Mega Man Starforce 2: Just beat Terra Condor, then did some side questing. Like an idiot, I saved after beating Plesio Surf EX depsite not getting the card, so now I'm looking for his SP form which is kind of ;_;
Also beat Kung Foo Kid...many times...and finally got his Mega Card. Looks like fun stuff!
Pokemon Colosseum: Finished! Final Boss is stupid cause, you know, how you do depends on what he opens with.
I know some of you are thinking "Oooh, randomized boss, neat!" But...no, its not. See, one of the ways you had the advantage on bosses in Pokemon games is you have advanced knowledge; you know what he's going to open up with, so at least, you can react accordingly. This game though? No, you can't predict which of his 6 he's going to use, besides that T-tar is going to be his last. Its ridiculous. You can open up to counter the Machamp and the Scizor but...nope! Slowking and Slaking came out!
It'd be one thing if his levels weren't so massively above yours. 5 level edge would have made this fine; then it'd be "He has the level edge, you have to find a way to work around it." But...he's *15*' above yours, with clearly better skill sets (This game has horrible TM options, and even the good TMs have very limited users.)
Frankly, Colosseum was such an unpolished game it shows, especially playing it after XD. Shadow Pokemon was fail and lose how it was handled; took forever to unpuirify, etc.
THEN your options sucked. My final team was Ampharos, Espeon, Umbreon, Entei, Suicune and Heracross.
Sounds like a decent squad no?
Well, Heracross doesn't appear until late in the game; I went out of my way to purify him only cause he was better than Hariyama, the FIRST SHADOW POKEMON YOU GET (as a Makuhita), and he was still one of the more interesting ones. Umbreon and Espeon were starters, though, they're always good. Suicune...fanboy reasons! Also about the only decent Water type you get if you don't choose Croconaw (...yes, Croconaw/Feraligator is the second best you get, from what I saw. This is WATER types too, for crying out loud, so its not like your options were limited...) Entei...I wanted to use Quilava/Typhlosion, but he fell too far behind on levels cause...well...
See, for a good part of the game, EVERY SINGLE TRAINER USES GROUND OR ROCK TYPES. And all of them KNOW DIG (to branch off, if you're facing a Flying type, there's a 90% chance they'll have fly. Yeah, you'd be wasting PP and fights would extend an entire turn for no good reason.) Occasionally, they wouldn't have Dig, but rather Earthquake instead, which of course, is far more unfair. What about EQ hitting their allies?
...they'd almost always pair EQ with a levitater, or a flying type, or sometimes, they'd be bold and just make it a Grass or Bug type next to it, so the ally was rarely hurt. Of course, you could only DREAM of getting access to Earthquake, given your options suck and there's no real TMs.
So wait, why not use a Water type?
...cause at this point, my only Water type was freaking Quagsire. I had to use him, cause well, it was either not use him and struggle against them, or just use him. Its just obscene. It doesn't help that Surf gets nerfed in multi battles (hits both enemies, but halved damage; this doesn't sound too bad until you realize there's plenty of cases you just want to nuke one of the enemies, and don't care about the other.)
What about flying types? Well, your flying options consist of NOCTOWL! MANTINE! AND SKIPLOOM! Probably something like Ledian in the mix too. Uh, yeah, not exactly a thrilling roster there, especially considering how annoying it is to purify. Well, Skarmory exists too...in the final dungeon long after this stretch of GROUND TYPE SPAM is over, thus losing his point entirely.
Other things that were annoying? Well, see Ampharos? He comes with the following moves:
THundershock
Thunderbolt
Thunder Wave
Cotton Spore
Or IOWs, 2 Electric attacks, a paralysis move, and a speed lowering move. Can we say redundancy? He's also 100% useless if the enemy is a ground type and struggles to be useful (barring Paralysis) if the enemy is a Grass or Electric type.
Solution? THERE IS NONE. I used him only cause Raikou had Thunder, which was worse than T-bolt for a number of reasons (despite Suicune having Rain Dance.) Might be regretting this too since I bet Raikou had some sort of nonElectrical attack. But anyway, the reason there is none is cause NORMALLY, there are TMs for this kind of stuff. At very least, you could give Ampharos something like, say, Secret Power. Not the greatest of abilities, but it lets him do SOMETHING against Ground types. This game? Best you'll get is Hidden Power -_-
And guess what? My Ampharos decided it'd be cute to get HIDDEN POWER ELECTRIC!!!! Uh, yeah, talk about complete uselessness.
I can't stress how bad the options are, especially since what you have to go through to get them. Using the legendaries and your two starters (Espeon and Umbreon) felt like a must due to this. The game revolves around Gen 2 Pokemon, with an occasional Gen 3er tossed in. I'm aware this was the game's way of getting Gen 2 Pokemon into Gen 3 before they came up with the idea of doing the FRLG aftergame, but geez, don't OVERKILL US with Gen 2ers; at least throw in some Gen 1s or Gen 3s to balance it out. No, a Makuhita and Vibrava don't qualify as enough, nor does a level 14 Plusle or whatever when you start off with mid level 20 Pokemon out of the box.
Anyway, Pokemon game that took me the longest to get through. It was genuinely boring. Something I never say about Pokemon games. It shows how you can take the core Pokemon system and fuck it up. Lets recap one more time!
-Crappy Pokemon options
-Add an extra stupid aspect to using said Pokemon
-Make enemies retarded and monotone.
-Remove decent TMs
-Force all fights to be double fights
-Add in a girl who follows you everywhere that can ACTUALLY GET IN YOUR WAY WHEN YOU TRY TO TURN AROUND IN A NARROW PASSAGE (ARGH! Why couldn't they just make her phasable like any other party member who follows you in other RPGs.)
-Make you unable to level up any new Pokemon until over halfway through the game. Yes, you read that right; you can't purify til halfway through the game.
So...lets compare it to XD, its successor.
Pokemon XD gives you Eevee from the start. Ok, yeah, that's worse than Umbreon and Espeon...except after a few fights, you're given the option to turn said Eevee into whatever you want (STARTER FLAREON *YES*!) You are also in plot given a Teddiursa early...one that knows Return. STAB Return on what eventually becomes massive attack is a nice thing to start with!
Yeah, your options in XD kind of suck at first...but then again, its early game. However, purification is so much faster, and you can pretty much do it like half an hour into the game instead of over half way in.
Your options get a lot better once you do your first real dungeon; right out of the box, you get Houndour, Seedot (!!!!), Numel, Spheal, Gulpin and something else...could be mistaking a few of these options, but I know Houndour and Spheal are among them, two normally late game Pokemon with interesting typings. The options keep coming too! If you keep up on catching things, you'll have plenty of things to choose from.
TMs were limited, but offset by skillsets being generally good. For example, Dewgong in XD nets you Ice Beam and Surf out of the box. Starmie is even sillier having ICe Beam, Thunderbolt and Waterfall (Waterfall debatable better here given the 2 on 2 fights.) Then there's Elekid who comes with Cross Chop and all 3 Punches...yeah, you don't get any of these kind of sets in Colosseum.
Purification Chamber...I don't need to explain why this was a massive improvement.
I could go on. XD really did a great job of killing off most of Colosseum's flaws and making a decent game out of it. Colosseum was just half assed BS and boring. First Pokemon game I'm giving a below average score to as such!
Mega Man Wily Wars: Beat MM3!
I'll make this rant brief.
Magnet Missile *SUCKS ASS* What the fuck did they do to it? Originally, it was a nice solid weapon. Now? Its about half speed, has an actual turn time making it even slower, and TREATS PROJECTILES AS TARGETS, so it doesn't even home in properly. To give you an idea, I almost lost to Magnet Man himself using Magnet Missile (normally, MM3 Robot Masters are completely massacred in Mirror Matches with their own weapons, Top Man aside.)
Gemini Laser is unusable unless fired at point blank. why? Cause the weapon for some unknown reason causes massive lag on each shot.
UNRESPONSIVE SLIDING. I don't need to explain why this fails.
Mega Man jumps out of the Rush Marine when it surfaces now! This makes Gemini Man's stage more annoying than it needs to be.
Not to mention Rush Marine can only fire ONE SHOT AT A TIME. I really don't know what the fuck they were thinking with this. Apparently, being able to shoot the buster at the normal rate is too broken for an object needed to get past a specific part of Gemini Man Redux's stage.
Yellow Devil can be hit with 2 Hard Knuckles per Pass...easily. I don't think this was realistically possible in the original because the rate Hard Knuckle would be fired was too slow to keep up with the eye. Now, the Eye is out longer, the shots are slower, and Hard Knuckle's fundamentally the same.
The bounce part of Yellow devil is trivial to deal with now. I literally just walked over and under the first bouncing block, and the rest just kind of bounced over. I remember in the Nintendo version, doing that would kick your ass since they didn't have the same bounce trajectory.
Shadow Blade *GOT BETTER*. It now has the same awesome piercing capabilities as Metal Blade! No, this doesn't make it anywhere near as good as Metal Blade, since its still weaker, fire rate of 1 at a time, less range, and can't be aimed down. One thing it does do is make those STUPID BEES hilariously easy to deal with, since one Shadow Blade kills them all often.
...yeah, otherwise, all the same nonsense that applied to MM1 and MM2 applies to MM3. Again, half assed remake hidden behind pretty 16 bit graphics. Not gonna cut it I'm afraid!
Supposedly, Wily Tower is awesome, and I'll be trying that soon! Unsure what weapons I'll use besides a few obvious ones (Metal Blade, Thunder Beam, Fire Storm, Hard Knuckle for Demolition, Rush Jet, etc.)
