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I decided to go back to playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Shortly after starting my recent playthrough of Path of Radiance, I realized that I've still only completed about 1.9 of the 4 routes of Three Houses. So I decided that, before going back to Path of Radiance, I would at least finish at least one more route of Three Houses.

I think my mistake the first time was trying to play the routes back-to-back; I played through all of Crimson Flower and then got burnt out (and busy) after completing most of Verdant Wind; I got all the way to the second-to-last chapter before stopping and moving on to other stuff. The thing is, if I remember correctly, that was almost a year ago. So, I had a choice: start a new Verdant Wind playthrough, or finish the current one; getting back into a mostly-done playthrough of a strategy RPG after you haven't played it in a long time is very daunting, but on the other hand, starting a new playthrough and getting to that point would undoubtedly take a long time. Ultimately, I chose to just finish the already-existing playthrough.

I haven't finished it yet; I just began today and I ended up midway through the second-to-last chapter's mission. Getting back into the rhythm was surprisingly easy; my characters had already reached every skill level I wanted them to reach and been equipped with every item I wanted them to be able to use, and they were more than high-enough levelled for the mission, so my only reason for doing two skirmishes was to practice. I'm definitely a bit rusty, but not nearly as rusty as I thought I would be.

 

After completing Verdant Wind, I will start an Azure Moon playthrough, then I will play something else before playing Silver Snow.

 

EDIT: Well, I just completed Verdant Wind. Nemesis and the Ten Elites under the reanimation jutsu were a fun final boss fight, however little sense it makes, and they utilize the map well. But it is very obvious that the map was not originally a final map (it has treasure chests on it).

 

EDIT: I have a conundrum: I recently started my first Azure Moon playthrough, but I also found my old Wii remotes, which means I can play the Metroid Prime Trilogy on my Wii U. So, I have a choice: keep playing Three Houses, or start the Metroid Prime Trilogy?

I decided to start the Metroid Prime Trilogy. Metroid games are usually short, so I should be going back to Three Houses in not too much time. I will say, I'm not a fan of first-person games, I almost never play them, and I haven't played a Wii game in years, so the first bits of Metroid Prime were very awkward for me. I did quickly get used to the combat and aiming thankfully, but platforming in first-person is still troubling me; how can I be expected to platform well when I can't see where the character will land?

Other than that, the game is really good so far. I was very impressed at how well a lot of its visuals have aged, and exploring has been very fun and rather intuitive so far.

Edited by vanguard333
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Speaking of games with visuals that have aged well, ever played Star Fox Adventures? As adventure games go, it's one of a kind. It is unfortunately rather linear and thus doesn't have a lot of replay value, but the one trip through you're likely to make will treat you to stunning graphics and excellent music. Star Fox Adventures is one of those games that makes you think about what could have been and, in my case, makes me want more on-foot Star Fox adventures in the future.

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On 12/26/2021 at 1:28 PM, Lord_Brand said:

Speaking of games with visuals that have aged well, ever played Star Fox Adventures? As adventure games go, it's one of a kind. It is unfortunately rather linear and thus doesn't have a lot of replay value, but the one trip through you're likely to make will treat you to stunning graphics and excellent music. Star Fox Adventures is one of those games that makes you think about what could have been and, in my case, makes me want more on-foot Star Fox adventures in the future.

I haven't played it, but I have heard of it. I've never really played any of the Star Fox games and I'm not really a fan of them (I know that Adventures is very different from the rest of the series, but that's beside the point).

 

EDIT: Anyway, I just played more Metroid Prime, to the point where I've beaten the first main non-tutorial boss fight (the giant plant monster) and I have reached the snow area. I've gotten used to aiming, but platforming in first-person is still a bit of a pain, especially when I was in the magma area.

So far, the Metroid games I have played are this, Super Metroid and Metroid Dread, and of the three of them, so far, the only one with boss fights that I've enjoyed is Metroid Dread. As much as I enjoyed the exploration and atmosphere of Super Metroid, the boss fights really weren't fun for me; they were often claustrophobic and a bit clunky, for lack of a better word; I was particularly disappointed with the Ridley fight.

The plant monster boss fight in Metroid Prime isn't bad; the concept is fairly sound: you have to shoot the sun lamps to knock the monster out, then blow up its core with a morph ball bomb, and repeat three more times, each time with a different lamp. The monster is also large and imposing without making the boss arena too claustrophobic. The problem I had was that, once I got into the rhythm of stunning the monster, shooting a sun lamp, moving to the next sun lamp, stunning the monster, shooting the next lamp, etc., the boss became kind-of dull. It was also really easy on the third and fourth phases because the lamps are only so far apart; it's actually at its most difficult on the second phase because you have to run halfway around the arena to get to the second lamp instead of just a quarter of the way in the 3rd and 4th phases. Perhaps the monster should've gained a new attack or increased in size in the latter phases?

 

EDIT: I just beat the second boss of the game (the giant rock monster); this was a much better boss fight than the giant plant monster. It was a bit less puzzle-like, but it more than made up for that in the moment-to-moment action.

 

EDIT: I've made it to the Omega Pirate boss fight, and I can easily say that I'm glad that there's a save station only a room away from it, because this boss is easily by far the worst I've encountered in the game so far (and that I've encountered in a long time, to be honest); almost everything about it seems designed to kill the player in a way that's extremely unfair.

First, there are several pools of phazon in the boss room, and since the boss is colossal, the camera is aiming up at it, so you can't see any of these phazon pools while you're trying to avoid its attacks. This means that you will inevitably be stepping into the pools and taking damage.

Then there's its attacks. Its shockwave attack is fairly manageable, but its other attacks are ridiculous: it can unleash a missile barrage that has a huge blast radius and isn't headed towards you, but is headed towards where you're going, so unless you change direction immediately when he fires the missiles, or if you weren't moving when it began firing them, you will get hit and lose a fair bit of health. I've heard that its missile launchers can be destroyed, but I haven't figured out how, and that would only be scratching the surface. Then, if the Omega Pirate gets close to you at any point (which it will, as the boss is huge and the arena isn't), it will immediately unleash melee swipes with a far bigger hitbox than itself and tear a ton of health.

Then there's the fact that it spends most of the fight with a shield up that absorbs everything except missiles and the flamethrower; the former of which is limited-supply and the latter of which requires being pretty much at melee range and consumes missiles anyway.

As for how to beat the Omega Pirate, it has four weak points that the player must destroy. Once the player does so, it turns invisible and teleports to one of the phazon pools to regenerate those weak points, so the player has to use x-ray vision to spot it and attack while it's regenerating to damage it. Very straightforward, except it spawns beam pirates during this phase. The only way to see which beam will hurt these reinforcements is to go out of x-ray vision, meaning you can't see the boss, and you cannot defeat all the reinforcements before the boss regenerates. If you try to ignore them to focus on damaging the boss, they will attack Samus relentlessly, and their attacks add up.

I'm playing on normal difficulty, and every other boss has pretty much been easy until now. But this one has beaten me twice now, and unlike in Metroid Dread, where I kept going after losing to a boss because it was my fault that I lost and I needed to fight smarter, this one feels like, when I beat it, it won't be because I changed my strategy; it'll be thanks to pure luck. Who designed this boss fight?!

Edited by vanguard333
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Well, I just fought the Omega Pirate again in Metroid Prime, and this time I beat him without too much of a sweat. It turns out that the beam pirates can be easily obliterated by a power bomb, and that the Omega Pirate is weak to super missiles. The former is something the game never even hints at; in fact the game outright says that beam pirates are only vulnerable to the corresponding beam weapon, and the latter is vaguely hinted at. I still think the boss fight could've been a lot more refined; I get the feeling that this boss might've been a victim of rush.

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14 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Well, I just fought the Omega Pirate again in Metroid Prime, and this time I beat him without too much of a sweat. It turns out that the beam pirates can be easily obliterated by a power bomb, and that the Omega Pirate is weak to super missiles. The former is something the game never even hints at; in fact the game outright says that beam pirates are only vulnerable to the corresponding beam weapon, and the latter is vaguely hinted at. I still think the boss fight could've been a lot more refined; I get the feeling that this boss might've been a victim of rush.

You aren't wrong. Kraid would've been the boss of the Phazon Mines.:

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Retro Studios didn't want to delay the game, not even if Kraid was in the process of being 3D-modeled. The Omega Pirate was a last-minute replacement for Big Green.

There was also a scrapped ice-ape boss, intended for Phendrana. Thardus likely would've been fought in Magmoor Caverns -which lacks a boss- had it not been for this cancellation.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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Recently played some Mario Party Superstars with my mom and bro. We had a good time. It's amazing how much animation in the Mario series has improved since the GCN days. I lament the loss of the original more stylized Toads from the original Mario Party, they had character that modern Mario lacks. But I appreciate the game's tongue-in-cheek writing referencing the fact it's been over two decades since the N64 games were released.

Also finally got to start Metroid Dread, after waiting months since it's release. Gotta say, I like what I've seen so far, though I'm frustrated by the fact I died to the first E.M.M.I. a few times all because I kept trying to shoot missiles downward at it, causing me to before remembering that it's immune to Samus' regular weaponry. I hate having to enter E.M.M.I. zones because the presence of the E.M.M.I.s means I can't comfortably explore until they're destroyed. Nevertheless, Dread has probably the best controls in the series to date. Samus doesn't feel as slow and floaty as she did in Super Metroid. Wall kicking is much more intuitive, and ledge grabbing and sliding make so much of a difference in the gameplay flow.

Another neat detail I noticed is how the map updates as you progress. The most notable example I can think of so far being when you drain water in one area, causing the starting room with the destroyed bridge to flood. That really pulls together the game's world and makes it feel like a cohesive whole.

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On 1/1/2022 at 1:19 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

You aren't wrong. Kraid would've been the boss of the Phazon Mines.:

Retro Studios didn't want to delay the game, not even if Kraid was in the process of being 3D-modeled. The Omega Pirate was a last-minute replacement for Big Green.

There was also a scrapped ice-ape boss, intended for Phendrana. Thardus likely would've been fought in Magmoor Caverns -which lacks a boss- had it not been for this cancellation.

I read about that. However, what I read was that the Omega Pirate being a replacement for Kraid is a common misconception; the original plan was for both the Omega Pirate and Kraid to exist as bosses in the game. Omega Pirate didn't replace Kraid; Kraid was simply completely cut.

 

Anyway, now I'm at the part where I have to collect the twelve statues. Incidentally, I already had seven statues because I've been thorough in searching for items... though apparently not thorough enough; I'm currently at 75% item collection, which does include the statues, but it still means that I've been everywhere except for the final area (which, as far as I know, doesn't have any items in it) and I still need to find 20 different energy tanks/missile expansions/power bomb expansions.

One thing I definitely would've liked would be if the game map had something to indicate whether or not there were still items to be found in a given area, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that. So, here I am, combing through everywhere I've already been, which gets particularly annoying whenever I stumble upon a room full of chozo ghosts. Fighting chozo ghosts isn't difficult, but it is incredibly tedious.

 

EDIT: I'm currently at 95% item collection, with all but one artifact obtained. So, that leaves four items plus the artifact. However, there's a problem: I have combed through basically everywhere in the game. I even resorted to a wiki (which I really dislike having to do, as I wanted to find these items on my own), copied each list of rooms that had items in them, and either found every item in that room or confirmed that I had indeed found all the items in that room, so I should have every item. Before anyone asks, I also found all the beam combos like the flamethrower and such. At this point, it would've been really fantastic if the game could tell me where I still needed to look so that I wouldn't have to comb through every area yet again. I don't know how people managed to 100% this game.

I double-checked, and I currently have 240-missile capacity (maximum is 250, so I'm missing 2 missile expansions somewhere), and I have every power bomb expansion, so I must be missing two energy tanks by process of elimination. …That doesn't really narrow things down.

I was not expecting Metroid Prime to have the exact same tedium with 100% item completion that Super Metroid had in 1994! How did it take until the Switch era (Metroid Dread) for Nintendo to realize that, if you're going to make a game where 100% completion actually matters in terms of gameplay and story content, then you have to put things in place to remove the tedium with hunting down those last few measly items?! I was seriously enjoying this game: the atmosphere, the exploration, etc., but between the Omega Pirate fight and the tedium of item hunting, I'm beginning to loathe the game.

I just hope the Prime sequels are less tedious with item hunting.

 

EDIT: Well, it turns out that, when reading through the list of rooms in Metroid Prime on the wiki, there were rooms where the wiki would list "None" on the list of items, only for the description of the room to say that an item could be found there. I noticed this when I saw it say "none" for the Ruined Courtyard and I thought, "I'm certain that I found an energy tank there." That explains a lot.

I will say that I would've liked to have been able to 100% the game without resorting to a wiki. All it would've taken is being able to know which rooms to not return to, like in Metroid Dread.

 

EDIT: Well, I did it: 100% item collection. It wasn't too bad; I just would've liked to achieve it without a wiki. If they ever re-release the Prime Trilogy, it would be good if they added the map features from Metroid Dread to remove the tedium of hunting for those last remaining items.

The Meta Ridley fight was pretty good. I'm not much of a fan of only having a narrow window within which to attack, but there's plenty of good back-and-forth to the boss fight. Really, my main problem with it had less to do with the boss fight itself and more with the fact that it highlights a real problem with the trilogy: side-step and jump being mapped to the same button. I can't tell you how many times I got hit by one of Ridley's attacks because I wanted Samus to jump and she side-stepped or vice-versa.

The inside of the crater was interesting; it's a very small location, but I wasn't expecting a grand labyrinth to appear right before the final boss fight. One thing that did annoy me a bit was the endlessly respawning fission metroids when I was trying to get to the boss room.

Speaking of which, the boss fight itself was really good. The first phase had a bit of jank; you're fighting a giant crustacean monster in essentially a series of narrow alleyways by shooting whatever energy weapon matches its current colour while avoiding its beam and missile attacks. It doesn't really make sense that a giant crustacean that's been trapped in a meteor impact site has missiles, but okay; the real annoying thing was hitting its head with any of the non-tracking weapons like the plasma beam. But the second phase more than makes up for the first; the second phase is admittedly a bit easy, but there's a lot less annoyance. Figuring out which visor to use is really neat, and being able to use giant blasts of phazon against it is fun.

Weirdly for a Metroid game, the escape sequence is relegated to an offscreen escape and a cutscene. That was a bit odd.

Finally, since I got 100% completion, I got a bonus cutscene showing the Metroid Prime emerging from the impact site as Dark Samus. Given that there was no guarantee for this game to be a success, let alone a big enough success to get sequels, putting a cutscene like that at the end of the game is very... brave, for lack of a better word.

 

Anyway, Metroid Prime 1 was fun; now onto Metroid Prime 2.

Edited by vanguard333
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  • 2 weeks later...

Just finished Tales of Arise Saturday. Excellent for 50 hours, with a clearly unfinished lategame, up to what is probably the worst end plot in the series. For all the things it gets right, I guess it's an 8/10 game. It's kind of the Fire Emblem Three Houses of Tales - it doesn't live up to its franchise's golden age games, but it does represent a radical and reassuring upswing immediately following multiple mediocre entries.

 

Now about 10 hours into Guardians of the Galaxy and it is a blast.

 

Next is probably going to be Scarlet Nexus since that's another one I can knock off quickly.

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Well, I finished Metroid Prime 1 a while back, and now I've been playing Metroid Prime 2. I'm currently at the Torvus Bog: the second area of three.

I'm honestly not sure what I think of it compared to Prime 1, so I'll largely just be saying what I think of it on its own so far:

The opening part of the game was very interesting; having the player find all the dead Federation troopers did a good job setting the tone and establishing that this game was going to be more about overcoming an ever-present threat rather than uncovering a mystery of what's going on. My two criticisms of the opening section would be that it's rather starved for save points and that half of it becomes inaccessible until the last third of the game, so if you somehow missed one of the Federation trooper logs or you noticed a spot where you can obtain an upgrade, you have to wait until you're two thirds of the way through the game to get back to it. Admittedly, Prime 1 did something similar with the Space Pirate frigate starting as the tutorial area and then becoming a late-game area, but Prime 1 changed things up by having the frigate be crashed and underwater, and thus pretty much is a new area with the same name.

The Luminoth are a good idea; as fun as it is exploring an isolated area, having there be an NPC helps with the stakes: if Samus fails, the planet will be wiped out, and the Luminoth will go extinct. Plus, there's only one Luminoth as the rest are in cryostasis, so there's still a good sense of isolation.

The Light Aether/Dark Aether aspect of the game is neat. I can understand disliking the toxic atmosphere of Dark Aether, as it can discourage exploration, but I think you get the dark suit early enough, and light emitters are plenty enough, that it hardly hinders exploration; it just means you have to explore carefully. My real criticism of it would be that the light emitters restore health way too slowly, so waiting for your health to go back up enough for the next bit is really dull and makes me want to keep going with not enough health.

The dark beam/light beam and ammo aspect is, for lack of a better word, interesting; I both like it and dislike it. On the one hand, I like the dark beam and the light beam, and the ammo does encourage being careful. However, there was already a weapons system with limited ammo: missiles. Having beams also have limited ammo seems a bit odd. And, you restore the ammo for one beam by destroying living enemies with the other; this is perfectly fine when you're surrounded by living crates, but when you're in a boss fight, it becomes a bit annoying.

 

Anyway, the sight of the dead Federation troopers made me think of something: a single-player Metroid game where, instead of playing as Samus, you play as a Federation trooper that's the sole survivor of a team that went on a mission and is in over their head could potentially be interesting. I know Federation Force was a flop, but that was mainly because it was a fluff multiplayer game and not a metroidvania.

 

EDIT: I've gotten to Sanctuary Fortress and I obtained the Spider Ball. I was really enjoying the boss fights in this game so far, so I was quite shocked by the Spider Guardian. Here I thought that the Omega Pirate from Prime 1 was a bad boss fight; this was far worse. Now; a boss that you fight while entirely in morph ball form is an interesting idea and ideally would've made for a fun change of pace, but, given the fixed camera and the limited options, they would've needed to make it a slow-paced puzzle boss or essentially a game of hide-&-seek. Instead, they made something that relied on quick timing and everything bad about morph ball form. Even with the ability to jump without a morph ball bomb, this boss was absolutely terrible.

Edited by vanguard333
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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been a month since my last update, so of course I've been playing some games. 

Sonic 3D Blast

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Your objective in 3D Blast is to save the cute animals - which feels like should be the objective of any Sonic game with Eggman as the antagonist and it never is. People care about the animals more than they care about reaching some dumb GOAL sign at the end of a level. The animals in question are very clearly inspired by Flicky, Sega's closest thing to a mascot before Sonic the Hedgehog, so seeing them in a game together feels pretty special. The isometric gameplay is slower than the previous 2D entries, but otherwise Sonic moves with a similar acceleration. Most of the threat of enemies and hazards stems from how you can't see more than a few feet in front of Sonic, so if you want to keep your rings, just slow down your pace and be more cautious. I managed to beat the game on a first try, which was surprising. I think it's much easier because there are no bottomless pits in 3D Blast, or crushing hazards. Nothing will ever instantly kill you, not even running out of time. Since the game has no timer you can proceed as slowly as you want and focus on exploration. It's like the progression of going from Super Mario World to Yoshi's Island. The genre is the same, but the play experience is totally different. 3D Blast saw the difficulty in making a platformer with this character and removed all the punishment for missing jumps. Its level design is fairly difficult to get lost in despite the lack of landmarks. Its secrets often involve spin dashing into a wall, but unlike the 2D games, the walls here can be identified as breakable with simple observation

I was surprised to find a lot of the DNA of 3D Sonic games here. Collecting cute animals was a core mechanic that tied in Sonic Adventure's levels to the Chao Garden sub game. The Homing Attack makes its debut here, though it's tied to a rare powerup. I think a lot of the Dreamcast/PS2 era of Sonic had a similar focus on exploration or at least getting all of one thing in an area before you can move on. And if you look at the bonus stages you can see an early blueprint for the modern sonic "boost gameplay" where the camera is behind you on a linear track of rings and hazards. This is all weird to think about when you consider Sonic Team didn't make this game. Traveller's Tales did. 

In the mid 90s, the question of how Sonic should operate in a 3D space was a tantalizing one. Especially in 1996, which saw the one two punch of Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot. However, modern Sonic games have been going on for several decades now and I'm not convinced that they've arrived at a major breakthrough on the same level as 3D Blast. That's not to say 3D Blast is a better game, just that it presents more ideas to evolve the gameplay. The quote un quote best 3D Sonic games are the ones where you're on the rails of a linear track with a series of (functionally, not always literally) QTEs and scripted sequences guiding Sonic from point to point. It's similar to the Genesis trilogy but affords even less control to the player. And when you slow the gameplay down for some precision platforming or enemy combat the experience suffers because all you can do is jump and homing attack. Trusting that the game won't automatically guide you towards a more perilous position. 

Here's an idea for free, Sonic Team. Take that Boost meter, and instead of allowing you to go faster in real time, make it a gauge that lets you slow down time for the player. For decades of fiction speedsters have been depicted with this "bullet time" power. Even the Sonic movie has "the Quicksilver Scene". But in the format of a video game this allows you to make crucial adjustments to Sonic's movement as you skirt around obstacles up ahead, nail precision redirecting of your momentum to land on platforms, and otherwise make all of the decisions that you deny the player by having a main character that moves faster than a human's reaction time. Not only does this make Sonic easier and more satisfying to control, it also creates a style of gameplay where hardcore players see if they can beat levels without slowing down time. The real time speedster runs. That would be exciting to watch. 

...How is the game? It's fine I guess. It has about two hours worth of ideas and would you look at that, it's over in two hours. I'm very amenable to any game with that ratio. About the only frustrating thing that I can recall is occasionally you'll take one path that leads you over the cliff to a previous area. I assume this is here to allow you easy access to a previous area's knuckles and Tails bonus stage which requires a certain number of rings, but it can be disorienting to suddenly end up in a previous part of the level and have to backtrack to where you just were. You also have to watch your Flickies like a hawk. If you or they get hit, they'll scatter, and they move around quite a bit on their own. Tracking a lost flicky down can be difficult since the game doesn't provide any hint as to their current location. Only whether you've freed them from a badnik. I'd also say the soundtrack is pretty underwhelming, but only on the genesis version. The Saturn version's soundtracks are bangers.

Dissidia NT Final Fantasy

Spoiler

Back in November I picked up a few PS4 games out of Gamestop's bargain bin - buy 2 get 1 free sale. Some of my pickups were crossover fighting games because I expected they may be of use for a project I'm working on this year. Another pickup in the same vane was the also critically panned Warriors All Stars. What IS the connection between Dissidia and your average licensed Musuo game? They're both from studios owned by Koei Tecmo, that much is clear. Tim Rogers, the man who once not-so-famously said that Dissidia is "Like doing your taxes on the moon", opined that Final Fantasy was always "too prestigious to have its own musuo spinoff game". I would have agreed, at least until they went and did one for the Legend of Zelda. Now that nothing is sacred, I have to reconcile with any possibility of Warriors game.

For all the flack that Final Fantasy gets from nerds on the internet, it really is the most important, most innovative jrpg franchise of all time. That's not a signifier of individual game quality - some Final Fantasy games are garbage to play, but they are often what inspires the next, better entries of another series. And Square knows they've got a hot hand, with how they flaunt this legacy in crossover titles. I was a fan of the Theatrythm games on 3DS myself, but there is by now a decade of similar, mostly mobile platform titles also doing this thing for other genres. The character roster for NT is almost identical to what I remember from Theatrythm. And my gosh, this character roster. Pull any Final Fantasy 9 fan out of the crowd and ask them who their top 3 favorite characters are. I doubt they'll name either Zidane or Kuja - the only two that make an appearance. The thought process behind a lot of these character inclusions would seem to adhere to a single philosophy. Every Final Fantasy has a Cloud, and a Sephiroth. Naturally if you've played more than a couple of these games, you could rightfully call BS. But the big budget crossover is only interested in algorhythmic design. Even Smash Bros, the best crossover game in the universe, is incapable of getting away from the well of Fire Emblem Sword Lords and Fire Starter Pokemon. 

All of the spectacle of NT feels alien next to the realized play experience. It's kind of like a 3D Smash Bros if you removed the blastzones and space off the stage and set everybody's percent at 80 where it can't go up or down. Your character has a small handful of basic attacks, but the only one that really matters is the HP attack which does actual damage to their life bar. The only "combo" in a game like this is ramming an opponent into a wall with basic attacks, and then nailing them with an HP attack while they're in a wallsplat state. When all six characters gather around, it becomes total chaos of waiting to play the game again after getting clocked from behind. There are aggro lines that turn red to indicate somebody is attacking you. That's pretty smart since 90% of attacks come from offscreen due to the restrictive camera. But unless you're staring at your attacker you can't know how imminent the threat is or if you should block, dodge, or dash away. It could be a deliberately slow projectile to mask their real attack timing, or their fastest move which you just barely have enough frames to react to with your block. Blocking doesn't work on HP attacks, and dodging seems to have no I-frames. So staying in a perpendicular run to an opponent targeting you and whiff punishing their attacks is the best form of "defensive play" I can gleam from a game as slow and unresponsive as this one.

With NT I had one goal: To beat the story mode. Simple enough right? Watch some cutscenes, do a fight, eventually reach big spectacle boss battles that were not playtested for difficulty. But there's a problem: you need to unlock the story chapters one by one. The only way to do so is through increasing your player level by playing Versus matches. Since Online play was not an option for me, I relied on Gauntlets, the sort of 'Arcade Mode' of the game. At first I was frustrated at the hours of grinding that lay before me, but I had many more hours of podcasts, video essay-type videos, and AGDQ to catch up on so it worked out. Through googling I found the optimal grinding strat: You can set the rules to only include Core battles, which are easy to cheese with a ranged character. The enemy AI barely understands the objective even on its hardest setting so you cut a ten+ hour grind to just four or five hours of targeting the Core and tapping circle. Is it scummy of Square Enix to lock its most unique and interesting mode behind such grinding? Of course it is, but this is the same company that pledges a future of NFTs in its New Years message. And is about to sell full priced, compromised cloud versions of Kingdom Hearts on Switch. They were always evil. 

Paper Mario Dark Star Edition

Spoiler

Paper Mario 64 ROM hacking has certainly caught my attention in recent years. The most famous is Master Quest, an extremely difficult version of the game with new content and a fully functioning Pit of 100 Trials. Dark Star Edition is going for those same things. I was planning on playing Master Quest until I learned they're doing a huge version 2.0 overhaul that probably won't be finished anytime soon. But DSE is very new, and had its last content update very recently, so it was the perfect time to jump in. I've only ever watched a few streams of Master Quest, so I couldn't say which one I like better. But I enjoy DSE a lot. The main chapters are difficult enough that you need to have a plan going into each boss fight, but not so hard that you need to constantly stock up on the best items/recipes and take literal notes of what enemies do on each turn and where you think their "pissy boss mode" AI script starts. It also helped that I could reach out to the hacking discord for answers to precise questions. Most ROM Hacks tend to be challenging because the hackers and playtesters are all masters of the vanilla game and probably other ROM hacks. So what is challenging for them is often impossible for the casual player. For me personally, DSE difficulty had me panicking for nearly every boss fight, but usually after a couple attempts I felt like I had a handle on things. At least until I got to the optional superbosses which really do seem to border on impossible.

The way DSE tackles Paper Mario's game balance is pretty smart. It removes the evasion stat entirely and if an enemy is susceptible to a status ailment it will work 100% of the time. This takes all the RNG out of fights, but at the same time there's a hard cap on how often a certain ailment will work on that enemy (usually just once). There's a much greater variety of badges for specific builds, like one build centered around the Focus command, or another around the Berserker badge which gives up control of Mario. Lots of options for stalling/sustaining but I can honestly say none of my attempts at that playstyle ended up being the one that won the fight I was stuck on. If guess one thing that ultimately bugged me is how there are still no badges that enhance your partners in any way. They still can't use items or star powers, so Mario's turn is always the far more consequential one. With enemy damage output reaching into the double digits within the first five hours of the game, it often feels like you get stuck in a loop of using items while your partner struggles to put out meaningful damage. 

Still, this game's challenges were always a thrill. Many boss fights came down to the last turn. I used all of my items on the final boss even. I game overed a lot, but never felt like I needed to make a trip out of a long dungeon for more items. I was constantly tweaking my setup in my head for the next attempt. There are also some nice quality of life additions to the game, like Goombario's tattle not taking up a turn, more shortcut pipes around the game world, and several badges that cost 0 BP and enhance your parameters overworld. Tackling the Pit of 100 Trials and other optional areas was also a nice break from the vanilla game's content. 

Pokemon Red

Spoiler

 

While doing a bit of spring cleaning, I was curious how some of my old game boy cartridges held up. It pains me to say that some of them have shot save batteries. Pokemon Red still works however, and before I knew it, I was on another replay of Gen 1. Could it be that even I am excited for the new pokemon game? Normally in this situation the goal is completion: Get every pokedex entry that is possible in a single playthrough with no access to trading. But it occurred to me that I don't need to settle for that in Generation 1. Using the Trainer-Fly glitch (also known as the Mew Glitch), I can encounter any pokemon I want. And this helpful map shows me the fixed encounters that are possible throughout the game. Though unfortunately it's got several things wrong, and even points out trainers you factually cannot do the glitch on without crashing the game. Even so It's a very easy and flexible glitch where I just have to check special values for new opportunities. It really made for a unique and fun play experience. 

You'd think that this glitch would make the pokedex process quicker, but these captures took a while. It's so bizarre that GameFreak feels a need to give very tough catch rates to Pokemon that cannot actually be caught without glitches. I had to make several trips back to stock up on Pokeballs. Remembering what trainers I fought was also a headache. You can't rematch them, so there's a theoretical limit on how much you can do with the glitch. It's best not to battle any more than you need to, but trainers are the best source of exp so you're nerfing yourself a little. 

Unfortunately the journey was cut short by hardware error. When mentioning this playthrough to a friend, the subject turned to our past attempts at trying to beat Pokemon Stadium. How we relied on the Rentals to get through the game's absurd RNG. Wouldn't we do much better with a curated, competitive team? So I got out the old N64 cartridge and transfer pak to confirm that they still worked. After a half hour of cleaning contacts and reinserting stuff, it eventually worked and read Yellow's save data just fine. I then slotted in Red version and...no data. Confused, I put the Red version back in my GBA and the save data was wiped clean. Apparently this is a common problem with Transfer paks deleting your save data, though I don't recall this ever happening when I was a kid. I don't know why Yellow's save data is still intact, but this was the end of my journey in Red version.

What was my team? I decided to fully take advantage of the glitching to get myself level 7 copies of Zapdos, Articuno, and Moltres. I've got no interest in "proving myself" with another "legit" run of Pokemon Gen 1. The only way to have fun in that game is finding new ways to break it, so loading up on legendaries felt very much in the spirit of this generation. Why not just capture the level 50 versions? Because that way they can nab some stat experience without advancing past level 50. My fourth party member is Raticate. I've long theorized that Raticate was excellent in the first game - especially in PvE, so I felt like it was time to confirm it. Hyper Fang is the most powerful move any pokemon has during the early game and by level 20 it's packing a near 20% critical rate because of Raticate's speed. I don't think he's quite as good as Tauros' raw stats, or Persian's access to Slash, but the former is a rare, later game acquisition while the latter doesn't pick up Slash until the game is pretty much over. Number Five is Hypno. Sure I could have finally used Alakazam but he's hard to make happen with the glitch (no fixed encounters, you need 148 Special), and he lacks the Hypnosis I need for all the pokeballs I'm throwing. Plus Hypno is another low key Gen 1 all star with good stats and good moves. I'm fine with using an old staple. Member Six is nobody. I can never seem to fill that sixth slot in a pokemon game. I kept my starter charmander around for HM moves (lol at not being able to learn Fly though).

 

 

Edited by Zapp Branniglenn
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I recently finished the second Metroid Prime game: Metroid Prime: Echoes. Overall, the game was pretty good; almost everything in it was somehow simultaneously better and worse than they were in Prime 1.

 

So, now I'm onto the last game in the trilogy: Metroid Prime: Corruption.

One thing I can say right away is that it is very obvious from the start that this game, unlike the previous two, was made to be a Wii game. The motion gimmicks are mostly harmless, but I can see why they might annoy others. The increased focus on action, undoubtedly to capitalize on motion aiming, is also readily apparent. I think it is rather neat, as right from the beginning of the game, it's clear that the game is going for being a big, climatic, epic finale to the Prime series, rather than a typical "here's an isolated labyrinthine area to explore", which I find interesting.

Speaking of which, being able to pilot the ship is an interesting idea for a Metroid game, though I'm not sure if the idea works. A big part of a Metroidvania is exploring a labyrinthine area: exploration being more determined by where you can't go than where you can go, and it's hard to make it that there's places you can't go in outer space, so the ship so far has basically been a glorified level-select. I get it; using the ship for a big action sequence would be more Star Fox than Metroid, but I can't help but wonder if more is going to be done with the ship in this game or not, and if not, I can't help but wonder if more could've been done with the ship.

The fight against Meta Ridley in the elevator shaft was a fantastic boss fight. The boss fights in Prime 1 and 2 were very much hit-or-miss, but the boss fights in this game so far have been really good, so I hope that remains so.

One thing that caught me off-guard was the sudden introduction of full voice-acting. The voice acting is oddly quiet and hard to hear compared to the background noise, and the lack of subtitles or dialogue boxes in cutscenes meant that I found myself having to turn the volume up until the game was rather loud just to hear the dialogue. Audio mixing really is one of those things where, when it's good, you don't notice it. Here, I noticed it.

 

EDIT: I'm a lot further in the game now; I'd say somewhere around halfway through skytown. Now I have the ship grapple beam, so the ship is useful for more than being a level select & save station, and I have to say, it is a lot of fun to use the ship for puzzle-solving. Perhaps my favourite example would be on Bryyo, where, to obtain an item, I first had to unlock a shortcut connecting two separate areas, then use the ship to carry a large item from one of those areas to the other.

 

EDIT: I just completed the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The series started well and ended well, and it's honestly hard to see how they'll follow up from this with Metroid Prime 4. For one thing, the titular Metroid Prime is dead thanks to the complete destruction of phazon.

Edited by vanguard333
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  • 2 weeks later...

currently playing modded CnC Generals Zero hour. a game that despite the overwhelming popularity in modders forum for years, still absolutely cant be remake-d, remastered,  make a sequel of, or even re-release publicly due to obvious reasons. sometime i also play Humankind and Cities Skylines. i like buildings things (and destroy it later).

 

last game that i beat Tales of Arise. im having fun with it. i like simple story with plot twist and fulfilled romance in my JRPG. not a highest point in the series? didnt care. as im not part of the fandom. but i firmly believe if FF7R is how JRPG can look as realistic as possible in one end of JRPG spectrum, the other end of spectrum is Arise with its 3D anime style model that even look better than their 2D counterpart. any high budget JRPG should take note how these 2 game are made in technical aspect of world building and storytelling.

 

also trying to pick up Valkyria Chronicles 4 again. already forgot why i stopped playing it halfway. a good SRPG sequel that plays it too safe. dunno why they even forgot to add new element from VC3, and just make a slightly prettier VC1 with new story and called it done. are SEGA afraid of losing fanbase by inventing stuff and thus lose sales again? again, tales of arise come to mind. pretty much around half old-fanbase dont want to praise it because they change the formula, feels different, and other reasons. but sales and reviews speak for themselves.

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1 hour ago, joevar said:

also trying to pick up Valkyria Chronicles 4 again. already forgot why i stopped playing it halfway. a good SRPG sequel that plays it too safe. dunno why they even forgot to add new element from VC3, and just make a slightly prettier VC1 with new story and called it done. are SEGA afraid of losing fanbase by inventing stuff and thus lose sales again? again, tales of arise come to mind. pretty much around half old-fanbase don't want to praise it because they change the formula, feels different, and other reasons. but sales and reviews speak for themselves.

Funny; I too had to stop about 3/4 of the way through the game; in my case, it was because I moved, and by the time I got everything set up, my schedule became very busy.

I wouldn't know about that comparison to VC3 though; I've only played VC1 and 4.

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3 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Funny; I too had to stop about 3/4 of the way through the game; in my case, it was because I moved, and by the time I got everything set up, my schedule became very busy.

I wouldn't know about that comparison to VC3 though; I've only played VC1 and 4.

then let me enlighten you. theres a lot of differences actually. and you can even say "isnt that what FE has/can do as well?" well yes.. if its good why not, right? altho i agree that objectively, more doesnt always better.

Spoiler

story telling

non cutscene dialogue in VC 1&4:  usually 1 or 2 big box containing moving 3D model with large text box below it.

non cutscene dialogue in VC3 stylized like comic book panel, can contain up to 4 box ranging from portrait, landscape,  perfect rectangular, eye focus thin box, etc. with text box not glued to the bottom but more situational.

story17_lg.jpg

vc3ex22.jpg

Class

VC1 has 5. VC4 has 6. VC3 has 8. while VC2... a whooping 35 classes, divided into 3 tier with 2 branch per tier. yep, like Awakening or maybe 3H so many classes yet some are just plain meme/useless. but whats interesting is VC2&3 has Melee class

progression also more varied in VC3, not just dumbed down with one single bar for each class. but you can focus leveling each stat of each class. then there's this progression like Final Fantasy skill tree:

valkyria-chronicles-3-review-master-tabl

which unlock perk/trait and bonus (for each character iirc)

Morale

theres morale in VC4 but individually, while in VC3 its for whole troop. you can even lose by reaching 0 morale. so ranging from bad to good (with effect). versus default to good only in VC4. altho they also introduce "inspire" mechanic tied to it in VC4 which is interesting.

Main menu

VC 4: its diary / picture book style with easy to guess how many content per page (chapter)

VC 3: tactical map style per chapter, it has branching main mission sometimes. You cant really guess how many cutscene/battle will be there since those thumbtacks only appear when you reach it. you can also see "enemy line" which changes with story progression. it add more urgency sense to the ongoing war.

Valkyria_3_Map.png

Special Points (command)

i dont know if this makes a return completely or not in VC4 since not beat it yet. In VC3 all 3 main characters plus DLC char has unique power. Direct command, valkyria mode, and bombardier. its OP if done right. fortunately only has around 2 uses per map usually for balance.

direct command seem making a return but less unique and potent (?) maybe the Ship order in VC4 also meant to replace it with something more acceptable and fair.

Menu

im sure 99% of player annoyed by the fact that every upgrade and lvl up you click in base followed by cheers that cant be skipped. its less in VC3 iirc.

bonus

what VC3 clearly lose is in this aspect:

2018092413385800-4F26C43AFCA5C03EE5FA461

 

Edited by joevar
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@joevar I see. I don't know too much about the series as a whole, but I'm going to guess that the thinking behind VC4 probably had to do with diminishing sales numbers/audience reception, since the series doesn't exactly sell very well.

 

Anyway, I started playing Pokemon Legends: Arceus. I created a topic specifically for people to post their first impressions of the game, so I'm not going to say too much here (then again, I haven't said much in that topic either because I created that topic before I bought the game...)

One thing I can say is that I've been enjoying it a lot; the gameplay loop of going out in expeditions, exploring and catching a lot of Pokémon is quite fun. The new combat is also fun, but I'm not a fan of how it sometimes seems to lie to the player: it'll say that the move order is your Pokémon will attack once and the wild Pokémon will attack once, only for the wild Pokémon to get to attack twice even though they don't have access to swift-style moves or anything that would raise their attack speed.

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I've been playing through the Metroid series. Amusingly, despite being a huge metroidvania fan, I've never played the actual Metroid games until now. I've been playing through them with a friend who wanted to see my reaction to them.

And I honestly think they're kinda shit.

I'm finishing up the 3DS remake of the second game, so I haven't gotten to the games everyone praises to high heaven yet, but I just have a serious issue with its fundamental design philosophy. A combination of Samus's awkward controls and careless enemy placement give me the same feeling I had playing Symphony of the Night: that the devs didn't really give a rat's ass if combat was fair, because the power ups they give you basically make you invincible to anything that isn't a boss. They were banking on your overpowered abilities making sure that none of the terrible level design killed you. And as anyone who knows my opinion of Three Houses would know, that sort of game design just completely grinds my gears.

Zero Mission's Mother Brain battle was quite possibly the worst boss battle I've ever fought, just this mess of projectiles knocking you into lava it's incredibly frustrating to climb out of, just way too much going on compared to what the controls actually let you reliably handle. I was practically screaming in frustration the entire time.

Also, with the exception of a few quite memorable tracks, the music's just not that good at all so far. A lot of stuff that feels less like music and more like ambiance. And the games just don't seem to know how to make a bunch of cave systems unique and memorable like Hollow Knight does.

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You oughta give Metroid Dread a spin. Having played through my fair share of Metroids, I can tell you that Dread greatly improves the controls and thus far has felt mostly fair. The areas you explore look quite distinct, and even the music stands out with instruments I haven't heard in a Metroid title before. Some of the music sounds like something from Ratchet & Clank of all things.

The E.M.M.I.s are frustrating to deal with, though; sometimes their presence forces you to wait while they pass by, and when they chase you, the ensuing panic will often cause you to make mistakes, allowing them to catch you and, unless you know how to counter them, kill you, making for rather cheap deaths. I'm also not proud to admit I got killed by the very first E.M.M.I. a few times because I kept trying to shoot downward at it despite knowing it's invincible to your weaponry, causing me to fall and get killed by it. On the other hand, one of my more recent badass moments was sparked by the green E.M.M.I. killing me one time too many; I snapped and just ran through its area full bore, firing my beam in frustration. It caught me on the way, but I countered the mother trucker and kept on going until I was safe. For once, being reckless actually paid off. XD

Edited by Lord_Brand
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4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, with the exception of a few quite memorable tracks, the music's just not that good at all so far. A lot of stuff that feels less like music and more like ambiance. And the games just don't seem to know how to make a bunch of cave systems unique and memorable like Hollow Knight does.

I haven't played Samus Returns or Zero Mission, but I know that, when it comes to music and the Metroid games, it's Super Metroid and the Prime games that have the good music.

Speaking of which, you should probably try those games. Super Metroid is very much a product of the SNES era but it otherwise holds up, and the Prime games are pretty good.

Edited by vanguard333
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Some more games I've been playing since the New Year. Plus the new one everyone's playing

Yakuza Remastered Collection (this one's got some light spoilers, particularly if you're right in the middle of 3)

Spoiler

 

Yes all three games. I'm a pretty big fan of Yakuza for being the one AAA reference for a modern beat em up game.  And as a spiritual successor to Sega's too-close-to-the-sun Shenmue series. I know Yakuza fans don't always appreciate these comparisons, but it is how I engage with the series. Yakuza 3 is derided as "the worst one" by fans. I don't know if I agree but it is definitely the point in time where the series is failing earnestly to justify its existence. The story of Kiryu Kazama is over after the second game. If Yakuza 1 and 2 are The Godfather Part 1 and 2, then Yakuza 3 completes the comparison wonderfully. Just when Kiryu thought he was out, they pull him back in. And this will just keep happening with each game. Beyond that film series, it's also easy to draw comparison to honest to god tv soap operas. The antagonist for most of the plot is the evil twin brother of a previously killed off character. While another major character spends the entire plot in a coma, springing to life at a critical moment of the finale to draw a gun from his hospital gown and shoot the bad guy. I wish I was making this up.

Then there's the kids. Look, Yakuza 3 can be an annoying narrative, but it's not because of the kids. Yes it's dumb that their little substories were made mandatory plot progression - according to developers. But as we'll see in later games, the Yakuza series has an awful habit of derailing the story to give you unskippable subplots and minigame storylines that nobody asked for. If you're going to foist mandatory junk at the player like that, I'd rather it be stories that sell you on Kiryu's attachment to the kids. It may not be fun, but it at least convinces you that he has a serious role at the orphanage. That it's tragic how his past is pulling him away from his family. That's the point of Michael Corleone in The Godfather part 3. I just wish Yakuza 3's ending had the same bite. Kiryu does "die" in his family's arms, but it's faked out immediately and not for the last time in this series.

Yakuza 4 has one crucial course correction - forgetting about Kiryu Kazama, at least temporarily. In fact it has many playable characters, Each with their own ~4 hour campaign, substories, minigames, and fighting style. Jumping into each one feels pretty good because of how quickly you earn skill points and flesh out what they can do. Kiryu returns as well, but he's already packing the basic abilities just to flaunt how tough he is in-universe. The angst of Kiyru' leaving the orphanage is almost totally skipped over, perhaps responding to backlash of the previous game. Kiryu's story actually ends with the antagonist telling you he's "not like other Yakuza bosses" before tasking you with a tower full of goons while he waits on the roof. I contemplated whether this was parody. Whether Sega took my money and then clowned on me for even liking Yakuza at all. But I drew the conclusion that this series doesn't have that level of self awareness to qualify as parody. Fans debate whether the rubber bullets twist works or not, but my problem isn't with the idea of it. If you watch that cutscene, you can see clear blood spatter. It's a twist that only works if you ignore the game lying to you about the facts. That's a plot hole, not a plot contrivance.

My biggest gripe with Yakuza 4 is the characters themselves. Akiyama's money lender with a heart of gold shtick is tiresome and downright creepy. Coercing a vulnerable woman into a date and a job at his strip club? Even for 2010 standards that is uncomfortable and gross. Saejima is a big bag of missed opportunity. He spends 25 years in jail for a crime he thinks he committed, but when the truth is revealed it doesn't impact his world view, motivations, or attitude. It's like an open refusal for the writers to give him character development. Furthermore they miss the opportunity to have him comment on the sanitized, digitized world of Tokyo once he's out. Yakuza 1 is full of moments like this and Kiryu was only gone for 10 years. Tanimura is a cop which raises many questions about what role the police serve in Kamuro as he beats up thugs and gets into all kinds of extra-judicial violence. He solicits hush money from vulnerable minorities to give it to other minorities - I don't know what point the writers are trying to make with his sense of morality. Police have generally been a non-presence in this series and that trend continues here unfortunately. I can just imagine stepping into the writers room for a day, asking the question "what if the Police...were another Yakuza?" and being given a job immediately for such a novel idea to base a sequel on.

Yakuza 5 is the big glow up. Five playable characters with unique fighting styles, stories and minigames, five districts to explore, and a new game engine with more voice acting and attention to detail on character faces. The production values here are even higher than later Yakuza games like 0 and the Kiwamis. Unfortunately it brought all the baggage associated with the series as well. 5's story is told at a glacial pace with constant digressions and way too many characters to keep track of. There are, no joke, hour long sections where the only gameplay is the player walking to the waypoint on the other side of the map so that we can relay the information we just learned to characters that were not present in the previous scene. Near the end of the game, the villain addresses the new character as "Shinada, the Baseball player" since they just assumed players would forget about the guy we've been playing as for eight hours. Poor Shinada is treated like the Scrappy Doo of the group during the finale, with constant notions about how he has no reason to be there. 

Beyond the sheer runtime of the game, Yakuza 5 is seriously up its own ass about its minigames. I'd swear to god nobody that worked on this game brought up the word "pacing". It might not be so bad if they played well, but Saejima's hunting and snowball fights control like a PS1 shooter, and Kiryu's taxi driving is a hilariously bad driving simulator before it becomes bargain brand Daytona. I'm not surprised fans are divisive on Haruka's campaign but honestly that's the best part of the game. All of her minigames reflect back on the main plot in a figurative sense as well as literal by boosting your stats. Heck maybe I'm just low key in the mood for rhythm games but the fact remains that it controls well and doesn't overstay its welcome like so much of the rest of the game. 

Which was my favorite of the three? Yakuza 4, hands down. It's story is the closest to approaching "good" despite poorly conceived characters, and it's told at the briskest pace. And in terms of raw gameplay it's got the most variety in ratio with its playtime. Since nothing of long term consequence really happens in 3 and no major characters are introduced, it's easy to suggest skipping straight to 4 from Kiwami 2. 5 was the weakest for me due to the overwhelming level of bloat. I think 3 and 5 have about the same ratio for wasting the player's time, but since 5 is at least twice as long as 3, I have to give the victory to the shorter game. And also, as somebody who started with 0, I'm very let down with the returning characters. Majima has nothing to do in 3 and in 4 and 5 he's either a damsel in distress or reportedly dead. Daigo is similarly underserved. He's set up perfectly to be the next Dragon of Dojima following Kiryu's departure, but the writers are thoroughly uninterested in him beyond his plot-convenient preference towards guns over fists. Like Majima he spends these games either reportedly dead or incapable of making his own decisions. 

 

Stella Deus The Gate of Eternity 

Spoiler

 

More like Grinding For Eternity lol. Actually there's definitely some things I like about this tactics rpg. You can flank enemies for better hit/crit rates, and that gels well with the Team Attacks you only get access to when your squad is surrounding an enemy. And the Action Point system is pretty interesting to plan around since you can see the precise point of the timeline every unit's next turn is. Everything from movement to attacking runs on AP, so trying to do both is costly. What I found after a while is that you can move up to your enemy, spending just few enough AP that you get your next turn before they do, and have the full 100 AP to wail on them with attacks now that you're in range. Maybe killing them before they get any damage off. But if that sort of gamble doesn't pay off, it's you who's taking big damage. Also you can attack your own party members for experience. Forget Final Fantasy Tactics, this is Final Fantasy Two Tactics, and it allows you to easily train up a unit from a low level so that nobody lags behind.

For me, the big problem with Stella Deus is the level scaling. This is a mid 2000s Atlus RPG, so if you're not within three levels of a boss, you can give up on victory. The jumps in levels with boss fights are so sudden throughout the first half of the game that it felt like I had no choice but to grind once I recognized how much of the game runs on level scaling. Everything from the damage dealt, hit and crit rates, maybe even status immunity runs on level, not so much your literal stats. It is worth mention that experience gain is also impacted. If you can survive against a higher level opponent, you'll be gaining a lot of experience for landing a hit. However, this game denies you that on a regular basis with very high Evasion bosses (further bolstered by their level advantage), and passive status inflicting zone skills. In the first half of the game, there's no way to gain immunities to status ailments. There's a fusion guide on GameFAQS that is integral, but the items necessary aren't available so early on. So trying to play without grinding seemed futile to me. You'll be stuck spending most of your AP on healing the Fear status, only to get inflicted with it again on your next turn due to the RNG. It's frustrating that there's nothing else to do but grind.

The level scaling upsets the game balance in other ways too. There's the classic fire emblem chapter in which you must push ahead to rescue a green unit before they're killed. In this game, the green units are controllable. Good start right? Well the green unit in question is much higher leveled than the enemies - probably because the level designers quickly realized they can't possibly survive the onslaught of attacks coming their way. But the result of making her three levels higher and having passive health regeneration is that she becomes indestructible, and can grab the attention of any enemies you want. Heck, she goes toe to toe with the boss just fine despite being the "priest" class. She should be rescuing US. There's also a lack of satisfying progression to your units. As you get better equipment, it weighs your characters down with higher AP costs on movement and attacking. Imagine a fire emblem game starting you off with 6 Mov infantry units, only to end with 5 Mov mounted units. It also doesn't feel like your skills and spells can keep up for longer than a few maps due to lack of scaling off of your stats. Class Promotion exists, but it only boosts their stats a bit and grants another spell slot. There's no change to their appearance or animations like in Fire Emblem.

Scaling concerns aside, the second half of the game is much more smooth - but only because the level of enemies rises much slower, so you won't need to grind to keep up. There's still some jank though. Enemies can do team attacks as well, but unlike the player they don't have any positional requirements. If they're nearby, they can do it. And the only reason they won't is sheer RNG. If they do get it off, you're taking enough damage to lose a unit immediately. There's no permadeath in this game, but if your Lord dies, it's a game over. And by the end of the game, bosses are doing Team Attacks from literally across the map so your only potential strategy is baiting one of your six units to the wolves so that your Lord can safely go to the front line without fear of a game over. It is pretty much the same phenomenon as resetting thirty minutes into a map of Fire Emblem because one of your units died to a 1% crit.

 

Pokemon Legends Arceus

Spoiler

 

As a card carrying member of the Genwun clan, pokemon has been a big deal in my life. I've been deeply critical of the series since I picked up and quickly put down Diamond Version on my brand new Nintendo DS. It's hard not to look at these games without letting your own wants for the franchise paint your critique. I definitely did not ask for an open world Pokemon game, but once I saw the change - any change, I took the bait. I couldn't help but see where they were going with this.

Make no mistake that Pokemon Legends Arceus is still the same standard for quality that Game Freak is known for. The Pokemon models and animations are by now a decade old beyond some new forms. I think the only unique thing I spotted came from Aipom. If you throw a Nanab Berry at him, he'll use his tail to pick up and eat it. That's a rare show of character. The sheer technical quality of in-game dialogue scenes are not above GeniusSonority's Gamecube titles. Not wanting to shell out for voice acting (even garbled gibberish sound bites like Zelda does) is bad enough, but dialogue is presented in sheer, uncomfortable silence with very close up shots of mouths that do not move. Just like the diamond and pearl remakes, this game is begging you to notice the poor presentation. Plus the sound effects are still presented through the Game Boy's soundchip. The game's very first minute of cutscene had my head in my hands when an ancient creature spoke to me in bit-crushed noises. It's embarrassing and takes you out of the experience when the otherwise life-like pokemon turn to you and make these noises. The graphical fidelity naturally doesn't match other open world games on Switch - much less games on older hardware like Xbox 360 or PS4. I do appreciate the level of optimization when I'm zooming around in fast travel. It takes just a second or two to warp back to camp to heal my pokemon. And while there aren't an abundance of such warp points, the fastest Ride Pokemon is available early on and the game doesn't slow down a ton while riding him. Being able to spot a pokemon you want, seamlessly start a turn based battle anywhere, with no fade to black is probably the most concise answer to how much more modern this game is to it's immediate predecessor released a couple months ago.

So, heck yes this is the most fun I've had in a new pokemon game for ten years. Being able to spot a pokemon you want, and potentially catch them without battling is a huge speed up of Pokemon's gameplay loop. And they also heard my cries of making the pokedex more interesting and involved in the plot by tying the plot progression to it. Battling is much less integral to the experience, yet the battles themselves are made more interesting with the style switching and complete revamp/rebalance of stats. Almost no battle went exactly as I expected, and 100% of battles are done on the player's terms - always asking if you want to back out and come back after healing up. Pretty much everything you do is on the player's terms. There's never a narrow route of pokemon trainers stopping you from reaching the next screen. Never a Gym leader you must face to leave the current town. Even if you lack access to the Surf and Fly pokemon, you can still walk nearly everywhere and catch nearly everything in those early regions. Yes you can load your team with intimidating Alpha pokemon in an attempt to break the game balance, but unless you put in the effort on that pokedex, you're not going to steamroll anything since they won't listen to your orders. And even with a level difference of 30, you can still do meaningful damage if you know your type matchups. And if you don't know your type matchups, the game is providing for you in that regard as well. This is a pokemon game that caters to all skill levels, and yet doesn't patronize returning players. 

I don't think for a second that Pokemon Legends will be the standard moving forward. Remember that GameFreak is the Set it and Forget it, developer. No trend gets used twice anymore. I'm thinking the next Pokemon game is Gen 9 with the same scale and scope as Sword and Shield, only missing the Wild Area. But I do somewhat expect we'll see another game like Legends in the next five years, and it will have the same minimum budget. So here's the areas I would set out to work on when that time comes. Heck some of these can be addressed in THIS game if they cared to push out some free updates:

  • Cut the gameboy sounds and push for full voice acting - at least full voice acting for the pokemon. They clash with the open world/lifelike feel of the game, and I know the pokemon company already has sound bites for every pokemon from the anime - in multiple languages - that they can reuse. 
  • Integrate the pokedex into wild battles. It's genuinely dumb not being able to do this when you're specifically aiming to get more of those research tasks done, since so many are only possible within a battle. The pokedex can help in other ways, like revealing the opponent's moveset, or at least their potential movelist if you've studied them hard enough already.
  • Show us the "weight" of moves, and maybe only grant trainer battles the ability to Style Switch. In Pokemon Legends, stronger attacks seem to influence how quickly you can move again - independent of the Style Switching system. That's interesting! Why not let the player know about that and make decisions based on it? I know that Final Fantasy X, the game that Legends ripped off its battle system from, also didn't tell you the hidden cost of moves. But unlike Legends, FF10's turn order was set in stone from the moment you make that move. In Legends, your opponent's access to Style Switching means they can change the turn order and mess with your plans. That's kind of annoying since the AI-controlled wild pokemon can't be expected to make optimal decisions.
  • Grant the player the ability to catch a wild pokemon after KOing them. I've wanted this in the main series for years, since it applies to any situation where an accidental crit killed the pokemon you've been searching for. There's no logical reason why pokeballs capture sleeping or frozen pokemon but not KOd ones. So if you do beat a wild pokemon in battle, that should afford you a free toss right there in the battle screen. And if it fails, that pokemon can get up and hit you for the capture attempt despite having 0 HP. They can also grant more experience this way. The one time experience bonus for KOing the pokemon, and the experience bonus for capturing them. The player is rewarded with the most EXP in this scenario since that's the most time invested in the encounter. 
  • Integrate the Pokedex into multiplayer. Make it so you and your friends can sign up to be on the same Research Team and share progress. Even battle each other to fulfill battle-related tasks. This can be a fun cooperative way to engage with other players. Increase the research requirements in this mode for completion and suddenly it takes a lot of effort and coordination for you all to knock out these research tasks. You can even have player specific stamps over each task to indicate who did what. I know this clashes with the idea of the Pokedex being your mode of story progression, but not every future title needs the pokedex to serve that role right? If badges make a return in the next one of these, I want the Pokedex to still feel just as relevant.
  • Let me look at my list of requests and sort by area so I know what can be done nearby. Or heck, just highlight every currently active quest with its quest marker to save me from thumbing through such a long, unorganized list.
  • Let me lock on to pokemon from further away. Maybe they were worried players would attempt to throw pokeballs from a distance where they cannot reach without manually raising your aim, but I just want to check the damn pokedex before I decide whether a pokemon in the distance is worth my time.
  • Don't have the music just cut so easily. They only wrote two pieces of music for the "Alert Theme" when a pokemon notices you. And it overrides anything that's already playing, except for a certain point near the game's finale. If you're going to have only two generic Alert Themes, make it so that it only happens when no music is playing at that moment. 

 

 

On 2/5/2022 at 4:11 AM, Alastor15243 said:

Zero Mission's Mother Brain battle was quite possibly the worst boss battle I've ever fought, just this mess of projectiles knocking you into lava it's incredibly frustrating to climb out of, just way too much going on compared to what the controls actually let you reliably handle. I was practically screaming in frustration the entire time.

It seems like the approach of your critique is on the raw game balance of video games. That's not invalid - even for games that have no competitive multiplayer component, but I would defend the older games on the basis that they were breaking new ground. Metroid was once a lone franchise, not a genre until we decided it was decades later. Symphony of the Night came ten whole years after the original Metroid, and even the later Castlevania titles routinely missed what SotN got right until, debatably, Aria of Sorrow. So of course when more developers set out to make more Metroid, improvements to level design philosophy, controls, and the hardware that we play games on just sort of becomes standardized as the roads get more paved from the traffic. 

This Mother Brain example is interesting to me, however, because I love this fight. Mother Brain's ability to knock you into the lava is frustrating yes, but it's meant to prompt the player to focus on dodging or shooting the projectiles out of the air before continuing your own onslaught of damage. It's a fast paced fight that rewards pro-active play over reactive. And if your approach is on judging the game balance of the fight consider this: If you make any attempt to physically dodge Mother Brain's attacks (by doing the only thing you can do: jumping), that puts you further away from the lava. If your jump is poorly timed or you didn't activate your screw attack by making it a spin jump, you're going to take a hit, but the projectiles do extremely little damage compared to taking a dip in the lava. Because the player jumped before taking damage, they can then safely fall back on the platform and judge their next move. That's a much better situation than standing there and getting knocked into the lava because you got greedy with your missile spam. Think about this interaction. The player chose to dodge the attack, and is rewarded with either no damage, or less damage than the decision to not dodge at all. I'd say that's good consideration of the player's intentionally limited options.

Edited by Zapp Branniglenn
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Suddenly lost any desire to finish Valkyria chronicles 4, again. already installed it on PC, but having point out the downgrade feature of 4 to Vanguard333 actually make it more unbearable to see stuff like annoying cheer everytime you upgrade something, and the menus being sluggish

 

Now im really immersed in Pathfinder: Wrath of Righteous, a CRPG that uses dice system like DnD tabletop game to determine many things. Altho longtime fans of pathfinder says it uses slightly different ruleset. so whats the catch with it? think of it like FE6 percentage where 3% can crit and 95% can miss  more times compared to more recent FE games, but this didnt use percentage (altho you can calculate the probability urself). so yeah the result between same encounter can vary a lot, Save-scumming is greatly encouraged. heck, like so many thought in forum, just selecting Normal difficulty or slightly above it for newbie feels like the game master hates you. its hard. (its actually quite fair, but not just to you.. kek)

the story more than make up for it fortunately. anyone that like "chosen one" story will like it. its like the chosen one among chosen ones. its CRPG afterall, well written story is number 1 priority. i mean..

Spoiler

one of the path has you slowly becoming part of cosmic force that maintain balance of the law in multiverse... you are straight becoming god basically

while not really good implemented or explained, it actually has war campaign. actual war campaign you control aside from main party where you clear the path using troops. think of it like FE:awakening which have overworld map, but you're managing  armies not just 1 whole party . the movement is also tied to time constraint which affect morale, funds, and in turn, army management. and some random ambush spawn surprise encounter or event too along the road for flavor.

 

Edited by joevar
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Was playing Final Fantasy XIV a while back, taking full advantage of the Free Trial. I finished the AAR storyline completely and began Heavensward, but decided to take a break to play other games and do other things.
-- A Realm Reborn (AAR) is considered the weakest point of FFXIV, so much so that players may drop out during this phase before they "get to the good stuff." However, while AAR definitely has its faults, I didn't find it that bad. Consider AAR as an entire "setup arc" that establishes the characters and setting, and it becomes much more manageable.
-- Gameplay wise, AAR (and FXIV in general), treats the starting experience as your first ever MMO of all time. This means that almost everything early-game is simplistic and hand-holdy, which gets tiring real quickly if you want to play on alts. Problem is, FFXIV doesn't really support alts as much as other games, in fact it is much preferred that you create one character and do everything on said character. This has pros and cons, but as an alt-a-holic, it sorta sucks that having multiple characters is not as supported.
-- Story-wise, its like your standard JRPG. When one remembers that AAR was rushed on time and was trying to salvage the trainwreck that was FFXIV 1.0, it makes sense that the main story is nothing noteworthy. There are indeed some amazing moments (including some fun sidequests), but overall the "AAR Arc" was relatively average.
-- As a Free Trial player, my main issue was the Gil Cap and trying to find stuff to spend Gil on. Not having access to the Market Board (Auction House) sorta sucked, but then again I tend to be a self-sufficient player anyways. Not being able to be in a guild or form a party may also be a detriment to some players, but since I tend to play solo this did not affect me at all. // I plan on sticking to my Free Trial until I finish Heavensward, and perhaps do everything I can as a Free Trial player before potentially getting a subscription down the line.

After taking a break from FFXIV, I got sucked back into the void of Path of Exile with its newest league launch.
-- Gameplay-wise, PoE is amazing since it has so much depth to its combinations and builds. Do you want one, massively huge Fireball, do you want to launch multiple Fireballs at once, or just have a Totem launch Fireballs for you? The depth and build customization on PoE is seemingly second-to-none.
--- However, PoE suffers from the grind treadmill, and this becomes more apparent each league launch due to the shuffling of the meta, new mechanics thrown in, and the endgame Atlas being reset (even in the Standard league). While you could mess around in Standard after the resets, it is very easy to become lost with all the new features, especially if one takes an extended break from the game. PoE doesn't respect the player's time as well, meaning if you really want to cool stuff you will spend a while grinding out what you need to get what you potentially want.
-- Story-wise, PoE is fairly standard, but it suffers from lore being cut from the game when it no longer suits their needs gameplay-wise. For example, the original "Forsaken Masters" were allies and had daily quests to break up the monotomy of the leveling process, only to have all that dialogue and lore removed when a new league expansion released that transformed them into unique enemies to fight. Recently, the endgame portion of PoE changed, and the original endgame NPC Zana is now gone, replaced by another. // Sure, this can represent the passing of time, but then there's no history to experience. It's there one moment, and and soon as it is not relevant, it is tossed out the window. It's a shame to me since I enjoy the setting of PoE, and there is so much "lost lore" out there.
== I think PoE is currently on the throne because it is easily accessible (free to play), although I'm hearing good things about other ARPGs such as Last Epoch. However, as someone who does not have much money to spend on games these days, I make do with what I have.

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10 minutes ago, joevar said:

Suddenly lost any desire to finish Valkyria chronicles 4, again. already installed it on PC, but having point out the downgrade feature of 4 to Vanguard333 actually make it more unbearable to see stuff like annoying cheer everytime you upgrade something, and the menus being sluggish

I have finished Valkyria Chronicles 4, I enjoyed it a lot (though part of that may be bias from it being the first VC game I've played), and I can say that I can understand not wanting to finish it, for one specific reason: the final mission. I don't think they really finished (or at least polished) the final mission: it's a large icy map where you fight a giant amphibious tank, and it's rather buggy and just bad.

The first problem is that it's stuffed with enemies. Remember how the final battle against Prince Maximillian in VC1 was literally just against Maximillian because that was all it needed? Remember how the giant tank you have to scale in that desert map of VC1 only had a few enemies around it and its turrets were more dangerous? Well, this game apparently couldn't resist overstuffing the final map with enemies, even though, for story reasons, the villain really should be alone at this point. This feeds into the second problem: one of the main gimmicks is that the tank will sometimes go underwater and re-emerge elsewhere on the map, and the map is absolutely huge, so you have to make your units travel a long way a lot, all while fighting a relentless horde of enemies. Even worse, it's like Maximillian's tank in that you have to destroy its exposed radiators (which thankfully are always exposed this time), and every time you destroy one, a bunch of enemies will spawn around the tank; making this even worse.

Finally, if you want the game's true ending, you have to beat the final boss fight twice. You have to beat the game, unlock a side-story that has no missions, go through that side-story, then beat the final mission again just to get the game's true ending. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I actually did this, though I only did so because, as it turns out, there's a way to end the boss on the very first turn; I'll put it in the spoiler tag, and while a relief, it really does not seem like a method that the developers intended:

Spoiler

You put Riley and another grenadier armed with the anti-tank mortar in the APC, deliver Riley to the ship as needed to complete the mission, then have the other grenadier receive the blast radius expansion order and the anti-armour boost order, then hav e the grenadier aim for the exact center of the tank; it'll take out all four radiators at once.

It's a very disappointing end to what is otherwise a really good game.

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Well, 100%ing Fire Emblem Warriors has moved up in my priority list. I was explicitly saving the remainder of the completion to tide me over once the next FEW was announced, and that's happened.

 

I also wanted it to specifically be my first 100% musou, so other completions (namely the easier to complete Pirate Warriors ones) may follow.

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