitri’s vassal in the four years since the tragedy, and their affection for each other is very genuine (in their A support, Dimitri reveals that rescuing Dedue was one of the things that helped him stay sane during the four years between the murder of the royal family and the pre-timeskip academy time). From the other routes, it seems more master/servant than it actually is; the two are ultimately pretty dependent on each other (and their A support is probably the gayest support I’ve ever seen). Dimitri is frustrated with Dedue’s deference and Dedue is frustrated with Dimitri’s self-depreciation but they clearly love each other (see my new sig!). Dedue’s reappearance is the first time in the route that Dimitri sounds happy, almost boyishly, since the timeskip. He has this adorable pre-timeskip portrait where he bulges his eyes in surprise/excitement, and this is the first time you see that facial expression again post-timeskip. It’s the first time that you think that everything might be okay.
Then there is the Battle of Gronder where the famous quote “Kill every last one of them!” is from. I speculated before playing the game that it was taken out of context, but it really really isn’t. He doesn’t give a fuck about his old classmates; if someone’s in the way, they are good as dead. After the battle, Fleche, Randolph’s sister, attempts to kill Dimitri in revenge. She tries to exact her revenge for the death of her brother, but instead kills Rodrigue (poor hot Rodrigue, destined to croak). I think Dimitri sees himself reflected in her, and in that moment, he has a revelation. The real turning point scene in this route is when Dimitri finally turns it around, and Byleth helps him on that course by talking him through things and finally convincing him that it is okay to be the sole survivor and also to live for yourself. “Your hands are so warm… have they always been?
After all of this, he works to repent for his many sins and apologizes to the party for his horrendous behavior. Dimitri believes that he is unworthy of happiness and even life; this is a belief that pervades a lot of his supports. You can definitely see Gilbert’s influence in Dimitri; they both carry these chains of their past around them, and won’t let themselves go. Gilbert/Dimitri support is the most painful support chain in the game, as they participate in their weird fatalism / loyalty / depression together. (After this support, I declared that Byleth would ban Gilbert from the royal household.) Annette tells Dimitri that she also pretty much has to move into the castle because he’s far too much like her dad and she wants to make sure he smiles and doesn’t end up a sad, guilt-ridden mess of a human like Gilbert. In some supports, he is at least partially convinced that he needs to live to fix his country, even if he’s never really convinced that he deserves to be alive?
Another scene from this route that I loved was when Dimitri liberates Faerghus. He cries as he realizes that he’s home and that people want him to be there, even though he is certain that he doesn’t deserve to be loved. It was really sweet and touching and Byleth feels impactful there, convincing him that it’s alright to be happy.
The scenes with Edelgard are also good, but Elfboy already talked about those so I won’t.
An interesting contrast of Dimitri vs. the other mains is that the other two are driven by large goals and ideology, whereas Dimitri is too mired in depression and anger to really even have goals. No point in making goals if you don’t plan to be alive in five years???
I guess there are other characters in this game?
Felix is probably Azure Moon’s route’s second most important character, although I think it is less obvious than El/Claude’s routes. Felix is cold, anti-social, and pushes people away. There is a Felix-related paralogue with some early insight into why Felix behaves the way he does. This is where we meet Rodrigue for the first time and he talks about his son Glenn dying in the tragedy. Rodrigue clearly believes that dying for your country is honorable and that it is better that Glenn die than alive and live with the shame of being a sworn knight who did not protect the people who he was guarding. It is clear that Rodrigue loved his son deeply but he has internalized this part of his culture. Felix believes that is father/country’s ideology is bullshit and remains bitter at anyone who implies that death is preferable to being alive and living with the shame of being dishonorable. He has this nasty line in that scene. “I guess if I died, you’d say the same about me. That I died with ‘honor’, fighting for my country.”
Felix ends up, as a result of his stance on death being closer to a normal human’s than a crazy Faerghus noble’s, as a cultural outsider; this is the core of why he pushes people away, especially his friends. He ends up reconciling with Sylvain because they are both outsiders to their crazy culture, but he and Ingrid’s bond are always a little strained because of the tension related to Glenn. Ingrid always glorifies the death of Glenn as some sort of chivalrous act and she wants to be like him. Felix accepts this eventually but his relationship is poisoned by her disagreements on a subject that hits him very close to the heart.
Post-timeskip Felix ends up being interesting on all of the routes. On Azure Moon, he is the one who is most willing to challenge Dimitri on his bullshit, although you get the sense that his dad would prefer if he would just stop. Once his dad dies, he ends up deciding to champion his cause, even if he nurses continual resentment for Dimitri because of all of the things he’s done. Their relationship is always toxic, mostly because Felix doesn’t really trust him.
Felix: Sometimes you have an animal's face, contorted with anger and bloodlust. At other times, a man's, with a friendly smile. Which is your true face?
Dimitri: Do not waste your breath on questions with such obvious answers. They are both the real me.
On Silver Snow, Felix is very affected by Dimitri’s death and clearly regrets abandoning his country. The depth of Dimitri’s madness is not really explored on this route, but Felix above all people knows about Dimitri’s bad side, but he comes to terms with it one he dies. Felix becomes quite unhappy on this route compared to Azure Moon, I feel. He feels like he has no place in the world outside of being a soldier.
I enjoyed this character more than I expected. Ironically, he is the most well-adjusted and the most ethical of the three Blue Lions noble boys, which was not what I was expecting at all.
Mercedes is a character who grew on me over time. Her relationship with Annette is so so sweet, and I think she brings the best out of many people in supports.I n her support with Sylvain, she reveals that she lived in a noble house in the Adrestria Empire, but after her mom produced an heir with a Crest - some sort of blessing of elite blood that we will presumably learn more about later, she and her mom were dumped and she ended up going to the church. Sylvain and her end up having a lot in common, except Mercedes is so much less bitter, despite probably having better reason to be bitter; she is used as a tool for prosperity via her Crest, whereas Sylvain has more control over his own life, being male nobility in Faerghus. In her support with Felix, we learn that she has a younger brother named Emile. And then if you read in the Empire history, you learn that he is a serial killer who murdered his dad and entire family, and later we learn that her brother is Jertiza/Death Knight, who stabbed Manuela and kidnapped Flayn. The game ultimately doesn’t do a lot with that plot, but Mercedes is still pretty good. Mercedes seems like a great pairing with Sylvain because they seem to actually get each other, which I can’t say for too many other people.
Ingrid is a pretty enjoyable character overall, although I would have liked to see her be a little more important. Good voice acting, good interactions with several of the other characters, and just a really good person who wants the best for everyone. Her story is mostly that her family is a noble family that has fallen on hard times financially, and she is very conservative and thrifty to make up for it. Her support with Sylvain is probably my favorite, where she reveals that Sylvain hit on her grandmother when she was eight and she just gives him the business for being a total idiot (she also has a good support with Claude, which I of course didn’t see on this route). You get the impression that she’s spent too much of her life dealing with all of the difficult manchildren that surround her. Her character flaw is that she believes that the Duscar people were responsible for Glenn’s death and she holds resentment toward Dedue over it. The biggest thing about her later is that her dad is constantly trying to sell her off to the highest bidder because of her Crest.
As mentioned earlier, Ingrid and Felix clash over chivalry; Ingrid believes that it is noble to fight and die for what you believe in and she sees it as honorable, whereas Felix hates it. She was engaged to Glenn, Felix’s brother, at the time of his death and idolizes him and his knightliness. She also clashes with Dimitri over his fatalistic comments about Glenn’s death. Because he openly questions the value of his own life and thus the value of Glenn sacrificing his life to save him, he unintentionally hurts Ingrid very badly, and you really feel for her in those scenes.
In general, Mercedes and Ingrid share a lot of commonalities, and somehow, they are less damaged individuals than their more privileged male counterparts. Interesting way of doing things, and not necessarily inaccurate, having seen the relative function of men on the internet vs. women. I think the fact that they are both very functional people makes them a little less interesting than the boys, which is a shame, but we play the Black Eagles for great female characters, I guess. ;)
Sylvain is another BL headcase. At first glance, Sylvain is a typical trash fuckboy, a womanizing dork who definitely gives the vibe of lazy privileged rich kid who coasts on daddy’s influence and money. Beyond the exterior, he follows the tradition of the fucked-up males of Faerghus. His brother was disinherited because of his lack of a Crest, which is a big deal to his family. His brother ends up stealing the divine weapon that he can’t even wield and that opens up some excellent plot reveals. On second glance, Sylvain ends up as this weird hedonist who accepts that his whole life is predetermined for him to marry a rich girl and be the house heir so he’s just gonna have fun while he can. Except that isn’t true either! He manipulates women and uses them because he believes that everyone is using him for his ‘Crest babies’ and he has developed a complex about not trusting women. Sylvain, much like Felix, has rejected parts of Faerghus culture that he doesn’t like and holds in built-up resentment, but unlike Felix, he hides it via a facade of friendliness and flirting rather than a facade of coldness. Also unlike Felix, Sylvain is not at all loyal to his country and is happy to give the finger to his family whenever.
Post-timeskip, Sylvain is much closer to straight up depressed. He hangs on to some of his foibles but he is hit by the war quite hard. Unlike Felix, who I mentioned regrets leaving Faerghus, Sylvain does not give a fuck. He is unaffected by Dimitri’s death in other routes, and more or less admits in Azure Moon that he found Dimitri too far gone to ever truly trust him again.
And just in case you wondered if Sylvain was affected by the culture of death, here’s his final quote on Verdant Winds route.
Sylvain: I mean, I'll still fight like I want to die because that's worked so far, and why change at this late date, right? And if I'm right and I don't die, would you go have dinner with me sometime?
As for Annette, she is one of the Blue Lions that’s a little less directly connected to the Faerghus storyline, but damn is she adorable, bubbly, and just generally an enjoyable character. Fuck Gilbert so hard. I think she offers a great deal of positive energy to the route and she is such.a.damn.nerd. without being an antisocial jerkass. Post-timeskip Annette is a breath of fresh air, bringing positive energy (and nostalgia for the school days). She is a rare character who at least partially calls Dimitri on his bullshit, although she is too scared to fully challenge him. Like everyone else. Her support with Felix is the best. She sings and he tries to flirt with her (badly). It is so cute and they should be together forever.
As mentioned Gilbert is trash. Annette gives him all of the business in their supports for being a useless asshole, and you feel so so sorry for her for having to endure so bullshit from her father who supposedly in theory loves her but has the crappiest way to show it imaginable. He is very very weird. He actually reminds me a little bit of Kresnik of all people, except that the game 100% realizes that he is trash. His support with Annette are the most awkward, painful support in the game (with the exception of his supports with Dimitri) as he completely misses the point and fails to explain why the fuck he abandoned his family. He just constantly fails to listen to his loved ones about the things that matter; we want you around! We don’t care if you failed as a knight! We love you!
Ashe exists. He is important early as Lord Lonato’s adoptive son, but I dropped him pretty quickly so I didn’t see his supports.
This post is too long, so I think I will talk about Silver Snow later. If you want bitchy cattiness, I can whip that one up sometime. :D
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I was on a Trials of Mana binge while the formus were down. Completed multiple playthorughs with a variety of teams. Scattered commentary:
Lord, Grand Devina, Ninja Master - This one wasn't so easy, except in a few places where it is. Angela shines on Tzenker and Gorva due to hitting weakness and their tendency to hover out of melee range. And it is quite satisfying to use her magic to thrash random mobs. Moon godbeast wrecked my face a few times; it attacks really quickly at times. Only won after gaining a level on Hawkeye for fire jutsu; it brought the damage down enough to keep up with healing. Never used Ninja Master before. No Lv 3 fullscreen tech but that's OK since the plan was clearing screens with Fire jutsu + full screen spell from Angela. Which appears it would work better in the Hawk/Riesz quest than the Duran/Angela one. This one tends to load more enemies per combat zone. Final boss was not fun with this party since they have no way of dispelling his stat ups. He cast them twice in my game; guess using water jutsu at the wrong time and him absorbing it triggered them again.
Vanadies, Wanderer, Necromancer
This team had some awkward dynamics. First off, the midgame is harder due to no stat downs. For the final third, the plan was to use Aura Wave on Vanadies, Power up, wipe the screen clear to deal with randoms. But Wanderer learns the spell so late I didn't have it until after Bigeu. So didn't get to make much use of that doom combo. Two MT mini casters is pointless duplication too. I found myself using Wanderer for melee which he's awful at. If he's going to melee, any other class would be a better choice. Warrior Monk is a better partner for Vanadies (and maybe Angela as anything but Rune Master for a third. With that group, there's very little reason to be using MT stat ups. Kevin already has his own source of attack up and only Angela fully utilizes Mind Up.
Atelier Meruru showed up on Amazon for less than $10 so I went for it. Too occupied playing it to write about it though I will mention it was worth the $10. "Poopy head?" Haven't heard that word used since Lunar.
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Small addition to my post, because I was just reading supports (Seteth/Felix):
Seteth: It is not my intention to spy. I am merely concerned about you. I do not think you have been keeping your friends at a distance because you dislike them personally. Rather, I think what bothers you is their concept of proper knighthood. Is that not so?
Felix: Hmph. You really have been watching me closely. You're correct. I don't understand why they revere knighthood. I won't be friends with anyone who believe in that nonsense.
Seteth: Do you feel that way because of what happened in the Tragedy of Duscur? I have heard the story. Your brother was one of the royal knights. He gave his life to defend the prince.
Felix: My brother was doing his job. My father is the real problem. When my brother's armor was brought back to the castle, do you know what he said? "He died like a true knight." Chivalry begets the worship and glorification of death. Am I alone in finding that grotesque?
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Fire Emblem Three Houses
Enjoying it so far. On Golden Deer route, post timeskip.
Since I obviously don't want to chat about the plot too much, two gameplay comments, one a sorta response to something Elf brought up:
1) To be a bit contrary to Elf, I actually liked Awakening's skill system better. Having 5 slots but not filling 'em up right away makes every little ability you get relevant, even if it's niche; it's better than an empty slot. Like, Pegasus Knight's Relief is strictly worse than War Monk's Renewal, but it's something, and you will set it until you get into the postgame. 3H has 5 slots, theoretically, but 1-2 of 'em are taken up by fundamental basic stuff like Sword(/Lance/etc.) Prowess. You also get some very solid, basic stat-boosting skills early, and all the niche stuff is late... which means the niche stuff will never ever get set, realistically. Something like Defiant Strength is kinda cool on FE Heroes pre-skill inheritance Ryoma flavorfully, but you aren't setting it given a choice. In the same way, a perfectly valid skill set for Hilda might be something like Axe Prowess / Strength +2 / Deathblow (=+6 Str on attacking) / Weight -3 (pretty close to Speed +3), a bunch of functional-but-boring straight stat boosts, leaving just 1 slot left for something "interesting" like Lancebreaker, Seal Speed, or Authority. For characters who wield 2 weapon types, it's even sillier; you might have Cyril with something like Axe Prowess, Bow Prowess, Close Counter, Deathblow as their base setup, so again, it's like you only have room to pick a single skill. Stuff like Pavise ends up beyond awful as a result.
2) Since mechanically the game feels a lot like Echoes 2.0 (a LOT of inspiration from Echoes it feels like), one of the most notable things is that the game has some hardcore range-cheezing and gives that more to you than your opponents. You can re-enact "300" as the Persians by having a hail of 3-4 range arrows smashing up enemies without the ability for them to counter. On the magic side, the Echoes Mage Ring equivalent as well as a slightly lesser variety are attained quite early on the Golden Deer route at least, so mages can smash from 3 or 4 range as well with impunity. I kinda worry that Maddening Difficulty will compensate with uber-stat'd foes you're expected to cheese out; I would rather they only increased enemy stats slightly, but handed out the "Counterattack" skill (unit can counterattack regardless of range) like candy to enemies, forcing you to "fight fair". Similar to how Lunatic Fates Conquest bosses all got range 1-2 weapons. But yeah, bows & magic end up very scary as a result. (Also. Flying units with bows & canto. Yes this is very fair.)
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One big exception to the "you get more range-cheezing than your opponents" is that they typically have Bow Range +X abilities before you can, like Bow Range +1 as early as Chapter 2 (while you have to wait for Archer). They never carry Close Counter, though (a few bosses aside) so they have a big weakness to exploit.
Re bows on fliers, I didn't find them that abusive? (Aside from Claude who's good of course, though even he lacks the Bow Range+ which would have made him truly cheesy). Archer pegasus knights are pretty solid for the time, but once you hit tier 3 you're giving up a -faire to use them, which means Hand Axe/Javelin aren't much worse than Silver Bows, and as you noted you really want to free up skill slots so not having double prowess makes up the rest of the gap (especially since effective bow use really wants Close Counter as well).
Caduceus is all routes, Thyrsus requires recruiting Lorenz but that probably isn't THAT much later if you gun for him. And yeah they're great.
Agree to disagree on the skill system, I guess, but yeah I really enjoyed having to make choices. I loved hitting that point where Hilda had like 6-7 useful skills (as you described) and I had to choose which ones I actually wanted. There are different valid builds that are very effective. You can set your wyvern up with things which juice their combat stats (atk/spd/etc.) OR you can set one up with Alert Stance(+)/2 prowesses/2 breakers and be almost unhittable by a huge number of enemies. It's cool. Fair point that the Prowess skills do add a bit of a tax, especially on multi-weapon builds, although this is somewhat offset by making the -faires class skills.
I do agree with the point that it's nice to give niche skills more chance to shine, and thus some of the skill placements in 3H are baffling, like WTF are the Defiant skills doing on tier 4 jobs, or nerfed!Wrath in tier 3, etc. I probably would have done away with at least some of the basic stat-boosts from tier 0-1 in favour of some more interesting flavour skills, yeah.
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Blasphemous - What's this piece of a gem I found!? Sorrowful be my heart for almost letting this game sneak past my radar.
What a well designed side scrolling plat former that gave me the same feel that's back in the prime days of Game Boy Advance when the ACT genre populate the handheld.
The art direction really has that old GBA feel, and packed with the aesthetics from the old times of Spain along with many gore and grotesque. Then combined with a mournful world under a twisted approach of Catholicism. It really builds an extremely chilling and suffocating world that just blew me over with its sheer imagery.
The esoteric story telling is also less extreme than the From Software games that Blasphemous shares the same style with. Which is definitely a plus on my book.
I'd say the only weakness of the game is that it posses not enough secrets to be explored.
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Some words about Atelier Meruru:
All the raw materials seem useful for something. Does make it more difficult to decide what's worth hanging on to but it's an enjoyable difficult for me.
Unlike in Ayesha where one could go through the entire game without paying much attention to item quality, here item quality starts mattering early on. It does ask for some understanding of the alchemy system to meet some quest requirements. Though the quantity option is always available so it's optional albeit with a time savings payoff for understanding the system well enough.
Found myself going through my attack items quite frequently, especially after hitting Lv 15. Power Item works well at clearing out randoms for quite a while. I mostly avoid combat except for "defeat all enemies" objectives, hunt requests, and fighting a new enemy once to add it to the library.
I find myself unconsciously comparing the soundtrack to Ayesha's but that's a really unfair comparison. Ayesha's soundtrack is just that high of a bar.
Meruru has really pretty hair but seeing bloomers so often gets a bit distracting. Not enough to take away my enjoyment of the game overall but if that's the kind of thing that you'll be offended by, this game is not for you.
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Fire Emblem Three Houses
Finished Verdant Wind, the Golden Deer route (yo, "Verdant" means Green, not Yellow, localizers. Jaundiced Wind?). Other than the 8 Deer, I recruited Annette & Ingrid, and among the staff, seriously used Flayn (as a Dancer) and Cyril. 1+8+2+2=13, but deploy slots top out at 12, so Annette ended up getting the short stick as far as "who doesn't get deployed in the final missions." Well, that, and her ending up… pretty bad. I guess she was useful on Claude's paralogue in the desert thanks to mysterious mages-in-desert movement principles, but that was it. (I guess her niche is blowing up fliers with Excalibur? Except that I already had a ton of bow-users, and enemy fliers are not even THAT common. And why does Excalibur have to be so heavy? Go ahead and reward people hitting A-rank magic with something strictly better.)
Byleth, Claude, Lysithea (Gremory), Marianne (Holy Knight), Raphael (War Master), Ingrid (Falcon Knight), & Cyril (Wyvern Lord) went canon-ish classes. Ignatz stayed a Sniper forever becuz Hunter's Volley was just that good, and Hilda stayed a Warrior because… idk, didn't feel like going the full Wyvern fleet option, as I already had Claude/Leonie/Ingrid/Cyril in the skies. Main difference was making Leonie a Pegasus Knight rather than a Bow Knight. Lorenz ended up staying in Paladin after training in Soldier/Cavalier/Paladin which would have made going Dark Knight have someone who couldn't do either physical OR magical damage, so sure, crappy Sylvain ahoy with Frozen Lance backup. (Dark Knight should really have kept Lancefaire, then gotten Dark/Black Tomefaire merged as one skill.)
Re bows on fliers, I didn't find them that abusive? (Aside from Claude who's good of course, though even he lacks the Bow Range+ which would have made him truly cheesy). Archer pegasus knights are pretty solid for the time, but once you hit tier 3 you're giving up a -faire to use them, which means Hand Axe/Javelin aren't much worse than Silver Bows, and as you noted you really want to free up skill slots so not having double prowess makes up the rest of the gap (especially since effective bow use really wants Close Counter as well).
Well, the reason is mostly that even if you faced an army comprised of guys with stats like this:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Qn47ASucW4hQHusF9
Movement permitting, Canto flying units with bows like Claude & Cyril can move forward, take 3-range potshots with Curved Shot, then retreat back. On an open field, that beats all opponents with <7 move, and in reality, there's often obstructions for them to maneuver around to make it even easier to do this safely. In practice, the full kiting isn't necessary; merely taking a potshot then retreating oft suffices to aggro an entire inactive formation to charge forward, letting your waiting army get the jump during the next player phase and defeat them all where they stand.
Anyway, I started a Maddening NG+ of Black Eagles, and it seems range-cheezing is indeed the name of the game here. Bows for (nearly) everybody! Yes, including you, Ferdinand von Aegir!
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For plot, I'm still not reading most of the spoilery comments others have made, but there is one particular plot element that comes up in the Golden Deer routes (and at least some of the other routes, I presume?) that I just love. It's frustrating because it's a compelling and fun variation of a common trope that could very easily be stuck into more plots without fundamentally "changing" or messing with their essence, but inexplicably isn't. Specifically...
...so a lot of Fire Emblems have a "holy blood" type mechanic where certain people are descended from certain special other people which means that they can wield legendary weapons nobody else can, use secret magical tomes, perform divine rituals, use dragon veins, etc. Frequently, these people are also nobles. Let's face it, this is an excuse for Our Heroes (and sometimes Our Villains, e.g. Arvis/Julius) to have some special destiny and have an excuse to save the world and be "better" than the hordes of faceless enemies out there, but sure. Don't think too hard about why Marth's only descendents who can wield Falchion are Chrom & Lucina rather than either his bloodline dying out completely, or else there being 400 potential wielders after 1000 years, but moving on.
Meanwhile, over in the real world. Nobles have often claimed very similar things here, too. The Japanese Imperial family is partially descended from Amaterasu. God picked the Czars to rule Russia, according to the Russian Orthodox Church. The point is, nobles are special super-awesome people by dint of their bloodline. But! 90% of the time, if you search back far enough, what you find is that some warlord conquered the place with an army, declared himself King, and then all these nobles are just descending from that claim. The current nobles probably actually believe the propaganda, and hopefully have some idea of noblesse oblige, but.. it's all a lie, really.
So. Why don't more games decide to echo the real world and have an easy plot twist where sure, heroes are special and privileged and have magical powers, but the source of the magical powers is less-than-noble? You see that upfront sometime in darker & edgier works - in this world, vampires rule everything and have awesome fights - but rarely as a plot twist, in my recollection. And it's common if the powers come from some "external" source, it might be tainted with human sacrifice or the like, e.g. Tales of Symphonia Exspheres, but that turns into a denunciation of the evil technology. When it is a plot twist, it's a very individual plot twist that you're the kid of the villain or something (e.g. Fates Corrin), not a group plot twist, and it's not like Fates ever questions the idea that descendants of the dragons should rule (Corrin does go on to rule Valla, after all). It's more frequent that yup, the gods really did decide to bless certain bloodlines with awesome. Anyway, Three Houses does it, a first for Fire Emblem. All of these nobles (barring Claude & Marianne) really do seem to believe they're hot shit, but they're actually just descendants of a gang of bandits that happened to luck out to work with some professional supervillains ages ago, and drink up a bunch of dead god power. All the stuff about the goddess granting certain humans her powers to fight some great evil was just a giant lie put out by Nemesis & the 10 Elites, and I guess Seiros decided to roll with it rather than fight it, adding on "and also they've fallen and gone crazy so we gotta take 'em out" 1000 years ago. I kinda like how cynical Rhea is about this too; she definitely does not hold with Lunar-style doing this voluntarily, and makes clear she thinks that Sothis would never have done this intentionally. This seems to match real-world nobility pride pretty well; sure, you're a noble, but it's because a bunch of Norman pirates conquered Malta and declared themselves King of Malta ages ago, that's it.
I find doing this much more interesting and powerful than the "standard" super-awesome family powers to save the world.
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...so a lot of Fire Emblems have a "holy blood" type mechanic where certain people are descended from certain special other people which means that they can wield legendary weapons nobody else can, use secret magical tomes, perform divine rituals, use dragon veins, etc. Frequently, these people are also nobles. Let's face it, this is an excuse for Our Heroes (and sometimes Our Villains, e.g. Arvis/Julius) to have some special destiny and have an excuse to save the world and be "better" than the hordes of faceless enemies out there, but sure. Don't think too hard about why Marth's only descendents who can wield Falchion are Chrom & Lucina rather than either his bloodline dying out completely, or else there being 400 potential wielders after 1000 years, but moving on.
Meanwhile, over in the real world. Nobles have often claimed very similar things here, too. The Japanese Imperial family is partially descended from Amaterasu. God picked the Czars to rule Russia, according to the Russian Orthodox Church. The point is, nobles are special super-awesome people by dint of their bloodline. But! 90% of the time, if you search back far enough, what you find is that some warlord conquered the place with an army, declared himself King, and then all these nobles are just descending from that claim. The current nobles probably actually believe the propaganda, and hopefully have some idea of noblesse oblige, but.. it's all a lie, really.
So. Why don't more games decide to echo the real world and have an easy plot twist where sure, heroes are special and privileged and have magical powers, but the source of the magical powers is less-than-noble? You see that upfront sometime in darker & edgier works - in this world, vampires rule everything and have awesome fights - but rarely as a plot twist, in my recollection. And it's common if the powers come from some "external" source, it might be tainted with human sacrifice or the like, e.g. Tales of Symphonia Exspheres, but that turns into a denunciation of the evil technology. When it is a plot twist, it's a very individual plot twist that you're the kid of the villain or something (e.g. Fates Corrin), not a group plot twist, and it's not like Fates ever questions the idea that descendants of the dragons should rule (Corrin does go on to rule Valla, after all). It's more frequent that yup, the gods really did decide to bless certain bloodlines with awesome. Anyway, Three Houses does it, a first for Fire Emblem. All of these nobles (barring Claude & Marianne) really do seem to believe they're hot shit, but they're actually just descendants of a gang of bandits that happened to luck out to work with some professional supervillains ages ago, and drink up a bunch of dead god power. All the stuff about the goddess granting certain humans her powers to fight some great evil was just a giant lie put out by Nemesis & the 10 Elites, and I guess Seiros decided to roll with it rather than fight it, adding on "and also they've fallen and gone crazy so we gotta take 'em out" 1000 years ago. I kinda like how cynical Rhea is about this too; she definitely does not hold with Lunar-style doing this voluntarily, and makes clear she thinks that Sothis would never have done this intentionally. This seems to match real-world nobility pride pretty well; sure, you're a noble, but it's because a bunch of Norman pirates conquered Malta and declared themselves King of Malta ages ago, that's it.
I find doing this much more interesting and powerful than the "standard" super-awesome family powers to save the world.
No, this is just a plot hole for the sake of creating conflict.
The reality of the war back the is Empire lead by Rhea Vs. Nemesis & 10 Elites. With the empire been given Rhea and her 3 allies' blood.
In other word, at least back then, the empire know that they are the real blessed one with the right cause. Which is stupidly obvious if you just look at the Emblems. Only the people of the Empire carries the Emblem of the 4 Saints.
Rhea has no reason to perpetuate the lie, because she already fought it and won.
Especially so when the Empire founder and her are comrades. It is a piece of cake for her to rewrite the history the way she want after the Empire dominate the continent in its early years. On top of that the territories under Nemesis' influence are not very civilized tribal societies, which has little resistance against strong empire with literacy when it comes to history making.
The plot just force Rhea to make a stupid decision for no good reason who can have drama cooked up 1000 years later.
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The thing I really liked about how the writing treated crests, and this was very obvious playing this game shortly after watching FE4, was the fact that the game really dove head-first into what having such a thing in society would mean. In FE4 (and yeah, in other FEs too, but it's most obvious in FE4), holy blood was literally just an excuse for your characters and their main antagonists to be super-powerful, basically little more than a power fantasy. Whereas in Three Houses, the game actually goes into the social implications of crests, and it ain't all rosy. We see crests tear apart families, enable social exploitation, and leave some characters emotionally messed up... all things which you'd absolutely expect if such a thing were reality. Very neat.
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I hesitate to call it a plot hole in any way, with two different angles.
1. While there ARE five families in the empire with crests from the Saints, Rhea's effectively out to control human society entirely, and five noble domains just aren't enough administrative oomph to run a huge chunk of continent like Fodlan is. So from a simple logistics standpoint, another 10 families is still very managable for Rhea while being much more able to administrate the land. As well, the way Crests influence society seems, if not intentional, then functionally part of how Rhea retains control: the noble families vying to keep Crest bearers in positions of power and the uncontrolled ebbs and flows of the genetic lottery mean the nobles spend a lot of time undermining and rivaling one another, rather than challenging Rhea or the Church.
More interesting (although this is speculation)
2. Consider what Rhea's plan with Sothis' revival involved: using remaining holy blood and crest stones on a blank slate person in order to force-create a new vessel for her soul. She clearly failed quite a lot doing this, but ultimately it DOES approximately work, albeit Rhea doesn't understand what sort of person Sothis truly is and that she'd never simply erase another person to use their body the way she assumes.
However, mechanically, it does work. So by canonizing the Elites, she incentivizes the nobility to preserve their bloodlines and elevate those who carry the blood of the fallen Nabateans and maintain the weapons containing the Crest stones of their associated dragon. Meaning that it's likely, although we can't prove this was her plan, that once Sothis was revived she could use the preserved blood and crest stones to revive the dragons the Elites killed. And while she pays a lot of lip service to leading/protecting humanity in Sothis' stead, Rhea very clearly only truly cares about preserving and reviving her race.
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Also...
Rhea: Hey Loog, want this army-destroying spear from the goddess that your tragic hero ancestor wielded? He was totally not a fuckwit bandit genocidal monster btw. It also won't turn you into a dragon if you overuse it, promise. How about you break from the Empire in return, hm? They just got done with a failed invasion of a foreign nation where the goddess's light doesn't shine. Can't have them questioning her totally legit existence!
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More Atelier Meruru progress: Reached the population goal with about 5 months to spare despite mediocre planning and extra backtracking. Been so long since a scene with Meruru's dad. Game isn't that hard in that regard. I go through a lot of attack items, which eats up time replacing them. It's quite telling that there's a task to use bombs 100 times and I'd already done so by the time it appeared.
Oh hey, a different Mana Khemia remix. Wasn't expecting that one.
Mine boss went down only getting one turn. Though this is more because I put it off for a while and got equipment upgrades before challenging it. Also had Lias to push back its turns. Later half of the game feels very open ended with all sorts of quests available and being able to choose what order I'm going to bother with them. Always something to do while also taking time to make equipment as it becomes available.
Piled up money with not too much spending going on until the wholesale shop expanded. Then I found lots of things to register there to sink my cash into.
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FE3H - Playing Blue Lions on Maddening Mode, up to Chapter 18.
Thoughts on the route:
-Chapter 1 is probably a bit unreasonable, you have basically no way to prepare for the fight, you only get five people (and your mages have highly limited spells). You can lose units but doing so early is basically fatal. Pretty much a "play perfectly or lose" map and the enemies here have slightly elevated crit compared to normal (due all enemy Commoners/Nobles getting Dex+4 and of course slightly higher stats) so you'll face low crit you can't do much about.
-After that it gets much more fair. I've seen some hype for Chapter 2 but I beat it first try with no Divine Pulse, just lots of baiting enemies into your meat-grinder trap. (The enemies do outstat you a fair bit so you do have to do this.)
-Enemies now have fixed skills by class, so e.g. all Archers have Poison Strike, Snipers have that + Vantage, Myrmidons and Assassins have Pass, etc. The consistency is nice so you don't need to click through all the enemies like in Awakening/Fates' hardest difficulties.
-Ninja reinforcements are sadly back and are still lame. The most egregious case of them in the maingame is probably Chapter 5 where multiple scary Myrmidons spawn right on top of you. (Also all Myrmidons have Pass... yeah.) A lot of paralogues are bad about this too (among others: Dorothea/Ingrid, Annette/Gilbert, Caspar/Mercedes). I feel like this design could just be terrible but Divine Pulse makes it forgivable at least.
-Speaking of Divine Pulse, outside this use (where I do make use of it extensively), I'm.. actually using it less this playthrough than my previous ones, because I'm just that much more engaged with the gameplay. It's really solid now! Nothing new here, FE is good, FE with teeth is good. But now I have to seriously consider that this might be my #2 Fire Emblem for gameplay, which seeing as it's already #1 for writing... well. I've praised the game enough.
-Enemies are faster now, running a curve that goes all the way to "so fast they just double everyone, too bad". They also have stupid-high attack. It's difficult to tank them for long, the game really favours using range advantages and healing. Good mages who are also good healers (Merecedes, Dorothea) are invaluable in this mode; they range-cheese better than archers because they hit harder and don't lose accuracy at range 3-5. Combat arts are also better since doubling is harder, and again you like the accuracy more.
-Enemy fliers are absolutely ludicrous. They go where they want and ORKO almost everyone. That said there are a few people who can safely bait them (usually one) and most act aggressively so you can wait for them with ambushes, but they do tend to warp battles around them. Not complaining, now I know how the enemies felt on my Verdant Winds run.
-I never got the Rafail Gem before (it's from a certain part 2 paralogue). Wow, that's a nutty accessory, which I guess fits the profile of Relic accessories. It both nulls type weaknesses AND grants crit immunity, which is a big deal in this game with how bosses are structured. I think about how the big bosses of Verdant Winds in particular all relied on crit to be competent (C18 boss, C20 boss, final boss) and how much this would have helped instead of making me rely on Burning Quake.
-Named enemies are super-badass now. This wasn't so bad in Part 1 because the big battle against other students, Chapter 7, had Casual Mode active. But in Part 2, yikes. Let's talk about Chapter 17, because it was a pile of crazy fun: First of all, the Alliance summons a reinforcement wave that includes Hilda, Leonie, two Snipers, and two Falcon Knights. Hilda has ONE HUNDRED ATTACK (yes, that's the exact number) and can OHKO anything she touches. I had several rewinds figuring when they spawned and how to not be there, and on several failed attempts I had five PCs die in a single enemy phase, yeesh. Fortunately Hilda is range 1 only so ranged attacks to the rescue. Bernadetta now has 50-something Dex; she mans the ballista and has significant crit with it (and still has 100% silence), so uh have fun with that? Didn't have an RNG-perfect strat, but eventually did rush in with Dimitri to hit Bernie with Atrocity. Petra's atk/avo/crit were all nutty, but she came in to claim the ballista after Bernadetta died. I didn't deal with her myself, but retreated to let the Alliance army kill her, which they eventually did. And then Claude... ORKOs literally everyone, range 2-3, Close Counter, Flying Weakness Null, lol. What's his weakness? ATTACKS AT RANGE 4 OR MORE. My two main attacking mages both have 4+ range, so where able to kill him; his res isn't too great. But of course, he moves with his army, so safely doing that wasn't an easy feet; Dimitri's special gambit to the rescue. And finally, there's Edelgard. Edelgard has 80 attack enemy phase, 94 on her own phase, significant crit, insane charm, good enough durability, Distant Counter. She could ORKO everyone on my team except Dimitri (OHKO everyone except him and Dedue, whom she doubles). Fortunately the combination of an Atrocity from Dimitri carrying the Rafail Gem (which nulls crit) and a single gambit from Byleth (the only PC with enough charm to hit her, and even then it took a full linked attack) brought her low enough for a Dedue CA to finish. Thank god she doesn't have avoid or Vantage.
Unit notes. I decided to use the entire BL house as well as Dorothea, who does triple duty as a character who I like, is easy to recruit, and a very good PC.
Byleth: Myrmidon -> Pegasus Knight -> Falcon Knight. Pegasus Knight is the best tier 2 class, it is known. Was MVP for a while due to that + her base stats. Due to her training woes I wasn't able to shift her over to Wyvern so she fell off some in tier 3, but now that she's in her Master Class she's pulled up again. She's not super-durable but the offence and mobilty are both great. Also carries a bow for Curved Shot.
Dimitri: Soldier -> Cavalier -> Paladin -> High Lord. Dimitri beelined to Move+1 and is his usual mobile "best stats in the game" self. Due to the combation of decent speed, def, cha, and HP he can often tank things nobody else can, and of course the strength + Brave Lance or Atrocity or whatever means his offence rules. I ended up switching to High Lord even though the loss of Canto really hurts because the extra speed seemed really useful, and 7 move is hardly bad. One of the MVP candidates.
Dedue: Soldier -> Brigand -> Warrior (-> War Master planned). Early on, his personal gives him 12 def which lets him actually tank some things others can't, although as time goes on the speed starts costing him some (e.g. enemy Warriors get enough speed to double and no amount of def slows them down much), as does his cha. Fortunately he also has high str and several ways to use it well: fists, Vengeance, axe to the face, it's all good. Mages make him run screaming. An odd character, but quite solid until the timeskip where missing several months is hard to recover from.
Felix: Myrmidon -> Archer -> Sniper -> Bow Knight. Amazing start due to effective 15 str / 9 spd. Falls off a little as his personal eventually becomes junk. Felix kinda mocks most dedicated archers in this game because his str is so much higher, and god do archers need it, due to their lack of Combat Arts which boost damage significantly like Tempest Lance/Helm Splitter. Sadly mine is quite speed-screwed (like -6 points) which cuts into his niche, but he's still okay.
Mercedes: Monk -> Mage -> Bishop-> Gremory. Is amazing. Physic, Fortify, Live to Serve all make for amazing action economy as a healer, especially when she's hurt herself. But y'know she's also a perfectly capable mage on offence. Gave her Thyrsus and made good use of her above average bulk for a mage. Probably the best magic user in the game, her only disadvantage is a lack of innate 3 range.
Ashe: Fighter -> Archer -> Sniper -> Bow Knight. Yeah I mentioned archers with bad strength, here is one. I decided to keep him along that line. BK is silll an excellent class, and he's actually doing well for speed unlike Felix (fastest person on my team in fact). He's very squishy and can't ORKO hardly anything besides the odd mage but he's still valuable, if probably the overall LVP.
Annette: Monk -> Mage -> Dancer. The comparison between her and Mercie is kinda dismal on paper; lower stats AND a trash faith list. She does have Rally early buut even on this mode I don't find that super-great, giving up a turn is a big deal with how player-phase-focused the game is. But nonw of this matters since she's the dancer! And sometimes just chipping in her own magic is just what you need, since really only the other mages can ORKO armours reliably.
Sylvain: Fighter -> Brigand -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord. Kind of has an unimpressive start but the overall growths are solid and he snowballs well into a very competent Wyvern. Never the team MVP but ever since he started flying he's been consistently useful. Hits extremely hard with Death Blow and can actually double sometimes, and take a few hits as needed.
Ingrid: Soldier -> Pegasus Knight -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord. Also has a bad start but good growths, although mine got a bit speed-screwed, like Felix! Very sad given her niche. She's still one of the fastest especially with Darting Blow. Probably the weakest of the three fliers overall due to said RNG screw but obviously a good team member.
Dorothea: Monk -> Mage -> Warlock. No plans to move her out of Warlock. First off, the nice thing is despite her stated weakness in Faith, she actually starts out able to Heal, so she was useful as soon as she joined, and quickly gets Thoron/Physic which rounds her out into the great red mage she always is. With Caduceus and now Black Range +1 she has 4-5 range and can ORKO many enemy types. And... Meteor. Is sooo good. Not just the two shots of it (though those are nice, can OHKO problem enemies or aggro others, and the splash damage is nifty in a few ways too), but just equipping it enables linked attacks everywhere within 10-12 range and in this mode where accuracy matters more? Yeaaah. Really good.
Dimitri/Mercedes/Dorothea are probably the best (ignoring the dancer), with Byleth/Sylvain next, though both Byleth and Felix had MVPish times earlier in the game.
I switch accessories, especially mage accessories since they have the slots, more than I used to in this mode. Switching between Healing Staff (+10 healing), Magic Staff (+3 atk), and a range-booster just gives mages incredible flexibility and power at whatever role you need them for.
I have a lot I could say on the story but most of it is stuff I've already commented on in the Azure Moon section of my post so I'll refrain for now; this post is long enough as is. :)
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Fell Seal - Arbiter’s Mark: I’m about 20 hours into this game so far. I am playing on Veteran without any modifications, since I wanted to experience the game normally. When I replay it I will probably tackle some modified form.
The game is obviously created by someone who loved FFT and wanted to make a variant of FFT. It has the job class system where you need prereqs to unlock different jobs and sometimes combinations of jobs and it has the little rotating circle with the jobs. It also has the one secondary skillset slot as well as the three skill slots, although they are a bit more flexible. There’s a reaction slot and then two other slots. The game gives everyone the same Job Points regardless if they participate in a battle, and they give people who did not participate a small amount of spillover job experience as well.
One of the nice quality of life things is that it learned from FFT’s mistakes! Including:
-you can see the map when you set up your people
-you can see the map and change your classes/equipment
-you can take back moves
-documentation is better - showing how things are calculated
-more physical skills that are varied and interesting
The biggest departure from FFT is the MP system, which is a bit more like Tactics Ogre. Each of your characters regenerate 10 MP per turn, and often skills cost from 8-24 MP, so you can never run out of MP, but MP is always a consistent issue for most of the non-pure physical characters, and even many of the physical classes have some nice techs. Because of this system, a lot of the classes with high MP drain (hello, Sorcerer) really want to dedicate their skill slots to MP regeneration. One of the characters I have the “reduce MP cost by 1/3” ability and the “move-MP up” ability just to keep her going indefinitely.
The game has this Injury system that keeps the characters out for a battle when they die in battle, which encourages you to have a rotating group of people. Here are the people I have set up right now.
Kyrie: Templar/Marked. Strong mixed strengths with both physical and the holy/dark magic of Marked.
Reiner: Dualist with Dual Wield. Glass cannon physical character.
Anadine: Demon Knight / Reaver: I gave her Reaver for some ranged physical options. Her offense is pretty absurd: she just did 500 damage to the most recent boss. She also has Cleave, which gives her another turn if she kills an enemy. She is probably the overall MVP. Either her or…
Yates: Healing machine with dark magic. Supreme Healer is pretty much godlike with the general overall weakness of healing.
Katja: Joined my party quite recently, but she has Dual Wield and Guns. Can’t complain.
Generic Male #1: Wizard with Alchemystic. A buffer / general mage. Alchemystic is a bit underwhelming, though, because buffs aren’t great in this game. He has Double Cast now, though, and I am working on Half MP. Might just turn him back into a Sorceror.
Generic Female #1: Plague Doctor / Warmage. Decent build but is a little squishy because she has to be in close to be effective.
Generic Female #2: Dual Wielding Gunner who heals. A bit better than Katja due to being built more.
Generic Female #3: Dual Wielding Assassin with Gadgets. Not too useful; I only use her when I’m desperate.
Generic Female #4: Fellblade with Warmage. I mostly use her for some damage along with Fellblade’s single target 75% sleep, which is quite good in this game where truly disabling status is hard to come by.
Generic Female #5: Sorcerer/Wizard. Fullscreen spells are broken, but they cost a lot and don’t do THAT much damage. I built her around MP regen so she can use them as often as possible. Great PC, although squishy.
The boss fights are quite good in this game. Often quite difficult, well-designed, and generall quite fun. Randoms are bit hit and miss; they can vary from “this is very easy” to “omg why”.
The story is boring and just fills time. All the characters are generically likeable and have a couple of personality traits, but the writing is really nothing special at all.
So far I’d give it at least a solid 8/10. We’ll see where it takes us.
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AI: The Somnium Files
Finished! Excellent game, highly recommended for those who like visual novels. Also all the eye / eyeball / AI / ai puns you can shake a stick at.
The good: The plot, the characters. For obvious reasons, I can't really go too deeply into this without ruining the game. But it's very smartly written, and it's got a good pace of handing out both new hints / revelations as well as new questions to think about. One thing in particular I love is that the characters are smart: if there's some obvious weird coincidence afoot, the characters will explicitly talk about it. Anyway, you're a cop in Tokyo who's part of a secret force that investigates crimes via drugging witnesses / suspects into a chemically induced sleep, then poking around in their dreams / subconscious, called their Somnium, looking for clues. Along with your AI pal who doubles as a replacement eye (ai-ball). Bit of a civil liberties nightmare, yes.
Also good: While Uchikowski still loves branching paths, 'cuz that's just how he rolls, this isn't just a rehash of the Zero Escape series (i.e. 999). So nah, it's just branching paths, there isn't a meta aspect this time a la Undertale. There's one character / path who does rant about secret societies and parallel universes and the like, but that's mostly just a bit of fanservice.
One of the advertised bits is that the character designer from Fire Emblem Awakening & Fates worked on this game (Yusuke Kozaki). They did good work, to be clear, but for the most part, it's actually not too obvious? Guess the change in scene from FantasyLand to Tokyo did a lot. The only one that stands out is that Kaname Date himself, Our Hero, looks an awful lot like a modern Tokyo Male Corrin from FE Fates (the default look, at least). Also, I can only assume it was expensive to render the more detailed characters, because there is a suspicious lack of background characters - bars & lounges are empty-ish, the cafe has most of the other customers far in the background, and the crime scenes have the same few cops show up.
Also, there's not TOO much gameplay, and the game is quite generous (if you want to brute force all the interrogations, the game will let you, there's no punishment for "failure" aside from not getting an achievement). I'm fine with this, but YMMV. (This is one of the nice things about Phoenix Wright at its best, it lets You The Player figure something cool out rather than watching the characters figure something cool out.)
As another random thought, since by law all games set in modern Japan need to have an "idol" subplot in them somewhere, I really like the slant AI takes. Rather than having some J-Pop superstar who we're told is the biggest hit ever (e.g. Persona 4 Rise), which is the common take in other fiction (but one that is frankly rather restrictive if taken seriously, and raises major questions about why they aren't being tailed by paparazzi and causing scandals), the character in AI is much more of a C-list celebrity, the equivalent of a popular YouTube / Twitch star. Sure, she has a studio contract and a few superfans, but it's mostly in stuff like recording podcasts or streaming !Minecraft on !Twitch. So there's a lot more room for weird stuff to happen and for them to not be under surveillance 24/7. (As another random thing that the story does right, at least for a more serious game - the game does come up for a proper excuse for an Ace Attorney Maya Fey-esque kid helper - her parents are TERRIBLE at being parents.)
Complaints, which are really mostly nitpicks:
* There are some quick-time event "combat" events in the game, and they are... ridiculous. Actually the part of the game most played for comic relief, oddly enough, and highly variant in tone from the rest of the game. You know how sometimes in the movie Inglorious Basterds, it's a gritty realistic tone where one wrong move in a bar gets you shot, and sometimes it's superheroes who invincibly fight through a horde of bad guys? Yeah, it's like that, with extra skeeviness. (Our Hero literally distracts mercenaries with panties… during a rainstorm.. at night. Or makes some Superman-esque jump to a pond lured by the promise of a non-existent porno magazine. Or a 12-year old girl with a pipe goes on a smashing spree against thugs with guns. I Am Not Making This Up. These battles are in their own separate Rule Of Cool reality everybody forgets about afterward.) I think they added these because video games are supposed to have some sequence that shows off what a badass the main character is and get some mook-smashing frustration out? With some juvenile hur-hur thrown in?
* The game includes the assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold trope in one of its characters. While such characters are obviously "interesting" in fiction - dangerous wild cards with elite skills - I dunno if portraying these types too sympathetically works in a "modern" environment. James Bond might be a great movie character, but he's also a bit of a psychopath, no? (One character even calls this out, talking about how assassin sounds all proper & professional, but it's just a nice name for serial killer.)
* In general, the game is quite good at ensuring that even the endings where Date gets stuck on a dead end / exploring a side character's story/history, there's some new revelation to think about. I think that one of these revelations might be a little too helpful for figuring out WTF is going on, though. (Or, alternatively, given that we know this, there's too much exposition in the final two locked paths that observant players should already have figured out, so cut some of that, maybe.)
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Beat Azure Moon Maddening Mode. Last two maps were definitely the hardest in the game, very satisfying to overcome. Ninja reinforcements remain questionable design but Divine Pulse makes them okay, just never play Maddening without DP if you hate yourself. I actually ran out of Divine Pulse three times on those last two maps. When you reach the throne room in the final battle, FOUR mobile ninja siege tome flingers appear, which might be one of the craziest such reinforcements in the series. Even knowing they were coming on the second run I had to use DP to fiddle with positioning.
Random thoughts:
-Part 2 really has significantly better map design than part 1. Like almost all my favourite maps in the game are in Part 2? I'm probably a big enough nerd to talk about all the maps but I'll do that later.
-Dodgetanking becomes really good lategame, Ingrid with Alert Stance+ using primarily axes (the worst weapon for dodging!) became one of my most important PCs right at the end, especially because she had enough HP/Res to reduce some enemy mages to 3HKO. Definitely would recommend building this harder on future Maddening runs, especially on ones where Ferdinand is used. Dimitri's probably great for it too, and of course high-AS PCs like Petra/Ingrid/Leonie. It opens up great EP options especially when combined with Retribution. Ingrid swung her Silver Axe 15 times in one enemy phase; I can't think of any time earlier in the game where that number climbed past 4, for any PC's weapon.
-Long-range attacks with crit are terrifying, but the game gives you several good tools to deal with them. Stride/Warp/Rescue to get in range quick, dodge-tanking, the Rafail Gem, and a strategy I only pulled out in the final battle, Retribution (gambit which grants Distant Counter for a few turns).
-Rafail Gem is really good. Thank god Crimson Flower leans less heavilly on crit bosses than the other routes since it can't get it. Did it really need to null type weaknesses too? Probably not!
-Gambits with large AOEs are pretty damn good, the "lord" batallion gambits being able to be used twice is godly. Otherwise I think there's a reasonble balance between two-use small-AOE gambits (giving you more options for monsters), one-use big-AOE gambits (huge at turning the tide against a swarm), and Stride/Retribution/Impregnable Wall/Dance which all give solid utility. The latter are good for PCs with lower Charm obviously.
-That was probably the most enjoyable final boss in the series? You have to hold off endless reinforcements while the boss itself has (gameplay spoilers) (a) a lot of durability, especially if you go for turtly victory methods due to her regen + barrier which halves two attacks per turn, which forces you to assign some PCs to hold off the reinforcements while others play utility roles and still others damage the boss, and (b) enough damage and crit to be scary in her own right and limit who can gang-beat her safely, (c) alternates between striking two people in range (which you can counter!) and using a huge ITD AOE move (which you can't. Also it did enough to OHKO my Byleth who was one of my best damage-dealers, so she had to gtfo on those turns). Also (d) Vantage/Wrath on boss durability WTF I guess that means "Rafail Gem or savescum" good thing I got it. Definitely kept me really engaged down the stretch in a way FE final bosses rarely manage.
-The two most important PCs in the game to recruit on this route are Lorenz and Caspar. Let that sink in. (On VW and SS Mercedes joins the fray but at least she's a great unit herself.)
Game continues to be a joy for all that I definitely need a break from it now.
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Haha, I actually pulled out the Retribution tactic in multiple maps in my BL run. Bolting/Meteor/etc mages can eat it~
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Y's9 - This thing is absolutely great. I end up liking it more than Y's8. I totally feel for White Cat at the end. I am all "don't go Adol, don't go" by the end myself. It really has been a while I played an RPG and don't want it to end.
The game play is also the best of the series so far simply because of the Monstrum abilities. Truly 3 dimensional dungeons that goes up and down. Especially the key mobility movements are unlocked super early. KH series better take an lesson from this. Don't lock double jump and gliding late in the game.
Ahh, whoever is doing the localization this time better not messed up.
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Glad to hear it. I loved Ys 8 and played the hell out of it (as my twitch videos can attest). Have high hopes for 9.
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Glad to hear it. I loved Ys 8 and played the hell out of it (as my twitch videos can attest). Have high hopes for 9.
I should mention Y's9 has a very different feel then Y's8.
Instead of an adventure out in open field, Y's9 traps you in a city and dungeons and thus a much smaller world.
But has more things to do due the Monstrum Abilities allows more freedom on the map. (But it does have a limit on wall climbing so the plat forming doesn't die off completely.)
Y's9 also has something akin to the Adol/Dhana perspective switch, but with a surprising twist to it. (Falcom's certain behavior in advertising the game is a hint to this.)
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Hollow Knight anyone?
A young gamer seems mortified that I've mostly played it without Cornifer's maps. I'm assuming this means I'm playing most of the stages out of order, because I only see his mask most times. I GUESS that's what happens when you waist 100+ hrs per expansive RPG. The payoff for developing intuition should feel better than it really is.
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Cornifer is really tucked away in some zones. I wouldn't read much into not finding him. You can buy his maps in town after some time passes. I would say that there are a few zones that you really, really want a map for, but even with the maps your first foray into a zone is basically blind.
One of the true delights of Hollow Knight is how open the game is once you pick up the mantis claws. There's no such thing as a "right" order to do the zones in. You can have a wildly different experience from other players based on where you choose to go from there. Many of the later zones can be first accessed from different directions depending on where you've gone, what upgrade's you've picked up.
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Hollow Knight is cool. I didn't talk about it when I was playing through it since I wanted to experience it unspoiled. Still need to go back and get the better endings, but I got the default ending, so that's something.
River City Girls
Is also cool. This is by WayForward, known for Shantae & the Pirate's Curse around here, although the more relevant WayForward game to know is Double Dragon Neon of all things. (Skullmageddon now runs a pawn shop.) I think Aleph/074/Nama also played it? Anyway, it's a very solid beat 'em up, and I like the tone quite a bit - rather than some sort of 80s fever dream hellscape city from Final Fight clones, River City Girls modernizes things a bit by having perfectly normal trendy shops & people checking their phones in the background as they blase ignore the fighting going on in front of 'em. Closer to The World Ends With You, I guess.
Anyway, as is usual for WayForward, the humor & writing is good but highly goofball. Also, they seemingly went for the "hire the best of BandCamp" style for composing the soundtrack, which can be erratic, but they got good stuff here (including, apparently, some remixes from old Japan-only SNES games in the series). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrB_g6m0Qww if you're curious; check out 16:45, The Hunt, for example.
Similar to the Ys games, there's quite a gap between randoms and bosses. The randoms are tough but doable, even on Hard (although you'll just die a lot more on Hard, but dying is not a big deal). The bosses are extremely tough even on Normal, though! Also like (modern) Ys, you can cheeze them with healing item use in battle if you are stuck, but I'm trying to beat 'em all legit, so RIP me.
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It has certainly been a while since I got an ending in Atelier Meruru. Mostly procrastinating on which words to put here. For a first playthrough, it had that feel that there wasn't enough time to do everything but there is enough time to do enough. I respect that and it does give me something to aim for on replays since my scheduling was kind of messy. I had unfinished quests in two regions so maybe there's more plot stuff yet to be discovered. On this first time, Meruru's dad was plot irrelevant. Music's at that place where some gets stuck in my head while playing it but not where I'd try to share it with someone with no exposure to the game. Never did finish that task which requires using the basic revival item 3 times, I was still at 2 at the end. Though this is more from deliberately avoiding situations where one would face a risk of death than a knock on the game's difficulty.
Smorgesborg of unsorted character thoughts. Having not played any of the other Arland games, I'm not aware of all the character development of the returning faces and am coming from my impressions in this game only.
Keina: As a character, reminds me of FF4 Rosa a lot in her devotion to Meruru. I can picture the outrage that would ensue had the main character been male and she maintained her same degree of devotion. As a battle unit, my impressions kept changing. I'm used to having the alchemist be the healer while the allies do the bashing so her focus on healing and support didn't match my playstyle. Her low HP and LP didn't help either, often being half exhausted just traveling to farther locations. Someone's got to get sent into the dirt to use those revival items though so I guess she's the easiest sacrifice. Later, I make better attack items and she becomes useful for freeing up Meruru turns to launch attack item assaults. Plus, her stat growth vastly improves past Lv 40, very Onion Knight-ish.
Lias: Comic relief. He really wants his brother's approval but he also has luck nearly as awful as Ashton Anchors leading to hilarity at his expense. Very useful in battle due to his ability to push back enemy turns.
Totori: The patient teacher. There are a few moments here and there which crack the facade though. in battle, it takes a while to hit her stride. Item duplication isn't all that special when she first joins since the only items I had early on were low-end. It has tremendous game-altering potential once one starts making better items though. An MP restorative that restores more MP than it costs to cast the ability? Very potent skill. She does well at group damage (her regular attack and one of her skills are area effect) but her low attack power limits her output at bosses so she's better as a supporter.
Gino: Comes off as very single-minded in his pursuit for strength. Seeks the approval of his master, similar to Lias but doesn't come off nearly as strongly. Battle-wise, he leans very much towards a boss fighter. His reason for coming to Arls is looking for strong opponents to test his strength against, he has a passive which raises his stats at bosses, and all his skills are single-target. Didn't seem very impressive on the base stats front. Between his passive and his buff skill though, he could be stronger than the raw numbers would appear to indicate.
Rorona: I hear there's been a lot of outcry over her appearance in the game, for reasons I won't get into here. Some of her pie scenes are quite entertaining in their own right. Very mixed bag battle-wise. Starts on the more fragile end of the durability spectrum and the passive that boosts item speed at the expense of power I feel makes her worse. Highest evade in the cast though so I chose to build her as an evade tank.
Mimi; Another of the experienced adventurers from Arland, her arc in this game is that she apparently has feelings of some sort for Totori and is unwilling to spit them out. Magical intervention aside, that is and those scenes I found comical. In a fight, she's the game's physical powerhouse. Cast best base attack, the highest attack power weapon, a passive which decreases the wait between turns, a speed lowering skill, and a skill that ignores enemy defense. What is this character balance thing again? Guzzles MP like crazy if being used at full offense so MP cost reduction is a great idea for her accessories.
Esty: OK, I admit it. I laughed when her full name is said out loud. Even if it is an easy joke on the localizer's part. Very sensitive about her age because Japan. In battle, she's probably better Totori at mowing down trash randoms. Didn't feels particularly remarkable though. Also goes through MP fast on full offense.
Sterk: Found him memorable because his character feels like some crazy mashup of Squall and Seifer. He's got Squall's intimidating appearance and serious demeanor while he also has Seifer's obsession with being a knight. Personality-wise, he comes off as some alternate world Seifer who picked a more benevolent figure to be a protector to. In battle, he's doesn't hit as often as most of the other fighters and focuses more on high power per strike. He's not sluggish, just that his damage output leans more towards higher damage per attack with his +50% crit rate passive and a stat boost if fighting higher leveled enemies.
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13 Sentinels - I cannot wait for this game, I want it now.
Since I bought the prologue, I was able to play up 20% of the whole game with the trial version. And UGH, I can't wait for the real thing.
The art is great and the story really hooked me up.
The battle system is not great, but serviceable enough.
It is a real time rock and paper like SLG. But the air unit really breaks that balance.
Ughh, why the release date if this and P5R can't be switched?
I was thinking so much about this game that I can't pay attention to P5R.
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13 Sentinels - I cannot wait for this game, I want it now.
Since I bought the prologue, I was able to play up 20% of the whole game with the trial version. And UGH, I can't wait for the real thing.
The art is great and the story really hooked me up.
The battle system is not great, but serviceable enough.
It is a real time rock and paper like SLG. But the air unit really breaks that balance.
Glad to hear it. What I've seen so far in trailers had me very worried about the game.
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Devil May Cry 4 - Thoroughly average and unremarkable, but not a bad game to pass the time. I just fought the She-Viper.
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Romancing Saga 3 - Help I'm trapped in a saga game with even less direction than usual. I have bought many businesses but have no actual money but riding boats costs money and where the fuck do I go to find quests and things that give money?
Ellen start, did the Pidonia stuff and rescued a kid from the archfiend tower after going the wrong way and getting my shit caved in by demons. Twice. Some horrible pink child forced her way into my team and then left as soon as I got on a boat? I have 600au left to my name and no idea which of these boat destinations(that cost 200 or more to go to!) has Adventure. I have so far determined it is not the desert town(though I did find some cultists in the desert but they don't want to fight(yet?)) and not the tennis town(seriously it's called wimlbledon or something).
At least punching things is fun? Also will Sarah and Tom please start gaining some MP, being able to only cast magic like 6 times before they run out is getting very old.
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Romancing Saga 3 - Help I'm trapped in a saga game with even less direction than usual. I have bought many businesses but have no actual money but riding boats costs money and where the fuck do I go to find quests and things that give money?
Ellen start, did the Pidonia stuff and rescued a kid from the archfiend tower after going the wrong way and getting my shit caved in by demons. Twice. Some horrible pink child forced her way into my team and then left as soon as I got on a boat? I have 600au left to my name and no idea which of these boat destinations(that cost 200 or more to go to!) has Adventure. I have so far determined it is not the desert town(though I did find some cultists in the desert but they don't want to fight(yet?)) and not the tennis town(seriously it's called wimlbledon or something).
At least punching things is fun? Also will Sarah and Tom please start gaining some MP, being able to only cast magic like 6 times before they run out is getting very old.
Go to Lance and do the delivery quest there.
Keep on beating bandits until they tell you where their hide out is and beat the boss there.
Then help professor retrieve her pets and do the mouse quest.
Then head back to see Muse and do her dream quest. MAKE SURE TO FIND SILVER GAUNTLET in the dream. Permanently miss-able, so make sure you find it.
Then head to Vanguard and do the quest there.
Then head to Mozes and deceive both Undine and Vulcano to obtain the shield in the well. This is a hard early game quest, but if you can beat it, then you are ready to do a lot of thing.
I recommend recruiting Herman after this and begin the Mixmum quest.
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So yes, I still play games. Kinda...
SD Gundam G Generation F:
Wow, okay. This beast took me about 5 months of playing to beat the entire main game. It was released back in early 2000s so it doesn't include any of the newer Gundam series. It starts with the original Gundam and works itself up to Gundam X. The way the main game is set up, each series or OVA represents a Campaign (8-10 stages) or a Sidequest (2-3 stages). Altogether, this makes up for a total of 110 stages, with some stages sometimes having a two parter. Each part to a stage can take a long time too, because even skipping battle animations, the game has to show damage dealt to each unit on each phase. Think of it as like FE9's animations skip. It skips the big dramatic zoom ups, but you still see the units of the map interacting. So that's why this took so long. It also didn't help I primarily played this game while on the subway to work, so my sessions were limited to 1-2 hours at a time.
Anyway, since the game held my attention for that long, you probably already realized that I think this game is pretty solid and that would be right. It's not as deep as XF or FFT, but it certainly has its own beauty and charm in it's simplicity. There are some obvious complaints - the biggest one being that the game doesn't do much of a damage forecast. SRPGs without this feature can be quite frustrating, but to it's credit, the damage formula is actually so simple that I was able to decode it years before even joining the DL. This means that while the game itself doesn't tell you how much damage to expect, you can certain easily calculate it if you wish. Still no excuse though. The other big complaint is that once you start a story, you have to play it to completion. You can't grind along the way and there's no way of knowing if a certain stage just gets you stuck and you have no way of beating it. This is mostly negative (ala FFT's infamous Velius lockout) but it also means that the game won't force you to grind unless you choose (or messed up in previous stages - see below).
You have a select group of guest units that you own and can take into every stage. Usually this only applies to the second part of the stage (which typically is more massive) but they are often required in campaigns as the game expects you to do certain things while playing. The chief amongst these is to do what it refers to as "ACEing" or getting the ACE data for a mobile suit (MS)/Gundam. Once you have the ACE data, you can add its blueprints to your factory, which you can then produce for your guest units. You get story units too in every stage, but just as it is in the series plot, sometimes you are massively outnumbered, outclassed or out-piloted, so guest units become mandatory. Certain stages add a "Home Base", which you can launch your warships and mechs from but you have to protect. Protecting this base is sometimes impossible if you don't have strong guest units since you may only get 2 story units in a level to do everything against 50+ enemies.
Overall, I think this sits somewhere at around 7/10 for me. It's pretty challenging at times and the added secondary goals can give each level a nice spin on the objective. AFAIK there is no English patch so if you want to give it a spin yourself, you're gonna have to deal with everything being in Japanese. Not a huge deal, but since this is a SRPG, it can be a little more annoying. Some other gameplay thoughts below:
- What's really interesting about the game is that it tends to follow a couple of rules in its design. One of these rules is that every MS has a weakness - whether it's bad attack/defense, bad weaponry, lack of movement, etc. This makes it such that the more units you ACE out, the more tools you have in your kit to deal with the threats. It's a way of constantly encouraging you to improve your armory instead of just using one or two suits, so this is neat
- The game has a lot of misleading objectives, which can be very frustrating. I remember one level in Zeta Gundam where the objective is to beat Four's Psycho Gundam - a MS with massive UA/UD and it's only weakness is that it cannot attack at melee range. The problem here was that there is not way for Camil to get into threat range without take a ton of damage. You get Amuro too in this stage but he's tied to a Warship zone and can't move outside of it, meaning for all intents and purposes, Camil's all you get. And his death or Amuro's leads of a defeat. I spent like 3 days on this stage along trying to figure out how to kill Four before I realized that Camil can outkite him. I then tried to lure Four back into a range where Amuro can help out. Even with Amuro, I could only deal about 65%, but I decided to go for it anyway. After one attack, Four retreated because I had taken him below 50%, which was the true victory condition. GDI
- On that regard with the above, there are bonus objectives that sometimes takes you to the true stage or the 2nd part and it plays a FMV when this happens. These are neat and the game rewards you with extra funds for triggering them. They aren't always easy to get so they can make for an interesting challenge too.
- The game is definitely designed for you to start with Campaigns first instead of Side stories. Most side stories have absolutely brutal part 2s that can be almost impossible (Char's Counterattack) if it was your very first series choice. Flip side, most Campaign's part 2s are relatively simple and give you time to build up your armory. The only part 2 in a side story that I can get through is GW's Endless Waltz.
- On Series challenge, as noted above, a lot of side stories are very tough without strong guest units. Chief amongst these include: Char's Counterattack, Gundam F91, Sentinel Gundam, Gundam Wing - Dual Story. On the easier side of things: Gundam Wing, Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, Crossbone Gundam, G Gundam
- Gundam Wing IMO is probably actually the easiest campaign and thus series to begin with. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1) The MS you get from story units often outdwarf the enemies in stats. So just like in the series, it is quite easy for Heero to take on 14 Leos without breaking a sweat. 2) The 5 Gundam Wing pilots all have high stats. Average stats in this game for the combat ones hover around 20ish. Many series protagonists or allied characters will be around there or in their teens. The Wing boys break this rule in that they all have stats that average to 30. All 5 have combat stat totals that add up to 90, which means they have 1.5x more stat points than average
- One of the things I still don't understand is Newtype level. It only appears for Newtype characters and can range from 1-9. However, it seems to be a stat multiplier instead of a flat increase. How much it increases by I'm not sure, but it's what makes certain pilots such as Amuro/Camil/Quattro really good as they have strong combat stats + a NT level
- Damage formula is basically Base attack damage (from selected attack) x Unit Attack / Unit Defense x Tension multiplier. If Tension multiplier is maxed, the attack always crits. Certain attacks have a randomized attack value which goes from it's minimum to the displayed number. I haven't figured out the bare minimum here since I rarely used them as they are often unreliable except as a finisher.
Some really good units that everyone playing this game should be adding to their roster:
- [-] Gundam - If you're playing from the earlier side of the series, this is a great suit to add to your blueprints. Strong UA/UD and has excellent weaponry.
- ZZ Gundam - 5000 base melee attack is nothing to scoff at. It also has a very powerful MAP attack (attacks that ignore evade and hit everything in their path - friendly fire be damned) and can transform into a plane for bonus mobility
- S-Gundam EX - See [-] Gundam. Very strong for what it is.
- Crossbone Gundam X1 - Each of the crossbones are worth adding for different reasons aside from their good UA/UD. For X1, it's because it has a range 2-3 melee attack, which amongst suit weaknesses, having poor range 2 weaponry is a big one. So the fact that it has a strong usable melee at 2-3 range is a big deal
- Crossbone Gundam X2 - X2 doesn't have the 2-3 melee range, instead it has the super range option. A huge ass cannon it can fire at 5-6 range for 6000 base damage. You can't use it that often but it works as a snipe as 6 range will outrange most enemies in the game. And that base damage is amazing. Not many attacks in the game will beat it.
- Crossbone Gundam X3 - X3 comes with a built in Ion Field (immunes Beam 1 attacks, halves Beam 2) and like ZZ Gundam, a base attack damage at melee range for 5000.
- Gundam F90 - F90 has a very unique advantage that many other suits do not have. It can change its auxiliary functions to fight more effectively in different environments, but it is also the only that has a very effective underwater mode. Underwater fighting is rare, but exists and not many suits are actually good at it. F90 scoffs at that and performs amicably where most suits have reduced effectiveness.
- Gundam F91 - Aside from strong stats and good weaponry, it also has a built in Flight mode, making it great at melee combat for any battles on earth. There are a few like this, but F91 is amongst one of the most balanced.
- Gundam Maxter - Average UA/UD but like Crossbone X1, has a strong 2-3 range melee attack. G Gundam series gundams have a "weakness" where once their tension is maxed, their weapons change and they all cost you your tension bar. Maxter however, retains a 2-3 option that doesn't drain tension, making it very effective at scoring consecutive kills.
- Master Gundam - Excellent UA/UD and has a great 2-2 melee range attack. When it reaches max tension, gets a ridiculous MAP attack that basically kills almost anything.
- Wing Gundam - Primarily useful for combining ACE data, which is a function at the end of a level that allows you to create additional blueprints. The suit itself is not bad, but there are better versions of it. You can do a comedy strat if you have enough money to blow to use its melee MAP attack. It deals 99999 damage but also destroys the suit itself.
- Gundam Sandrock/ Sandrock Kai - Sandrock the OG has a 2-2 melee option called Cross Crusher that deals 5000 damage at base. This is huge and makes Sandrock keeping on the roster despite receiving upgrades to it. Sandrock Kai, the upgraded form loses this weapon for a replacement uzi that deals only 2500 at base and is randomized. Huge losing trade. But in return, it gains +3 UA/UD, much better mobility in space and at least the uzi is cost efficient as an attack. The definitive Sandrock model to keep if you can only hold 1
- Altron Gundam - Altron has amazing weapons. That's what it comes down to. A 5-5 melee attack, a 3-5 Beam option that hits twice and even a randomized damage attack for the gamblers in you. Like Sandrock, basically the superior version of its MS family.
- Gundam Deathscythe Hell Custom - Gundam Deathscythe HC is basically superior to all its previous models. And it's absolutely retarded: Built in flight mode, 1-3 Melee attack that is almost 5000 at base (4800), innate Beam Coat, innate Hyper Jammer system (+10 Pilot evade) and good UA and UD. Definitely want to keep one of these on hand.
- Wing Gundam Zero/Wing Gundam Zero Custom - Both versions have innate Zero System, which adds +20 to both range and melee combat stats. Both machines are also very mobile and have good weapons in general. Wing Zero has a wide range map attack but its very difficult to set up without friendly fire that is its chief draw. If you don't care for it, Wing Zero Custom is better. For one, innate flight mode. Then it has the most damaging base attack that I'm aware of: Twin Buster rifle that does 4000 damage x2. So on a clean hit, it's 8000 damage, which is just ridiculous. In my completed game, this thing has 39 bonus levels, primarily because of this attack, making it an extremely effective nuke on almost anything.
- Mercurius - Mercurius has mediocre weaponry, but that's not why you use it. You use it because it has innate Planetary Defense Systems, which gives you ranged immunity. Due to AI quirks, this function makes your borderline immortal and is useful for training weaker guests.
- Tallgeese 3 - Tallgeese 3 is basically the best version of all the Tallgeese and technically a superior Epyon too. It loses 2 UA but gains 1 UD. It has 2 extra attacks, one of which is a useful map Support and ridiculous movement. No Zero System though. Great for any well trained guest.
- Gundam Leopard/Leopard Destroy - You will notice Heavyarms was not on the list. This is because Gundam Leopard exists. They basically have almost the same stats and weaponry except: 1) Leopard OG can fight better effectively underwater, giving it a unique niche. It also has +1 UD just for insult to injury 2) Leopard Destroy has much more cost effective weapons. It's missiles only comes around 10% of its energy as opposed to the 20% on Heavyarms Kai. It does lose 1 range, but the effectiveness more than makes up for it.
- Gundam Airmaster Burst - This thing has an attack in it's plane mode that does 2000 damage x4. Again, 8000 base damage is silly. AND it's mobile. It's chief weakness is that it has poor 1-2 range and none of it's attacks are classified as melee, so it gets stonewalled by Virgos and the like.
- Gundam Versago Chest Break/Gundam Ashterion Hermit Crab - Both suits belong to the Frost Brothers and it takes a little work to add these to your roster but its worth it. Great UA and UD and great weaponry in general, along with Flight mode and a good MAP attack for support.
- Beltigo - It's UA and UD are alright but similar to Maxter, it makes up for it in weaponry. Beltigo has 4 attacks and all 4 are effective in someway depending on the situation.
- Gundam DX - Great UA and UD but actually kinda underwhelming. You'll use it chiefly for the melee and MAP support. The other two attacks are a bit junky. Needs the G-Falcon combined Data to be a real nuisance.
- Psychoro Gundam - Ridiculous UA and UD (50 for both). Innate Ion Field. Huge HPs. However, getting one is another story. You basically need to capture an enemy unit, and then level it up repeatedly and upgrade it's model at every opporunity to the right path. Then you need to ACE that suite, get its data and combine it with another suit to get to the Psycho Gundam series. From there, upgrade the suit model like 5 more times and voila. It does kinda break the game with its stats, but given the effort, it better!
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Niu: Thanks! Took me awhile to find Lance tho. @_@
Anyway...RS3: Found some dude named Ward on my way to Lance. The boss at the lake was A Regenerating Bitch but I managed to slug it down. Recruited Ward full time and he's a beefy boi with a big sword who does lots of damage and don't afraid of anything. Eventually found Lance, picked up that quest and snoozed my way through bandits until....
...the bandit boss. So THIS MOTHERFUCKER. He never stops summoning minions who clog up the front line so my fighters can never FREAKING HIT HIM. My "mages" are Thomas and Sarah who have like...12mp max and do roughly lukewarm garbage magic damage yet. And then he busts out Tornado Sword and puts my entire team to Almost Dead except that he does OHKO Sarah. I'm sure I could bring him down, but you can't attack the back row with melee and my team is very melee heavy for real damage. Sarah is an archer...but she does slightly less lukewarm garbage damage with her bow(like...does she ever get good? She's LVP by miles rn. Shitty physicals, shitty magic, shitty HP, the works) so that's not nearly enough. I think I need a better bow for her? But haven't found one in a shop yet. Mostly finding Swords and Rapiers which I don't have anyone using! :V
EDIT: Okay so on the refight he didn't summon as many guards and I snuck in enough damage? Kay. I have now found THE PROFESSOR and her amazing entrance, but she does not ask me about finding any missing pets. I did find mice in a cave and uhhhhhhh I reloaded from before I entered the cave because that was an absolutely awful fight. :V
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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - So they finally patched the Switch version. It's still not perfect performance-wise but good enough for me.
Game is thoroughly enjoyable. I'm surprised to the extent it's basically more Order of Ecclesia, but since OoE is the Dark Holy Elf Official Best Castlevania, this is the best outcome for me. It shares the varied glyph shard system (though there are some differences), the tendency for areas to be tough gauntlets as you search for the next save/warp point, and has some really great boss fights (at least if you don't spam items, c'mon this is an Igavania), the type which kill you many times until you get good but you can see how perfecting them is always within reach because they're very fair and well-designed. I just beat the boss in Hidden Desert, about 64% map completion or so.
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EDIT: Okay so on the refight he didn't summon as many guards and I snuck in enough damage? Kay. I have now found THE PROFESSOR and her amazing entrance, but she does not ask me about finding any missing pets. I did find mice in a cave and uhhhhhhh I reloaded from before I entered the cave because that was an absolutely awful fight. :V
First, if Sarah is not your main, kick her ASAP. She is going to permanent leave eventually.
There four spirit type monster in the forest. Those are her pets. Give it back to her and she'll help you on the mice.
Start the mice quest and fight the mice first, then retreat. Then exist the cave (some one will be there to open the entrance.)
Then go to see Professor for help. She'll give you an item that can show you which is the real mice. Then go back to fight the mice again.
After this. See if you can activate Muse's dream quest. And try to travel to the inner area of Demon King's Castle. Where you'll find a door that ask you for a ring.
You can find the ring in Lance from someone. You can then exploit the Ring bug for infinite money.
After that, you can enter the Holy King's Trial in Lance with the ring. There is one specific trial that pits you to fight strong monsters. You can use the Giant and Sun Flower to grind techs. Since you can freely enter and exist the fights in the trial.
Do grind some Command Mode techs too. It'll be very handy later on. (You can access command mode by putting the MC at the back row.)
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Oh and I realize I never even posted about Code Vein, the game which tests the hypothesis of "how much more would Elf like Dark Souls if it actually had even slightly engaging plot/characters"? Turns out, it helps decently. Telling the story of the world through all the memory flashbacks is an interesting conceit and I think the game pulls it off reasonably well, although I did feel the final conflict felt a bit underbaked. Never a game I'd play solely for writing, but it didn't completely embarrass itself. Gameplaywise, well, it's not an all-time favourite (the RPG side of things feels a bit clunky and tacked on as it often does in these games) but I definitely get into the high-stakes 3D action. Some of the random gauntlets could be quite challenging, especially in the first half of the game, so reaching another save point is always a relief (hmm, wonder what that reminds me of), and bosses are great. More consistent than Souls was, I literally died to every boss at least once and the tough ones really made me get good. Especially That One Boss Fight against two foes at once, as if Dark Souls hadn't already taught me how brutal those could be. Aesthetically, I liked the character customization options but have mostly forgotten the music already, though I appreciate that at least it had music in random battles I guess. Good lord do the Nier games kill the rest of this genre in music use.
7/10 area, could actually see myself playing it again sometime.
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Atelier Lulua- fin.
So having skipped the intervening games between Ayesha and Lulua (for now), the drift in the series has actually gotten quite noticeable. That lulua actually brings back all the Arland staples makes this stand out even more. Like... oh, I can fuck around and take my time and get everything? Weird. Took me a good 3 chapters to realize it was okay.
Anyway the main gimmick of Alchemyriddle, where it gives you a general idea of what you should to doing and a big ol' list of bonus objectives, but you have to kinda explore to have the hints make sense, is neat. At least for ones that are more "visit this dungeon" or "synthesize this item". The stuff that's dependent on Item Quality or spamming particular items in battle are legit just too vague, doubly so for quests that don't actually tell you item quality is even in play. I mean, eventually you will, but yeah, it's a game where I was happy to have FAQs just to speed things up for myself.
Honestly though it's a weird experience because Lulua as a game goes far more for sincere emotion than any of the Arland games did. Totori does it once in a while, but they very carefully spaced that out throughout the game, two or three key moments with a lot of growing up and faffing in between. Lulua has a much sharper divide between the silly bits, which is mostly non-mandatory events and about half of character skits, but the main plot is always focused on her goals and growth and about half the character stuff is actually pretty serious.
Granted there's also Shonen Arm Wrestling and the entire Curry quest but.
To an extent I do feel like the battle system, while it has enough to keep you with it, is a bit striped down in a way? Like for the most part it seems like most fights were determined before you started based on knowing the right item to slot in for Interrupt and the raw stat check, and while there WAS strategy for the most part there's a fairly simple ideal strat for every party setup and it's just a matter of executing it reliably. But then again, out of 11 chapters you don't actually fight a "real" boss until chapter 9, at which point there's 5 total, so... there's a lot of combat due to how alchemyriddle and unlocking character skits works but for the most part it's not a substantial part of the experience? I dunno how to describe that part of it.
But honestly it's been ages since I played Atelier and Lulua is fairly charming and Eva is Very Gay and it was entirely pleasant to revisit the series with this particular incarnation. 7/10
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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Beat this. Game clock was 14 hours, but the Switch assures me I was actually playing for 25-30 (I imagine most of the extra hours are from deaths and a bit from loading times). 99% map exploration.
This game was extremely fun! It's a new Igavania, which certainly had potential to be good, but still my expectations were tempered because Kickstarter games are a big "who knows" (Mighty No. 9 is overhated but I'd never call it a particularly great game), and y'know I only really loved one Igavania, which is Order of Ecclesia.
So it's a good thing Bloodstained is basically Order of Ecclesia 2019, isn't it?
By which I mean holy hell this game has some great boss fights. The game provides fluid action 2D platforming on an extremely high level and then designs battles to take full advantage of it. I love the first half of the final battle so much that I stubbornly kept with my usual Castlevania "no items" policy even though it meant I was at the final battle for some 4-5 hours, but it's just the capstone to a series of great designs.
Other things... getting from save point to save point is also fun and in a good place challenge-wise, I don't have too much to say about it but it certainly pushed me in a good way, and made me learn how to approach certain enemies and groups of enemies better. The game does the standard Metroidvania "get power ups, go more places" loop fine, though unexceptionally (I did love how the lategame "platforming powerups" actually prove super-useful in combat too though). The shard system feels a bit bloated compared to OoE's glyphs but it's not a major complaint. Plot uh is there I guess, I think it's a story about stubborn men who refuse to tell me anything because they think my feeble female brain can't handle it resulting in the villain being able to pull a fast one on all of us? That's what I took from it anyway.
Great game regardless. 9/10 area.
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Octopath traveler: Working through chapter 1 with Dhyer. Short version: Gameplay is excellent, the writing is atrocious and why the hell does a random old lady in nobletown have a knife that gives 188+ magic attack for stealing?! (I got it on the first try, that is stupid lucky)
Cyrus was picked as the main. Gameplay wise he's quite strong for the MT smash; healer girl from icetown was second, archer girl was third and thief is fourth.
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I think 'the plot is there' is a pretty generous description for Bloodstained's plot. I think Super's description of 'atrocious' describes it quite well actually.
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I was able to get PPSSPP working on my phone so I downladed Trails to Zero and Azure to play on my way to work. I am amazed to tell you all that despite my 50% understand of the Chinese language, the post I had written about 1.5 years ago regarding the prologue was surprisingly on point with the translation patch. Either that means my Chinese is better than I thought OR the translation is terrible. Or both. You decide.
Anyway, this is my first time playing older trails games but they have the same sort of set up as Cold Steel (a introductory phase, exploration phase, mission phase). Not sure if this was the case in FC. The orb system also is missing some QoL features, such as being able to look at your entire arts list and get descriptions at the same time. Needing to mix and match to get the right quartz level reminds me of VP2's skill system because there is no documentation or even a memory feature that remembers which quartz levels give you what. As such every menu has taken me like 30 minutes of just fumbling with quartz to get the spell list I wanted. It's probably biggest gripe with the gameplay so far.
Other stuff...
- The game is very laggy. I suspect this is partially due to my phone or the PPSSPP emu not being able to load the game as quickly, but it's functional for what it is.
- I'm only on Chapter 2 so the game hasn't gone anywhere yet really, but I'm sure more will come. For now, it is relatively slow paced.
- Has the known Trails hidden items and objectives and lock outs. So play with a guide or be okay at missing at a lot of stuff. Since I'm playing this mainly on my way to work, I don't have much choice here.
- Phone controls are really awful. It takes forever sometimes to me to get a character to right position on the battle field. I understand this isn't a problem inherent with the game though, so I'm not deducting any points from it.
- On the other hand quick traveling and the map overall is a little clunky. You can't quick travel once you leave town (for some reason) and have to take the bus. Also if you are inside a building, you can't quick travel. Like I said, it's missing some QoL features
- Difficulty right now is actually respectable. I died twice mainly on the Lloyd duel. However, again we're in the early game. So I suspect a lot of the broken hasn't arrived yet.
As for character thus far,
Lloyd...is actually pretty good. He's the only member of the team that passed his Detective certification (cause he went and got it). The set up for his character arc seems pretty obvious at the moment (why he became a detective), but I suspect there might be more to it than that. The game makes him usually come up with most of the theories and solutions, so he's the de-facto leader but it works due to the context of him being an actual detective versus the others. He does seems a little generic otherwise, but is otherwise pretty well written.
Tio has a little too much mystery surrounding her, but still early game. Randy being a flirt is played up quite a bit, but not offensive. Not much on Elie other than "she's there". Rather the supporting cast, namely Sergei and Arios, are the ones that have the most character after Lloyd. Falcom's [pretty good at writing NPCs so this isn't surprising. Hopefully the writing stays sharp though. Sergei for best boss by the way. He pretty much does exactly what I describe in my Chinese translation, then in the next chapter is pretty much like, "Okay guys. You figure it out. I'm having a smoke".
Battlewise, EP has been quite restrictive at the moment. I just unlocked L2 orbments, so that should alleviate some of the EP crunch. It's quite clear this was a balancing mechanic because while spells are largely superior to physicals (as they ignore evade, can hit weakness and generally have much larger AoE), you can't use them all that much so you have to conserve them mainly for important fights. Crafts are also not quite spammable (CP gain in general feels slower) but are much more likely accessible due to being relatively lower cost. For example, Randy's Power Smash only costs 20 CP. He can get here quite frequently or you can have Elie help him out. This results in Randy kind of being the best for most of the early game, capable to dealing with randoms and having a S-craft on deck for bosses. I also crafted a stronger weapon for him because the translation patch translated -20% accuracy to +20% accuracy (how do you mess this up?) so for a while he was hitting notably harder than the others. In addition, Randy's crafts have a bunch of useful status on it while Lloyd's doesn't so yeah. If what Random says its true, he'll get worse as the game goes on, but hey, at least he has 15 minutes of fame.
Elie's also really solid on the account of having a usable physical so she isn't stuck cast spells permanently. Great range also helps since it doesn't require her to have good Move. 5-1 Orbment is great. Not as good 6-0 but she can cast most of the big stuff when needed. Her main issue right now is that her S-craft doesn't do any damage - it just heals. This isn't a *huge* deal because for starters, it means you always have it on deck. So if you get ambushed or get damaged by some unexpected attack, you can S-break and instantly recover. Secondly, it lets her use her "Holy Bullet" craft, which not only heals HP but also gives surrounding allies 20 CP. So she can be a battery...kind of. Not a great one, but it's a unique niche and gives her something to do most of the time. Tio and Lloyd are just okay with Tio being better due to spells being better and Tio generally doing more for the important fights. Lloyd right now is just kind of there. He helps out by drawing enemies away and having a small AoE craft and passable magic, but doesn't shine at all.
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13 Sentinel - Game finished. Game length is 30 hours to reach the ending. This definitely my game of the year. I haven't played a Visual Novel this captivating for a long while now.
The real time SLG gameplay also has more complicity and actually challenging, thus fixed what I find lacking in the beta.
I must say this game has good pacing and avoid lard contents, something I hate in VN in general.
The story progress by feeding you information from completely different PoV from, with each PoV focus on different period of time in the story, none stop. It really hooks the player in wanting to find out how things connect, and how some conflicting information manage to be true at the same time. It keeps your brain running all the time to the point of making you feel the reading portion is more exhausting than the SLG portion, yet I just want more.
I spent doing almost nothing in the Thanksgiving weekend playing this simply because I couldn't stop.
Though, the most breath taking moment that made me choked on my own breath is when I was bashed with a super beautiful gay couple in an end game story route where my focus was 100% on the revelation plot. It caught me completely off guard and my mind literally went blank with this sudden ecstasy.
Thank you Vanilla, you are really the best.
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Octopath: 8/10 game. I'm not quite done with the main game, but it's just a matter of breezing through the final chapters. Gameplay is good, story is awful as noted above (See Discord comments for more details)
XCOM2- Remains one of the best games released this decade; definitely the best if I'm not counting OMD2 or Defense Grid.
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CSTW- Picked this back up since I have access to a controller that makes playing on computer bearable. Got just Dacre. Princess Ape was a great fight, but the bosses after her may have less HP unscaled + worse damage and support.
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Trails to Zero: Finished. I can say this about the translation patch: While it's not perfect, for what it is, it's decent enough. You will be able to pick up on the major themes, plot, character interactions and the like. So for of you looking for another Trails game while waiting for Cold Steel 4 or something, download PPSSPP and Zero. For a Trails game, it's actually surprisingly short. I clocked in just around 60 hours during the credits roll. It's also better than what I thought it would be, which is saying something given all the high praises I have for Cold Steel 1 and 2.
The really big thing I love about Zero is the theming. Part of this is also how well the game paints the important characters (other than the 4 PCs, the primary supporting characters such as Chief Inspector Dudley and Cecille) but just the writing overall is very on point. You play as 4 Crossbell police officers, who are all new to the department and part of a newly developed section meant to rival the work done by Bracers. Each character has their own reasons for joining and the overall linking concept to the entire story and concept is the idea of Justice. Spoiler territories from here on out, so I suggest you skip the next paragraph if you are intending to play Zero yourself. For the Tide's notes version of reading deeply into the writing, read on:
The idea of the Special Support Service department (SSS) is presented at the beginning of the game to be an idea created by the Police Chief Sergei. He gives you the story that it's meant to gain back the trust of the public because the Crossbell PD is basically seen in a very unfavourable light: being either grossly incompetent or ineffective. It's also what's provided to the government, so you are operating under this notion for the majority of the story that the SSS is meant to be a Public Service Act. In truth however, the idea of the SSS was actually developed by Lloyd's brother Guy, and its true purpose is meant to support the PD by acting in ways that the other divisions cannot. It is for this reason that the SSS kind of operates in its own building and your party is able to move around more freely, since you are "supervised" in a way by Sergei.
And right there, is the heart of the problem in Crossbell. There are criminal groups and lax laws that get circumvented due to corrupt officials and politicians, often taking bribes to release or overlook faults done by these groups as long as no serious violent acts are committed. In such a way, the public's confidence in the PD is undermined because even if caught, these convicts are simply given a slap on the wrist and released. You see this many times both in story quests and side quests. The game is not subtle about the rampant unfairness or seeming lawlessness in the city. As chief inspector Dudley puts it, Crossbell operates under a fragile illusion of order. The PD is actually doing everything it can to prevent major crimes from occurring but in return, it has to look the other way from certain unscrupulous activities. The characters refer to this unfairness as "the wall". More accurately, I suspect the true translation is supposed to be "barrier" since it gives way more meaning to the random battle theme (appropriately called "Get Over the Barrier"). Each character also has their own barrier or struggles they are dealing with that tie to the theme of justice (or lack there of).
For Lloyd, he leaves Crossbell before the game starts and takes the Police and Detective exam, basically following the footsteps of his late brother. You learn in the opening of the game that Guy was killed in action before the game starts, and for a large part of it, Lloyd is trying to live up to his brother's shadow. More importantly though, although the game does not directly state it, you get the feeling that he became a detective to seek justice. Ultimately, the reason he became a detective is so he can look for his brother's killer. Zero doesn't answer this question (and it's one of few that remains a mystery) and it plays to the overall theme as no one is ever served for Guy's death. Growing past Guy and ultimately securing the convict is Lloyd's barrier.
In the case of Elie, you find out that she actually was originally going to become a politician. However, during her childhood, she witnesses how ineffective the Crossbell government is when all the reforms proposed by her father are overturned and political opinion turned against him, leading to the divorce of her parents. She winds up in the Special Support section as she feels that being in the forefront dealing with the public will be more effective versus taking up office in the government. For her, the fact that her father's proposals, which would have supported the most vulnerable in Crossbell were overturned becomes a sort of injustice even if it was within the rules so to speak. Being in the SSS becomes her means of crossing the barrier.
Randy is more simple. You are told very early on that he was transferred due to "women problems" while he served as Guardian Force (basically Crossbell's national guard). You later find out that actually, all his former co-workers have no issues with him and that it was instead because he had a falling out with the base commander, who you then later find out, is basically inept and taking bribes from the mafia. You also find out that at one point, he actually was part of a Jaeger corp, and he joined the Guardian Force to put that past behind him. In similar ways, his joining the SSS is similar.
On the other hand, Tio's motivations are far more complicated and tied with the main plot. The game shrouds a lot of her reasons behind this air of mystery, but it is revealed during near the end of the game that in the past, she was a human test subject. A victim of the DG Cult and the sole survivor who survived the experiments, which is how she has enhanced sensory, reaction and affinity to the elements. The Cult was ultimately disbanded and arrested by a joint effort of multiple agencies, which included the Crossbell PD, which at the time had Guy as part of their roster. He rescues her and becomes a brother like figure but disappears due to this untimely death. She carries on, albeit lost with what to do with her life and ultimately ends up back in Crossbell under the SSS to carry on Guy's will. It's interesting this way because while the other were often by breaking down a barrier from the past, Tio's crossing is her carrying on Guy's wish with the SSS' re-instatement.
Other NPCs have to heal with this concept as well, albeit on smaller scales that don't span the entire story. Wazy and Wald's entire ordeal is settled mainly by "street justice" versus utilizing the actual law and the police as gang activity is not seen as a high priority due to the mafia's own activity. Detective Dudley has to struggle with his listening to his corrupt superiors versus being able to carry out what he feels is the right decision of the PD. Jona commits a whole bunch of data breaches and hacking but points out that because the technology is so new, that no laws have been put into effect regarding his activities and does information brokering as a result. The list goes on.
The overall effect of this is that it makes Zero seem complete compared to many RPG plots because there is an overarching thread that joins the story from the start all the way to the end. It doesn't answer all the questions (which is why presumably Azure exists), but it makes Zero capable of standing on it's own 2 legs as it's own story despite the segway straight into Azure. Altogeher, the writing ends up being quite tight despite some loose ends not being resolved. And if Azure didn't exist, it would be perfectly fine to have those loose ends there because they contribute to the overarching theme - justice isn't so easy to find sometimes.
Now for gameplay. The good news for Zero is that it is actually decently challenging. I was playing on Normal (since I wasn't sure what to expect on the harder difficulties) and several fights definitely gave me trouble. The story driven ones for the most part weren't too much of an issue, but some of the bonus quest ones - oof. Particular highlights include:
1) These two optional crystal enemies which would heal at the beginning of every turn and had 2HKO ice damage. They also had insane defense, so hitting them with magic or S-crafts was the only way to go. Normal attacks and crafts basically did nothing.
2) These 5 landworms that all had a MT 4HKO damage. They seem to all start spamming it once damaged, which made things extremely dicey. Aura Rain to the rescue for this one, followed by Tio and Randy having enough punch in their S-crafts to seal the deal.
3) Optional chest super monkeys. These 2 had 2HKO wide GT damage. Immensely scary. However, they don't heal so a focused blitz to eliminate one quickly early on was key.
About the only story fight that was a little bothersome was probably Garcia in the third chapter. His S-craft is basically a OHKO on the girls (although he didn't use it on them during our fight) and he has other powerful AoE abilities at his disposal. His problem is that outside of his S-craft, he's entirely evadable. So bulking up Randy, sticking evade on him and baiting works great while your three casters go to work. The rematch with him sadly though doesn't quite live up to this as he lacks delay immunity. Since the game gives you Joshua and Estelle at the end as guests and Joshua also has a delay craft, you can actually delay lock him into oblivion. Its also the end of the game then, so there's a bunch of really stupid ways you can go ham at that point.
Overall, great game. Probably a high 8/10. Might be a 9...dunno yet. The main issue I have is the pacing. The game starts off slow. Chapter 3 is ridiculously long. Then the final dungeon is also ridiculously long. It ends up being a very uneven playing experience.
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Xenogears- Final dungeon of this replay. Actually, thought I was going to finish on Wednesday, but I didn't remember that somehow Tower of Babel is not the worst designed dungeon because Deus exists. Sure, a final dungeon that is just screens of vaguely altered pseudo-identical screens with no real good way to tell where you are, where you came from and where you are even trying to go.
Xenogears is such a polarized game. You have an amazing plot and fantastic soundtrack combined with arguable two of the worst battle systems combined. Foot battle system requires multiple buttons to essentially do a basic physical equivalent, there's nothing interesting to really work to (cool animations though), and really bad balance. Gear battles are theoretically more interesting, but also painful (however, when Elly takes off with Aerods that really helps). Which also goes to say that gear battle balance is pretty bad too!
The game does a good job of utilizing the physical scope that gears afford; Babel Tower (for all the frustration involved) does that have a really cool design that wouldn't make sense if you were just stuck on foot.
While playing on the Vita certainly helps playability, I tended to be too nice when ranking the game previously. It settled into a clear 4 at Babel Tower, and Deus really tempts me to lower it to a 3.
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Fire Emblem Three Houses: So guess who has two thumbs and wound up getting a Switch for Christmas. Up to Ch7 Black Eagles, gameplay isn't quite as good as I'd have hoped but everything else has been an extremely enjoyable time abyss.
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Random: You might know / have been told this already, but as a minor spoiler for Black Eagles route that does have gameplay implications...
There's two paths of Black Eagles. For whatever reason, they're both kinda rushed & incomplete (Well, 3H was delayed in its release date twice...). However, Ciato & Fudo & the Internet all say that the Silver Snow route is really pointless since it's just a lesser version of another route already in the game but with less dialogue that was kinda shipped as-is. And the one map that is unique to SS makes no sense and is the worst map in the game. Unfortunately, the Silver Snow route is the "default." You might find it worth your while to check the requirements and make sure you're on Crimson Flower. CF is also a bit rushed (still pictures rather than animations, fewer maps, compressed plot) but it is unique and satisfying. Basically.. keep a backup save at the start of C10, if nothing else.
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Yeah I know about the Crimson Moon/Silver Snow divide but thanks anyways.
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CF is extremely, extremely easy to get and if you miss it you're probably trying to miss it or don't do basic things while playing the game like 'talk to major characters in the monastery'. It's estimated that 80% of players do CF before SS, so to say SS is the default route is a bit daft, I think.
For what it's worth, as loath as I am to defend Silver Snow, its final map is actually pretty good gameplaywise. I think the second to last map of VW / SS is the weakest map of the post-timeskip, and Chapter 9 overall.
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Made progress in my FF4 replay. Still doubt I'll finish before the end of the year. Finally dragged my team (why, slow walk speed?) over to the first strata of the Lunar Subterrane. Grabbed some chests for sweet gear upgrades and fought the White Dragon at the Murasame altar. Probably could have killed it without giving it a chance to use its MT HP to single digits special but forgot to use Bahamut. It looks better to say I deliberately dragged it out for research; let's go with that story. (Maelstrom is turn 7. It's quite viable to kill it before then with enough offense, Slowing it, and not using Fight since that triggers Slow counters) Edge throws stuff I had saved up for this, Kain jumps, Rydia casts, Rosa and Cecil on utility. No trouble with Blink from Rosa and items.