Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Acacia Sgt]

Okay, time for the Frosty Forest.

Ugh, those Snorut with Double Team will be a nuisance, even with Pikachu having Iron Tail.

[Lightcosmo]

9 hours ago, Lightchao42 said:

mean, you still haven't played Trails into Reverie. Daybreak will be out before you start it.

Meanwhile, im waiting on Kuro 3 to get more info. Their mechanic changes seem interesting, and their character artwork is improving from before, as always.

[Acacia Sgt]

And Articuno defeated.

I still remember. The first time I played this game, pretty much 20 years ago with Red Rescue Team, I got stuck here. Couldn't defeat Articuno despite several tries (that damn room-hitting Powder Snow), and it always felt that leveling up in these games took forever. Even now I still notice it. Currently gaining on average 45-50 EXP per Pokémon when I already need over 2K to level up, and I can't just defeat everything in sight since I have to conserve PP and Max Ethers/Elixirs. And admittedly, I didn't had the patience to do grinding runs (thankfully the Frosty Forest has that rest point to go back out to do another run without having to continue forward). So... I just stopped playing for a while. Eventually I retook the game, though starting a new playthrough, and eventually I could get past Articuno (I pretty much reset the quiz until I could get Charmander). Man, how satisfying that felt.

Aw yeah, now Absol joins. For a game that's about the world being ravaged by natural disasters at an alarming rate, it makes sense for the story to involve an Absol.

Now if only they had actually done more than just the one cutscene.

Like, seriously, Absol goes silent the moment he joins. Since there's no way to not have him... although, it's possible to lose him permanently if he doesn't survive to the very end of the Fugitive Arc. As he technically hasn't joined the Rescue Team yet even if he has joined the party. Kinda like what the remake is doing now with the temporary recruits. Huh, I wonder if the bit with Absol inspired the mechanic. Anyway, since he's here regardless, it's even weirder they didn't gave him additional dialogue if only up to reaching Mt. Freeze. Not even emoticons popping up or animations. Well, he does emote and move around in confusion when the spirit of Gardevoir shows up, but other than that, he's just standing there menacingly as the plot happens. I remember people hoping the remake would rectify this... but dissappoitingly, they did not. I think they only did one or two minor changes regarding Absol, and that was it. With the game being in 3D now, it makes Absol staying put and silent even more jarring.

Anyway... aw man, even all these years later, the story still moves me. Back then, seeing the resolution of the Fugitive Arc after finally getting past Articuno perhaps helped to enhance it; making it even more memorable for me, I guess, heh.

Okay, so... well, at least they put Absol at the exterior area to talk to. In the originals he didn't showed up there. That's something at least. Man, he's Level 28 when the other two are only 22. I don't remember him coming so overleveled, and usually I'd still be around levels 22-23 when I played the original. Oh yeah, forgot to say. Before the arc began, I got lucky that Eevee got the Leap Ahead Rare Quality. It's been such an Arceus-sent. More so since qualities apply for the entire team, so it's all good. Looking over, I don't know if it's random, but Absol joined with the Super Luck ability and the Squeeze Out quality. Not bad, not bad.

Well, I'll tackle Mt Freeze... next time.

[Armchair General]

3 hours ago, Armagon said:

Yeah it's Starship Troopers-tier satire that the game was going for.

At least it's pretty much on the nose, though

 

 

[Acacia Sgt]

 

[Armagon]

Looks like Sony ended up walking back the Helldivers thing.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Cleared Scene 15, paused in the middle of Scene 16 (enemies with stealth might become annoying). I think it's a fair observation to say the starting arc of the story is over, now things look like they'll be getting intense, narratively at least. 

IAS aside, things are pretty simple gameplay-wise. Though I almost softlocked on the three back-to-back-no-healing-no-spending-money battles. Thankfully, using Retreat repairs all destroyed units and restores all HP/EN/Ammo, if at the cost of accumulated Spirit. Still, I'm enjoying the battles.

 

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

Looks like Sony ended up walking back the Helldivers thing.

Pretty quickly too, no drawn-out stubborn refusal at all. Maybe the lasting damage won't be too bad.

I've read many comments, some saying that what Sony should've done is not force, but encourage. Incentive to PSN on PC, no obligations to do so.

 

19 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

and it always felt that leveling up in these games took forever. Even now I still notice it. Currently gaining on average 45-50 EXP per Pokémon when I already need over 2K to level up, and I can't just defeat everything in sight since I have to conserve PP and Max Ethers/Elixirs.

I don't remember too much of my PMD experiences, but I do think sloooow leveling was one of them. I haven't the faintest why they would've done that, when you could have hordes of 'mons to train if you wanted to, and the ultimate dungeons are "reset to lvl 1" ones IIRC. 

...Well, maybe it's because they hadn't a good idea of how many requests players would do between story parts? -Although an EXP curve could've been a solution then, if overleveling was the concern.

[Capt. Fargus]

19 hours ago, Armchair General said:

At least it's pretty much on the nose, though

 

 

Lol...Somebody there dont know a whole heluva lot about guns 😆

In most every box mag fed rifle in the world the chamber stays open when the last round is fired, so when your empty you’ll know it

Although granted Kalashnikovs are different animal. With them it depends on the mag thats in it

[Acacia Sgt]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Cleared Scene 15, paused in the middle of Scene 16 (enemies with stealth might become annoying). I think it's a fair observation to say the starting arc of the story is over, now things look like they'll be getting intense, narratively at least. 

IAS aside, things are pretty simple gameplay-wise. Though I almost softlocked on the three back-to-back-no-healing-no-spending-money battles. Thankfully, using Retreat repairs all destroyed units and restores all HP/EN/Ammo, if at the cost of accumulated Spirit. Still, I'm enjoying the battles.

That reminds me, I think I mentioned before the game has two endings. It's a route-split deal, if I haven't mentioned this before. Are you wanting to keep that still the dark, or have you already looked it up?

In addition, this game, unlike SRW, doesn't have much in terms of secrets. I think it's just the one recruitable character and that's it.

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I don't remember too much of my PMD experiences, but I do think sloooow leveling was one of them. I haven't the faintest why they would've done that, when you could have hordes of 'mons to train if you wanted to, and the ultimate dungeons are "reset to lvl 1" ones IIRC. 

...Well, maybe it's because they hadn't a good idea of how many requests players would do between story parts? -Although an EXP curve could've been a solution then, if overleveling was the concern.

Well, the remake trivializes grinding a little thanks to the changes to Makuhita Dojo. The EXP gains there are now through the roof, though the runs being timed and the need of tickets (obtained mostly through the requests) does balance things out.

As it is, I feel I'm on the expected thresholds. 21-22 level range is how I was also back when I played the original, and I felt I had to do less dungeon grinding. Again, if only thanks to the dojo.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

That reminds me, I think I mentioned before the game has two endings. It's a route-split deal, if I haven't mentioned this before. Are you wanting to keep that still the dark, or have you already looked it up?

I'm good, I don't need to know.

[Acacia Sgt]

Man, and I thought the food trick with Clorica and Kiel was abusive already. TIL that closing the game and opening it again resets the trigger (at least for Clorica), so that's multiple food items per day to get and potentially sell. Hahaha...

Hmm... you know what, I think I decided. I'm gonna play next Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. I remember coming across this game as it was owned by one of my cousins. Tried it out and it was fun and fascinating. It's pretty much an Egyptian-themed LoZ. I owned the PS2 version, though I could never finish it back then. I never thought I'd ever see it getting a re-release... and then the mad lads did it. A very generous re-release since they also included an editor for the game which contained beta and cut assets. People pretty much went and made mods restoring the game's cut content. Nice. Though I'll be playing it vanilla myself, for now at least, maybe.

Edited May 7 by Acacia Sgt

[Acacia Sgt]

Dude, they just added G Gundam's Super Mode to FEH...

Now they can go:

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/05/nintendo-switch-successor-announcement-is-coming-this-fiscal-year

God speaks, the trumpets sound, the beginning of the end is near- no more speculating. The Anti-Christ, claimed by many to be as many over centuries as many, shall shed their enigmatic robes and be bare for the world to witness.

*Sneezes*🤧 -I don't mean to vilify the heir to the heavenly throne through my choice of metaphor, I simply wanted to stick to an overdramatic Revelatory tone.😛 I'll be buying the successor whenever it arrives, no question about that. Yet, my immediate delight, is knowing that by (fiscal) year's end, all the rumormongering shall be trampled over by the Horsemen and cast into the lake of fire.

Edited May 7 by Interdimensional Observer

[Sidereal Wraith]

7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

God speaks, the trumpets sound, the beginning of the end is near- no more speculating. The Anti-Christ, claimed by many to be as many over centuries as many, shall shed their enigmatic robes and be bare for the world to witness.

The abomination is getting a sequel!?!?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Venger_06]

Who wins?

[Interdimensional Observer]

Finished Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars.

I think I liked the game more for the forest, not the trees. Which is to say, the individual characters and events might not have wowed me, but the overall package was good. More specifically, I liked the bit of Real Robot grit (-not that I've ever watched mechanime, just what I presume from samplings via SRW and whatnot). Of all the things I've encountered in SRW so far, TFoM bears the strongest resemblance to The 08th MS Team- a Real self-contained microcosmic side story. Getting that and only that- noooo mercenaries in Arm Slaves working for Dr. Hell, nor saving of the entire world as SRW inevitably involves. It's a contrast that actually makes me appreciate both ends of the mecha spectrum more well, it's more than a spectrum once magic and organic robots are factored in.

Gameplay-wise, The Fist of Mars was simple, perhaps too much so. The more limited ranges of attacks, limited EN/ammo, and the lower attack values reminded me of the one half of Masoukishin I got through. WinkySoft indeed didn't change much from their -the original- SRW days, they even brought back Double Action. Quaint, to some degree. Overall an easy game -thanks to IAS. I did learn to leave the Interactive Battle System on all the time, since otherwise hero casualties would've racked up very easily and my many attack misses would've slowed down the maps. That became tedious, actually, leaving everyone's defensive Balancer set to maximum Evasion having to manually hit and dodge everything (I think I was hit one time each in the last two battles).

Now for a silly rant, involving spoilers...

Spoiler

...I still believe Cage had more chemistry with Ares than Myoma.😛

-I know I'm complaining about game from 2001, it's not modern; a silly complaint as I said.😅 (Yet, I did notice a joke where the funny was "you two are gay?". Falling into that gradual era where the quiet acknowledgement of queer people exists, but what little is said of them consists of offensive jokes.)

I feel like this could be the perennial case of it being easier for a straight male (I presume) writer to write a strong friendship between two men, than it is for them to write a strong romance between a man and his woman. The straight male writer falls back onto artificial tropes for the hetero romance, while the male platonism -if still using tropes- is basted with more natural flavors. Not the first, and certainly not the last time I'll analyze this from a story.

Outright deleting Myoma, it wouldn't be impossible. Shifting/most of her spotlight onto Ares wouldn't be so difficult. The primary challenge would be the matter of Iblis and Testament being invented for the brother & sister, and you need both Orbital Frames for the very first battle. Why would Testament exist if only one of the two pilots did? Pharsti wouldn't be a huge concern, I think you could edit that into Vale/Ares transferring most of his Ares persona into Testament's AI in an attempt to save Cage from what he was about to do (Pharsti in this version would obviously be named "Vale"). Leaving enough Ares in his own body to keep up the veneer of being Ares when it's the mind-controlled/hate-filled Vale identity that's actually in charge. -Alternatively, we leave Myoma in ...but Cage and her simply don't romance. Why not leave her without a man and have a male-female friendship for a change?

-Now, let me admit that I'm something of a hypocrite. Because -by pure coincidence- from the past March to this very day, I have toyed with a mecha-themed m/m daydream wherein one of the guys ends up captured and integrated into a giant artillery unit for quite a while.🤣 -So what I really am, is gayded (pronounced the same as "jaded") to cliched het love stories.😆 

On a different note, I don't get why the English localization changed the subtitle. There is no titular "Fist of Mars", or at least nothing that is called that. "2173 Testament", besides referring to the protagonist's mech, could be read loosely as "Chronicle of the Year 2173 AD". However, "The Fist of Mars" does sound really cool, that I concede.😃

Overall, not bad.😀 Not amazing, the combat is a tad too iffy for that. Still, a novel little game. While I'm sure The Fist of Mars could be made as an OVA or a novel (again, I'm thinking of 08th MS Team) to this day, I don't know about a video game, feels like corporations wouldn't bother with this kind of thing, too small-scale for the present business climate.

(...Does this sate me like SRW does? Not entirely. TFoM was a one-act ballet you feature alongside one or two others to comprise a three-hour matinee, SRW easily fills those three hours by itself (and might force you to ditch the intermission to fit it all in). Nonetheless, being a thoroughly-mecha game, it does push back the desire W for a while (not that it was presently strong in me anyway).)

---

Back to Berseria tomorrow, Velvet still needs her REVENGE! -Though I'm told that's a dish best served at room temperature, so maybe this interlude was fine.😛

[Acacia Sgt]

Congrats on finishing!

Yeah, haha, coming from SRW, TFoM certainly feels on the simpler side. Admittedly, I first played TFoM years before learning about SRW, and it was also like, my first SRPG ever. So to my 9-10 year old self, it certainly felt otherwise in terms of scope, haha.

[Revier]

 

[Capt. Fargus]

7 hours ago, Sidereal Wraith said:

The abomination is getting a sequel!?!?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Got 5 Playstations. What could a 2nd Switch hurt? 😁

[Acacia Sgt]

Okay, time for Sphinx.

Interestingly, you don't get your main weapon, the Blade of Osiris, until the end of the first area. It's mostly platforming and puzzles. There are enemies, but you either need to avoid them or they are in fact used for a puzzle.

[Acacia Sgt]

I'd say, even to this day I'm not sure if Horus is only named after the god, or if he's suppose to be the Horus. In this game he's treated as a peer to Sphinx, who is a demigod, and we already have a definitely-not-the-historical (as he's not even human to begin with) Imhotep as their master.

Speaking of historical, what we do have is the appearance of Prince Tutankhamen Khamen. The other playable character of the game, and I may perhaps already said too much if you remember the game's title, hahaha. For now, though, the scene shifts to his impending 18th birthday. Where I'm sure nothing will go wrong, no sir...

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Congrats on finishing!

Thank you.

I decided to look up what the route differences are, wow they're more than I expected.😲 Why did they decide to have the split determined by something as mundane as a kill contest?🤔 In my case, two of the Mars Angels were taken out quickly by unlucky RNG, so I won it easily. Why even have this split at all? TFoM doesn't feel like a story that needed one/should have one.

[Armagon]

They know.

16 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/05/nintendo-switch-successor-announcement-is-coming-this-fiscal-year

God speaks, the trumpets sound, the beginning of the end is near- no more speculating. The Anti-Christ, claimed by many to be as many over centuries as many, shall shed their enigmatic robes and be bare for the world to witness.

*Sneezes*🤧 -I don't mean to vilify the heir to the heavenly throne through my choice of metaphor, I simply wanted to stick to an overdramatic Revelatory tone.😛 I'll be buying the successor whenever it arrives, no question about that. Yet, my immediate delight, is knowing that by (fiscal) year's end, all the rumormongering shall be trampled over by the Horsemen and cast into the lake of fire.

Bloomberg finally right for once lol.

8 hours ago, Venger_06 said:

Who wins?

 

[Acacia Sgt]

Well, bye prince. Now we know how he actually died. It's back with Sphinx now.

Okay, gonna stop here for now.

35 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Thank you.

I decided to look up what the route differences are, wow they're more than I expected.😲 Why did they decide to have the split determined by something as mundane as a kill contest?🤔 In my case, two of the Mars Angels were taken out quickly by unlucky RNG, so I won it easily. Why even have this split at all? TFoM doesn't feel like a story that needed one/should have one.

Yeah, I don't get why either.

Speaking of, did you managed to recruit Nadia? She's the single recruit I spoke about. It's not a full loss since you get Twede instead, so it's more of an either of choice.

[Armagon]

How to erode public trust in your company speedrun any %