Soooooo what'cha playing?

[Samz707]

Been returning to finally finish Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land.

A pretty cool 2012 IOS strategy game that got ported to Android and PC, sadly it was delisted (with some of the developers going on to make Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics.

Not played Achtung! yet (as it honestly looks like they downgraded the game, such as only 4 party members instead of 8 but I'm really enjoying Wasted Land.

[vanguard333]

I'm now in the plant-themed area of Ys Origin in my playthrough as the mage Hugo. I have to say that I have now discovered one thing about Hugo's gameplay that I don't like: his lightning skill.

In both the sand area and the plant-themed area, there are specific enemies that are only vulnerable to the lightning skill; the regular attack and any other skill just does scratch damage to them. Fighting these enemies was fine as Yunica, as her lightning skill was a melee axe attack that creates a vertical pillar of lightning; a bit lackluster compared to her other two skills, but it worked fine, and Yunica was a very mobile character that could dodge attacks fairly easily.

Hugo, by contrast, is less mobile, and he is somewhat dependent on his wind shield; a different skill, for protecting himself, and his lightning skill is a mine; he places a lightning bomb in his location that then explodes after a few seconds. His lightning skill can damage the opponent multiple times, dealing a lot of damage, but only if the enemy remains within the blast radius, and enemies are pushed away from the blast when they take damage from it, necessitating that the opponent be cornered. It also doesn't help that these enemies that are weak to lightning in these areas are fairly fast and aggressive; able to keep up with Hugo even when he's dashing. Oh, and enemies that glow red because they are required to unlock a treasure or progress in the story take even less damage, and in these two areas, these specific enemies are picked at least once to be the required enemies.

In short: using Hugo's lightning skill requires careful near-melee-range positioning and being quite mobile; things that Hugo lacks, and it needs to be used to defeat very mobile and aggressive enemies in at least two areas of the game. The result: of the few times I have had a game over as Hugo, several of them have been against groups of these enemies that I've been required to defeat.

But that really is the one area where Hugo's gameplay suffers. Outside of that, combat as Hugo is really easy and his skills are very useful.

 

EDIT: I have now completed the plant-themed area of the tower. I will say (spoilers for the two default routes in a game from 2006):

Spoiler

I think Epona's death in Hugo's route is much better handled than Roy's death in Yunica's route. Both have a small element of contrivance that mitigate their impact, but Epona's death has an element of tragedy with it being an indirect result of Hugo's folly, where Roy's death occurs as a result of Yunica stepping on an invisible magic trap. Moreover, Epona's interactions with Hugo are more narratively significant than Roy's interactions with Yunica, and I think Epona and Hugo have more chemistry: Roy being a nearly-grown man who hasn't outgrown his 'pulling her pigtails because he secretly likes her' phase (something that honestly is immature at any age) isn't endearing, whereas Hugo and Epona being two people who have no idea what romantic love feels like due to their upbringings falling for each other is endearing.

Anyway, I have also fought Kishgal as Hugo. Their interactions are good overall, but I don't understand why Hugo doesn't tell Kishgal that Dalles is the one who killed Epona. It could not have made things worse, and it could've convinced Kishgal to turn against Dalles.

 

Edited June 6 by vanguard333

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Pokemon Grand Colosseum (2021)

Spoiler

I have a ton of nostalgia for Pokemon Colosseum and its sequel. It was never an especially polished RPG but then again neither were handheld pokemon games until Gen 5. It’s a challenging entry whose Double Battle Only format tests new skills and strategies you wouldn’t get to experiment with in mainline games outside of one-off trainer battles. So I was excited to see the state of Pokemon Colosseum modding. Unsurprisingly they incorporated the Physical/Special split and Fairy Type. And even took the liberty of making further balance adjustments to pokemon you can’t even acquire just to have a consistent challenge from every battle. There's also a gimmick in which you can choose Kanto or Hoenn patches to swap out the starter shadow pokemon and obtainable legendaries. I went with the Hoenn patch,

I picked a good point to jump in at the 3.1 release, as they add the ability to access the PC anywhere. Limited access to saving was a major drag on the original game, but it also gives you an Out of Battle means of healing your pokemon for free. It’s especially appreciated now that every trainer battle has been enhanced to be a huge threat. I was getting two or three of my guys KOed every match which would have prompted a lot of backtracking or digging into my stash of items. There’s also the Shadow Pokemon Lab dungeon from the original game that never had a healing station, and only one PC at the entrance, now much less annoying in this hack.

The main draw of Grand Colosseum is the revamped shadow Pokemon. About two thirds of them have been swapped out for a different mon, sporting new moves, abilities, rebalanced stats and sometimes a different type. Every obtainable pokemon can be a huge asset to your team. But a handful have a few changes I take issue with. For instance Sunflora and Tropius which are clearly geared toward running Sunny Day. In the main series games they have Sun-related Abilities, but in this hack they were given abilities that have nothing to do with the sun. It feels random. Tropius with Thick Fat isn’t too bad, but Sunflora with Own Tempo is a truly terrible trade, I can't help but wonder if it was an accident.

I’m also a little disappointed that they weren’t able to add a greater quantity of shadow pokemon. There were no surprises, every trainer with a shadow pokemon has one in this hack. So every new one came in at the direct cost of an older one’s slot. I would have enjoyed trying out the new Bug/Fighting Ledian or a Not Terrible take on Slugma, but they were replaced. Every new move also comes at the cost of an existing one’s slot, but since Pokemon has tons of irrelevant moves (like bubble, tackle, etc), nothing of value is lost there.

Grand Colosseum adds infinite-use TMs as well. No Move Reminder but since a lot of the best attacking moves are TMs you won’t screw yourself out of too many meta options. There are 58 TMs (50, plus the unused eight HM slots which they could change into regular TMs), and half of them have been swapped. I disagree intensely with the decision to remove Rain Dance and Sunny Day, because there’s just no other way to deal with Drought and Drizzle battles. Ninetales with its Drought ability was the shared element of every boss battle that gave me the most trouble. Another major tweak is Mt Battle. The first 60 battles face you off against pokemon that know one move, the Self-KO attack Memento. It’s Free EXP and Evs of all six stats, one for each of the six Areas. This is obviously a very effortless way of powering up your team and optimizing new team members that may seem cheap to purists. But it is an optional area in a game with no shortage of challenging optional battles so I’m okay with it being here. Past Area 6, Mt Battle is seriously difficult, ending in a fight against 6 lv 100s, four of whom are legendaries

Dream Tactics (2024)

Spoiler

When Marvel’s Midnight Sons was announced as a tactical rpg, I was hyped. When Marvel’s Midnight Sons was announced to be a deckbuilder tactical rpg, I was immediately skeptical. The actions I can take are entirely random from a pool, “isn’t that the absence of strategy?" I said. I’ve grown to see that that reaction was rash, wrong, and cringe. Having to cook up strategies with random ingredients each turn is its own flavor of strategy game. In Dream Tactics, each character’s deck size is just 15, and you have the ability to redraw a card as many as a dozen times in a turn if you’ve built up enough redraw points. So in practice the moves you get to make are extremely consistent and rig-able.

Besides collecting new cards for your deck, you’re also collecting equipment pieces. You spend an expanding pool of ‘ability points’ to equip them and most of them are not raw stat boosts. A lot of equipment pieces are character-specific, altering the function or utility of specific cards you may be using. But others have devious synergy. Early on I got one item that boosts Resistance, but at a steep cost to Dex which seemed like a bizarre trade. Moments later I got an item that causes an explosion on every missed attack that can outpace the damage of actually hitting them. I put these on Neru, whose sleep debuff can reduce her own Dex, creating a lot of explosion opportunities. And I also moved her first since this kit gave her the widest range of rng possibilities on damage dealt and to whichever targets. This is part of why I like Player Phase/Enemy Phase tactics games, you can move your riskiest or most random units first and then your consistent units to play off of their result.

My biggest issue comes down to unit death. There’s no permadeath, but also no revival ability, so if one of your units die, you’re taking a serious hit to your firepower every turn for the rest of the battle. It did allow for hype moments like being down to my last girl 1v1-ing the final boss, but when someone dies early in a very long battle, I have to seriously consider resetting. Because I don’t have the fore-knowledge of upcoming reinforcements. Every map in the game is a route map, and the only thing that pushes you to play faster are the treasure chests. The Chests have a number indicating which turn they lock out, which leaves their contents permanently unobtainable if they do. Another annoyance is the enemy aggro system. Most stand around until you enter their range of attack, but some will be programmed to aggro to your position on Turn X or in response to another unit getting aggroed. In maps that allow you to split up, you’ll be working your way through Path A when suddenly all of Path B’s enemies aggro toward you at once, creating a sudden flood of units from behind you have to deal with in just a couple of turns. Someone’s probably dying.

I enjoyed my time with Dream Tactics. Should really have been called Pillow Fight Tactics, considering the enemies you’re fighting are all sentient pillows. The aesthetic is a real miss for me. The Steam store says it’s a GBA-style aesthetic, but I disagree. Game Boy games had much larger sprites just to be visible on those tiny screens. Dream Tactics’ sprites are tiny and have no expressiveness in battle. It's an open world RPG where you can tackle all four of the game’s chapters in any order (the enemies scale to your current level), there’s no Lord character so you can deploy any party of 4, and you can take cards from any other character’s deck and put them in yours with extremely lax restrictions. See if you can double down on one character’s buffs and debuffs by passing their cards to someone else. This game is a real playground for experimentation. I just wish I could save loadouts. Allowing me to swap back to my non-gimmicky stuff at any time after testing weird builds.

Animal Well (2024)

Spoiler

2024 is off to a rocky start for Games, so I had to check out the world's first Well-Type game. Which if I know my proper grammar means "good" game. Yes this is the one published by super popular youtuber whose a former Newgrounds alumni like me VideoGameDunkey. Of course, nothing about who Dunkey is as a person informs Animal Well as a project other than an attached celebrity name enhancing the game's notoriety much higher than it would be as a self-published project dropped on Steam one day. There's no shortage of pixel art style metroidvanias out there made by One Guy. I couldn't help but think of 2015's Environmental Station Alpha. Though I'd be remiss to mention Animal Well's visuals are meticulously detailed with excellent lighting and environmental interactions that betray it's "retro" aesthetic.

A more tangible difference between the two games is that the level design is far less concerned about how it will wall off the player's exploration until the right item is acquired. Animal Well's world is largely accessible from the get go. And when you do get an item, its applications typically extend far beyond serving as a "key" to a specific type of "door". An early acquired item, the Bubble Blower, permits you infinite jumps by simply pressing the button soon after a jump and landing on the new bubble. The sequence breaking possibilities are only occasionally thwarted by hanging vines. Another technique, riding your frisbee by jumping onto it after a wall bounce, gets its own achievement when you first do it, implying to me that it’s a secret technique that's not necessary to discover to beat the game. It can get you across infinite horizontal gaps that the bubble blower wouldn’t.

This is yet another dialogue-free 2024 indie game, and I’m running out of things to say about it. I can't really claim that this one is ever trying to tell a story, communicate a theme, or present to you a Character. It has sight gags, but it's narrative depth is about as complicated as our indescribable blob of a protagonist. Kinda wish there was some Super Metroid inspiration with background animals demonstrating how to use a newly acquired item or one of the secret movement techniques. Missed opportunity. What is unique is the lack of combat for a game in this genre. The typical metroid-like game has its puzzles lightly interspersed through a world of jumping and attacking enemies. In this game, it’s mostly puzzle rooms flanked by more puzzle rooms. Animals that are antagonistic toward the player are extremely rare. Such as a “boss battle” against a hungry lizard whose tongue you must lure toward the ouch-y porcupines. 

I can't say I recommend Animal Well too highly. Most of the fun to be had is getting immersed in the visuals and the "ah ha!" moment of each puzzle, and that minimalism really opened my eyes to how much metroidvanias rely on combat to keep you engaged and unwind your brain at the same time. I wouldn't suggest Animal Well would be strictly enhanced with a generic combat system and added hallways with enemies. It being such a small, parsible world with one-time puzzles is its own strength in terms of pacing and traversal. But the exploration elements aren't exactly polished. There are rooms that are designated too 'dark' to see on the map, so they just don't appear on your map screen at all. The entrance to the dark room never gets filled in, potentially leading you to backtrack there later thinking it's a room you neglected to walk into. Nope, you've been there. There's a fast travel nexus room, and several one-way pipes, but the places that they lead to are not marked on the map. You have to do a lot of the marking yourself before your map is at all helpful. 

Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door (2024)

Spoiler

TTYD is characteristic of the Sinking Ship era of Nintendo where Iwata just took over and they’re pumping out Mario games of every flavor they can think of to stay dry. They would do it again in 2012-2016, but I think the Gamecube era's frantic production environment let some really weird and creative decisions slip past Nintendo's Brand Lawyers like Miyamoto. The setting, characters, and dialogue are so consistently like nothing Nintendo has put out before or since, and certainly not with Mario. It is indeed one of my favorite games of all time, but of course like any cult classic it’s not the perfect version of itself. There were so many ways to improve for the sequel that we never got. That’s the main tragedy of Paper Mario as a franchise, TTYD was never meant to be the last of its kind. The question of what Paper Mario 3 would have been like is a question posed within TTYD itself with its Gamer Toad npc. TTYD was meant to be the subversive middle entry. Imagine if Majora’s Mask was the last Zelda, or Mother 3 as the last... I need a minute.

The best area for improvement for this remake is the music. I know I’m relatively alone in thinking so, but the game’s original soundtrack was its greatest issue (yes more than the backtracking). It compares especially poorly against Yoko Shimamura’s work on the other Mario RPGs. And the Remake is working harder here than anywhere else. My opinion of 90% of changes in the remake is “Happy it’s improved, wish they went further”, but they certainly did their due diligence here. The soundtrack list is about doubled with a lot of new character themes, dynamically changing music when walking into certain areas, and a different rendition of the generic battle music for every single Chapter. A simple swap in instrumentation can go so far. My jaw dropped when the Rogueport Sewers music added an additional layer on its lowest sublevels incorporating the motif of the game’s intro cinematic. Inviting the player to think “yeah...what did happen to the old city?”. Music isn’t exclusively about sounding good, it can tell a story even.

And yes of course they addressed the backtracking by having a room with the fast travel pipes all in a circle. A Pipe Nexus. A concept we’ve already seen in Bug Fables’ Ant Mines. Though I wish they also added that game’s Ant compass item that warps you to the room with all those tunnels, making backtracks even faster. Naturally you’d want to disable such an item during certain story sequences (chapters 4-7 all restrict Mario’s ability to leave before he’s finished with the chapter). They also added a spring on the most annoying room of Chapter 5, and a new pipe to Creepy Steeple. The General White sequence is the same (and I’m glad, it’s hilarious), but the pipe nexus obviously makes it more tolerable. In a completionist playthrough, these additions would shave at least a cumulative hour of time and that’s great. What isn’t great is slower, unmodifiable text speed in an RPG. TTYD already lacked the text skipping of its N64 predecessor so not seeing it in the remake is double obnoxious. Especially when I notice you can skip cutscenes you’ve seen before (due to a Game Over). Did they add the ability to skip every cutscene and just...disable it? I dare not even think.

The best way to describe the experience of playing a remake is that it’s a conversation between players of the original and the developer. If you haven’t played the original, then I suppose it’s a one-sided lecture. Thousand Year Door has a lot of fans with a lot of notions of what they’d do to improve the game specifically. But some small changes will be uncontroversial. For instance, Save Blocks giving you a Yes/No prompt after you’ve jumped into them. Removing it and simply saving your game when you hit the block is good. No notes. Having a Retry option rather than booting players out to the Main Menu on Game Over sounds like an excellent change for challenging Boss Battles. But it’s there in every battle, including even the Pit of 100 Trials. That feels like an overstep to me, since this gauntlet of battles is supposed to push players to make a choice on whether they think they can keep going or not in their current state. I wouldn’t say I Hate this change, but I will say it’s conflicting with some of the original game’s intended design. Again, remakes are a Dialogue, and this is noticing the person you’re speaking to made a contradictory statement.

Let’s have ourselves a Gush Lightning Round. I like the sounds added to character dialogue. The new back sprites on party members make them look more natural. Nearly every NPC is sporting at least one new facial or body expression rather than giving the same vacant stare of the original. Even two npcs with literally the same sprite, like Goomther and Goomfrey, will have expressions unique to just them for one scene. The new super boss, brilliant. Definitely designed by someone that understands the battle system, I just wish a Superguard wasn’t the only answer to him. The other, secret-er superboss, hilarious. Although Paper Mario 64 ROM Hacks beat them to the punch on this joke half a decade ago. Another change that’s obviously from ROM hacks is making First Strike a 0BP badge. Pressing ZL as a dedicated “What am I doing” button is something I want in every game. And in TTYD’s case it’s great that it didn’t come at the cost of Goombella’s out-of-battle Tattles. Because while those were famously unhelpful regarding puzzles, they at least add flavor text and I wouldn’t want them replaced. I like the new Clear Bonus coins from boss fights. TTYD’s has a lot of great stuff to buy early, but not a lot of great ways to earn money, and this is a real shot in the arm to the in-game economy. Finally, the new art and sound galleries. Seeing the original 2002-2003 concept arts made my jaw drop, and it's a cool unlockable for finding all the star pieces.

 

I know I said I'd play Eiyuden Chronicle, but I couldn't fit it in between the RPG I started the previous month, the rpg rom hack, and Paper Mario holding me hostage the rest of the month. This is why I don't call my shots on games.

Edited June 8 by Zapp Branniglenn

[vanguard333]

Ys Origin definitely works as a standalone game, but it is still a prequel to the first two Ys games, which I haven't played. I have incidentally already been meaning to play them as part of my own research of top-down adventure games from the NES era, so yesterday, I looked around and I found that there are Switch ports of the first two Ys games. There is just one problem with these two ports: as stated in their description, the game manuals are translated to English, but all the in-game dialogues and scripts are still in Japanese. So, I was wondering if anyone here knows the best way to play the original versions of the first two Ys games?

 

EDIT: I have complete my second playthrough of Ys Origin. The last three bosses were all quite easy to defeat as Hugo Fact, with me winning on the first try with every single one of them, including Dalles: the final boss of the default routes for whom it took me several tries to beat when playing as Yunica. I still don't think Dalles is a very good boss fight as he fills the arena with too many obstacles, so him being easy to beat when playing as Hugo just shows how useful Hugo's abilities (except the lightning mine) are.

For the second fight against Toal Fact, I both like and dislike the reveal that, all this time, Toal knew that Hugo was the superior spellcaster and that was the true reason Toal left the family and became a knight. I like it because it completes Hugo's character arc, it adds a bit of dramatic irony in that both brothers thought they were living in each other's shadow, and it creates a nice moment between the two brothers. It does mean Toal has what I'm going to call Itachi Uchiha Syndrome: namely that, if he had bothered to talk to his little brother, a lot of tragedy could've been avoided. The problem is, where Itachi had good reason for not telling Sasuke any of the important things he really should've told Sasuke, Toal doesn't really have any reason for why he never told Hugo that he left because Hugo was better at magic.

I've said that Ys Origin definitely can stand on its own as its own game despite being a prequel, and I still think that, but I have found one area of the game where the meaning is lost without the context Ys 1 and 2: after beating Dalles as Hugo, Dalles taunts Hugo by saying that the Fact bloodline is more cursed than he realizes and that someone within the bloodline will succumb to that corruption sooner or later. If I hadn't already learned online that Hugo's descendant: Dark Fact, is the villain of Ys 1, the meaning of the last part of that taunt would've been lost on me; it's a bit like hearing Demise's Curse in Skyward Sword if the only Zelda games you played beforehand were games ones that don't have Ganondorf.

 

EDIT: I have begun my third playthrough of Ys Origin; this time as the secret playable character unlocked after completing the two default characters' playthroughs. It's a little funny; my original plan was to do one playthrough of Ys Origin, finish my playthrough of Advance Wars 2, then do two more playthroughs of Ys Origin. I guess I've been enjoying Ys Origin a lot more than I was enjoying Advance Wars.

Right away, I like that the cutscenes for this character's route are very distinct from the default routes' opening cutscenes. However, right now at least, I'm not a fan of the secret character's gameplay. I like how quickly they move and how their wind skill is basically an anime flash-step, but I dislike that they are a fragile character with very short-range offence. I disliked how Yunica, despite being a melee fighter, had no real defensive options, and this character has the same problem but with even less reach. I imagine their gameplay will probably improve as the other two skills get acquired.

One thing that was clear as I was playing Hugo's route was that the three different routes could not possibly all happen, and that the secret route is undoubtedly the canon route. That's even more clear now as I'm playing the secret route. I do think it would've been more interesting if all three routes were canon, but I can see how difficult that would've been to implement while giving all three routes a satisfying beginning, middle and end.

Spoilers for this secret route:

Spoiler

I do like the idea of the supporting cast from the first two routes being bosses in this route; a lot of them didn't do much in the default routes, so this really helps give them a bit more premise. In addition to them, both Yunica and Hugo each encounter Toal, but Hugo gets a boss fight while Toal easily defeats Yunica in a cutscene. I get that Hugo has personal conflict with Toal, but it does feel a bit disappointing that only one of the two default protagonists is a boss fight.

I'm also not a fan of Toal lying to Yunica that he killed Saul Tovah, when he knows that Kishgal killed her father. I dislike it mainly because it's pointless for him to do so and means that he's giving one of the heroes reasons to oppose him, which should be the last thing that he wants given his true goal.

 

EDIT: I have now reached the desert area of the tower in my playthrough as the secret third playable character. For all their differences in gameplay, one thing that all three characters have in common is that their lightning skills are consistently the most underwhelming of their elemental skills.

Story spoilers:

Spoiler

In the first cutscene of this route, Reah and Feena talk about how they rescued a bunch of humans from a flood when they founded Ys. Then, when Feena is captured and she and Dalles meet face-to-face, Feena realizes who the Darklings are and refers to them as having, "opened the Ark", and Dalles in turn refers to her as, "a descendent of those who turned their backs on the gods and sank the land into the ocean's depths." I'm guessing that these bits of dialogue are references to lore that's revealed in Ys VI, simply because that's the only Ys game with the word "Ark" in its subtitle. Am I correct?

I do like that Yunica figures out that Kishgal killed her father before she and Toal interact again, mainly because I disliked Toal leading her to wrongly believe he killed her father when they first met. That was pointless, so I'm glad it's resolved quickly.

 

EDIT: I'm now at the final area of the game in my playthrough as the secret third character. I still don't like the gameplay for this character; too much emphasis on dashing and dodging while fighting at extremely close range. I will probably find myself eventually replaying the game at some point in the future, but I have no idea which route I'd pick, as, in hindsight, they all feel a bit... compromised, for lack of a better word. The default routes are compromised by the fact that I know the secret route is the only canon route, but the secret route has my least favourite character in terms of gameplay. Moreover, Hugo is by far my favourite of the three in terms of gameplay while Yunica is by far my favourite of the three as a character.

Now, for more story-related thoughts on the route so far:

Spoiler

The way that the story has progressed has all the more reinforced in my mind that all three routes should have been written to be canon and not conflict with one another.

For one really good example: the story in Toal's route has somewhat built up a fight between Toal and a brainwashed Hugo. There's just one major problem: I do not buy for a second that the version of Hugo in this route would accept a piece of the demonic essence. In Hugo's route, It was believable because it was built up properly, Dalles approached him at a moment when he was least certain of himself, and Hugo was still convinced that Toal saw him as inferior. In this route however, his anxiety never reaches the level it did in the Hugo route (at least not on-screen), and Toal tells Hugo that he always saw Hugo as the superior spellcaster and gave up his position as heir because of it, and he encourages Hugo to abandon their father's ideals of blindly pursuing power and instead find his own path, which does get through to Hugo, and this all happens immediately before Dalles offers Hugo a piece of the demonic essence. The buildup is all wrong in this version, yet we're supposed to buy it because we saw it happen in the Hugo route. The difference is that it made sense in the Hugo route.

Incidentally, Hugo and Epona falling for each other is also entirely off-screen in Toal's route, and again, it's less believable because the events of Hugo's route can't have happened in this route, but it's still at least believable because nothing on-screen contradicts it happening.

And then there's also places where there was a real missed opportunity to have the events of Toal's route line up with the other two routes. After the Kishgal boss fight in Toal's route, Kishgal reveals that his endurance has increased exponentially and demands a rematch, and then Yunica and the rest of the knights appear to fight Kishgal, giving Toal an opportunity to proceed further up the tower. All it would've taken for this to line up with Yunica's route would've been to have Yunica show up alone in Toal's route and have Toal be in the room before Yunica's fight with Kishgal in Yunica's route.

With the amount of boss reuse, I get why they chose to have only one route be canon, but I can't help but look at these moments and think that the story would've been a lot better if they chose not to have the three routes contradict one another.

 

Final Edit: I finally completed my playthrough of Ys Origin as the secret third playable character, so I can finally give my overall thoughts on it. Before I do, I will quickly give my thoughts on the ending:

Spoiler

The second Hugo boss fight is fairly fun despite playing as Toal. However, I had no real investment in the story part of the fight for the reasons I gave earlier, namely that I do not buy Hugo accepting a piece of the demonic essence in this route.

The reveal that Cain Fact: the father of Hugo and Toal and the leader of the six high priests, is the true villain, is well-executed. I think it might've been more impactful if he had more presence; outside of a couple of flashbacks, his main role beforehand is characters speaking of him in passing. But the reveal still works as a good answer to how the Darklings learned of the demonic essence and how to wield Ys magic. His boss fight is also fairly fun, though I was over-levelled for it, making it a bit easy.

Reah utilizing Toal's exhaustion to keep him from being able to destroy the black pearl and instead seal it away with herself and Feena was a saddening moment with more impact than it had in the default routes.

After that, most of what's mentioned in the ending is stuff I presume is references to important things in Ys 1 and 2: Toal mentioning that he and the other six high priests will each write a book about what happened, Toal leaving behind his Cleria Sword as a precaution, and I'm guessing Toal vowing that he will destroy the Black Pearl one day and he hopes to hear Reah's harmonica again are nods to Adol fulfilling those things instead on account of Toal being long dead by the time of Ys 1 and 2. I say "I presume" because I have not played Ys 1 or 2. So I guess the meaning of these things are lost if someone hasn't played Ys 1 or 2, but I guess that they still work as people leaving behind what they need to for the moment that the demonic essence and Cain/Darm breaks free of the seal.

 

Now, my overall thoughts on the game:

Overall, it is a very fun game that packs a lot of fun in its brief playtime, playing a lot like one long linear 2D Zelda dungeon. The gameplay is a ton of fun; hindered only by the fact that not all three protagonists are fun to play as, with Hugo easily being the most fun in terms of gameplay and Toal being the least fun. The story overall, while by no means a masterpiece, is a good narrative about the fall of a magical kingdom, with its main problem being that, rather than have each route only tell one part of the overarching plot, only the secret route is canon, despite some of its emotional moments relying on the player's knowledge of the events of the other two routes. With the amount of boss reuse, I understand the decision to have the default routes be non-canon, but I can't help but feel that the three routes all being part of one story would've been the better story.

If someone ever makes an adaptation of Ys Origin, it could easily justify its existence by being exactly this: one story that combines most of the events of all three routes.

Edited June 9 by vanguard333

[Samz707]

Fallout 2

Very close to just dropping the game.

The combat is made worse than the first game in pretty much every way and there's more of it, my entire playthrough has felt crippled since I didn't build a character with small guns tagged (Still got the skill to 100) and I don't want to put another 50 hours into another character.

The random encounters are frequently borderline if not literally unwinnable due to clearly not being play-tested and I've died/nearly died several times when my AI companions would just skip turns in combat and not actually help me or do dumb stuff like unequipping their weapon to just punch enemies.

Sure it's got lots of cool stuff you can do outside of combat but I've died well over 40 times at this point and I'm just sick of it, I honestly would consider this the worst game in the series at this point. 

 

[vanguard333]

A while back, I bought the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, and today, I decided to start playing the first game in the series. How is is? ...Very obviously the first Battle Network game.

For context, the Battle Network series was my introduction to the Mega Man franchise as a whole, and I am very familiar with the series... but only with the last third of the series. My first Battle Network game was 5 (Team Colonel), and my second Battle Network game, which I never finished, was 6 (Cybeast Gregar). This will be my first time playing the first four Battle Network games.

Before I say what I think of the first game so far, I will just quickly say what I think of the collection. I'm not sure about the fully-voiced talking Mega Man in the main menu; I get the idea since Mega Man is a NetNavi, but the novelty faded very quickly. It does seem like Mega Man can be silent if you choose that in the settings though, so a player doesn't have to hear it if they find it annoying. Other than that, I don't have much to say.

As for Battle Network 1, I was surprised by how fast-paced the start of the game is. This is the game that had to introduce the characters and setting; every game after it could skip most of the introductions since they were hard sequels, and yet, I distinctly remember 5 and 6 doing a lot more buildup in the earliest parts of their stories. In this game, Lan goes right to class, quickly goes through the tutorial for the game's combat system, learns about how WWW is targeting people's ovens (incidentally, one thing I really liked about the series looking back is how it effortlessly demonstrated why connecting every electronic device to the internet would be a very bad idea long before the first smart fridge was ever proposed), and then the player is confronting the first boss maybe 10 seconds later. The pacing doesn't slow down after that, as the next day, Lan immediately heads to class, and another WWW guy targets the school's computers. I have to ask, does the pacing continue to be this fast for the rest of the game?

That was the big thing that surprised me. The rest of the stuff that surprised me was little things:

1. The guard and shockwave battle chips being separate chips.
2. Bird enemies that give a dash battle chip; this one surprised me simply because these enemies never appeared in 5 or 6.
3. Small differences in character catchphrases and stuff like that.

EDIT: I am further in the game, and one more thing has surprised me: Lan Hikari's dad being portrayed as a bit of a workaholic. I don't recall him ever being portrayed as a workaholic in either 5 or 6. Granted; in Battle Network 5, he spends the entire game having been abducted by the villains. In game 6, however, he isn't, and I do recall him going out of his way to make sure to spend time with his family and not be at work all day. Does he go through character development, is this building up to a twist, or is this simply an aspect of his character that later games dropped?

Another thing I thought worth talking about is the buster MAX option that the Legacy Collection provides and that can be toggled on or off at any time. Normally, I wouldn't use something like this because of just how easy it makes the game, but the amount of enemy encounters in Battle Network 1 was enough that I turned on buster max just to relieve the tedium. I decided that I would just use it for random enemy encounters and not for boss fights, but I keep forgetting to turn it off before the boss fights.

EDIT: Another thing I noticed while playing this game is how weirdly believable the villains' approaches have been so far in certain ways. When the villains need to hack into something as part of the plan, they don't type a million random buttons on a keyboard; they trick other characters into giving them access. How often is that seen in popular media? Incidentally, I also mentioned the probably-accidental pre-emptive criticism of smart appliances earlier, and now I just completed a part of the game where Lan and Mayl go to a town where all the vehicles are self-driving and coordinate with each other and the traffic system via the internet, and again, the game immediately shows at least one very clear problem with that idea when a villain gains access to the traffic system.

Edited June 15 by vanguard333

[Fabulously Olivier]

I don't really have a lot to talk about in June, because I came back to Warframe after a roughly 5 year hiatus. Seeing how far the game has come, I'm proud of the little game I backed as a master tier founder way back in college. It's always been a game I play so excessively that I burn out, but I'll also always come back eventually.

 

44. Pokemon X

Spoiler

Cleared 6/13

9/10

 

My team was Greninja, Nidoking, Absol, Charizard, Aurorus, Aegislash.

(I didn't mention this during my Diamond review, but my team was Empoleon, Luxray, Honchkrow, Lucario, Weavile, Garchomp.)

 

Pokemon X is a grossly underappreciated entry in the franchise from what I've seen. It gets a lot of flak for being too easy (and I guess it is, if you do any grinding). My other complaints are that swarm battles are terrible and the new rivals outside of Selena suck. They're too friendly, and they're dorks.

 

Aside from that, it's honestly pretty peak. Mega Evolutions are the best gimmick mechanic in the franchise, and should have stuck around. The QoL has been ramped up massively. The visuals are great for the platform. It's the first game in which I required ZERO grind. And the mon variety is so high throughout the whole game that I could see myself replaying it many times.

 

45. Immortals of Aveum 

Spoiler

Cleared 6/16

7/10

A mid shooter with great visuals, okay gunplay somewhat lacking in oomph, a mediocre story, annoying characters, and a lack of enemy variety.

 

46. Path of Exile

Spoiler

Cleared 6/19

8/10

 

So let's start with the negative. This game is WAY too hard. The number of times I died in less than a second or to outright one shots is unacceptable, and I put a lot of points into elemental resistances, armor, and evasion. And I had a shield in the final act. As a consequence, my damage was also poor. 

It's certainly possible that my take on the Cyclone Slayer build was just that unoptimal that I made the game borderline unplayable. But here's the thing. I'm a seasoned ARPG player and a buildcrafting enthusiast. If I, of all people, cannot intuitively make a good character without using someone else's build, very few people can. And if the game is being balanced around meta builds, the entire glorious build system is pointless.

We shall see when I experiment with more characters in the future, and I'll rescore up or down accordingly. And that's the thing. As bad as my entire Part 2 experience was, I do want to play again sometime.

 

 

Now onto the good. The passive tree is one of the greatest things I've ever seen, and it gets my neurons firing in the best way. The story is fascinating, and the lore is deep. The combat isn't as good as D3, but it's a lot better than the D2 it was inspired by. The game is content rich, and always getting new leagues. And the first half of the campaign was a well-balanced blast consistently.

 

Warframe

Spoiler

10/10

What do you get when you match up Dynasty Warriors, Destiny, and Titanfall in a dating app, and they have a beautiful baby. You get one of the best 3rd person shooters of all time, and the best f2p game on the market.

 

Warframe is a ridiculously huge, content dense, glorious time waster. It's fast, it's fun, it's got so many playable frames and so much weapon variety. The gunplay is snappy, the parkour is fun, the action is hectic, the lore is fascinating, the community is friendly, and it has a bottomless well of actitivities and rewards.

On the bad side, it's a really obtuse game with poor user onboarding, Archwing & Spy missions aren't fun, and certain map tiles can be really confusing to navigate.

 

I foresee myself playing a lot more Warframe going forward as I catch up on my many missed Primes and other rewards. I started Pokemon Moon. I've also been playing a fair amount of Samurai Warriors 5, a little bit of Astro's Playroom, a little bit of Gauntlet Slayer Edition, and some of the Trails Through Daybreak demo.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

44. Pokemon X

  Reveal hidden contents

Cleared 6/13

9/10

 

My team was Greninja, Nidoking, Absol, Charizard, Aurorus, Aegislash.

(I didn't mention this during my Diamond review, but my team was Empoleon, Luxray, Honchkrow, Lucario, Weavile, Garchomp.)

 

Pokemon X is a grossly underappreciated entry in the franchise from what I've seen. It gets a lot of flak for being too easy (and I guess it is, if you do any grinding). My other complaints are that swarm battles are terrible and the new rivals outside of Selena suck. They're too friendly, and they're dorks.

 

Aside from that, it's honestly pretty peak. Mega Evolutions are the best gimmick mechanic in the franchise, and should have stuck around. The QoL has been ramped up massively. The visuals are great for the platform. It's the first game in which I required ZERO grind. And the mon variety is so high throughout the whole game that I could see myself replaying it many times.

Interesting; on my first playthrough of Y, I also picked Aurorus as my fossil Pokémon. It had good offence, but it was constantly being defeated almost instantly because it's a slow Pokémon with Ice/Rock type in a game full of Pokémon with steel and fighting type moves. In all subsequent playthroughs, I went with Tyrantrum.

Similarly, I had picked the grass starter as my starter on that first playthrough, and I liked the idea of a knight-themed starter Pokémon, but the game is full of fast flying type Pokémon that beat it quickly, so I used Greninja in all subsequent playthroughs.

Aegislash is a Pokémon I also picked because it's a sword Pokémon, and I really enjoyed it both because of it being a sword and because of it being a very fun Pokémon in gameplay.

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 minute ago, vanguard333 said:

Interesting; on my first playthrough of Y, I also picked Aurorus as my fossil Pokémon. It had good offence, but it was constantly being defeated almost instantly because it's a slow Pokémon with Ice/Rock type in a game full of Pokémon with steel and fighting type moves. In all subsequent playthroughs, I went with Tyrantrum.

Similarly, I had picked the grass starter as my starter on that first playthrough, and I liked the idea of a knight-themed starter Pokémon, but the game is full of fast flying type Pokémon that beat it quickly, so I used Greninja in all subsequent playthroughs.

Aegislash is a Pokémon I also picked because it's a sword Pokémon, and I really enjoyed it both because of it being a sword and because of it being a very fun Pokémon in gameplay.

Yeah, Aurorus was godawful for most fights, and I'll never be using it again. I wasn't happy with Aegislash's performance either, personally. Nidoking was actually my MVP, and Charizard & Greninja were carrying me too. But there really are so many good Pokemon in X that I intend to make playthroughs a sort of annual thing for the forseeable future. Alongside Soul Silver & Alpha Sapphire.

What I've noticed is that aside from picking Sword, I always pick the game with the softer color/theme.

[vanguard333]

2 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Yeah, Aurorus was godawful for most fights, and I'll never be using it again. I wasn't happy with Aegislash's performance either, personally. Nidoking was actually my MVP, and Charizard & Greninja were carrying me too. But there really are so many good Pokémon in X that I intend to make playthroughs a sort of annual thing for the foreseeable future. Alongside Soul Silver & Alpha Sapphire.

I can see how a poison type Pokémon would be the MVP in the game that introduced the fairy type, given that its weaknesses are steel and poison. I'm a little surprised to hear that Aegislash was disappointing; it is admittedly a one-trick-Pokémon in that it relies on its shield form for defense and sword form for offense, but it is a really good trick: using sword dance while in shield form, attacking once, then using king's shield to return to shield form is a pretty good trick.

I can definitely see Charizard and Greninja carry the team as well, especially the X Mega Evolution of Charizard, which swaps out the flying type with dragon type. As I played Y, my Mega Charizard had the ability that grants temporary strong sunlight and very strong special attack, but retained the flying type.

 

As for what I've been playing: I'm still in the middle of Battle Network 1. I've been struggling to motivate myself to play it. One more problem I've encountered with Battle Network 1 is that, while the net in 5 and 6 could be confusing at times, overall, it was very straightforward to navigate and explore, whereas, in this game, it is a lot more confusing; the sections of the net aren't named and they all look identical, and the enemy encounter rate is so large that it's really annoying to get lost. Moreover, in 5 and 6, more of the net unlocked as the game progressed and you often had to explore the new areas opened up in order to progress, whereas in this game, all the story moments and boss fights happen in places disconnected from the net, so, when I explore the net, I'm always left with this feeling of, "Should I be here? Am I supposed to be here at this point in the game?"

[Fabulously Olivier]

My initial impressions of Moon are extremely negative, by the way. For one, I find it unfun that basically every wild Pokemon can call for help, which makes them considerably more annoying to grind and WAY more annoying to catch.

 

Two, I'm consistently having to grind a lot to beat every totem Pokemon, and I'm currently on the jungle one. They're honestly stronger than your Pokemon even 5-10 levels over them, they summon help, and some of them even just spam full heals on themselves. Super annoying, doesn't feel balanced at all.

[vanguard333]

6 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

My initial impressions of Moon are extremely negative, by the way. For one, I find it unfun that basically every wild Pokémon can call for help, which makes them considerably more annoying to grind and WAY more annoying to catch.

 

Two, I'm consistently having to grind a lot to beat every totem Pokemon, and I'm currently on the jungle one. They're honestly stronger than your Pokemon even 5-10 levels over them, they summon help, and some of them even just spam full heals on themselves. Super annoying, doesn't feel balanced at all.

I don't remember much of Sun. I do remember wild Pokémon calling for help being annoying; the only time I liked that mechanic was a moment where I was looking for a Cubone with a specific ability.

As for the totem Pokémon, I honestly found them fairly straightforward overall, as I found that their strength was more than balanced out by there only being one of them. It felt to me like fighting a gym leader that had only one Pokémon. It didn't feel balanced, but I think I found it unbalanced in the opposite direction. I could be misremembering; it has been a while.

Incidentally, what Pokémon have you picked so far for your team? I picked Rowlet as my starter, I had an event-only munchlax as a result of buying the game close to day 1, and then the rest of my team consisted of the following: a midday Lycanroc, a Wishiwashi, an Alolan Marowak, and a Mimikyu.

[Fabulously Olivier]

5 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I don't remember much of Sun. I do remember wild Pokémon calling for help being annoying; the only time I liked that mechanic was a moment where I was looking for a Cubone with a specific ability.

As for the totem Pokémon, I honestly found them fairly straightforward overall, as I found that their strength was more than balanced out by there only being one of them. It felt to me like fighting a gym leader that had only one Pokémon. It didn't feel balanced, but I think I found it unbalanced in the opposite direction. I could be misremembering; it has been a while.

Incidentally, what Pokémon have you picked so far for your team? I picked Rowlet as my starter, I had an event-only munchlax as a result of buying the game close to day 1, and then the rest of my team consisted of the following: a midday Lycanroc, a Wishiwashi, an Alolan Marowak, and a Mimikyu.

So I picked Rowlett as my starter, I've got a Pikachu that I intend to evolve to Alolan Raichu, and I've got a Salandit I intend to evolve. The rest of the team is up in the air, and being rotated around as I catch things/as needs be. I may put a Poliwrath in there. My Moon run is less planned than my last couple games were.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

So I picked Rowlett as my starter, I've got a Pikachu that I intend to evolve to Alolan Raichu, and I've got a Salandit I intend to evolve. The rest of the team is up in the air, and being rotated around as I catch things/as needs be. I may put a Poliwrath in there. My Moon run is less planned than my last couple games were.

I see. I don't remember if my team was really planned, but I do remember that I mainly wanted to try using Pokémon that were introduced in gen 7.

[samthedigital]

@Fabulously Olivier Did you play Path of Exile beyond the campaign? I'm not absolutely sure based on your post.

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

@Fabulously Olivier Did you play Path of Exile beyond the campaign? I'm not absolutely sure based on your post.

No, and unless I find some seriously good gear for him on an alt in the future, I don't intend to touch postgame on my Slayer.

[samthedigital]

16 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

No, and unless I find some seriously good gear for him on an alt in the future, I don't intend to touch postgame on my Slayer.

Yeah, so what I will say is that the game only becomes more difficult once you reach the post-game. When I say difficult what I actually mean is that past a certain point you need to have a good understanding of at least a handful of the game's systems/mechanics to progress, and that can take a significant amount of time even if you're using guides and doing a lot of research. I will try and refrain from saying too much more because my perspective on the game and issues with it are entirely different given where I'm at; I've sunk somewhere north of 10,000 hours into the game.

[Revier]

Played through the first chapter of Tactics Ogre: Reborn yesterday, finally. My take: while I don't really like the script, the heavy emphasis on skills, and the general difficulty, the quality of life and gameplay improvements from the PSP remake, rebalance of classes and largely solid enough voice acting do a lot to still make it a fairly palatable experience. Here's hoping that holds going forward!

[Revier]

Continued playing Reborn, and while it is still a solid remake, there are some issues that are starting to bother me:

- They seem to put way more high HP enemy units on maps than is necessary, which drags down the pacing and forces the player to make high damage characters.

- The general difficulty curve isn't smooth, I was able to get along decently well until Tanmas Hill, then the difficulty just shot up a whole bunch and stayed high until I readjusted my party composition to make up for it.

Spoiler

-The heck was that Vice fight? Seriously. Why do SRPGs love crafting dueling scenarios?

 

Edited July 4 by Revier

[vanguard333]

I finished playing Mega Man Battle Network 1. Given that its gameplay is a very obvious prototype, by the end, I was mainly playing through it for the story, so I'm not too bothered that I accidentally left buster max on during the final boss fight when I normally turn it off for the boss fight. I'm going to play the rest of the games with buster max off at all times.

Of course, I say that I mainly played through it for the story by the end, but the story would also be fairly average if not for the twist that Lan and Mega Man are actually twin brothers. I already knew about the twist from having played Battle Network 5 and 6, so I mainly wanted to see how the first game handled the twist, and it did handle it fairly well overall, with plenty of hints scattered throughout the game and with the moment of the reveal itself being well done. I do have one criticism: after the reveal, Lan's dad cautions him against using Mega Man irresponsibly, not because he's a relative that already died once and nearly died twice, but because any harm that happens to Mega Man could also happen to Lan because their DNA is the same. ...Yeah; that's really dumb, and I'm glad that the later games dropped that idea and focused on the risk of losing Hub again whenever Lan and Mega Man did anything dangerous.

[Hrothgar777]

I'm exactly halfway through watching a Path of Radiance playthrough on YouTube.

(And yes, I know watching a playthrough isn't the same as actually playing through it. If I had a GameCube and a copy of this game lying around, you know I'd give it a try. But alas.)

Some thoughts on the game so far:

 

-I don't know how the map overworld can look so good while the character sprites are so crudely rendered. This one detail must've given them trouble for some reason.

-They were definitely planning a sequel while working on PoR. What's unclear is how far into the planning stage they were for Radiant Dawn before PoR launched.

-As someone who's accumulated probably more playtime on Three Houses than all other FE titles combined, I'm astonished how large the unit roster is for the Tellius series. I guess that was normal back when Classic was the only way to play. Then again, the playthrough makes PoR look surprisingly easy.

-The laguz were an interesting concept, and IMO it makes no sense to only consider human-dragon hybrids and not those for other animals. Too bad Intelligent Systems has pretty much forgotten about them since 2007.

-In the expanded inter-battle menu we see the early origins of the hubworld that's now a mainstay for FE. Though I took a dig at character sprites above, and though I stand by that comment, I will say it's neat how entirely unique models were made for one-off characters who appear in a 15-second conversation in a single chapter.

Edited July 7 by Hrothgar777

[Hrothgar777]

Hmm, the story suddenly got way better around Chapter 16. It wasn't super interesting before but now I'm starting to get vested.

Oliver is a magnificent fat pervert whose mere existence justifies the song Beauty is a Mad Mistress, and Sanaki is a likable authority figure. Though I guess the Aesop of this story is "legislators suck and everything is better with an enlightened despot calling the shots", which is questionable.

[vanguard333]

I started playing Mega Man Battle Network 2. One thing I can definitely say is that it does set a different tone almost immediately.

After beating the game's first NetNavi boss, that boss' operator is told by the game's evil organization that failure will not be tolerated and the classic, "Who left this briefcase here? (Kaboom)" happens. A villain killing off a subordinate for failing them is common to the point of cliche in most media, yet part of me was genuinely surprised to see it happen here, and I immediately realized that the reason for that is that I've never seen it happen in a Battle Network game up until now. I've played 1, 5 and 6, and while they all put characters in life-threatening situations and did have some dark stuff (Lan's dad being tortured in 5, etc.), they're generally lighthearted overall to the point where a villain killing off a subordinate doesn't really happen.

This reminds me of a piece of writing advice I like to tell people: contrast/juxtaposition is important. One reason I really don't like most edgy grimdark media is that, if everything in it is already dark and grim, where can you go from there? The natural answer in that case would be to shine a light in that story for contrast, but most writers writing such stories actively avoid doing that in the name of being 'edgy'. Meanwhile, if a story is normally lighthearted, then the moments where it does something dark stand out all the more. Ocarina of Time is perhaps the best example of what I mean: the player first sees idyllic Hyrule as kid Link, and that makes seeing the fallen Hyrule as adult Link all the more effective because the player has that contrast in their heads.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Played through and beat the Elden Ring DLC. Modest Spoilers ahead, I suppose?

The whole thing was... a mixed bag for me to be frank, though on the positive side over all. The new "area" if we wanna call it that, keeping in mind that it´s a pretty large addition offers a lot of fun "How do I get there" moments, where Fromsoft shows you where you COULD be... but aren´t yet. Certainly, the exploration was the highlight of this DLC for me and the shaman puzzle had me feel downright proud of myself for having gathered the little piece necessary to solve it, obvious as the puzzle felt however. Areas being too empty is an understandable criticism, though I think the only area that needed more was the stretch of field with nothing but dogs before the Shadow Keep... all the other areas either have good reason to be empty and I think it adds to the overall feel of it (that being the Abyssal Woods and Jagged Peak) while in others Fromsoft has you running around like a headless chicken, finding items, dungeons or cookbooks... yeah, woohoo for cookbooks.

In terms of enemies... I could be wrong, but I don´t think there are that many new enemies actually... neither from the base game, nor from prior Fromsoft games? The Horned Warriors seem to be a Gundyr reskin with obviously more moves, the Ariandel flies are back, the Yhorm chapel KKK gang is back... I can only really think of 2 enemies that haven´t existed in ER as such and felt truly new, not counting bosses, of which some become regular enemies, in good old Fromsoft fashion.

The bosses... I think most people would consider bosses to be the "meat" of a Souls-like, where the players mechanics are put to the test and what not... I didn´t really enjoy the bosses all that much and felt too many of them had attack strings that go on for too long, too many instantanious gap closers, ludicrous AoE and the final boss is, quite literally, too flashy for me - I wasn´t ever really sure which move would come out next, which makes reacting correctly difficult. Though his grab attack is interesting and kinda a cool idea. That being said, if my build wasn´t an obstinate STR build, I may have found some bosses more interesting to fight, but as it stands I don´t belong in the group of people who consider learning a bosses moveset a life altering experience (in a positive kind of way) and instead my madness meter goes up everytime I get caught in a combo.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Trails Through Daybreak and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (iron man run)