Soooooo what'cha playing?

[DragonFlames]

14 hours ago, Armagon said:

Unfortunately, there is no demo so even though the game is worth the full price, i'd say maybe wait for a sale in your case. Or maybe buy the game and return it if you end up not liking it.

Alright, I'll wait until it's on sale then. Thanks for the tip!

5 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

try to play Bayonetta or Metal Gear Rising. These are older Platinum games that are usually pretty cheap. You can try them to get a taste of Platinum's gameplay^^

 

I have been eyeing Nier Automata, too. My main problem is that I am not confident in my skills in action games. Just like fighting games and platformers, I'm not very good at those.
Based on that, it's almost a miracle I managed to beat Okami and Shadow of the Colossus...

---

So... I've played the first hour of My Neighbour Atelier Totori and I can already tell it's vastly different from Rorona in terms of tone. Things started out harmless enough, but the game very quickly made it clear that this isn't going to be as cutesy as Rorona was.
Some things to note:
Totori's dad is literally Kellam. I guess now we know where he went after Awakening...
Alanya village is absolutely beautiful and I can understand now why you weren't happy that it wasn't visitable in Atelier Lulua, @Armagon. It's one of those places in video games where I'm like "I wanna live there". And I honestly like it more than the city of Arland.
The music so far is also stunningly beautiful and relaxing, as per usual.
Fun fact about the music: The standard battle theme is in Warriors All-Stars, too, albeit an orchestral version. It was one of my favorite pieces of music in that game, so recognizing it here made me happy.
Lysithea's post-time skip design at the very least took inspiration from Totori's. I am now convinced of that.

With that said, there are also some alert flags for me already: gathering and battling uses time in this one, where it didn't do so in Rorona. Granted, this is a thing in Sophie and Lulua as well, but those two games aren't on a time limit. Oof.
Another semi-"oof" moment is that the game isn't kidding about Totori not being built for fighting. A wet napkin thrown at a brick wall is more effective than her physical hits. Then again, her boisterous buddy Gino (not to be confused with Gio) isn't much better in that regard.

[Armagon]

22 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Fun fact about the music: The standard battle theme is in Warriors All-Stars, too, albeit an orchestral version. It was one of my favorite pieces of music in that game, so recognizing it here made me happy.

There's also a lyrics version, though from the Atelier Lulua arrange CD.

25 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Another semi-"oof" moment is that the game isn't kidding about Totori not being built for fighting. A wet napkin thrown at a brick wall is more effective than her physical hits. Then again, her boisterous buddy Gino (not to be confused with Gio) isn't much better in that regard.

Yeeeeaaah, i'd say upgrade equipment ASAP but even then, everyone in this game just kinda feels weak. Even Sterk. Normal enemies aren't too hard but bosses might give you a bit of trouble.

It's funny though because if you don't have Totori in your party in Atelier Meruru, you're actively hurting yourself. Totori is a powerhouse early on in that game.

[DragonFlames]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

There's also a lyrics version, though from the Atelier Lulua arrange CD.

Eargasm intensifies.

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

Yeeeeaaah, i'd say upgrade equipment ASAP but even then, everyone in this game just kinda feels weak. Even Sterk. Normal enemies aren't too hard but bosses might give you a bit of trouble.

It's funny though because if you don't have Totori in your party in Atelier Meruru, you're actively hurting yourself. Totori is a powerhouse early on in that game.

She becomes a badass between games. Nice!

[Shrimpica]

49 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

My main problem is that I am not confident in my skills in action games.

You won't know until you try 😉

Also, Platinum is very generous with their save points, from my experience. So generous, they put em between boss forms

[Armagon]

15 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Also, Platinum is very generous with their save points, from my experience. So generous, they put em between boss forms

With Astral Chain, there's soft-save points within each chapter. Basically, whenever you complete a sidequest, the game saves it so if you were to get a game over or reload a save, you would spawn at a certain point but any sidequests you had done will still be completed.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Anyway, Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX came out today and it's the same Inti Creates goodness i've come to expect from them. Gameplay is fast and satisfying. 

Edited September 26, 2019 by Armagon

[DragonFlames]

15 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

You won't know until you try 😉

Also, Platinum is very generous with their save points, from my experience. So generous, they put em between boss forms

 

Just now, Armagon said:

With Astral Chain, there's soft-save points within each chapter. Basically, whenever you complete a sidequest, the game saves it so if you were to get a game over or reload a save, you would spawn at a certain point but any sidequests you had done will still be completed.

That is a huge point in their favor.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

On 9/25/2019 at 5:47 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

1. It took me a moment to realize what you were referring to. I think since VII weird start of game little thingies you have to do have existed. Then, for a moment, I considered slapping you, since that particular moment was awkward.

I can't believe you'd threaten to wound me. Me, Captain Basch of Dalmasca. This is the world we lived in when we had the choicest memes

Quote

Getting past that, I actually have XIII unplayed as well. I got it used for $5, I have to try this supposed trainwreck for myself, and one can rarely have regrets over something so cheap.

Nothing wrong with discount gaming. The search for cheap thrills has taken me to back alleys far worse than FF13.

Anyway this week on what the hell did I just play, Startropics. An experience so cryptic that I wondered if the game's purpose was to sell more Nintendo Power magazines. It WAS built for the US market, explicitly. My stand in for Nintendo Power was playing along with HCBailly's LP. I was aghast at how the game introduces secret passages marked by discolored sprites, only to rely on totally unmarked secret passages later. Final Fantasy 1-6 also relied on these unmarked secret passages too, but always for secrets, never for progression. Okay, sometimes for progression. Those games don't hold up as well as I give them credit for.  An even worse sin is how exploring can lead you to get warped to the start of a dungeon or straight up killed by a room transition leading to a bottomless pit you can't see coming. Failure states in this game are pretty generous though. It's got a save system *choir sounds*, and a few extra lives that refresh on each new dungeon. Though I do wish your health would get refilled on each new dungeon, since they go to the trouble of taking away any of your excess items and extra lives.

Movement is laggy, to emulate the human feeling of turning and walking in a new direction. I never felt like I mastered it as I repeatedly failed to dodge traps and projectiles without any ability to shoot in one direction while moving in another. You'd think a baseball player would possess more agility. But the dungeon designs and enemy scenarios were often creative. And the dialogue writing is goofy and weird. Apparently you can overcome mind control by jamming bananas in your ears. There's also a cool Review Mode that lets you replay individual chapters for fun. I think I rate it a 4.7 out of 10. It loses points for being a game that warrants a guide this much, but it's not as random as the original zelda.

[Armagon]

So it being a Mega Man-inspired game, i finished Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX a day after it's release. The game can very easily be described as "short but sweet". I mean, it is a Gunvolt game so it wasn't really long to begin with but for the first time in the series, this game only has one ending. The gameplay is very quick and satisfying. While the Gunvolt series takes more inspiration from the Mega Man Zero games, Luminous Avenger is more reminiscent of the Mega Man X games. The main character, Copen, acquires EX Weapons by defeating each boss and each boss is weak to a certain EX Weapon. In terms of difficulty, while the main challenge of the series comes from trying to get the highest rank,  on a base difficulty, i'd say this game is the hardest in the series because, especially early on, Copen doesn't have a lot of health. You can Prevade through attacks (Prevasion is an ability in every game where if you have enough EP (as Gunvolt) or Bullits (as Copen), you can nullify attacks. You can refill these meters at any time so you can really just Prevade through everything though you can't move if you do) but given that dashing into enemies to lock onto them uses up Bullits and you only have three (can be increased to five) and Prevasion uses up two......yeah, you might find yourself taking a bit of damage. The final boss also kicked my ass a few times. There are difficulty settings as well:

• Fearless basically makes it so you lose all your points if you take a hit
• Cautious gives you three hits before taking away all your points
• Casual(?, i forgot the actual name) basically makes it so no matter how many hits you take, you'll keep your points

as well as optional equipment you can buy to make the game harder for you, like All or Nothing, which removes checkpoints or another part where your HP is always 100. You can even disable Prevasion if you want.

On the music front, the OST is decent with the vocal songs being bangers, as is the case for the series. There are three catagories for songs. Overdrive Songs, an Anthem Song and a Darkness song (i'll talk about those two later). Overdrive songs are triggered when you get 1000 points (and because you can lose these points if you aren't careful, you can also lose the song).

The game also has a story and it's nothing to write home about. It's mainly there to move the game along but it and the characters are nice to have around. Talking to the characters increases the chance of Lola's Anthem triggering, which basically revives you and gives you unlimited EX energy. You can still die and you won't gain any points but it's nice. Lola also has a Darkness form, activated by the EX Weapon Darkness Trigger. This also gives you unlimited EX energy and increases the power of everything but if you aren't locked onto enemies, you'll slowly take damage. The only way to deactivate the mode is to use an SP skill (by which i mean the only one) or trigger an event. The ending does leave me intrigued, though. Speaking of the story, the game does not take place in the same universe as the first two Gunvolt games so you could start here but i still wouldn't recommend it. Which brings us to....

The few flaws this game has. For starters, this game is definitely geared more towards the veterans of the series. Not only is it the hardest game in the series but the game doesn't really teach you anything. There is a manual (which i didn't look at because i've played this series before) but even aside from that, i actually don't know what most of the EX Weapons do and i just have to make assumptions based on what i see visually because there are no descriptions apart from names. The only EX Weapon that has any sort of description is Darkness Trigger. And speaking of EX Weapons, this game has the Mega Man 2 problem where one of the weapons is objectively the best one. Unless you're fighting a boss where a different weapon is more ideal for more damage, if you aren't using Orbital Edge, you're playing the game wrong.

So where does the latest entry in the Gunvolt series compare to with the rest of the series? Well, it's a great game but i don't think it's as good as Azure Striker Gunvolt 2. That game had a better story (not that this series is played for story) but also the best gameplay. You can either play as Gunvolt or as Copen and while i personally prefer the former, the latter has a more balanced selection of EX Weapons. So my ranking would be: Gunvolt 2 > Luminous Avenger > Gunvolt 1. While i wouldn't recommend starting with this game, for series veterans, it's an absolutely worthy addition to the series and Inti Creates' library.

Edited September 30, 2019 by Armagon

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I tried an hour of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice before realizing "wow I'm bad at this game" and stopped playing. In my defense, part of the issue is fighting my memory of Dark Souls and trying to dodge attacks unnaturally for optimal counter attacks. But these dodge steps don't have magic I frames. I went through most of my playtime not realizing this. Then once they added enemies whose attacks track your position I was getting destroyed. In this game you want to dodge long before they attack, not at the last moment. The dance of deflecting attacks is also awkward as there's little visual/audio feedback for how my opponent responds after their attack is blocked and whether I just created an opening. And vice versa when I'm doing the defending. The game is cool as heck but I don't think I'm in a state of mind to prevail at it. I'll come back to it before the year ends.

I then tried an hour of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I've always been a cynic when it came to the post Symphony Castlevania games, so although I did back the game, it was mostly Konami Hate Money like seemingly everybody at the time. It's been so long I actually forgot I was a backer when they sent me my download code on release. And the reason I've waited this long is that I've been advised to wait since I asked for the Switch version which was apparently unnaceptable on release. One big ol' update and the game seems fine. Too wordy for my taste but it is the opening moments of the game. I strongly disagree with no knockback when you are hit. I understand why you wouldn't want players to get smacked around by projectile attacks, but these games don't have bottomless pits like the action castlevania games. So every fight is this slug fest where with no weight behind the attacks. And the bulk of the damage I've taken is enemies walking into me so I have to remind myself to physically back off before I start attacking again. Annoying. Another thing that bothers me is when you have two adjacent rooms available: One a save room, the other the boss room. Choose the boss room then...well, hope you've got potions to burn. If you choose the save room, enjoy your checkpoint and full heal before the boss. I could never understand these huge lapses in level design. What is the appeal behind punishing the player for missing an unseen coin flip?

Edit: Also I'm definitely encountering plenty of bugs. Twice I was still able to move and attack after my HP reached 0 and the game over screen was fading in. And when I used the summon bat skill once, the bats that spawned were three times the size. Also against the crystal hand boss I got him stuck in the ground on three separate occasions by just camping the right corner

Edited September 30, 2019 by Glennstavos

[Shrimpica]

So finished Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

So, unlike many of it's players, i never played a Castlevania game before, however i have to say i really enjoyed my time with it. It's a solid 8/10. The gameplay is fun, and alot of the Bosses were pretty cool, and the Music, oh my, the Music, so good, so good.

What i didn't like however:

• Difficulty curve: Mainly, it was too easy, and you can't select higher difficulties unless you clear the game (which is a dumb choice tbh). However, despite it mostly being too easy, there are big difficulty spikes, especially towards the end. Instead of a steady difficulty curve, it just suddenly spikes towards the end
• Cryptic ways to move forward: This really annoyed me. Sometimes there are no hints on how to move forward and for the life of me i can't figure out how is anyone suppossed to come up with that while playing. One example: halfway through the game, you need a random drop from a random monster to move forward... How is anyone, especially those unlucky like me who didn't get the drop when i did the monster quest for the monster that dropped those, suppossed to find out about that? Castlevania fans say it's obvious to them, but for a newcomes like me it's ??? and made me run like a headless chicken for a while. There're multipe such things throught the game, especially in the later half
• Touching enemies without them attacking = damage. That needed sometime to get used to. Maybe it's a genre thing or something however.

Still, all in all i enjoyed it and can recommend it^^

20 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I strongly disagree with no knockback when you are hit

Some enemies do have knockback, infact, alot of them do. Not early on however. I once got knocked back by attack completely to the other room xD

20 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Another thing that bothers me is when you have two adjacent rooms available: One a save room, the other the boss room. Choose the boss room then...well, hope you've got potions to burn. If you choose the save room, enjoy your checkpoint and full heal before the boss.

Boss rooms usually have boss doors though, so you better not enter it before finding the save room 😉

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, Shrimperor said:

Boss rooms usually have boss doors though, so you better not enter it before finding the save room 😉

Eventually I noticed it too. A "boss door" has a unique animation you'll see just once as it opens. Still, I would prefer if save and teleport rooms were at all labeled as well. Instead they're just empty passages like any other room. As is, the only rooms you can identify are doors leading between two different zones, and that boss door animation.

1 hour ago, Shrimperor said:

 

• Cryptic ways to move forward: This really annoyed me. Sometimes there are no hints on how to move forward and for the life of me i can't figure out how is anyone suppossed to come up with that while playing. One example: halfway through the game, you need a random drop from a random monster to move forward... How is anyone, especially those unlucky like me who didn't get the drop when i did the monster quest for the monster that dropped those, suppossed to find out about that? Castlevania fans say it's obvious to them, but for a newcomes like me it's ??? and made me run like a headless chicken for a while. There're multipe such things throught the game, especially in the later half

I'm told Dominique is a source for hints. But you can only hear these conversations once so you'd better pay attention. I definitely recall her giving me a direction to go when it was time to get the double jump.

Quote

Touching enemies without them attacking = damage. That needed sometime to get used to. Maybe it's a genre thing or something however.

Yes, but it wasn't much an issue back when standard enemies had knockback in order to forcibly remove the player from danger when an enemy lunges forward. I went through early stages of the game using knives and I was punished excessively for it. Except on the Zangetsu fight since they made the smart decision to not have his body be this constant hitbox and you can freely jump on and around him. I wish the whole game was that way.

Impressions of this game are still rocky. I experienced an honest to god game crash when I examined a bookcase, which cost me a bunch of progress. I don't know how much they bothered to update the Switch version of the game but I get the impression they gave up prematurely. There's no version number on the title screen for me to judge the quantity of updates either. Game crashes are especially a big deal for games that don't autosave. If this was how the Switch version turned out, I wonder how they planned to put this game on Wii U initially?

[Shrimpica]

31 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Eventually I noticed it too. A "boss door" has a unique animation you'll see just once as it opens.

not just animation, but a unique design/color as well.

31 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Still, I would prefer if save and teleport rooms were at all labeled as well.

same, although you can kinda recognize save rooms as usually (not always!) they have bookshelves near them. 
I also wish save rooms acted as teleport points tbh. 

31 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

I'm told Dominique is a source for hints. But you can only hear these conversations once so you'd better pay attention.

She doesn't always say hints. Alot of times she does (like double jump, as you said), but that isn't always the case.

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Shrimperor

[Armagon]

33 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

I don't know how much they bothered to update the Switch version of the game but I get the impression they gave up prematurely.

That's because the updates haven't come out yet. The expected timeframe is November.

https://bloodstained.forums.net/thread/4463/update-zangetsu-switch-backer-rewards

Quote

The improvements are expected to be released in two separate updates. The first update will contain the vast majority of the improvements. The second update will improve performance with a couple of especially troublesome areas and enemies.


We expect these updates to be launched by the end of November. We will give more specific timeframes when we are closer to release.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

30 minutes ago, Armagon said:

That's because the updates haven't come out yet. The expected timeframe is November.

https://bloodstained.forums.net/thread/4463/update-zangetsu-switch-backer-rewards

I can personally confirm that there are existing updates for this version that I downloaded the other day. I guess it's good to hear they're still working at it, but at this moment this game is on the border of what somebody ought to consider releasing. Just now I did the twin dragons fight and big environments like that one tend to cut the speed of the game in half. I clenched a bit when the game froze during its death animation and I was worried it would crash again. It didn't though and the game eventually resumed.

33 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

not just animation, but a unique design/color as well.

I just looked up some footage of the PS4 version to compare to the doors I've seen, and they are not as distinct in the Switch version. For me they're just non detailed black walls that slide up into the ceiling when you approach. If they were glowing red like that I might have noticed sooner they were important.

Edit: in fact I left a save in order to show off a boss to a friend so that I could compare directly. It's the same model for sure, but barely red.

Edited September 30, 2019 by Glennstavos

[Armagon]

When it was first announced, i knew that Astral Chain was gonna be one of those games i would like. Sci-fi setting? Check. Cool visuals and music? Check. Stands? Check. Having never played a game from Platinum before, Astral Chain was my entry point into this acclaimed developer. And did i have a good time? Yes.

While the controls do take some getting used to, Astral Chain is a game with incredibly satisfying combat and a natural learning curve. You start with one Legion (the Stands) and as you progress through the game, you gain new Legions, each with their own abilities. For the most part, the Legions were pretty much balanced. Each had their own valid uses, both in and out combat. I'd say my least favorite of them is the Beast Legion, since it's the only one that doesn't levitate, making Chain Jumps a bit of a pain for the occasional areas of platforming.

The actual difficulty of the game isn't really that hard for the most part. With the exception of the final chapter (more on that later), the actual difficulty of the game comes from trying to get the highest rank in each mission (both required and optional) as well as the chapter itself.

There is also a slower aspect of the gameplay as well. Since you are a policeman in this game, you essentially do police jobs in addition to your job to bust up inter-dimensional threats. Most of these side-missions include finding lost items/people and arresting thugs. It's definitely the time during each chapter where things are the slowest though thankfully, these side missions are always around the start of each chapter, so you can do these all before continuing the game or skip them entirely.

The game has a story and it's.......fine. It's really just there to give context to the things you do. Some likable characters but nothing i'd really write home about.

The game isn't perfect though. There are two categories of items: field and permanent. Field items are found scattered throughout the field and they can only be used on the field. Once the chapter is done, you lose these items. Permanent items are standard items that you can buy in shops. I never really understood the justification of the former but i guess they did it because i don't think permanent items restock. Maybe they do but i've noticed that some items were just grayed out, even after going to the next chapter. The game really wants you to use field items, leaving the permanent ones for last resort. Money isn't that hard to come by. In fact, it's incredibly easy to get. So i don't know why split items into two categories.

I also need to talk about the bullshit difficulty of the final chapter. Like i said before, the game is easy......until the final phase of the final boss. It's such a massive difficulty spike that i wasn't expecting. It's got insane amounts of health that you have to deal with while also dodging a constant barrage of AoE fuck yous. I will admit that i didn't have all my Legions fully upgraded (but you really can't fully upgrade all five without redoing missions) but that's because i didn't feel the need to, given how easy the game was before.

In conclusion, this is a fantastic game. Great gameplay, cool premise and a good soundtrack makes for a nice package. Some flaws in the gameplay but nothing that really sours the experience. This is definitely one of the best games in the Switch's library and an absolute must for any fan of action games. 9/10.

Side note: there is a post-game chapter. I have not done it yet.

[DragonFlames]

Just a bit earlier, I finally lost all ounce of patience I had left for Atelier Totori, so I consider my run in that game done and will offer the usual closing thoughts. This will be more brief than my Atelier Rorona "review" (which was probably the closest thing to a legitimate review I've ever done), so no wall of text this time.

What I liked:

• Story is great in this one. It has Totori wanting to be an adventurer like her mother to find said mother, who went off the radar some years prior. Again, simple in concept and genius in execution, like Rorona. It also deals with Totori's family basically breaking apart over it (as Totori's sister didn't want her to end up the same as their mom, which tugged at my heartstrings a lot.
• Music, as is standard at this point, is pretty great, too. I'd consider the soundtrack overall a tad weaker than Rorona's or Lulua's, but there are still some great pieces in there.
• Totori herself is a great protagonist. Between her and Rorona, I prefer Totori, personality-wise. She's similar to Rorona in that she's a tad bit scatterbrained and has a certain doormat-ness to her, but she has a very sharp tongue on occasions, which makes many interactions with other characters just great. It helps that she's voiced by one of my favorite English voice actresses, who is the same one lending her voice to Sothis, Edea Lee, and Morgana.
• When this game wants to be funny, boy is it funny. Some dialogue is just plain hilarious to witness (for instance, the catfight between Cordelia and Mimi when you first meet them or any scene where Sterk sulks over his supposedly scary face).

What I didn't like:

• As great as the story and music are, the gameplay falls flat on its face and ruins the entire thing. While the core mechanics (synthesis, gathering, exploration) are all well and good, there's this teeny-tiny shadow just insisting to ruin everything: the time limit. Yes, Rorona had it, yes Nights of Azure 2 also has one, but in those two games, it didn't feel as intrusive nor as restrictive as it does here. The time limit in Totori will make you panic constantly and get in the way of making any substantial progress, as focusing on one activity locks you out of doing pretty much anything else and you won't be getting that time back. Worse still, you have to travel between two different cities, which will eat up almost an entire month until you get the upgrade for the carriage. There is also a point in the game where you can't use said carriage, meaning you have to hoof it from one city to another, which wastes even more time better spent on doing... pretty much anything else. 
• Which brings me to my next gripe: The combat. Totori and her gang feel so weak, fighting anything becomes a chore, even with items. Towards the end of my run, I got my butt kicked by nearly everything, even the most basic of enemies, so to level up, I had to fight weak monsters that offer pitiful amounts of EXP and because battles use up time as well, I was completely underleveled for what finally ended my run (more on that in a bit).
• As far as the cast of characters goes... eh. I didn't like most of them. Between Gino being annoying, Mimi being a carbon-copy of Cordelia but worse (I actually kind of liked her in Lulua, not so much here) and Marc being the d-bag that does the locking-you-out-of-using-the-carriage-for-a-while stunt, I vastly, VASTLY prefer the (returning) characters from Rorona. If you know me, a bad cast of characters can be a huge dealbreaker when it comes to how much I like a game. When it's one or two bad eggs, I can by and large ignore them, but when I dislike more than half of them, we have a problem on our hands. And sadly, Totori's companions fell into that pitfall.
• Bosses can attack twice per turn. I didn't mind that in 7th Dragon III, because the game was clearly balanced around that. Atelier Totori isn't. What doesn't help this is the fact that some of those bosses come completely out of nowhere and will f*** you over in a single turn if you're even slightly underleveled, which WILL happen.
• The severe lack of materials from Atelier Rorona is still present here, arguably worse, because of the restrictive time limit. This severely limits your ability to upgrade your equipment, which is essential if you want to stand a chance against even the weakest enemies, emphasizing the point I made earlier.
• Unlike Atelier Rorona, this game CAN'T be played without a guide if you want to get the True Ending or really any ending at all. And I hate that fact. I should not need a guide just to find out where to find certain materials, I should not need a guide to know when certain character events take place.
• The Chim mechanic sucks. Not only can Chim only synthesize or gather items you currently have, it also needs a constant supply of pies to even do the work, while Hom could just go gather stuff on its own and synthesize items you made before but currently lack the materials to make. Only plus side is that you can get more than one Chim, but to do that, you need an item that I didn't find ONCE in the entire game. Also, more Chims means more pies, so... yeah. You can buy pies for 70 Cole (the currency in the Atelier world) a piece, but I imagine having more than one Chim will mean very quickly burning through the already hard to get money quite quickly to keep them fed. I want Hom back...

What ended my run?

• There is a fetch quest that unlocks sometime after you get your license approved at Diamond Rank that asks you to synthesize all the parts needed to build a boat. Getting the materials is a pain in the ass, as is the actual synthesis, and it will eat up a hell of a lot of time if you don't know where to find certain things (the game gives you two more in-game years after the initial three if you manage to get Diamond Rank). Why is this annoying? Well, because you have to focus on the fetch quest of course, meaning you can't get stronger, synthesize useful combat-related items etc. It's just another thing where the game actively gets in your way.
• And then there is what comes after this quest. Once you get your boat done, it's time to set sail and meet a giant water dragon that will send you packing. I looked up how to beat the thing with the characters I used, I had Chim synthesize the best combat items I could muster in the short time frame I was given, I threw myself at it five times and it was all in vain. All the panic and effort, for naught. Thanks, Atelier Totori. Thanks for nothing.

Yeah, I didn't really enjoy the game if that wasn't obvious. I'll probably take a break from Atelier games for a while and wait for Ryza to come out, play through that and then go through Atelier Meruru sometime later. In the meantime, I'll probably do another run of Etrian Odyssey Nexus or play another round of Three Houses or something. We'll see.

[Armagon]

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

And then there is what comes after this quest. Once you get your boat done, it's time to set sail and meet a giant water dragon that will send you packing. I looked up how to beat the thing with the characters I used, I had Chim synthesize the best combat items I could muster in the short time frame I was given, I threw myself at it five times and it was all in vain. All the panic and effort, for naught. Thanks, Atelier Totori. Thanks for nothing.

You too, huh? 

Yeah, i'm with you that Atelier Totori isn't a very enjoyable Atelier expirence.  I do kinda disagree with your stance on the characters but i see where you're coming from. While i still liked the overall cast, i will admit they weren't as memorable as other Arland character and the Atelier Totori characters that do end up returning in later games are better in those appearances than they were in their original one.

On the bright side, you've made it past the worst of it. To my knowledge, Totori is the worst when it comes to post-Arland games (I really don't know anything about Atelier before Arland). Atelier Meruru is a vastly superior version of Totori when it comes to gameplay. Everything that sucked about Atelier Totori is either gone or vastly improved. And while i'm not too familiar with non-Arland games, i hear the Dusk trilogy is pretty welcoming to newcomers (Atelier Ayesha is considered the starting point) so i don't expect it to be stressful. And of course, everything Atelier Shallie and after stopped having time-limits.

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

I'll probably take a break from Atelier games for a while and wait for Ryza to come out, play through that and then go through Atelier Meruru sometime later.

Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I did play the entire Arland series back-to-back but i refrained from playing other Atelier games for a while because i didn't want to burn myself out before Ryza that and Three Houses came out shortly after i finished Lulua, and i essentially became a hermit while i played 3H.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Armagon

[Rapier]

On 9/26/2019 at 12:10 PM, DragonFlames said:

I have been eyeing Nier Automata, too. My main problem is that I am not confident in my skills in action games. Just like fighting games and platformers, I'm not very good at those.

Nier Automata isn't really a game that requires much skill, and if you feel like the difficulty isn't to your liking, you can always set it to Easy. It's a very beginner friendly game.

Anyway, I've been playing Code Vein and loving it. Except for the Cathedral. Fuck that place. And my internet for giving me so much lag in multiplayer.

[DragonFlames]

18 hours ago, Armagon said:

You too, huh?

Yup. I even had the "evolved" Lighting Bombs and those didn't really help. In my best try (the third one), I got him down to almost half health, but then he succeeded in killing me regardless.

18 hours ago, Armagon said:

Yeah, i'm with you that Atelier Totori isn't a very enjoyable Atelier expirence.  I do kinda disagree with your stance on the characters but i see where you're coming from. While i still liked the overall cast, i will admit they weren't as memorable as other Arland character and the Atelier Totori characters that do end up returning in later games are better in those appearances than they were in their original one.

That sentence describes Mimi for me. I think I mentioned this, but I liked her in Lulua, while in Totori, she felt like a rehash of Cory, which is... eh.

18 hours ago, Armagon said:

On the bright side, you've made it past the worst of it. To my knowledge, Totori is the worst when it comes to post-Arland games (I really don't know anything about Atelier before Arland). Atelier Meruru is a vastly superior version of Totori when it comes to gameplay. Everything that sucked about Atelier Totori is either gone or vastly improved. And while i'm not too familiar with non-Arland games, i hear the Dusk trilogy is pretty welcoming to newcomers (Atelier Ayesha is considered the starting point) so i don't expect it to be stressful. And of course, everything Atelier Shallie and after stopped having time-limits.

That's great. I am greatly looking forward to Meruru based on the soundtrack alone. Her freaking theme song is stuck in my head ever since I first listened to it. I just want to avoid burning myself out before Ryza, like you.

Speaking of starting points, I feel like Lulua is also a really good one when it comes to learning the way Atelier games work, even if it is the fourth game in a saga. My own starting point, Atelier Sophie, also did a great job introducing me to the core mechanics of the Atelier series. 
I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but the alchemy in Atelier Sophie includes a fun little mini-game that has you filling up a grid with different shapes and colors. The way it works is that each material has its own color (type), size, and shape, and to make better stuff, you of course want to try and match the colors on the grid, which change depending on what you want to make. For example, making a bomb has the grid turn red, so red-colored materials will yield better results and so on. Overlapping materials will cancel each other out, which is something to watch out for and which is where sizes and shapes come into play.
It's a great way to mix things up a bit and it's something I really wouldn't mind if it returned at some point.

---

In other news, I went back into the comforting embrace of Megadimension Neptunia VII, as I am still trying to get the Platinum trophy in that game. The more I use Next Black in combat, the more I like her design. It's just so freaking awesome, definitely my favorite among the Next Forms (probably because it's partly blue and blue just so happens to be my favorite color I'm not biased, I swear!). Not to mention her "finisher", which is probably one of the most epic attacks in the series (aside from Nepgeardam, Neptune Break, and Pudding, of course). I also noticed that Million Arthur and Noire share a peculiar quirk in some of their special attacks: they both envelop their enemies in energy before facing away from them and snapping their fingers to blow them up.
Parallel to that, I have started a new playthrough of Etrian Odyssey Nexus. The Scrub Squad is back on the move! ... Is what I'd like to say, but "Scrub Squad" exceeds the character limit for names. Dangit!

[Lightcosmo]

I'm starting to replay the Megaman Battle Network series, and I forgot how much I dislike the first one, mostly for the fact that they don't have a run away function. Oh and of course the puzzles are a pain to navigate through. Excited to play 2 and 3 since they are my favorites, though.

[Shrimpica]

Finished Borderlands 2

Have been playing over the months co-op with a friend. I have to say, it's ok. Some Bosses are cool, and playing co-op is pretty fun.

But i would never play a game like that alone tbh. The whole collect a loot thingy isn't exactly something i am fond off, and some enemies were just annoying (looking at you, Badasses), and it was a bit grindy for my tastes.

7/10, just for the cool Bosses

[Armagon]

3 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Yup. I even had the "evolved" Lighting Bombs and those didn't really help. In my best try (the third one), I got him down to almost half health, but then he succeeded in killing me regardless.

I tried that too. See, this is why i hate it when bosses get to attack twice in one turn. All it does is artificially increase the difficulty. If it just attacked normally, i could've absolutely taken it out but sometimes we can't have nice things.

....I know i said that everything that sucked about Atelier Totori is either gone or vastly improved in Atelier Meruru but the latter still has "attack twice" bosses. However, because it's a thing that isn't exclusive to Atelier (pick a turn-based JRPG, it probably does this), i didn't really mention it. That said, while some bosses are required for specific endings, there are no required boss fights for Meruru's normal ending.

3 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Speaking of starting points, I feel like Lulua is also a really good one when it comes to learning the way Atelier games work, even if it is the fourth game in a saga. My own starting point, Atelier Sophie, also did a great job introducing me to the core mechanics of the Atelier series. 

Oh yeah, there are definitly other good starting points than Aeysha. Rorona and any of the games with no time limits are good for beginners. And Atelier Ryza is absolutely being the first Atelier game for a lot of people. People just say that Aeysha is the best starting point due to having a really welcoming time-limit since going from time-limit to no time-limit would be easier than going from no time-limit to time-limit. Then there's the fact that the Dusk trilogy supposedly has the best stories (Dusk is a bit more serious compared to other Atelier games from what i hear).

3 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but the alchemy in Atelier Sophie includes a fun little mini-game that has you filling up a grid with different shapes and colors. The way it works is that each material has its own color (type), size, and shape, and to make better stuff, you of course want to try and match the colors on the grid, which change depending on what you want to make. For example, making a bomb has the grid turn red, so red-colored materials will yield better results and so on. Overlapping materials will cancel each other out, which is something to watch out for and which is where sizes and shapes come into play.
It's a great way to mix things up a bit and it's something I really wouldn't mind if it returned at some point.

I think Atelier Ryza is doing something similar. I kinda don't get what's happening and tbh, i kinda don't understand Sophie's synthesis system from what you've described but i'm sure it's one of those things where it makes sense once i actually do it.

 

[DragonFlames]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

I think Atelier Ryza is doing something similar. I kinda don't get what's happening and tbh, i kinda don't understand Sophie's synthesis system from what you've described but i'm sure it's one of those things where it makes sense once i actually do it.

That is the case, yes.
I simply suck at explaining things properly, so let me try this again with screenshots which I totally didn't take five minutes ago just for this occasion...
Also, listen to this music while you read/watch to get into the mood.
First, select a recipe. In our example, we'll use a bomb.
Then, you select the materials. As you can see, the materials have different colors and shapes associated with them (the little box underneath the material quality).

Shapes and colors differ from material to material. The numbers beneath each one influences the end result. In this particular image, we can see that the Kaen Stone gives +10 points to red, meaning the bomb will have Fire Damage S as a standard trait. To increase that, you need to pick more materials that increase that number (+40 gives Fire Damage M), so, the higher the number on the Kaen Stone in this example, the better. It's kind of like Lulua in this regard. At the same time, however, a bigger number also means a greater size, so you might not have enough space on your cauldron panel.
After picking your materials, it's time to choose a cauldron (yes, there are multiple cauldrons in this game).

What you see here is a panel measuring 6x6 tiles. You need to place the materials in these panels to increase the quality and effects of your desired item. If you place matching colors onto the little bonus fields (the glowing orbs on the panels), you get an increase in points as shown (the big red one gives +40%, for example).

If you place a red material in the red field, this adds those bonus orbs to the surrounding red fields or makes the orb you placed it on give a bigger bonus, as well. As seen here:
(Sophie will also give an audio cue to let you know if you're doing good or bad)


You can also mirror the shapes to make them fit around corners better.
Now, if you place a material of a different color, then the tiles around it become that different color, as well, which is something to watch out for if you want a certain effect to be high (see how the free red panels have turned green).

And if you place a material where others have already been placed, the points and effect bonuses they granted are eliminated.

After this is done to your liking, you select traits like in the other Atelier games and there you go, a new item is born.

That's basically it.
The game probably still does a better job at explaining it than I ever could, but it's still quite simple to understand and easy to get the hang of, which is what makes it fun.

Disclaimer/Edit: If this sounds patronizing, I'm sorry. I just want to get better at explaining things, so I'm trying different ways of doing so.

Edited October 6, 2019 by DragonFlames

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Well I finished Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This game is packed with so much of Symphony's DNA that I was actively wondering how deep the rabbit hole went. Some of the references I found quite tasteful. Like when I got the fairy familiar and recalled her pointing out secret breakable walls in Symphony. Lo and behold, she'll do that for you here as well.  But some potential references were unwelcome. Was the dumb ID Card thing a reference to buying an important key from the librarian in Symphony? I wouldn't put it past them. Some points of progression are notably obtuse, and the in-game hints are infrequent and only helped me once out of four or so tries. I'm especially bitter about the Aegis armor since my memories of Symphony betrayed me. I didn't expect an optional piece of armor to let you pass through something Alucard would have used his bat or mist form to cross. I assumed Miriam would get a similar ability for traversal.

For the rating, I remember I absolved Borderlands 3 of its launch issues so it would seem inconsistent to let them alter my impression of this game. I would contend the difference with BL3 being that the issues I mentioned were already being addressed at the time I was writing about them a week after release. Bloodstained has been out for almost four months and has only just now gotten an ETA for its first hotfix patch. The only patches released for the Switch in that time have been merely balance changes to match other versions of the game. The Switch version is frankly not fit for release. If all versions played like this, the game would be a failure on the same level of Mighty No. 9 and we'd still be hearing about it. The game's director even gloated about how much progress the game had in its presentation and development. As much as I'd like to tear into it, I'm going to be extremely unfair and rate the game as if its bugs did not exist. 7.1 out of 10.

It has some similar quality standards to the recent, notable indie games of this genre while having a higher budget for voice acted dialogue, grindy side quests, and tertiary base activities like crafting/cooking. Personally I found the amount of interactable NPCs to stretch the conventions of this genre a bit, but never in a way that's unwelcome. And the story/lore is well told even if I saw the twist coming a mile away. Being able to set equipment/shard loadouts you can quick swap to is an excellent innovation that helps justify the occasional use of long range spells and weapons over higher dps short range options. The enemy designs, especially with regard to their constant body hitbox are atrocious. They're like a round, invisible bubble of pain you can't touch, prompting the player to use longer range weapons for safety above all else. Some bosses literally cannot be hit with a knife without you also touching them even when your spacing is pixel perfect, which is remarkably bad design. There's also no "moonwalk" where moving in a direction for a step doesn't turn your character's body, so adjusting your spacing takes up precious time for more attacks unless the backstep attack is exactly the spacing you wanted. Note also the game's use of 3D models over sprites makes hitbox visuals very imprecise due to Z axis interactions. Street Fighter 4 had the same issue as the series moved to 3D models. I also wish those body hitboxes delivered knockback so that the player wouldn't have to physically move away before continuing their assault whenever the enemy lumbers directly into them. Some human bosses you are free to touch and they are the best in the game, full stop, since all the damage you receive is entirely your inability to dodge their attacks. Metroidvanias where you primarily use physical attacks really need to stop designing enemies like this. It makes more sense in the games like Metroid and Axiom Verge where you primarily shoot enemies at long range anyway.

For a list of bugs encountered:

Spoiler

• The rumble from having your health low continued after healing and even after saving and quitting to the title screen. A hard reset from the Switch menu was required.
• Lines of dialogue did not match what was in the textbox.
• I received a hint for how to access the final area of the game after I had already entered and advanced the story there.
• Freezing during large graphic effects during boss battles, such as death animations. Sometimes for just a moment, sometimes as long as eight seconds. Though it never resulted in a total crash.
• I could consistently get the Craftwork boss to fall into the floor by camping the bottom right corner of the room.
• OD and the hairdresser are not marked on the map like other NPCs are. One NPC who disappears from the game world actually remains marked on the map forever.
• Significant slow down, where some areas and boss fights were played entirely in slow motion. Which is kind of cool but obviously an optimization issue.
• Total game crashes when you talk to an NPC or examine a bookshelf. Note that both of these things typically exist right next to a save/warp point, so I prompted myself to save before interacting with either of them so that I don't lose the maximum amount of progress.

 

[Armagon]

7 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Disclaimer/Edit: If this sounds patronizing, I'm sorry. I just want to get better at explaining things, so I'm trying different ways of doing so.

No no, it's fine. If anything, seeing an explanation along with visuals makes me understand the process a lot better. Thank you for this.