Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Interdimensional Observer]

And there, the three penultimate asterisks are obtained. Arcanist requires too much setup across the entire team for it to work for me. Bastion ought to be worth it just for Rampart/Vallation and possibly broken old Stillness under a new name. Phantom is the new ninja, so it ought to be good. In terms of boss fights, Phantom was nightmarish, I'm amazed I won on the first try; fast, deadly, and can attack you more with every kill they land. Bastion was on the easier side thanks to the physical counter-dodge skill, and Arcanist started easy, became a moderate challenge later in the fight. I did like the tavern scene with Lonsdale, the evil Asterisk bearers are pretty weak as characters, but having a short casual chat with the five-minute Camus while they don't know exactly who the heroes are was an interesting approach. -If only it had been done a game where the human villains didn't exist simply to be disrobed.

Now Holograd remains, not sure how much I'll have to brave to get to the evil Russian to mug him of his flying swords. And after that... when will I get access to the hidden job levels? And just how much game will remain wherein I can use it all?

 

1 hour ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Wait, they're bringing this back!?

I know I watched a few episodes of this later on in my childhood, Game Show Network ran it. The "temple guardians" catching the winning contestants in the end segment were BS.

Game shows are strange. The cash earnings are rarely worth it. And maybe it's me, but they seem to have the shelf life of organic no-preservatives white bread in the middle of the Amazon, barring the tiny few exceptions, they don't stay on air for long. Too much effort to assemble, not enough of an audience.

[Sooks]

Estelle and Joshua door good. They’re the best characters.

17 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Hey Armagon, guess what?

Omori thanks you at the end.

😈

[Armagon]

1 minute ago, Sooks said:

Hey Armagon, guess what?

Omori thanks you at the end.

😈

No i will not be playing Omori.

[Acacia Sgt]

I like how AE has one fishing spot that is basically sky fishing. Complete with robo-fish (cyborgs actually, looking at them), flying fish, and... seemingly "normal" fish yet can still fly. Somehow.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Acacia Sgt

[Acacia Sgt]

23 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I know I watched a few episodes of this later on in my childhood, Game Show Network ran it. The "temple guardians" catching the winning contestants in the end segment were BS.

Game shows are strange. The cash earnings are rarely worth it. And maybe it's me, but they seem to have the shelf life of organic no-preservatives white bread in the middle of the Amazon, barring the tiny few exceptions, they don't stay on air for long. Too much effort to assemble, not enough of an audience.

In what way they were BS? The whole "just showing up automatically counts as captured"? Their placements where sometimes the fastest way to the treasure had to pass through all three of them? Usually that was when the contestants had both Pendants of Life, but still...

Edited September 20, 2021 by Acacia Sgt

[Armagon]

Atelier Firis review:

After the disappointment that was Atelier Sophie, i am pleased to say that Atelier Firis was a much better improvement. While it's not quite as good as some of the other titles, it still proved to be a very chill game and it was that chillness that really helps it with it's rather unique structure. See, Atelier Firis is really weird in that the post-game is the real meat and bones of the game. Everything else prior to that is basically a prologue and while that may sound bad on paper, the "main story" is honestly really short compared to the amount of time i spent getting all the character events in the post-game. Said main story is the first time Atelier has had a legitimate time-limit since Atelier Escha & Logy and this is probably the easiest time-limit in the entire series. I've seen a lot of Atelier fans say that it's way too easy but admittedly, i did get lost more than a few times so i can feasibly see someone run out of time and get locked out of the post-game. And because of this structure, i found playing on and off with this game. I started playing this game on the first week of June 2021 and if you look at my Backloggd journal, you will see just how many games i've played between them and now. Atelier Firis' "post-game is the real game" completely changed my mindset as to how i would approach this game.

Now playing this game in a post-Atelier Ryza world is really interesting to me because it's very clear to me that this game basically served as a prototype to what would eventually be in the Ryza games, Ryza 2 especially. This was the first Atelier game to update the engine after sticking to it for several years and Gust took advantage of it by making this an open-world-lite game. Now of course, these games have never had much of a budget in the first place so the areas are not that big but compared to Atelier's usual bite-sized areas, this was something new for the series at the time. Firis would be able to craft vehicles to traverse these lands faster and even find a way to walk underwater and pretty much all of this would return and be expanded upon in Atelier Ryza and Atelier Ryza 2 and it gives me some newfound appreciation for both this game and two games it would directly inspire later in the series (at least i think that's what happened).

As for the combat and synthesis itself, i personally found it to be rather weak. Synthesis is explained horribly to you so i pretty much winged it the entire game. I was playing on easy as a result but that's fine, i don't play this series for the difficulty. But because i was winging it with the synthesis, i couldn't really bring the combat to it's full potential, a mistake on my part.

As far as characters go, it's a fairly decent improvement over Atelier Sophie. I enjoyed a lot more of the characters this time around although some other games in the series still have it beat. I'd say the character quality is comparable to that of Atelier Shallie. That being said, Firis is honestly in the top tier of Atelier protagonists because damn bro, her optimism is extremely infectious. She can be too loud at times but man, i just know i'm going to miss her for the time being (she shows up in the next game).

Atelier Firis is a decent, relaxing game, complete with the banger Atelier soundtrack from Gust. I still have one more Mysterious title to play and the improvements that this game saw over Atelier Sophie have given me hope that this trilogy isn't a bust. 7/10

And as always, here is the updated list: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Armagon/list/ranking-every-game-i-played-in-2021/

[Benice]

55 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I got every character ending. Review soon.

Every Yakuza game thanks you for playing it!

[Acacia Sgt]

SRW also thanks the player.

[Armagon]

12 minutes ago, Benice said:

Every Yakuza game thanks you for playing it!

Very glad that Kiryu Yakuza thanks me for playing his game.

4 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

SRW also thanks the player.

Even Endless Frontier?

[Armagon]

Anyways, I'm gonna start the Spider-Man DLC now.

Edit: after I get the remaining 4% left on the completion rate of the main campaign.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Armagon

[Acacia Sgt]

27 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Even Endless Frontier?

Not the Endless Frontiers ones, though.

Surprisingly, it seems they stopped the practice the moment they started to get official English translations. Since not counting the mobile games, BX was the last one to have a Thanking message. Next mainline SRW was Moon Dwellers, the first to have an English version, and also the first to not have the message apparently, and it's also missing in the VTX trilogy.

Ironic, as the Thanking messages would be in actual English. They knew we were playing them all the same.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Acacia Sgt

[Eltosian Kadath]

I am usually not one to share videos, but this one ends up kinda amazing. This whole series RubberRoss has been doing with real animators/artist doing Gartic Phone is great, but this one...

 

[Venger_06]

3 hours ago, Sooks said:

Where are you, out of curiosity? I haven’t heard a lot about the game from you.

In Bose trying to get infinite money.

45 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Anyways, I'm gonna start the Spider-Man DLC now.

I'm sorry for your loss.

[Acacia Sgt]

lol

 

[Saint Rubenio]

9 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Sounds coincidentally like a twist on the Artemis/Diana & Actaeon myth. Actaeon sees her the archer goddess bathing, gets turned into a stag, and then hunted and killed. I will interpret your words as a modified version will Actaeon actually liked being forced on the run and shot at the scrumptious hunter lady, a little extreme BDSM.

Hah! I wouldn't even be surprised. The guy's being aimed at and he straight up tells Sylvis to go with him to his quarters.

That makes her mad enough that she breaks the game mechanics and cripples him even if she fails to knock his health below the halfway point.

9 hours ago, Ghost_06_ said:

Man, the more I play Cyberpunk the more it makes me appreciate Dragon Age even more. The lifepaths and dialog hardly affect anything, most choices are inconsequential and the romance options are shallow because of a cynical decision by CD Projekt Red to artificially try to increase replayability. They should have let the player choose between all four, like in Dragon Age 2.

Well, I'm going to take a break from Cyberpunk and go back to FC now.

Sooo basically it's what it looks like: A bland GTA-like that, while not as bad as it's said to be, is way overhyped and really nothing too remarkable. That a good summary or is there more to it than that?

Also, isn't Dragon Age a sort of strategy-ish RPG? Why would you compare the two? They've nothing in common lol

7 hours ago, Sooks said:

Fishing door bad.

But I’m too stubborn to quit lol.

Ah yes, the mark of any good game: A fishing minigame.

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

No i will not be playing Omori.

I don't understand you, Armagon. You only like wholesome games, so I thought. So why not play Omori, which is really cute and wholesome? Is it because I like it?

[Punished Dayni]

8 hours ago, Sooks said:

Kevin likes pain apparently.

Are we sure he isn't one?

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am usually not one to share videos, but this one ends up kinda amazing. This whole series RubberRoss has been doing with real animators/artist doing Gartic Phone is great, but this one...

 

>First thing is Sonichu

>Actually works as expected.

(After watching all of them, the last one certainly was a thing. I..... should have expected it.)

[Lightcosmo]

9 hours ago, Sooks said:

When reeling in a really big fish, Estelle has a % chance to simply not catch it for literally no reason after you react successfully.

Have you tried mashing the button instead of simply hitting it once?

22 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Kevin likes pain apparently.

Are we sure he isn't one?

Lol. You don't know the half of it.

[Sooks]

2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Ah yes, the mark of any good game: A fishing minigame.

There’ve been worse fishing minigames, like how Twilight Princess absolutely requires you to deal with its atrocious fishing to progress the story.

39 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Kevin likes pain apparently.

Are we sure he isn't one?

I didn’t share the context™.

16 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Have you tried mashing the button instead of simply hitting it once?

No, but considering the game never told me to do that and Estelle could still catch big fish anyway…

[Lightcosmo]

Huh, i don't know what to tell ya, other than i never had any issues except the self caused ones.

[Saint Rubenio]

All right. Here we go. @Ghost_06_ I will hold you accountable if these 6 bucks go to waste.

Okay, maybe they've already been well spent.

[Armagon]

2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

The guy's being aimed at and he straight up tells Sylvis to go with him to his quarters.

That makes her mad enough that she breaks the game mechanics and cripples him even if she fails to knock his health below the halfway point.

Man was down atrociously.

2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I don't understand you, Armagon. You only like wholesome games, so I thought. So why not play Omori, which is really cute and wholesome? Is it because I like it?

Yes, my favorite wholesome topics: depression and anxiety.

 

[Lightcosmo]

Metroid Dread comes out in a bit over 2 weeks. To get it or not to... hmmmm...

Edited September 20, 2021 by lightcosmo

[Sooks]

13 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Yes, my favorite wholesome topics: depression and anxiety.

Oh, what, that silly little content warning at the beginning of the game? Why, that’s nothing to be concerned about. Nothing at all.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Today is the Persona franchise's 25th anniversary.:

Can't say I'm a real fan of the franchise, having only dabbled in P1 and P2 (nice to see Atlus acknowledge them here, even if Persona didn't seriously hit it's stride until P3), but it's still worth remarking upon, given has increasingly grown in JRPG prominence. And also relevant due to FE having slavishly imitated it with Three Houses.

 

8 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

In what way they were BS? The whole "just showing up automatically counts as captured"? Their placements where sometimes the fastest way to the treasure had to pass through all three of them?

I'm not going to go back and review the show to determine what I found problematic about them or if I'm correct to think such. But I guess it was the "Surprise and ya lose!" aspect was the issue. 

[Punished Dayni]

Me after playing 60 matches of Smash Online in a 24 hour period to get a few challenges, resulting in a Pikachu with 2.5 million GSP and a shattered percetion of how good I am:

(Maybe I should have seen if my Cloud was any good. Of if I could improve my K. Rool. Or if that one time with Roy was merely a fluke or if I actually could be good with him. Probably the latter even if I managed to beat a Fox with him.... but no, I'm good for a while.)

50 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Lol. You don't know the half of it.

So as masochistic as I've been the last while?

33 minutes ago, Sooks said:

I didn’t share the context™.

I feel like I've seen enough here.