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Post by Buster Cannon on Oct 4, 2014 16:57:16 GMT -5
Picked up Metal Gear Solid HD Collection a while back because it was on sale, but hadn't gotten around to touching any of the games until recently. In fact, this was my first time ever playing a game from this franchise. Imagine that! Overview I really wasn't sure what to expect going into it; I knew that the title had rave reviews, but wasn't exactly sure why. For those that don't know, Metal Gear Solid is a stealth-based series where you complete missions such as infiltrating a base, rescuing a prisoner, etc. Metal Gear Solid 3 takes place in a jungle environment, which makes things pretty interesting, especially from a survival aspect. You not only can use jungle elements like logs/grass as cover, but you also live off the land in that you can eat wild animals that you kill or fruit that you find in trees. You play as Snake, a CIA agent that's infiltrating a foreign country in order to rescue a scientist and prevent a nuclear war from happening. That's tasty! One thing I really like about this game is how it doesn't hold your hand throughout the story, instead giving the player the freedom to make their own mistakes. Snake (the titular hero) has a set of people he can call to get further information on his surrounding area, but it's very rare that they'll call you. 1 Likewise, the game will also give you subtle hints about the best way to handle a situation without spoon-feeding you the information. In one particular instance during the opening mission, Snake takes out a pair of binoculars and observes a guard standing under a tree. He then looks up and zooms in on a hornet's nest, right before putting his binoculars away and a Cheshire Cat-esque grin spreads across his face. You can shoot said nest down as an easy way to get the guard to leave, but the game lets the player figure that out on their own if they so choose. This brings me to my next point: the game has immense replay value because there are so many ways to clear areas, to the point that you could probably play through it 10 times and never go through it the same way. There are so many ways to troll guards that it's not even funny (okay, it kind of is). You can take them out the easy way with the tranquilizer, throw a snake at him, put a dirty magazine in his path so that he'll get distracted, blow up their food supply, repeatedly knock on a wall while out of sight to toy with them...there's a lot of options. I really appreciate the extreme level of polish that was put into the game. Ugh...sick! I felt like the boss fights were there for the sake of having bosses, and aside from Ocelot/The End/The Boss, I didn't really find them that fun at all. In particular the Fury was just plain annoying. The controls had their moments, such as having to shift from crouching to standing when trying to get places. I really didn't care for Eva at all, Volgin didn't need that many phases for his boss fight, and why did the gameplay turn into Time Crisis towards the end? Oh, and this game can be VERY cutscene-heavy...the story is good, but at times I just wanted to skip ahead and get to the gameplay. The End Overall I really enjoyed the game, and would give it a .5/5. It's a fun and challenging stealth game that doesn't try to take itself too seriously. 1I actually think the Megaman Legends series could benefit from something like this -- say you run into a new area of a ruin and you're curious about a certain reaverbot. You give Roll a call and she pulls up some information on it, including potential weak points or attacks that you need to be aware of. Far less intrusive than the current one, anyway.
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Post by Kyle on Oct 4, 2014 17:34:46 GMT -5
Have you sampled the Secret Theater yet, Buster Cannon? It might be to your liking.
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Post by Dashe on Oct 5, 2014 19:49:00 GMT -5
And here we have my latest conquest, mounted over the fire like one of Gaston's trophies: Wario Land 3. In a day and age when casual gaming brings to mind free-to-pay cell phone games that require absolutely no real thought whatsoever and instead opt to entice either the very patient or the very rich, Wario Land 3 really struck me as what a casual title of today ought to attempt to emulate. I never felt much of an urge to find more than one treasure chest per sitting, or played it for hours back-to-back, and that was okay. I was, in fact, able to just pick it up again after seven or so years of not playing the game without much trouble, because there was a hidden figure in the temple over in the first world who gave very explicit directions. By the time you figure out how to get to a treasure, it'll autosave and then you can pick it up and try to find the next treasure whenever. Even seven years later. There's nothing to keep track of, and even better, no minimum wait limit and no shortcut where you can buy your treasures from Nintendo with real money. The gist of the gameplay involves semi-linear exploration of different worlds in search of treasure chests. You open the chests with a matching key. Every level has four chests and there are twenty-five levels, bringing the grand total to an even hundred treasures. What's more, the majority of the stuff you find turns out to be useful. Either it grants Wario some power buffs or changes a thing in another world that makes previously unavailable treasure more available. And a good chunk of the treasures make sense, too. Like an axe to clear a path through the forest, or a turbine to get air currents moving around under the apartment building. It was easy enough for me to beat the game without too much trouble. I also managed to collect the eight music coins scattered throughout every level for a perfect run. There was an annoying golf minigame and getting the coins unlocked a new course for that, but all I really wanted was the pic of Wario giving two thumbs ups at the end with the word "PERFECT" over it. There were a few boss battles that made me want to throttle the designers. A certain football game against a tortoise and a hare comes to mind. That bunny was a cheating bastard. I think if more so-called casual games were like this, that'd be awesome. I don't think I'd be embarrassed if my mom were addicted to cell phone Wario Land 3. Unlock your treasures with mad finding skills, not by waiting and playing roulettes you can't control! Generally speaking, though, this is one of the best GBC platforming adventure experiences I have had, considering system limitations and what have you. They really seem to get the most out of the hardware as they can, and for that reason I'm gonna give it an extremely rare out of 5. Granted, it still ranks a 4 when you look at every game in existence, but I felt in this case a hardware handicap was necessary.
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Post by Bean on Oct 6, 2014 5:09:24 GMT -5
I wound up writing a review for Azure Striker Gunvolt for a friend's blog. If for some reason you'd rather see it somewhere else, it's also up on GameFAQs. I also beat Freedom Planet which is a Sonic-like game for the PC. No real review for it yet as there are two playable characters, and I've only gone through the game as Lilac, the totally not Sonic character. The game has some very good stages, although they tend to last ten+ minutes since there are collectables to look around for. Bosses remind me more of fights from Gunstar Heroes than a Sonic game as they get quite fast and hectic. Voice acting for it's fine, but the story is edgy/silly in spots. Still, it's a good game with some fun mechanics, so I'd give it a tentative B+ rating, which is what I would've given Gunvolt if either site I posted that on did letter grade reviews.
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Post by Dashe on Oct 13, 2014 17:06:09 GMT -5
The folks who were in iScribble last night know this already, but I 100%'d Donkey Kong Land II last night. From what I can tell it's supposed to be a Game Boy demake of Donkey Kong Country 2, and it only goes up to 100%, unlike its SNES counterpart which maxes out at 102%. I mean, I did get the alternate ending and all, so I can only assume it maxes out at 100%. When I first started this, I didn't think there was any way in the universe I'd ever beat it. I had no means of figuring out the controls except through trial and error, and the platforming wasn't dummied down at all. I didn't even realize I could run until the third world and actually wound up getting through Slime Climb just by walking at normal speed. The cart itself was cruddy-looking and clearly pre-owned, though like Rayman and Keen and Tetris, I seriously have no idea how it came into my possession and am beginning to think that some jerk decided to leave it under my pillow one night like some sick, twisted version of the Tooth Fairy. There's no way I'll ever get any decent bank for this if I try to cash in. Fortunately, the save battery still worked and stayed functional throughout the playthrough. I'm also relieved to report that it was easy to discern background elements from platforms you can traverse. After Keen, I just can't take that for granted in a game anymore. Sometimes you had to guess where there were platforms underneath you when you were in freefall, though, which was a pain. One spot in particular comes to mind where I had to memorize a spot on the background scroll so I didn't overshoot the platform outside my field of view. It's weird. I was going to give this a very low score at the beginning for all the frustration it caused me but the game grew on me the more I stuck with it. It probably looks a lot better in full color with SNES-grade graphics, but Grant Kirkhope's tunes were pretty great, especially Bayou Boogie. Turns out I like the Game Boy mix better than the SNES one. It's quite a bit less atmospheric and definitely less evocative of an actual bayou. So yeah. .5 out of 5 servbot heads for this one. Next EKP update, I'd like to place an order to have either the refractors back, or an option for a half a Servbot head, just so rating in fractions is easier.
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Post by fAB on Oct 14, 2014 10:22:57 GMT -5
Congrats on 100%-ing, Dashe! Reading this gave me a bit of a nostalgia trip. I too was totally underwhelmed with it at first, only to really get into it by the end. I never touched the game after beating it however many years ago (15+) but anytime I've thought of it since then there's this music I really liked that pops into my head clear as day. So when I saw you'd picked out a single track, I thought, "Could it be?" Turns out it could. ^__^
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Post by Dashe on Oct 14, 2014 14:21:24 GMT -5
Nice! That makes one song we've both heard of and like! I think that was the only Game Boy rendition of it on Youtube, too. Good old Grant Kirkhope. Whatever he's making, they don't pay him near enough for this gig.
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Post by aarond on Oct 15, 2014 22:27:27 GMT -5
For me it was Fire Emblem: Awakening. I made the avatar look as old as possible and it was still just a TAD younger looking than I was. Still, I managed to pull through and help all my friends beat the dragon in the end. And since I promised I would die to defend everyone, I didn't. Because that's how that works. Honestly, I loved the game so much I immediately restarted with my hero in the reverse gender. W00t.
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Post by Dashe on Nov 4, 2014 14:12:12 GMT -5
By a complete fluke in about every sense of the word, I beat Final Fantasy Legend II in the dead of night last night. I'd already committed to switching to an older save file because apparently nobody told me the thing that I'd thought was the last boss in 2001 was actually the second-to-last boss, or that the final level would be a point of no return...so I ended up stuck in there with no heal staves. Meaning, only Silver could do healing and that was it. I'd been holding off on tackling this and Link's Awakening because I wanted to wrap up my GB/GBC backlog on a high note, and with games that wouldn't have me pulling my hair out over stupid platforming mistakes. I liked FFL2 better than 1 or 3 because overall it was lighter and funnier and seemed the most normal, which seems to be a recurring pattern with games I like. It's why I thought the best part of Kingdom Hearts II was the prologue, but I digress. The party knows each other from school, so I named them after myself and my friends (minus vowels, because the cap was four letters). I even managed to keep most of the same friends since I abandoned my old file so I only ended up switching out one person, which was neat. The story was basic enough--collect 77 macguffins to resurrect a goddess because your dad snuck into your house in the middle of the night to drop one off with you and then jumped out the window so your mom doesn't catch him. You know, basic nostalgia-inducing stuff for every kid whose dad did weird things behind their mom's back. They even gave us a cool slime professor as your first satellite party member and I kept picturing him as the Gay Choir Troll. You even get to Magic School Bus yourself into a cleric's body. You even get to go to a world where bananas are pretty much their version of hard drugs. It's an interesting universe. The biggest setback was the grammar. The translation crew was horrible. Despite the fact that they didn't try to over-dramatize it for western audiences, things were misspelled and sentences were constructed badly and it knocked FFL2 down from possibly being a great game to just being a good-ish one. Most of the satellite party members ended up being a load once I figured out how to properly level them up. If you ever play this, just screw strength and pour your resources into increasing your humans' agility. Agility affects your accuracy even if you're using a weapon that uses your strength stat as the multiplier, so if you max out their agility and give everyone catclaws by the end you'll be doing 1000 damage a hit. If you have mutants just increase their mana. I tried to have a monster the first time but the meat system was too confusing so I opted out this time around and just took on a second human. If you're curious, my party looked like: Me - Robot. Not the humanoid kind of robot, it looked more like R2D2 with digital display eyes to make it look cuter. Since I didn't have any monsters on hand I just fed myself all the meat since I was at the head of the party. Silver - Mutant, female, eventually learned a resistance to all magic off a good boss but spent the majority of the game as a completely underwhelming healer. The only one who didn't come out of this with 999 HP, but ended up KOing the final boss anyway. She used Flare. I'd forgotten I had that book. The Hippie - Human, female, strength-based. Stupid, stupid move. But she wound up maxing out her HP less than halfway through the game for some reason. The One Who Likes Dolphins - Human, female, agility-based. Dealt most of the damage, natch. And it had two human parents. Go figure. out of 5, because it's lighter and fluffier and very out there, but in a way that's followable. That grammar, though. That grammar has got to go. If I had more free time or more money I could either figure out how to patch it myself to give it better grammar, or hire someone to do that for me, but alas, it's not gonna happen. And yeah, I know about the DS remake and how patched that one got...but do I really need more games? Nah. I don't.
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Post by Bean on Nov 7, 2014 17:22:36 GMT -5
Since I last posted in here, I've beaten quite a few games.
Hyrule Warriors (October 2nd, Wii U) is a game about mashing the Y button and occasionally the X as you take down a majority of dudes that rarely attack you outside of the real deal enemies. I can't say it wasn't fun, though, as I'm pretty sure I racked up 50 hours of this game in co-op. It has a surprising amount of content compared to the first Dynasty Warriors Gundam I played, the only other Warriors title I had played to this point. B- from me.
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS (October 9th, 3DS) feels like an appetizer to the main course coming for the Wii U later. While I managed to get 30 hours out of this title from single player and online, I'm just not sold on the Smash Run mode. It doesn't make up for the lack of Adventure or Event Mode battles. Again, I can't complain too much because I got a lot of play from it. Another B- from me.
Shovel Knight (October 22nd, Wii U) was a game I thought I'd play sooner, but I never did. I really enjoyed most of the stages as most of the gimmicks worked save one darkness one. I also didn't like how the game relied more on insta-kill moments in a couple of the later levels more than anything else, but it wasn't too bad. I enjoyed the full game more than I thought I would. It gets a B.
The Legend of Dark Witch (October 29th, 3DS [eShop]) wants to be this Mega Man-style game that meets Gradius while fighting, but it just doesn't work. You're powering up your main character along the way both in-level and out of thanks to collecting stars or whatever they call it, but the levels themselves are absolutely basic. The only interesting thing about this are the boss battles. Those take decent reflexes. You play as an anime girl fighting other anime girls, so yeah, the subject content ain't all that interesting to me either. D-, if only for some fun fights. That's it.
Armillo (October 30th, Wii U) is a 3D-spherical platformer in the main game and a 2D standard one for the bonus stages. You're on a hit-point meter throughout both of those, and even falling into pits or traps only takes off a heart. There is one other area that pops up in the 3D stages, and that's when you enter into this dark zone area. There, you have to escape before time runs out, or else. In all the 3D areas, you're trying to save these blue dudes, so sometimes it pays to explore levels. It loves its gimmicks, and thankfully, most of them are fun. I really enjoyed one where you flip through the world Super Mario Galaxy-style and another where you were eating food to grow super huge. It's a fun game, but it's not the greatest thing ever. I'd give it a C+.
Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition (November 2nd, PSP), a remake of the original Final Fantasy, is just too basic to be any good for long. I had played FFIII on the 3DS awhile back, and both confirm my suspicions that until the ATB gauge was introduced in FFIV, fights are just random. Turn order is whatever the game wants, and in fights where it's 4-on-9, that's not cool. I think it gets a bit better when you class change halfway through the game, and I like that you can pick whatever classes you want your heroes to be to start (Warrior/Thief/Wh.Mage/Bl.Mage for me), but I just found myself mashing X for the most part as early fights don't have any strategy and late ones are just as easy once you use magic to power up your characters. It was just boring and gets a D as a result.
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Post by Dashe on Nov 9, 2014 19:35:15 GMT -5
There. I've finally conquered my Game Boy collection. This was the DX re-release for Game Boy Color, and I hadn't touched it in over ten years because I got stuck up in Eagle's Tower playing around with balls. I looked at my nigh-400 deaths and went, screw this, I need to start over, because I'd completely forgotten pretty much everything except the major plot twist. I'm glad I made it at least that far into the game before the internet came around to ruin those sorts of things and while it was still possible to easily impress me. I'm pretty sure everyone here knows what I'm talking about, but for the sake of any hypothetically lurking ten-year-olds who haven't made it there yet, I'm not gonna spill in this review. Everyone deserves fond memories of being holed up at someplace dreadfully dull at a moderately-impressionable age with a handheld game system, only to stumble upon a game-changing element on their own. When I first started this up (as Will Shuester again, though his name didn't stay Shue for very long), I found it to be significantly harder than the Oracle games, but in a good way, and once I got used to the difference it suddenly became really, really easy, to the point where the only dungeon that frustrated me at all was Eagle's Tower. In fact, that was the last time I even had to save. Loading my game would probably dump you at that ruin's entrance. A lot of this comes from the fact that dungeon plans have to occupy a single-layer 8x8 grid in the start menu instead of having their own map pages in the Select menu. The dungeon map was also a lot more handy and a lot less hand-holdy. You don't get to see which rooms connect to which other rooms in what way unless you've already been in the room...and you couldn't fill in map squares to look back on until you got the map, so I actually loved getting that thing instead of just soft-resetting every time I pulled it out of a chest because it made the game too easy. Unlike in the Oracle games, not every bombable wall will have visible cracks in it, so you'll have to poke around with the sword every so often or look for other visual clues. The biggest drawback was the save feature. You could only save if you died, or if you soft-reset, and soft-resetting always results in a full reboot from the title screen. Not fun when you're running on two AA batteries and you run out of juice. The nightmare key in Bottle Grotto can be a nightmare to snag if you don't know the names of the enemies in the game, too. They're not listed in the manual anywhere so if this is your first Zelda game ever and you aren't looking up cheats, you're going to be stuck guessing how to get that last key for a good while. The best part about this game was the world itself. It never took itself too seriously. It was like a Mario crossover with furries, and it had Sale's House of Bananas, which is one of my favorite establishments in gaming of all time. It's run by a crocodile who hawks bananas and has a really obsessive thing for canned food. It must be seen to be believed. I know, I know, a lot of you are probably just going, "Well no shit the game doesn't take itself seriously." I just really liked that it didn't, logical reasoning be damned. The other NPCs are for the most part memorable as well. As far as I know it's the only Zelda game in which every boss you fight taunts you. A lot of them even had personalities. That was fantastic. The first time around I thought Animal Village was stupid, but the music now suddenly sounds awesome. Tal Tal Heights had awesome music, too, but I consistently liked that song. Final verdict, .5 out of 5. So slightly above how I usually rate Zelda games. Definitely better than the Oracle games, and it'd have scored a 5 if it hadn't been for the clunky save mechanics and the weird Bottle Grotto key that forced you to know off the top of your head what Pols Voices and Stalfos were.
In light of finding out that GOG had two additional permanently free games I hadn't added to my library yet, I figured it'd be best to start knocking off some point-n-clicks in order to keep my backlog under control. I sat down and breezed through Beneath a Steel Sky and Teenagent, both of which I'd been periodically hacking away at when I got bored and needed something to do. If you have a GOG account, you probably have them as well and beat them ages before I did, because they are both free for as long as GOG allows it. Beneath a Steel Sky was pretty cool. The writing had that quirky charm that a lot of 90s point-n-clicks have. The puzzles were solid but traveling between levels was a pain, especially since a lot of the time you were required to wait around for your robot, Joey, or you'd accidentally leave him behind. Joey is not a fast robot. It was also fully voice acted, so if reading's not your bag, you don't miss out on much of the story. The backgrounds are drop-dead gorgeous. Gritty sci-fi spritework at the finest level I've seen it. But this one seems to be more about the journey than the destination. Once you get to the end, things start to feel really rushed and anticlimactic, and unlike Link's Awakening, I saw the plot twist to this one coming from a mile away. I'd like to attribute that to not being ten anymore. It's probably not something I'm going to remember any more than a few years from now, unless I were to find myself in a riveting discussion about examples of really awesome low-res background art. out of 5 here, but at that price, I'd actually recommend it to anyone looking for something cool that you don't have to pay for. Just remember, it's about the journey. Teenagent was originally produced in Polish, and it shows in the translation's questionable grammar. Most notably, "no one" is consistently written as "noone," but there are a lot more than that. As you'd expect looking at the title, it's not a terribly serious game in terms of tone so if you're going in expecting something deep for some reason, you'd be best off looking elsewhere. If you're looking for some lighthearted nostalgic fun, though, this might be good to try out. If anything, it doesn't take very long. Major detractors include having to find very specific, small items in a field of similar items. A certain bookshelf near the end of the game comes to mind--you have to find the one book marked "Book" out of hundreds of "Books." That took a while. A lot of other puzzles have you repeatedly trying to do things that didn't work in order to trigger a thing that did work several times later, which seemed really counter-intuitive because there was no way to tell which objects or background elements needed to be used multiple times before it suddenly became effective. Other than those things the solutions to the puzzles never left me too puzzled for too long. I'll give this out of 5, but as I said before, it was free, and it barely took me three hours, so if you want the sense of accomplishment of beating something and you like point-n-clicks and not paying for things, go for it.
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yui
Miroc
Posts: 53
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Post by yui on Nov 23, 2014 23:06:48 GMT -5
The last game I finished was Spelunky. But I'm not interested in playing it much anymore. It was too random.
I wish I had something noteworthy to put a review here for. But the past year has been really busy for me, I haven't had the time to play much of anything.
For comments sake, by the way, Link's Awakening is my favorite Zelda. If like to give the Oracle duo a try sometime. I remember playing them, but for some reason my memory is not coherent enough to decipher anything out about them. I definitely remember that I did finish at least one of them though.
I tried Minish Cap over this year, though. It was really fun, but way too linear. I almost finished it, I even got to what I believe was the final form of the final boss. But since I refuse to use a strategy guide, I couldn't figure it out, how to win. I tried literally everything I could think of, and failed. I still have no idea.
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Post by Dashe on Dec 6, 2014 20:06:19 GMT -5
I've been busy over the past month or whatever beating more point-n-clicks. Lure of the Temptress - For something that was the precursor to Beneath a Steel Sky, it was really disappointing. I spent most of the game just trying to get from one place to another, and I accidentally made Ratpouch glitch out before I needed him to pick that one lock in the marketplace so I needed to reset the whole thing. I'm not unconvinced that the titular Temptress was supposed to be an expy of Selena Quintanilla Perez, but the music and sound were both really, REALLY awful. out of five emotikobun for this one. Gobliiins Pack - I got this because I remembered playing part of Goblins Quest 3 at my cousins and liked what I played. The trouble was, it was easily the most normal part of the whole series. He had me playing the town segment after Blount spent that time shrinking and growing, and the town looked pretty normal. Generally though, this series is a point-n-click acid trip, and the first one especially makes very little sense. The first one also punishes you for experimentation, which sucks. Thankfully 2 and 3 did away with that mechanic. The games did progressively get better as the series progressed, but unless you're looking for a nostalgia fix or an acid trip, I'd pass on 'em. #1 gets , #2 and 3 get . Back to the Future: The Game - Thankfully, this was a breath of fresh air compared to the other two. A lot of Telltale's games are so hand-holdy that it's like playing a movie with minimal thinking involved, but that works out for this one. It's literally like playing a Back to the Future movie. And yes, Christopher Lloyd is still Doc and he's still awesome as ever. The guy playing Marty's really good too. The controls are a little awkward, though, especially during a late-game sequence where you have to aim. out of 5.
As for console and handheld stuff, I finished off the Rainfall Trilogy over the weekend. Pandora's Tower reminded me a lot of a Zelda game, in which the puzzles were just the right difficulty, you're not picking up copies of the same old things in each dungeon to defeat the bosses, and your main weapon is the expected hookshot expy. Basically, you go into a tower with the intent to break every chain in it, since the chains are holding the door to the boss room shut and the boss has some high-quality meat that you need to give your cursed vegetarian roomie, Elena, so she won't be cursed anymore. The scenery looked really cool, but you do have to go through each elemental theme twice, so it got repetitive once I'd cleared the first set of five elements. The light and dark versions of each were generally very similar, and as is usually the case with elemental dungeons, the water ones were the worst! They had a waterwheel puzzle this time and the second one was just a load of adjusting the waterwheel and backtracking. The time limit wasn't terrible once I got used to the controls. I didn't get used to them until the third dungeon at least, so there is a considerable learning curve involved. I did have all the text in French, so that probably helped make the learning curve somewhat steeper than usual. Figuring out the bosses' weaknesses on my own was fun, though. I did not feel any attachment to the girl I was supposed to be helping at all. She seemed like a pretty run-of-the-mill load to me. The dungeons were way more interesting than anything back at the observatory was. Unfortunately the game apparently penalizes you for not building your affinity with Elena, so you pretty much have to give her stuff besides purple meat. Fortunately, though, the cutscenes are skippable, so you don't have to sit around and watch her eat every piece of purple meat you give her. If you did, you would probably waste about six hours just watching Elena eat meat. Oh, and by the way? Trigger warning: eating meat is involved. I probably wouldn't mind cooking Master Flesh, though. It looks like it has excellent marbling. There is one thing that is a real pain, and that would be the glitches in the North American version. I've heard of an endgame glitch and a glitch for the 11th and 12th towers. I just got the 11/12 glitch, and it sucked. I pretty much had to reset every time I had to go back to the observatory to give Elena meat, which was lame since the 11th and 12th towers had the largest number of chains to break and will probably require the most return trips. The fix that worked for me was copying my file and then starting the game with the original, then heading for the Dawn Tower...but it's a very unpredictable glitch, according to Google, and different things seem to work for different people. All of the boss fights involve choral music, so that's a plus. I will have to give this just because of the glitch. It may be repetitive, but it has a logical reason for being repetitive. I do wish the Light and Dark versions of each element had more differences to them, but alas, no dice.
Finally, just last night, I cleared this one: The idea behind this was interesting. A train gets attacked by these things called CIMA, which pull the whole vehicle into some kind of CIMA-created alternate world full of different dungeons, and everyone gets separated. You have to find the missing passengers and direct them back to the train like a bunch of self-aware Lemmings. There are fourteen passengers to find, each with decent enough personalities and different reasons for heading out to the frontier. If you stand in front of a CIMA spawn point with passengers nearby and repeatedly hack at them with the passengers in range, their trust in you will increase. If you can get their trust level above zero, you can get them to craft items for you from enemy drops. I keep picturing the protagonist slashing at enemies with this playing in the background. I'm sure once all these people got back to the surface world, they'd have a good laugh out of how desperate this guy was for everyone to like him. "HE ONLY LIKED ME FOR MY CRAFTING SKILLS!" For some reason or another, I thought Halley was the best lemming, which is odd since he's just really just this little kid who looks up to you. Rick the magician was cool too, but his fiancee was a huge jerk who just wanted him to be more of an ALPHA MAN (TM). I forced everyone to trust me 100% against their will, and it was...pretty boring. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to kill any of the characters on purpose, and if someone is following your sprite directly (Ivy usually will be), they have a high probability of getting stuck behind an unwalkable area, leaving them an open target. And since this game was localized by Natsume, there were a TON of grammar errors. The old couple has a daughter who'd died twenty years prior to the game's events, and they tell this sixteen-year-old girl that she's the same age as their daughter would have been if she'd lived. Apparently this kid died four years before she was born! Even more egregiously, when the final boss makes a threat befitting of a final boss, the protagonist replies, "There's no way I'm not going to let you do this!" Thanks, protag, you just saved me the trouble of a final showdown. Also of note, cutscenes are unskippable, so it's a good idea to try and beat the boss on the first try. It is also a good idea, should you ever play this, to max out Jean's stats. You don't get him until the very end, and he has to face the toughest boss in the game on his own. I actually had to reset the file because he wasn't strong enough to make a dent in it and I had no way of going back and bulking him up. I REALLY wish someone out there had tipped me off about that before I hit the Point of No Return. Rick should probably be upgraded accordingly, too. As for the pros, it was a character-driven ordeal, so that made me happy. I like games where the characters are at least somewhat diverse and have motivations besides just being a townsperson. Speaking of lame motivations, one of the boss CIMA designed a dungeon that's modeled after a crappy RPG town. I wish the rest of his dungeons had been similarly cool. The bad guys just weren't as consistent as your party. There is also an awesome boss theme that only happens once in the game, and it is easily the best song in the soundtrack. Overall, I also liked how it seemed like they were trying to do something different from RPGs at the time--what little we saw of the overworld had a sort of a wild west theme, but the dungeons were very technologically advanced. Like with Mega Man Legends, I liked the discrepancy. It'll have to be another for this one. The game could have been a lot better if Natsume had spent a bit more effort on the localization and the bosses' dungeons had themes that fit a consistent personality, since the bosses actually are responsible for making the dungeons directly. Only Falcken seemed to have any degree of consistency with his level design. Blah.
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RyanLEO
Poh
At the Stripe Burger!
Posts: 415
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Post by RyanLEO on Dec 7, 2014 15:43:21 GMT -5
Did another playthrough of Dark Cloud 2. Easily a 10/10 game and has always been one of my favorites. I always try to do a "100%" Playthrough but since there are missables that are simple oversights it did not happen yet again . Also another game I've been waiting for 10+ years to announce a sequel... Level 5 is trolling with other games that nobody wants them to make instead. Either way I would strongly recommend this game to everyone, one of the best PS2 games ever. It includes all the best RPG elements, plus interesting concepts about time travel, rebuilding stuff, weapon upgrades, monsters, you know... This time I still missed photo's for invention ideas (there's like 300+ of them at least), but everyone does. Not for those with a fear of clowns or their giant robot.
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Post by Blues on Dec 27, 2014 19:56:38 GMT -5
Think it's about time I updated this thread with the rest of the games I played/beat this year... Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair I loved the first one, so naturally I was eagerly anticipating the sequel's release. And of course I picked it up day 1! By the way, I have a confession to make: I actually made sure to play and finish the game before Kyle started his stream. I just couldn't wait to play it, and kinda wanted to experience the game for the first time myself (sorry Kyle!) It's a great game; the characters are developed a little better in this one, the plot is pretty intriguing, and the new/revamped minigames, while a little confusing to learn at first, are actually pretty fun (especially the counter-arguement one!) And that ending, man; all I can say is that it really resonated with me, especially with where I am in my life right now. So with both (translated) games played and beaten, I gotta say: the DR series has absolutely become one of my favorite modern game series! So let's hope they translate and release DR: Ultimate Despair Girls eh? (Also Kyle if you're reading this I'm still totally up for seeing that last bit of your playthrough if you're ever able start that up again after what happened before, just throwing it out there >_>)Mighty GunvoltAfter the surprise announcement of this game I totally wanted a copy (well-made retro-style action games are a genre I try to follow after all), but didn't forsee myself getting one as I hadn't bought Azure Striker Gunvolt and wasn't able to win any of the code giveaways that were frequent around its release. Luckily the Mighty No. 9 team gave out codes for all of their backers, so I ended up getting a chance to play it myself! The game itself is pretty good, quite fun in fact. Tight controls, good character variety, and the stages are well-designed of course. The game's pretty short but I kinda expected that both given the nature of this game and the fact that Inticreates and Comcept are working on another more massive undertaking of which I'm sure all of you are well aware of. All in all I liked the game, enough to consider getting the new DLC stages whenever I get the chance. Super Smash Bros. for 3DSAh, Smash Bros. Been looking forward to both this one and the Wii U version for ever since last summer when Mega Man was announced as a playable character. So after like a year of following the hype and tracking its progress, does Smash 3DS diappoint? Turns out: not at all! I've been having a total blast playing this one, beating every game mode and collecting all the trophies and songs and stuff. The best part though is playing online against friends! It's a lot of fun to smash online, but I tend to play so hard that my circle pad's broken off a few times, whoops! Game's intense, what can I say? But really, high marks for this one, it's so awesome. Honestly one of my favorite games I've played this year. Now all I gotta get is the Wii U version! >: D And that's about it! Still didn't get a chance to play Shovel Knight this year, but with any luck that'll change in 2015.
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