Well, after some thought, I decided to give a hearty "meh" and put Disgaea down for a while. I've finally, finally got to play with my new toy, a PS3 (I've been current exactly twice when it comes to video games, yuck it up.)
Being an RPG specialist and a Lord of the Harvest, I picked up Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. It been a while since I've played a game that let me feel like a total badass within ten minutes of firing a game up. No picking an archetype and being stuck with, no sir! Right off the bat you can smack the unworthy with big swords, get all stabbytown with daggers, and fling fireballs of blazing doom upon those that displease you. I plan to get as close as I can get to being a Magitek Commando, and lay waste with whatever tools I see fit at any given moment.
I tell you, the forces of badness are in a great deal of trouble. They shall fall in their multitudes, releasing the wonderful, wonderful shinies, then they have permission to die.
Gadflow, you're in for it now!
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Where Grinding Is A Pleasure
Why, spambots, why is this crap so much fun? Tell me!
I've poured over 70 hours into Disgaea: Hour of Darkness now. That's more than enough to make pretty much any non-Nippon Ichi SRPG cry and give you its lunch money. And I'm not even close to done with the main storyline yet, much less the grindfest insanity of the bonus content.
Maybe I'm just not grinding efficiently enough. It took me a while to realize I need to be using grind-focused specialists to get going (Armsmasters, Statisticians, and to a lesser extent Managers), and got a bit too hung up on grabbing and taming them in low-level loot to realize that I was leaving the higher-level stuff alone. This resulted in me wasting time farming really crappy mooks. While this can be entertaining, my agri-combine of death just really wasn't getting any better at harvesting the unworthy. All of this was a bit exacerbated by my horrible little habit of playing stuff late at night, after a full shift at work; I simply wasn't registering that things weren't being done just right.
But, hopefully, I've corrected the flaw in my plan, and now the Harvest has gotten a good jump-start. Soon, the foolish enemy hordes will be laid waste, and their shinies will serve to fuel further conquests.
Final Fantasy Legend 2 is also proceeding fairly well. There are some hiccups, but nothing that I didn't anticipate, really. The biggest problem is that stat growth can be influenced by character actions, but still has a large degree of randomness. You can sit there and grind for a good while, but never get much of anywhere (except HP boosts, usually) if the game's RNG decides it doesn't like you. Some luminous soul at Square tried to punish grinding techniques by including breakable equipment, but cash is Final Fanasy-level plentiful, so its merely annoying without the controller-breaking rage later SaGa games could induce in the unprepared. But things are going well all things considered. I managed to get through the first real boss fight without getting flattened, which is a big deal for a my pack of nooblets.
In any case, things are going fairly well overall. We shall see how much they progress, and hopefully I can put Disgaea to bed soon. Then the Reckoning begins!
I've poured over 70 hours into Disgaea: Hour of Darkness now. That's more than enough to make pretty much any non-Nippon Ichi SRPG cry and give you its lunch money. And I'm not even close to done with the main storyline yet, much less the grindfest insanity of the bonus content.
Maybe I'm just not grinding efficiently enough. It took me a while to realize I need to be using grind-focused specialists to get going (Armsmasters, Statisticians, and to a lesser extent Managers), and got a bit too hung up on grabbing and taming them in low-level loot to realize that I was leaving the higher-level stuff alone. This resulted in me wasting time farming really crappy mooks. While this can be entertaining, my agri-combine of death just really wasn't getting any better at harvesting the unworthy. All of this was a bit exacerbated by my horrible little habit of playing stuff late at night, after a full shift at work; I simply wasn't registering that things weren't being done just right.
But, hopefully, I've corrected the flaw in my plan, and now the Harvest has gotten a good jump-start. Soon, the foolish enemy hordes will be laid waste, and their shinies will serve to fuel further conquests.
Final Fantasy Legend 2 is also proceeding fairly well. There are some hiccups, but nothing that I didn't anticipate, really. The biggest problem is that stat growth can be influenced by character actions, but still has a large degree of randomness. You can sit there and grind for a good while, but never get much of anywhere (except HP boosts, usually) if the game's RNG decides it doesn't like you. Some luminous soul at Square tried to punish grinding techniques by including breakable equipment, but cash is Final Fanasy-level plentiful, so its merely annoying without the controller-breaking rage later SaGa games could induce in the unprepared. But things are going well all things considered. I managed to get through the first real boss fight without getting flattened, which is a big deal for a my pack of nooblets.
In any case, things are going fairly well overall. We shall see how much they progress, and hopefully I can put Disgaea to bed soon. Then the Reckoning begins!
Friday, December 25, 2015
I Get Sweet Swag
And all I'm doing is playing with the coffee cup that stirs stuff by itself. Whirr...
Honestly, I went out of my to not ask for much, but everybody got offended that I asked for things that we're games and movies and stuff. Go figure. Wound up making a second list because of it.
But anyway, the more things change, the more they stay the same indeed. Today, I wound up with something that I plan to treasure properly this time: a working copy of Final Fantasy Legend II.
This, this, was the game that sparked everything for me. I was 12 or 13, maybe even younger. I had played the hell out of Mario and early Zelda and other stuff, and somebody let me borrow a copy of this weird little game, it had numbers and static combat screens and incredibly boring overworld maps and stuff, stuff that most kids turned up their noses at. But it got plugged into the old grey brick and the magic happened.
It had a little of everything. You could make a party of four from humans, mutants (updated later to espers, but still just JRPG-flavored elves), robots(!), and monsters (Protip: one human, one mutant, one robot, and one monster for maximum awesomeness). You got to tear around use all sorts of weapons and slaughter a ridiculous amount of mooks and monsters. You could seriously equip a damn tank and fight gods with it. Pick a pantheon, by the way. Chances are good you fought a member of it at some point. You got to hear some the best stuff to ever be pumped out of a Game Boy's speakers ever. This game was Kenji Ito's first big break (yes, that Kenji Ito), and it shows. It even had serious longevity and world-building. It had all sorts of worlds and dungeons to explore. Granted, the GB-level limitations and old-school tilesets made things kinda samey, but everything managed to have a bit of a different flavor anyway. I seriously can just keep fanboying and expounding for a least a few more paragraphs.
Yes, I know this actually SaGa 2, and all the inherent problems that SaGa games have are very much present. But it was and is still very much old-school JRPG awesomesauce. It triggered my nerdy specialty, and even now I focus on them numbers and the party-building and all that good stuff. It would lead into Final Fantasy VI, RoboTrek, Chrono Trigger, and these would cement a special basement-shaped place into my nerdy li'l heart.
But now, it is confession time. I loved this game all to pieces, and played the snot out of it--but I never manged to beat the game without cheating. I could tear my way all the way to the final boss, but the damn thing kicked my ass constantly and consistently. It would take three years later and a Game Genie to be able to actually see the end credits and put the game to bed. It's one of those dumb little things that shouldn't be nagging me (even using the GG didn't erase the challenge, just gave me the fighting chance I needed), especially since I was kinda, y'know, a kid. But it quietly stayed in the back of my head for a long time now. I can claim all sorts of JRPGs on my Kill list, and all of them without cheat codes or hacks or anything. But this one stayed on the Cheat list.
But here I am now, twenty years later, and the time is nigh. I plugged it into my GBA, flipped the switch, and it all came back to me. I very much recognize that it's an incredibly childish thing to get all riled up over, but there it is. No longer am I the little asthmatic fresh from beating Mario Land 2 the umpteenth time; I am Wulfe Luer, the guy who could beat Wiegraf in Final Fantasy Tactics without super grinding or cheating (Protip: the much-maligned Lancer class is the key to making him your bitch). I am Wulfe Luer, that tore through all sorts of RPG-flavored insanity and asked for more. And I will. Not. Be. Denied!
There it is. It has all come full circle now. I'm a grown-ass man, with a full-time job, grown-ass bills, and other grown-ass problems, and I'm getting agitated over a 20-year old Game Boy game. It's hilarious. Hello, Dork Side, I've missed you.
The time is come, and I shall use all the (legit) method at my disposal, and soon, the Harvest shall be visited upon the pixellated forces of badness once again. Arsenal, your end is nigh!
Honestly, I went out of my to not ask for much, but everybody got offended that I asked for things that we're games and movies and stuff. Go figure. Wound up making a second list because of it.
But anyway, the more things change, the more they stay the same indeed. Today, I wound up with something that I plan to treasure properly this time: a working copy of Final Fantasy Legend II.
This, this, was the game that sparked everything for me. I was 12 or 13, maybe even younger. I had played the hell out of Mario and early Zelda and other stuff, and somebody let me borrow a copy of this weird little game, it had numbers and static combat screens and incredibly boring overworld maps and stuff, stuff that most kids turned up their noses at. But it got plugged into the old grey brick and the magic happened.
It had a little of everything. You could make a party of four from humans, mutants (updated later to espers, but still just JRPG-flavored elves), robots(!), and monsters (Protip: one human, one mutant, one robot, and one monster for maximum awesomeness). You got to tear around use all sorts of weapons and slaughter a ridiculous amount of mooks and monsters. You could seriously equip a damn tank and fight gods with it. Pick a pantheon, by the way. Chances are good you fought a member of it at some point. You got to hear some the best stuff to ever be pumped out of a Game Boy's speakers ever. This game was Kenji Ito's first big break (yes, that Kenji Ito), and it shows. It even had serious longevity and world-building. It had all sorts of worlds and dungeons to explore. Granted, the GB-level limitations and old-school tilesets made things kinda samey, but everything managed to have a bit of a different flavor anyway. I seriously can just keep fanboying and expounding for a least a few more paragraphs.
Yes, I know this actually SaGa 2, and all the inherent problems that SaGa games have are very much present. But it was and is still very much old-school JRPG awesomesauce. It triggered my nerdy specialty, and even now I focus on them numbers and the party-building and all that good stuff. It would lead into Final Fantasy VI, RoboTrek, Chrono Trigger, and these would cement a special basement-shaped place into my nerdy li'l heart.
But now, it is confession time. I loved this game all to pieces, and played the snot out of it--but I never manged to beat the game without cheating. I could tear my way all the way to the final boss, but the damn thing kicked my ass constantly and consistently. It would take three years later and a Game Genie to be able to actually see the end credits and put the game to bed. It's one of those dumb little things that shouldn't be nagging me (even using the GG didn't erase the challenge, just gave me the fighting chance I needed), especially since I was kinda, y'know, a kid. But it quietly stayed in the back of my head for a long time now. I can claim all sorts of JRPGs on my Kill list, and all of them without cheat codes or hacks or anything. But this one stayed on the Cheat list.
But here I am now, twenty years later, and the time is nigh. I plugged it into my GBA, flipped the switch, and it all came back to me. I very much recognize that it's an incredibly childish thing to get all riled up over, but there it is. No longer am I the little asthmatic fresh from beating Mario Land 2 the umpteenth time; I am Wulfe Luer, the guy who could beat Wiegraf in Final Fantasy Tactics without super grinding or cheating (Protip: the much-maligned Lancer class is the key to making him your bitch). I am Wulfe Luer, that tore through all sorts of RPG-flavored insanity and asked for more. And I will. Not. Be. Denied!
There it is. It has all come full circle now. I'm a grown-ass man, with a full-time job, grown-ass bills, and other grown-ass problems, and I'm getting agitated over a 20-year old Game Boy game. It's hilarious. Hello, Dork Side, I've missed you.
The time is come, and I shall use all the (legit) method at my disposal, and soon, the Harvest shall be visited upon the pixellated forces of badness once again. Arsenal, your end is nigh!
Monday, December 21, 2015
The Force Is Meh With This One
The Force has awakened, but like most of its fans, really could use some caffeine.
I'll try not to include spoilers except the following major ones: there's plenty of flashy death, badass military hardware, and Threepio has been marked as the evil he is with a red arm.
It's not terrible, or even bad, honestly. The effects and acting is actually pretty well done. There is a fair bit of awkwardness here and there, but nothings that actually detracts from the movie. I will say there is a certain scene that makes all the "I am your father" jokes funny on a whole new level.
But its not particularly great either, to be sure. It felt like a fairly rehashed collection of plot elements, mixed with a bit of serial escalation. Yes, that thing on the poster is what it looks like, by the way.
Ooh, the hardware. Somebody figured out that people like custom paint jobs and evolving the vehicles as time goes on. There's probably a lot of griping about how everything looks like an Apple product, but its a lot more toned down compared to a certain pair of abominations that stand as insults to Trekkie-kind. It's all very flashy and awesome, but it doesn't try to overwhelm you with everything and fry your eyeballs. The weapons are awesome without being anime-level ludicrous. Iconic stuff like the X-Wings and TIEs have been updated and redone without looking completely unfamiliar. It's all like a big level up, but still very much Star Wars.
I won't go into the characters and story, since its all very spoiler-y right now. Possibly a few months down the road, once the fanbois have stopped spontaneously combusting. In the meantime we will return to our regularly unscheduled ramblings.
I'll try not to include spoilers except the following major ones: there's plenty of flashy death, badass military hardware, and Threepio has been marked as the evil he is with a red arm.
It's not terrible, or even bad, honestly. The effects and acting is actually pretty well done. There is a fair bit of awkwardness here and there, but nothings that actually detracts from the movie. I will say there is a certain scene that makes all the "I am your father" jokes funny on a whole new level.
But its not particularly great either, to be sure. It felt like a fairly rehashed collection of plot elements, mixed with a bit of serial escalation. Yes, that thing on the poster is what it looks like, by the way.
Ooh, the hardware. Somebody figured out that people like custom paint jobs and evolving the vehicles as time goes on. There's probably a lot of griping about how everything looks like an Apple product, but its a lot more toned down compared to a certain pair of abominations that stand as insults to Trekkie-kind. It's all very flashy and awesome, but it doesn't try to overwhelm you with everything and fry your eyeballs. The weapons are awesome without being anime-level ludicrous. Iconic stuff like the X-Wings and TIEs have been updated and redone without looking completely unfamiliar. It's all like a big level up, but still very much Star Wars.
I won't go into the characters and story, since its all very spoiler-y right now. Possibly a few months down the road, once the fanbois have stopped spontaneously combusting. In the meantime we will return to our regularly unscheduled ramblings.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Death By Penguin
Well, penguin-like suits that have souls stuffed in them. Wonder if somebody at NIS decided to take fursuiting to its explosive conclusion. Damn things are still really funny, though.
In any case, the Harvest continues! Thanks to the wonders of Disgaea's Transmigration mechanic, my party grows ever closer to becoming the ideal meat-mulching agri-combine of death. And thanks to the item world (now affectionately called Lootception), the doom train is being fueled by the constant influx of wonderful, wonderful shinies. The game is still fairly challenging, and the quirkiness of the games setting and characters are still very much entertaining. NIS really did a wonderful thing, and this is probably the closest thing we'll ever have to Munchkin: The Video Game. You tear about murderizing various idiots and freaks and steal their stuff, then run back to home base to bribe the government into giving you better abilities, more powerful classes, and extra glittery shinies to plunder. And everybody thinks that its totally awesome!
In slightly related news, all sorts of new goodies have managed to find their way here, and hopefully the Harvest will continue in all new places and forms.
In any case, the Harvest continues! Thanks to the wonders of Disgaea's Transmigration mechanic, my party grows ever closer to becoming the ideal meat-mulching agri-combine of death. And thanks to the item world (now affectionately called Lootception), the doom train is being fueled by the constant influx of wonderful, wonderful shinies. The game is still fairly challenging, and the quirkiness of the games setting and characters are still very much entertaining. NIS really did a wonderful thing, and this is probably the closest thing we'll ever have to Munchkin: The Video Game. You tear about murderizing various idiots and freaks and steal their stuff, then run back to home base to bribe the government into giving you better abilities, more powerful classes, and extra glittery shinies to plunder. And everybody thinks that its totally awesome!
In slightly related news, all sorts of new goodies have managed to find their way here, and hopefully the Harvest will continue in all new places and forms.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Grinding Has Never Been So Much Fun
Well, since somebody is staring at my stuff...
Yes, I'm still tearing through Disgaea like it's going out of style (not that it was ever in style to begin with.)
Yes, I'm still having an inexplicable blast doing so. It's actually fairy disconcerting. I very literally spent three days worth of gaming time grinding up some items so I can steal a damn horse wiener.
Outside of Disgaea and certain fetish groups, I doubt that's much of a goal that people set.
It's become a cliche, how JRPGs (short for Just Repeated Power Grinding or Japan Roves Proronged Grinding) have gotten us accustomed to the chore of power-leveling and farming drops and such like for decades now. Semi-hardcore types like myself have been developing techniques to handle the chore just as long. It's become a joke. Sometimes its fairly painless, sometimes its pointlessly laborious, sometimes you get a game in the genre that will punish you for ever trying (I'm looking at you Romancing SaGa). But here's a game that took the idea of stubbornly slogging through levels in the name of the inner muchkin and...
...Made it fun! It takes all the wild (and vicious) randomness of procedurally generated levels of loot from rougelikes, tossed in a liberal helping of brainiac grid-based tactic gameplay, and then brought in some epic-level wackiness to spice things up. Why I didn't latch onto this series will be a mystery for the ages.
Well, that's enough gushing for now. Under the circumstances, expect more rampant fanboyism about this game for good few weeks. Hopefully I will some have slightly more coherent stuff as well. Until then, The Harvest will continue!
Yes, I'm still tearing through Disgaea like it's going out of style (not that it was ever in style to begin with.)
Yes, I'm still having an inexplicable blast doing so. It's actually fairy disconcerting. I very literally spent three days worth of gaming time grinding up some items so I can steal a damn horse wiener.
Outside of Disgaea and certain fetish groups, I doubt that's much of a goal that people set.
It's become a cliche, how JRPGs (short for Just Repeated Power Grinding or Japan Roves Proronged Grinding) have gotten us accustomed to the chore of power-leveling and farming drops and such like for decades now. Semi-hardcore types like myself have been developing techniques to handle the chore just as long. It's become a joke. Sometimes its fairly painless, sometimes its pointlessly laborious, sometimes you get a game in the genre that will punish you for ever trying (I'm looking at you Romancing SaGa). But here's a game that took the idea of stubbornly slogging through levels in the name of the inner muchkin and...
...Made it fun! It takes all the wild (and vicious) randomness of procedurally generated levels of loot from rougelikes, tossed in a liberal helping of brainiac grid-based tactic gameplay, and then brought in some epic-level wackiness to spice things up. Why I didn't latch onto this series will be a mystery for the ages.
Well, that's enough gushing for now. Under the circumstances, expect more rampant fanboyism about this game for good few weeks. Hopefully I will some have slightly more coherent stuff as well. Until then, The Harvest will continue!
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Plundering The Countryside
Ha, you're still not rid of me yet!
I've been making strides in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. It's still pretty fun so far. The most fun part so far is still very much the Item World. I still get a kick out what really comes across as what happens when you stick Diablo-style random loot dungeon crawling into a grid-based SRPG. What really pulls it over the top is that you take the goodies you earn in the item world and jump into their item world and get even more loot and jump into their item worlds. Screw Candy Crush, this is the proper way to waste time! It gets even better since you also level up the stats of the item you're working through, and hunt down "specialists" that act much like, say, Diablo III's gems.
All of this is a wonderful sideshow to some of the best SRPG goodness I've ever been exposed to. The mechanics are pretty solid. I'm honestly none-too-pleased with not getting an in-battle revival mechanic, but that is very much small potatoes to just being able to mass heal and rez your dudes after battle. I'm something of a softie when it comes to my mooks, so throwing out permadeath is always a plus for me. I also love how Disgaea is happy to throw big swarms of baddies at me. Twenty-plus enemy groups? The Harvest Cometh for thee!
Another plus is that in addition to the fun main characters, the generic units are also very characterful and enjoyable. Thanks to the joys of random name generators, I wound up with a ninja named Konga, and promptly gave him an axe (as opposed to the recommended fist). So has begun the grand saga of Konga The Axe Ninja! When he's not part of my agri-combine of death, cleaving the unworthy in twain, he's in charge of turning trees into those logs that other, lesser, ninja use for those substitution-dodge stunts they like. Another fun head-canon is the duo of Jaccard and Oscar, my thief and ranger that tear about filling the air with lead and plundering the place, while yelling like maniacs. Now you see while I hate permadeath in video games?
In any case, you people will have the displeasure of hearing me natter on at length about this game again soon enough. You will also hear me bewail the fact that someone was foolish enough to give me a PS3 for my birthday, and even more countrysides will learn what it is to meet The Harvest!
I've been making strides in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. It's still pretty fun so far. The most fun part so far is still very much the Item World. I still get a kick out what really comes across as what happens when you stick Diablo-style random loot dungeon crawling into a grid-based SRPG. What really pulls it over the top is that you take the goodies you earn in the item world and jump into their item world and get even more loot and jump into their item worlds. Screw Candy Crush, this is the proper way to waste time! It gets even better since you also level up the stats of the item you're working through, and hunt down "specialists" that act much like, say, Diablo III's gems.
All of this is a wonderful sideshow to some of the best SRPG goodness I've ever been exposed to. The mechanics are pretty solid. I'm honestly none-too-pleased with not getting an in-battle revival mechanic, but that is very much small potatoes to just being able to mass heal and rez your dudes after battle. I'm something of a softie when it comes to my mooks, so throwing out permadeath is always a plus for me. I also love how Disgaea is happy to throw big swarms of baddies at me. Twenty-plus enemy groups? The Harvest Cometh for thee!
Another plus is that in addition to the fun main characters, the generic units are also very characterful and enjoyable. Thanks to the joys of random name generators, I wound up with a ninja named Konga, and promptly gave him an axe (as opposed to the recommended fist). So has begun the grand saga of Konga The Axe Ninja! When he's not part of my agri-combine of death, cleaving the unworthy in twain, he's in charge of turning trees into those logs that other, lesser, ninja use for those substitution-dodge stunts they like. Another fun head-canon is the duo of Jaccard and Oscar, my thief and ranger that tear about filling the air with lead and plundering the place, while yelling like maniacs. Now you see while I hate permadeath in video games?
In any case, you people will have the displeasure of hearing me natter on at length about this game again soon enough. You will also hear me bewail the fact that someone was foolish enough to give me a PS3 for my birthday, and even more countrysides will learn what it is to meet The Harvest!
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Lootception
So...
I started on Disgaea, and holy crap is that a new ride. I've played my share of grid-y, gritty tactical RPGs over the years, and while there was plenty of pixellated badass to be enjoyed, there was also a great deal of darkness. They weren't the darkest overall genre by any means, but sometimes it really just felt like they were trying to borrow Warhammer Fantasy's grimness without the over-the-top qualities that made things great. Nobody remember that Warhammer (and Warhammer 40,000) deliberately took things to absurb amounts of grim to where it was actually funny; kinda like if the Monty Python bunch went through a goth phase. I didn't quite burn out on them, but it did kinda get samey and boring after a while.
But damn, here's a game that I wished I picked up a lot sooner. Disgaea just takes that grimdarkness is grim, and converts it to utter whackiness! There's plenty of dark themes floating about, but what it really comes down too is that you're running an army of slapstick anime demons and other ridiculous freaks as they tear about and pillage the weak and learn about love and smash evil(er) and stuff.
There's all sorts of craziness to be had; so much so that I don't have time to delve into it for now. But one of my favorite new addictions is the Item World. If you're like me and live under a rock, here's the lowdown: Every item in the game has a pocket dimension called an Item World. In gameplay terms, this translates into a series of ten or more randomly generated floors. And we're really talking random, here. You can have small little cakewalk maps with a few mooks, to scary maps with tons of nasty effects that wind up being as close to 3-d Space Hulk as you can get with cutest sprites. Complete ten floors, and you power up the item considerably. There's a good few more details than this, but the thing I really want to cover is that while you're down there, the game's standard approach to loot still applies. While you're upgrading your loot, you can (and often will) come away with even more loot, which will have it's own Item Worlds to explore and pillage.
Seriously, you wind up with an infinite fractal of looting and upgrading going on, and it can suck you in if you're not careful. Forget Candy Crush or Tetris, this is a serious brain-sucking fruitopia of gaming goodness! How the in-game economy functions at all it beyond me...
I started on Disgaea, and holy crap is that a new ride. I've played my share of grid-y, gritty tactical RPGs over the years, and while there was plenty of pixellated badass to be enjoyed, there was also a great deal of darkness. They weren't the darkest overall genre by any means, but sometimes it really just felt like they were trying to borrow Warhammer Fantasy's grimness without the over-the-top qualities that made things great. Nobody remember that Warhammer (and Warhammer 40,000) deliberately took things to absurb amounts of grim to where it was actually funny; kinda like if the Monty Python bunch went through a goth phase. I didn't quite burn out on them, but it did kinda get samey and boring after a while.
But damn, here's a game that I wished I picked up a lot sooner. Disgaea just takes that grimdarkness is grim, and converts it to utter whackiness! There's plenty of dark themes floating about, but what it really comes down too is that you're running an army of slapstick anime demons and other ridiculous freaks as they tear about and pillage the weak and learn about love and smash evil(er) and stuff.
There's all sorts of craziness to be had; so much so that I don't have time to delve into it for now. But one of my favorite new addictions is the Item World. If you're like me and live under a rock, here's the lowdown: Every item in the game has a pocket dimension called an Item World. In gameplay terms, this translates into a series of ten or more randomly generated floors. And we're really talking random, here. You can have small little cakewalk maps with a few mooks, to scary maps with tons of nasty effects that wind up being as close to 3-d Space Hulk as you can get with cutest sprites. Complete ten floors, and you power up the item considerably. There's a good few more details than this, but the thing I really want to cover is that while you're down there, the game's standard approach to loot still applies. While you're upgrading your loot, you can (and often will) come away with even more loot, which will have it's own Item Worlds to explore and pillage.
Seriously, you wind up with an infinite fractal of looting and upgrading going on, and it can suck you in if you're not careful. Forget Candy Crush or Tetris, this is a serious brain-sucking fruitopia of gaming goodness! How the in-game economy functions at all it beyond me...
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Horrible Game Idea Revisited
I submit to the spambots that I have proof that I am actually quite deranged.
I had to put the controller down since I got all in a wad over Vesperia again; damn sidequests. Managed to seme more productive things, but still was way too overstimulated to do much that was coherent.
On the 'good' side of things, it gave me an excuse to trot out a couple of old horrible ideas living in my mind. One favorite is my idea for Backcraft, an incredibly wonko RTS that mosty dealt with middle schoolers tearing about and conquering stuff with Nerf guns and Super Soakers and suchlike.
It actually got quite intricate. I worked out a rock-paper-scissors thing with foam darts, water, and melee (most wiffle bats and plastic lightsabers and such). I forgot which was which, but I think water mostly won since it had intuitive area-of-effect and sustained damage-per-second properties. See? I can't even think about middle-school hijinx without going stupid technical and kinda muchkin-ly. I have fallen to the dork side, save yourself!
There was also stuff like research trees disguised as hitting up parents for stuff like bike helmets and sports equipment. Tossing in factions that boiled down to three basic concepts. "Good kids" that tried (and failed) to be all chivalrous, getting easier access to bikes and scooters, with signature "Fine Cardboardium Armor" that 'vehicles' and buildings could use as something equivalent to regenerating shields. "Bad kids" that basically were what would happen if you'd wind up with a Mad Max/Recess crossover; their perks were things like beating up neutrals for 'lunch money' giving resource boosts, and getting 'wet' weapons to deal extra damage (soaking an old Nerf football usually results in pain). The final bunch were "Big Brothers," that were mostly basement-dwellers that decided the kiddies LARP needed work. I couldn't decide if they were going to be a playable faction, special summons/mercenaries that wrecked enemies for high cash costs, or a "boss" faction that the kids needed to ultimately unite to take down and cast back into the firey chatrooms from whence they came.
Buildings were mostly fixed playground equipment, with some ideas like the HQ being a(n eventually) badass treehouse, and you got things on the research tree by taking and holding locations. You had indoor 'dungeon of doom' scenarios that were waged in schools (increasing in complexity, resources, and lulz potential from preschools to high schools) that would likely devolve into an unholy union of Dungeon Defender and Dwarf Fortress. Big rec areas for the huge brawls, and special scenarios like both sides storming a disc golf course, having to both fight each other and dodge frisbee-chucking nutballs to capture a monument that happened to be a deactivated tank! Stealth combat raids that mostly relied on precision and minimal casualties, since if some sissy starts screaming bloody murder then everybody gets hauled inside and grounded for sneaking out of bed!
One final part of the concept was a combination bonus boss and unlockable unit, "That Nerdy Guy." As you went through the campaign, That Nerdy Guy ran an upgrade shop, and if you brought him, well, lots of nerdy things, you could use him as a one-shot super unit (with a restriction that sort of fluctuated between iterations), and engaging in an appropriately nerdy and tedious fetch-quest, you got an extra side mission where you have to take him down as a superboss, with victory putting him permanently on the roster. He had a deliberately ludicrous backstory that the Big Brothers had hailed him as a great hero, then forgot about him when they were all kids, now all he does is video games, act emo, and contribute to the delinquency of minors.
Can you tell that sometimes I just get really bored?
I had to put the controller down since I got all in a wad over Vesperia again; damn sidequests. Managed to seme more productive things, but still was way too overstimulated to do much that was coherent.
On the 'good' side of things, it gave me an excuse to trot out a couple of old horrible ideas living in my mind. One favorite is my idea for Backcraft, an incredibly wonko RTS that mosty dealt with middle schoolers tearing about and conquering stuff with Nerf guns and Super Soakers and suchlike.
It actually got quite intricate. I worked out a rock-paper-scissors thing with foam darts, water, and melee (most wiffle bats and plastic lightsabers and such). I forgot which was which, but I think water mostly won since it had intuitive area-of-effect and sustained damage-per-second properties. See? I can't even think about middle-school hijinx without going stupid technical and kinda muchkin-ly. I have fallen to the dork side, save yourself!
There was also stuff like research trees disguised as hitting up parents for stuff like bike helmets and sports equipment. Tossing in factions that boiled down to three basic concepts. "Good kids" that tried (and failed) to be all chivalrous, getting easier access to bikes and scooters, with signature "Fine Cardboardium Armor" that 'vehicles' and buildings could use as something equivalent to regenerating shields. "Bad kids" that basically were what would happen if you'd wind up with a Mad Max/Recess crossover; their perks were things like beating up neutrals for 'lunch money' giving resource boosts, and getting 'wet' weapons to deal extra damage (soaking an old Nerf football usually results in pain). The final bunch were "Big Brothers," that were mostly basement-dwellers that decided the kiddies LARP needed work. I couldn't decide if they were going to be a playable faction, special summons/mercenaries that wrecked enemies for high cash costs, or a "boss" faction that the kids needed to ultimately unite to take down and cast back into the firey chatrooms from whence they came.
Buildings were mostly fixed playground equipment, with some ideas like the HQ being a(n eventually) badass treehouse, and you got things on the research tree by taking and holding locations. You had indoor 'dungeon of doom' scenarios that were waged in schools (increasing in complexity, resources, and lulz potential from preschools to high schools) that would likely devolve into an unholy union of Dungeon Defender and Dwarf Fortress. Big rec areas for the huge brawls, and special scenarios like both sides storming a disc golf course, having to both fight each other and dodge frisbee-chucking nutballs to capture a monument that happened to be a deactivated tank! Stealth combat raids that mostly relied on precision and minimal casualties, since if some sissy starts screaming bloody murder then everybody gets hauled inside and grounded for sneaking out of bed!
One final part of the concept was a combination bonus boss and unlockable unit, "That Nerdy Guy." As you went through the campaign, That Nerdy Guy ran an upgrade shop, and if you brought him, well, lots of nerdy things, you could use him as a one-shot super unit (with a restriction that sort of fluctuated between iterations), and engaging in an appropriately nerdy and tedious fetch-quest, you got an extra side mission where you have to take him down as a superboss, with victory putting him permanently on the roster. He had a deliberately ludicrous backstory that the Big Brothers had hailed him as a great hero, then forgot about him when they were all kids, now all he does is video games, act emo, and contribute to the delinquency of minors.
Can you tell that sometimes I just get really bored?
Monday, November 9, 2015
Dwindling Vespers On The Wind
Hail again to the spambots,
It's just about there. One last dungeon, one last final boss. I'm actually a bit torn; I want to go ahead and put this game to bed since I have something like five or six more the queue, but this one has the age-old tradition of having all the really good and/or profitable sidequests only be active at the very end of the game. I know a lot of is just the designers making sure that you get the content you paid for and the prepwork you need for the finale.
It's an old frustration. I have a very bad habit of getting to this final dungeon, sometimes even up to the last boss, and just...not caring anymore and plugging in the next game. Maybe its just a very nerdy fear of commitment. You take that plunge, and either you're ready and quite satisfied at the end of the day, or you're not and you're smacked around real good or find a crappy resolution to things. Right now, I plan to buckle down and get my world-saving on.
For a while now, I've been a bit frustrated with Vesperia's sidequest, simply because they're so obtuse when it comes to trigger, and have some nasty windows of opportunity. Then I thought about it some. This game follows the proud tradition of having a "New Game Plus" mode that actually opens up some options for customizations and the like for your next playthrough. You're not meant to see all of the game on the very first playthrough! Go ahead and whiff a few things; you can get 'em next go-round.
So here's to the next playthrough. Baddies beware; my fresh batch of plucky heroes will have quite a leg up when I come back.
It's just about there. One last dungeon, one last final boss. I'm actually a bit torn; I want to go ahead and put this game to bed since I have something like five or six more the queue, but this one has the age-old tradition of having all the really good and/or profitable sidequests only be active at the very end of the game. I know a lot of is just the designers making sure that you get the content you paid for and the prepwork you need for the finale.
It's an old frustration. I have a very bad habit of getting to this final dungeon, sometimes even up to the last boss, and just...not caring anymore and plugging in the next game. Maybe its just a very nerdy fear of commitment. You take that plunge, and either you're ready and quite satisfied at the end of the day, or you're not and you're smacked around real good or find a crappy resolution to things. Right now, I plan to buckle down and get my world-saving on.
For a while now, I've been a bit frustrated with Vesperia's sidequest, simply because they're so obtuse when it comes to trigger, and have some nasty windows of opportunity. Then I thought about it some. This game follows the proud tradition of having a "New Game Plus" mode that actually opens up some options for customizations and the like for your next playthrough. You're not meant to see all of the game on the very first playthrough! Go ahead and whiff a few things; you can get 'em next go-round.
So here's to the next playthrough. Baddies beware; my fresh batch of plucky heroes will have quite a leg up when I come back.
Friday, November 6, 2015
Finally a Dragon
Hail to the spambots!
The wild ride through fantasy known as Tales of Vesperia is finally coming near its conclusion (for now anyway, all hail New Game+). I've been gathering up and harvesting the not-so-helpless wildlife for all sorts of materials, since the last third or so of the game included all the wandering around and sidequesting behavior. Gotta get them shinies!
I've finally gotten to a dungeon where the boss is a dragon. It kinda stands out, since there have been little to no signs of draconic enemies at all in the entire game thus far, despite coming from a series that tends to have all sorts of dragons tearing around and burninating the countryside. Abyss managed to keep them rare, fairly epic battles, while Legendia had a gazillion palette swaps (fire dragons, ice dragons, undead dragons, holy dragons that were powered by the sea, you name it). It got me to thinking about how this game treated its rarer critters. This dragon (spoilers) is part of a race called the Entelexia, which are quite similar to say, Final Fantasy's Espers, down to leaving a powerful magic crystal upon death, being rather noble-minded, and coming in all sorts of forms. There fairly unique in style and characterization. This games airship is actually just a small merchantman hauled by the rigging by an Entelexia that looks and acts an awful lot like The Legend of Zelda's Wind Fish.
It might be a bit too far off, but I wonder if this game is actually the Tales crew's take on Final Fantasy VI's War of The Magi, with the Tales-style storytelling and nuances tossed in. There's a fair bit of animosity on both sides, humans are grabbing apatheia (Entelexia crystals, much like FF6 magicite) to power all sorts of machines, with some bad apples using them to power weapons and war machines to Take Over The World. There's a a great many differences, but the parallels are very much present. Just a thought, and I know I'm not the first one to think of it.
In any case, let's hope that things actually come to a nice conclusion, because soon afterwards, it's like to conquer the kooky netherworlds of Disgaea!
The wild ride through fantasy known as Tales of Vesperia is finally coming near its conclusion (for now anyway, all hail New Game+). I've been gathering up and harvesting the not-so-helpless wildlife for all sorts of materials, since the last third or so of the game included all the wandering around and sidequesting behavior. Gotta get them shinies!
I've finally gotten to a dungeon where the boss is a dragon. It kinda stands out, since there have been little to no signs of draconic enemies at all in the entire game thus far, despite coming from a series that tends to have all sorts of dragons tearing around and burninating the countryside. Abyss managed to keep them rare, fairly epic battles, while Legendia had a gazillion palette swaps (fire dragons, ice dragons, undead dragons, holy dragons that were powered by the sea, you name it). It got me to thinking about how this game treated its rarer critters. This dragon (spoilers) is part of a race called the Entelexia, which are quite similar to say, Final Fantasy's Espers, down to leaving a powerful magic crystal upon death, being rather noble-minded, and coming in all sorts of forms. There fairly unique in style and characterization. This games airship is actually just a small merchantman hauled by the rigging by an Entelexia that looks and acts an awful lot like The Legend of Zelda's Wind Fish.
It might be a bit too far off, but I wonder if this game is actually the Tales crew's take on Final Fantasy VI's War of The Magi, with the Tales-style storytelling and nuances tossed in. There's a fair bit of animosity on both sides, humans are grabbing apatheia (Entelexia crystals, much like FF6 magicite) to power all sorts of machines, with some bad apples using them to power weapons and war machines to Take Over The World. There's a a great many differences, but the parallels are very much present. Just a thought, and I know I'm not the first one to think of it.
In any case, let's hope that things actually come to a nice conclusion, because soon afterwards, it's like to conquer the kooky netherworlds of Disgaea!
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
We All Know Mooks Go Whirr In The Blender
Hail the spambots yet again!
Been busy unleashing the doom upon the malevolently idiotic in Tales of Vesperia again. I have to say, being able to smack things can be quite conducive to work life.
The looting is still awesome, and actually is quietly getting even better as time goes on. Things are still very farming friendly, which means Yuri is the farmer riding the agri-combine of death, turning the world's conviently renewable supply of monsters into materials for an almost insane amount of goodies. I know I've been fanboying over this a lot, but having such a wide variety of bitz to nab and actually make things to grab more bitz with is a very big draw for me. I'm a fairly craft-centric player when it comes to my games, and when its done right it can be very refreshing.
Vesperia's combat system is very much an enjoyable experience, even a klutz like me can produce some truly amazing feats of mook-mashing and burnination. Everything is actually a joy to look at, including the various mooks and monsters. It's about as close as it gets to tearing about in an anime (excluding Ni No Kuni) as you can get on a console. Everything is actually very characterful without becoming hyper-stylized.
The monsters, as mentioned, are something to look at. While Tales has always had some interesting variations on the monsters, this bunch actually has some nifty things running around. You got killer dodos with hatchet beaks, spider-cactus things, spider-mecha gun platforms, elemental bats, giant armadillo turtle things with racing stripes, mermen that are pretty weresharks that come at you with sharpened anchors and have werenarwhal shamans. The human enemies are kinda nice too, with some interesting behaviors like standing at attention in the middle of battle, and giving the knight's magic-users light-based spells. You're fighting friggin evil paladins, and its badass.
Well, I'm finally into the final third of the game, and should be wrapping up soon. We'll see where all this craziness lead us!
Been busy unleashing the doom upon the malevolently idiotic in Tales of Vesperia again. I have to say, being able to smack things can be quite conducive to work life.
The looting is still awesome, and actually is quietly getting even better as time goes on. Things are still very farming friendly, which means Yuri is the farmer riding the agri-combine of death, turning the world's conviently renewable supply of monsters into materials for an almost insane amount of goodies. I know I've been fanboying over this a lot, but having such a wide variety of bitz to nab and actually make things to grab more bitz with is a very big draw for me. I'm a fairly craft-centric player when it comes to my games, and when its done right it can be very refreshing.
Vesperia's combat system is very much an enjoyable experience, even a klutz like me can produce some truly amazing feats of mook-mashing and burnination. Everything is actually a joy to look at, including the various mooks and monsters. It's about as close as it gets to tearing about in an anime (excluding Ni No Kuni) as you can get on a console. Everything is actually very characterful without becoming hyper-stylized.
The monsters, as mentioned, are something to look at. While Tales has always had some interesting variations on the monsters, this bunch actually has some nifty things running around. You got killer dodos with hatchet beaks, spider-cactus things, spider-mecha gun platforms, elemental bats, giant armadillo turtle things with racing stripes, mermen that are pretty weresharks that come at you with sharpened anchors and have werenarwhal shamans. The human enemies are kinda nice too, with some interesting behaviors like standing at attention in the middle of battle, and giving the knight's magic-users light-based spells. You're fighting friggin evil paladins, and its badass.
Well, I'm finally into the final third of the game, and should be wrapping up soon. We'll see where all this craziness lead us!
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
The Harvest Cometh!
Like a targ, vengeance awakens hungry after a sleep...
Yes, I'm unleashing doom upon the poor mooks in Tales of Vesperia. Yes, its still awesome. Most of the bosses can still go to hell, though.
Its actually been fairly refreshing to find a game that actually rewards going out there and hunting down materials like crazy. Legendia shouldn't have bothered, and Abyss...well, it was somewhat rewarding, but you really needed multiple playthroughs or a guide to get stuff without going comepletely crazy. Did you know you can get capacity core and herbs in the trading/crafting system for Abyss? Good luck getting more than a couple without Disgaea-level farming and twinking! At least the bitz were fairly flavorful.
Vesperia's system is fairly spot-on. You get materials from critters, plus search points that refresh at certain times. Everything can go in a useful recipe, which are unlocked as time and practice continue without much hassle. Enemies actually can make multiple drops (!) plus one extra goodie via stealing. All three methods from Abyss (drops, stealing, and harvesting) are far easier and more rewarding in Vesperia, and crafting materials pile up pretty damn fast if you apply basic farming techniques. Bosses also tend to have rare, if not outright unique, material drops that can make some pretty rad stuff.
I still have some minor quibbles about getting (presumably) refined metal armor and weapons and such from (presumably) organic monster parts. How does it work? Alchemical trasmutation? Do we take pre-existing stuff and just somehow infuse the materials' properties into it? Caramelldansen? The second idea is probably the closest, since you can upgrade weapons by adding materials to pre-existing ones.
In any case, this stuff is pretty awesome. Going out there and hunting down things to make the shinies with is actually pretty damn fun, and is a great breathing exercise when you don't feel like tearing your way through the story line. Mooks beware! The time of the Bitz Harvest is upon you!
Yes, I'm unleashing doom upon the poor mooks in Tales of Vesperia. Yes, its still awesome. Most of the bosses can still go to hell, though.
Its actually been fairly refreshing to find a game that actually rewards going out there and hunting down materials like crazy. Legendia shouldn't have bothered, and Abyss...well, it was somewhat rewarding, but you really needed multiple playthroughs or a guide to get stuff without going comepletely crazy. Did you know you can get capacity core and herbs in the trading/crafting system for Abyss? Good luck getting more than a couple without Disgaea-level farming and twinking! At least the bitz were fairly flavorful.
Vesperia's system is fairly spot-on. You get materials from critters, plus search points that refresh at certain times. Everything can go in a useful recipe, which are unlocked as time and practice continue without much hassle. Enemies actually can make multiple drops (!) plus one extra goodie via stealing. All three methods from Abyss (drops, stealing, and harvesting) are far easier and more rewarding in Vesperia, and crafting materials pile up pretty damn fast if you apply basic farming techniques. Bosses also tend to have rare, if not outright unique, material drops that can make some pretty rad stuff.
I still have some minor quibbles about getting (presumably) refined metal armor and weapons and such from (presumably) organic monster parts. How does it work? Alchemical trasmutation? Do we take pre-existing stuff and just somehow infuse the materials' properties into it? Caramelldansen? The second idea is probably the closest, since you can upgrade weapons by adding materials to pre-existing ones.
In any case, this stuff is pretty awesome. Going out there and hunting down things to make the shinies with is actually pretty damn fun, and is a great breathing exercise when you don't feel like tearing your way through the story line. Mooks beware! The time of the Bitz Harvest is upon you!
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Fixing Loot Tables
Huzzah and mockery upon the spambots!
Things are looking up in the shinies department. Tales of Vesperia is actually coming along nicely, especially in the loot department. Namco Bandai managed to fix their little problems. The crafting system is intuitive and fun to learn, and collecting the materials for it is much easier than in my previous Tales experiences. Learning from the dearth of Abyss, enemies now typically have several possible drops that can came simultaneously, plus a decided majority have stealables this time around as well.
Most of the drops and steables are crafting materials for the games Synthesis system. This newer system is present much more clearly, and is accessible very early. It is also rebalanced to where you can't just nab late-game loot right out the gate, but it still rewards gathering up materials in quantity.
A much more amusing aspect of the whole thing is that your party's stealing and major item duties are carried out by Repede the ninja dog of awesomeness. He goes stabbytown on mooks and doesn't afraid of anything! That's right, we have a dog that comes after you with knives and loots the corpse afterwards.
That's all for the moment, but more looting and hijinks are forthcoming!
Things are looking up in the shinies department. Tales of Vesperia is actually coming along nicely, especially in the loot department. Namco Bandai managed to fix their little problems. The crafting system is intuitive and fun to learn, and collecting the materials for it is much easier than in my previous Tales experiences. Learning from the dearth of Abyss, enemies now typically have several possible drops that can came simultaneously, plus a decided majority have stealables this time around as well.
Most of the drops and steables are crafting materials for the games Synthesis system. This newer system is present much more clearly, and is accessible very early. It is also rebalanced to where you can't just nab late-game loot right out the gate, but it still rewards gathering up materials in quantity.
A much more amusing aspect of the whole thing is that your party's stealing and major item duties are carried out by Repede the ninja dog of awesomeness. He goes stabbytown on mooks and doesn't afraid of anything! That's right, we have a dog that comes after you with knives and loots the corpse afterwards.
That's all for the moment, but more looting and hijinks are forthcoming!
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Wrecked a Hippie Van
HaHA! The spambots are still not keeping me down!
Tales of the Abyss is now on my kill list. It's been a wild ride, I can tell you. I've decided to give some of my post-victory thoughts on things.
The Good
Abyss actually has some of the best battle mechanics I've seen, even considering I've played a fair few games that are a console generation or two ahead now. We get the usual big six elements, plus lots of special moves to keep things interesting. The monsters are fair bit more varied than I've usually seen, with a standout concept being golems powered by music. The critters do get repetitive after a while, but that's par for the course for an RPG anyway.
The characters are actually fairly interestingwith a standout being Jade Curtiss, the resident king of snark and the closest thing Japan has come to Raistlin McAwesomesauce yet. eh burninates monsters and doesn't afraid of anything! The rest have your usual mix of cliches, but with some interesting takes on them. The white mage chick is also a tough-fronted soldier, the best friend swore an oath to kill the main character out of revenge (and is secret buddies with the Big Bad Evil Guy), the kid is a foulmouthed gold-digger, the team critter is a punching bag, the fun goes on. The baddies are fairly interesting, too. And it was amazing how much mileage you got from the bad guy asking "Luke, join me!" for once. I'm not kidding.
The Bad
Unfortunately, Team Evil's characterizations are somewhat gimped near the end, with several of the God-Generals (the main minions) really dying pointlessly. The game does acknowledge the inherent futility for some, but a couple really come across as just plain dumb deaths. Dist, the resident mad kook, really just dies like a bitch for no reason at all. You wreck his latest mech, he decides to hit a self-destruct switch and whine at Jade, boom. Everybody else at least can be said to die for Van's cause and beliefs, but he just plain sissies out, when he could have just bailed and come back to plague us again later. URGH!
There really isn't much else to complain about, except for a glitch or two (found one that can freeze the game in the final battle today), which I've come to expect from PS2-era Namco. Nobody's perfect. There is a minor problem, which for a loot-aholic like me is fairly bad, though...
The Shiny
...The drop and crafting mechanics. I've already covered the weird ordering system in a previous post, but the drops are really plain annoying. Maybe half of the enemies in the game drop any items at all, and less drop trade goods. An infuriating frosting on the crap cake is that this game a very serviceable stealing mechanic, which is even more gimped at something close to a third or less of enemies having stealables. Fortunately, there are only two steal-exclusive items in the game, both of which are from bosses and have 1-in-2 success rates. Even more fortunately, this game come with 'search points' which are easy to farm, and with a few sidequests, can yield what you need to get all sorts of goodies.
The goodies themselves, hoo boy. An experienced player will find all sorts of shinies, especially with some focus farming and a bit of luck. I've found mentions of exploiting a glitch to get a late-game weapon, but why bother with bugs when you can nab even better stuff just a little bit later with some patience. You get your usual collection of weapons and armor, with helmets relegated to accessory status (one accessory per character, by the way), some of which can be quite interesting. Worth particular mention are the Fonic Catalysts, which seem like restyled variations on Soul Calibur and Soul Edge (the dark aligned ones have this creepy breathing animation), and the end-game Fonic gear, that presumably also run of the power of magic music. The Fonic sword is actually a sound-powered lightsaber! Another honorable mention is Ultimatus, a sword presumably related to the Fonic gear that is possessed by a kickass amalgam of Nightmare/Inferno from Soul Calibur and Final Fantasy's Gilgamesh. Put these suckers in a crossover against Elder Scrolls draugr for maximum metal!
Well, the campaign has drawn to a close, and it's almost time to chase the brightest star in the sky...
Tales of the Abyss is now on my kill list. It's been a wild ride, I can tell you. I've decided to give some of my post-victory thoughts on things.
The Good
Abyss actually has some of the best battle mechanics I've seen, even considering I've played a fair few games that are a console generation or two ahead now. We get the usual big six elements, plus lots of special moves to keep things interesting. The monsters are fair bit more varied than I've usually seen, with a standout concept being golems powered by music. The critters do get repetitive after a while, but that's par for the course for an RPG anyway.
The characters are actually fairly interestingwith a standout being Jade Curtiss, the resident king of snark and the closest thing Japan has come to Raistlin McAwesomesauce yet. eh burninates monsters and doesn't afraid of anything! The rest have your usual mix of cliches, but with some interesting takes on them. The white mage chick is also a tough-fronted soldier, the best friend swore an oath to kill the main character out of revenge (and is secret buddies with the Big Bad Evil Guy), the kid is a foulmouthed gold-digger, the team critter is a punching bag, the fun goes on. The baddies are fairly interesting, too. And it was amazing how much mileage you got from the bad guy asking "Luke, join me!" for once. I'm not kidding.
The Bad
Unfortunately, Team Evil's characterizations are somewhat gimped near the end, with several of the God-Generals (the main minions) really dying pointlessly. The game does acknowledge the inherent futility for some, but a couple really come across as just plain dumb deaths. Dist, the resident mad kook, really just dies like a bitch for no reason at all. You wreck his latest mech, he decides to hit a self-destruct switch and whine at Jade, boom. Everybody else at least can be said to die for Van's cause and beliefs, but he just plain sissies out, when he could have just bailed and come back to plague us again later. URGH!
There really isn't much else to complain about, except for a glitch or two (found one that can freeze the game in the final battle today), which I've come to expect from PS2-era Namco. Nobody's perfect. There is a minor problem, which for a loot-aholic like me is fairly bad, though...
The Shiny
...The drop and crafting mechanics. I've already covered the weird ordering system in a previous post, but the drops are really plain annoying. Maybe half of the enemies in the game drop any items at all, and less drop trade goods. An infuriating frosting on the crap cake is that this game a very serviceable stealing mechanic, which is even more gimped at something close to a third or less of enemies having stealables. Fortunately, there are only two steal-exclusive items in the game, both of which are from bosses and have 1-in-2 success rates. Even more fortunately, this game come with 'search points' which are easy to farm, and with a few sidequests, can yield what you need to get all sorts of goodies.
The goodies themselves, hoo boy. An experienced player will find all sorts of shinies, especially with some focus farming and a bit of luck. I've found mentions of exploiting a glitch to get a late-game weapon, but why bother with bugs when you can nab even better stuff just a little bit later with some patience. You get your usual collection of weapons and armor, with helmets relegated to accessory status (one accessory per character, by the way), some of which can be quite interesting. Worth particular mention are the Fonic Catalysts, which seem like restyled variations on Soul Calibur and Soul Edge (the dark aligned ones have this creepy breathing animation), and the end-game Fonic gear, that presumably also run of the power of magic music. The Fonic sword is actually a sound-powered lightsaber! Another honorable mention is Ultimatus, a sword presumably related to the Fonic gear that is possessed by a kickass amalgam of Nightmare/Inferno from Soul Calibur and Final Fantasy's Gilgamesh. Put these suckers in a crossover against Elder Scrolls draugr for maximum metal!
Well, the campaign has drawn to a close, and it's almost time to chase the brightest star in the sky...
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Loot Also Gazes Into You
Such spambots, so writings.
The Abyssal Campaign is going fairly well for once. Character development has settled in all around, and now most everybody is tolerable at worst.
There are some funny things about here. We actually have sidequests that revolve around Luke, the main character, bumping into to people that have family property, and then going and getting money from dear old Mom like the little mooch he is. Mieu the Cheagle (cheagle is Japanese for Viking Care Bear by the way), is actually fairly fun to have around, at least within limits. That cutesy voice screaming "FIRE!" is still disturbingly humurous, and watching the little thing smash rocks the size of Mack trucks is almost as good. Colonel Jade McAwesomesnarks is still a bit of fresh air around all the stereotypical JRPG nuttiness going on. I've gotten him back up to his beginning stats and then some (the guy got nuked with the equivalent of say 15 Level Drains), and thanks to the miracles of Capacity Core goodness, he's pretty much Black Mage with a spear and morals now.
The trade system that stands in for crafting has grown on me some, mostly because it encourages me to go out there and farm like crazy. With a bit of know-how, the proper investment (there's a sidequest requiring 200 thousand Gald, which is a crapton of money in this game, but worth it), and just the right bit of character selection, you can start farming the high-tier shiny bits pretty damn quickly. Unfortunately, the ordering/trading system itself has too much going on 'under the hood' to really suit me, and figuring out which bits get you what item type without an FAQ can be a frustrating process. That said, you can wind up with mid-game and even late-game goodies very early if you can figure out what you're doing! And I also like it better than the token system put in place in Legendia.
The loot drops themselves...well I think they were trying to compensate the ridiculous item drops from Legendia, but they kinda took things a bit too far. It's not horrible, and I know that loot systems are very hard to balance properly, and they did a decent job keeping things from going into Monty Haul territory. The biggest complaint I really have is that they included a Final Fantasy-style stealing mechanic, which has two major flaws. The first is that stealing is linked to certain attacks through special accessories; a problem, since the attacks still hit full force, and you can very easily kill the target before you get something, assuming you actually connect. The second, and much worse, part is that relatively few monsters have anything to steal, and typically with abysmal success rates. Again, without a guide, you can't tell what monsters can be robbed without trial-and-error. This can lead to literally hours of playtime spent on smacking critters with nothing to steal without realizing there's nothing to steal. Oh, and there are plenty of monsters with neither stealables nor item drops. This is likely to compensate for both the last's game's loot showers, and this game's ordering system.
All the ranting about the relative scarcity of shinies aside, I do like how we get a nice bit of flavor text about all the items that you can get, and that we actually have a bit of variation on the usual fantastic ores, metals, and monster parts. I also like that this game actually plenty of interesting monsters and locations going for it. One can only eradicate so many goblins, zombies, and EA employees before it gets old. A fairly novel monster group is a family of golems that are actually music-powered robots. I wonder if the spiky ones are run off of metal...
Well, I need to go. Those shinies aren't going to loot themselves.
The Abyssal Campaign is going fairly well for once. Character development has settled in all around, and now most everybody is tolerable at worst.
There are some funny things about here. We actually have sidequests that revolve around Luke, the main character, bumping into to people that have family property, and then going and getting money from dear old Mom like the little mooch he is. Mieu the Cheagle (cheagle is Japanese for Viking Care Bear by the way), is actually fairly fun to have around, at least within limits. That cutesy voice screaming "FIRE!" is still disturbingly humurous, and watching the little thing smash rocks the size of Mack trucks is almost as good. Colonel Jade McAwesomesnarks is still a bit of fresh air around all the stereotypical JRPG nuttiness going on. I've gotten him back up to his beginning stats and then some (the guy got nuked with the equivalent of say 15 Level Drains), and thanks to the miracles of Capacity Core goodness, he's pretty much Black Mage with a spear and morals now.
The trade system that stands in for crafting has grown on me some, mostly because it encourages me to go out there and farm like crazy. With a bit of know-how, the proper investment (there's a sidequest requiring 200 thousand Gald, which is a crapton of money in this game, but worth it), and just the right bit of character selection, you can start farming the high-tier shiny bits pretty damn quickly. Unfortunately, the ordering/trading system itself has too much going on 'under the hood' to really suit me, and figuring out which bits get you what item type without an FAQ can be a frustrating process. That said, you can wind up with mid-game and even late-game goodies very early if you can figure out what you're doing! And I also like it better than the token system put in place in Legendia.
The loot drops themselves...well I think they were trying to compensate the ridiculous item drops from Legendia, but they kinda took things a bit too far. It's not horrible, and I know that loot systems are very hard to balance properly, and they did a decent job keeping things from going into Monty Haul territory. The biggest complaint I really have is that they included a Final Fantasy-style stealing mechanic, which has two major flaws. The first is that stealing is linked to certain attacks through special accessories; a problem, since the attacks still hit full force, and you can very easily kill the target before you get something, assuming you actually connect. The second, and much worse, part is that relatively few monsters have anything to steal, and typically with abysmal success rates. Again, without a guide, you can't tell what monsters can be robbed without trial-and-error. This can lead to literally hours of playtime spent on smacking critters with nothing to steal without realizing there's nothing to steal. Oh, and there are plenty of monsters with neither stealables nor item drops. This is likely to compensate for both the last's game's loot showers, and this game's ordering system.
All the ranting about the relative scarcity of shinies aside, I do like how we get a nice bit of flavor text about all the items that you can get, and that we actually have a bit of variation on the usual fantastic ores, metals, and monster parts. I also like that this game actually plenty of interesting monsters and locations going for it. One can only eradicate so many goblins, zombies, and EA employees before it gets old. A fairly novel monster group is a family of golems that are actually music-powered robots. I wonder if the spiky ones are run off of metal...
Well, I need to go. Those shinies aren't going to loot themselves.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
The Abyssal Campaign
Aw, not even the spambots are read my blog any more...
Anyway, I've been busy with Tales of the Abyss. It's a bit different from what I expected, mostly since I picked the black sheep of the series to begin with. But we still have plenty of old-school JRPG goodness going on in here.
My first impressions thus far have been fairly favorable thus far. The main characters are memorable in one way or another. I especially like Jade. It's been a while since I bumped into a good Neutral Snarky aligned character, and making him the kickass mad scientist black mage of doom is also awesome. They also made this guy a colonel which warms my nerdy little heart for reasons I refuse to explain to anyone that has eyes. Luke, the protagonist, is a spoiled little wretch, but is slowly getting better, and for once being spoiled doesn't affect the ability to ship things you don't like Priority Mail to Stabbytown! There are plenty of others, some are kinda cliche but not actually bad. I'm not too fond of the obligatory Rebellious Princess Natalia thus far. Civic minded or not, she could use some time in a dragon's clutches right now.
The Also Obligatory Cute Thing is...well...sometimes I can't stand him, but other times he's hilarious. When you use his map abilities, he turns into some sort of pyromaniac hooligan, a lot like what would happen if somebody cooked up Viking Care Bears. Cutesy voices screaming about fire and attacks, smoke and doom and craters everywhere, why the hell hasn't anybody wrote that fanfic yet. Viking Care Bears needs to be a thing now. He also is on the receiving end of a great line: "Shut up and drown!"
The world-building magi-babble is actually fairly well thought out for once, though granted it's mostly your standard mana/alchemy/elements system with some sound-related concepts substitutes in for material science concepts. I'm also still on the fence on the way the loot is handled, and probably will not render judgment for a good while. The trading/ordering system that replaced traditional crafting still hasn't sold itself too well thus far, especially since it seems to be weighted toward repeat playthroughs. You can get access to higher-end equipment early on with some serious farming, but intelligence gleaned from elsewhere suggests that the real goodies aren't much use until late into the game (there are very powerful moves to be unlocked here) or in New Game Plus (arguably game-breaking moves unlocked then). The loot/baddie curve is still fairly low right now, which should start accelerating later.
In any case, I must be off. Another bit of uncertainty is whether there will be a Wreckonomics post made for this game. Legendia didn't merit one, since you get showered with cash and items, and the crafting system is kind of a joke. We'll see.
Anyway, I've been busy with Tales of the Abyss. It's a bit different from what I expected, mostly since I picked the black sheep of the series to begin with. But we still have plenty of old-school JRPG goodness going on in here.
My first impressions thus far have been fairly favorable thus far. The main characters are memorable in one way or another. I especially like Jade. It's been a while since I bumped into a good Neutral Snarky aligned character, and making him the kickass mad scientist black mage of doom is also awesome. They also made this guy a colonel which warms my nerdy little heart for reasons I refuse to explain to anyone that has eyes. Luke, the protagonist, is a spoiled little wretch, but is slowly getting better, and for once being spoiled doesn't affect the ability to ship things you don't like Priority Mail to Stabbytown! There are plenty of others, some are kinda cliche but not actually bad. I'm not too fond of the obligatory Rebellious Princess Natalia thus far. Civic minded or not, she could use some time in a dragon's clutches right now.
The Also Obligatory Cute Thing is...well...sometimes I can't stand him, but other times he's hilarious. When you use his map abilities, he turns into some sort of pyromaniac hooligan, a lot like what would happen if somebody cooked up Viking Care Bears. Cutesy voices screaming about fire and attacks, smoke and doom and craters everywhere, why the hell hasn't anybody wrote that fanfic yet. Viking Care Bears needs to be a thing now. He also is on the receiving end of a great line: "Shut up and drown!"
The world-building magi-babble is actually fairly well thought out for once, though granted it's mostly your standard mana/alchemy/elements system with some sound-related concepts substitutes in for material science concepts. I'm also still on the fence on the way the loot is handled, and probably will not render judgment for a good while. The trading/ordering system that replaced traditional crafting still hasn't sold itself too well thus far, especially since it seems to be weighted toward repeat playthroughs. You can get access to higher-end equipment early on with some serious farming, but intelligence gleaned from elsewhere suggests that the real goodies aren't much use until late into the game (there are very powerful moves to be unlocked here) or in New Game Plus (arguably game-breaking moves unlocked then). The loot/baddie curve is still fairly low right now, which should start accelerating later.
In any case, I must be off. Another bit of uncertainty is whether there will be a Wreckonomics post made for this game. Legendia didn't merit one, since you get showered with cash and items, and the crafting system is kind of a joke. We'll see.
Friday, September 4, 2015
A Legendary Tale
The Interwebs are not rid of me yet, haHA!
It's been a wild ride in my personal life, but that IRL for you, eh?
In nerdy news, I managed to put Tales of Legendia on my kill list, adding another notch on the RPG belt. That was definitely a fun time. Four Stars, Would Smite Again. Hell, the ending (the actual ending, not the first one) actually got me all teary-eyed. It's been something like a decade since a game did that to me.
The combat was fun, giving me all the awesomeness of a 2D fighter while letting stats and tactics get a good role as opposed to just reflexes and fighting game skills (I suck at fighting games that aren't Soul Calibur 3), and was just fluid enough to keep me going. The story has some good twists, the characters were actually memorable (all hail Will Reynard the JRPG Muscle Wizard), the loot was plentiful, and the enemies were a hoot.
Unfortunately, the New Game Plus this game offered really didn't do much for immediate replay value, though I freely grant that later on it will be a fine catalyst for going back and thug-punching bears while Will The Awesome fries them with lightning and honking big hammer.
I was actually pleased that I found a new RPG series without having to sacrifice organs on the black market to get installments (dammit Suikoden) or live with playing less than half the series ever without controller flinging (dammit SaGa).
On a final note, there will not be a Wreckonomics post about Tales of Legendia. The cash is very plentiful, with the only notable sinks linked to the cooking system. The only real barrier is that you can only carry 15 of any given item (NG+ has options for 20 or 30 if you so choose), which is a mild inconvenience if you're like me and grab a wad of curatives when you can. I wound up having to leave full chests behind in dungeons since I had the maximum amount of Panacea Bottles very quickly, and rarely needed them to begin with.
Anyway, off to Tale of the Abyss!
It's been a wild ride in my personal life, but that IRL for you, eh?
In nerdy news, I managed to put Tales of Legendia on my kill list, adding another notch on the RPG belt. That was definitely a fun time. Four Stars, Would Smite Again. Hell, the ending (the actual ending, not the first one) actually got me all teary-eyed. It's been something like a decade since a game did that to me.
The combat was fun, giving me all the awesomeness of a 2D fighter while letting stats and tactics get a good role as opposed to just reflexes and fighting game skills (I suck at fighting games that aren't Soul Calibur 3), and was just fluid enough to keep me going. The story has some good twists, the characters were actually memorable (all hail Will Reynard the JRPG Muscle Wizard), the loot was plentiful, and the enemies were a hoot.
Unfortunately, the New Game Plus this game offered really didn't do much for immediate replay value, though I freely grant that later on it will be a fine catalyst for going back and thug-punching bears while Will The Awesome fries them with lightning and honking big hammer.
I was actually pleased that I found a new RPG series without having to sacrifice organs on the black market to get installments (dammit Suikoden) or live with playing less than half the series ever without controller flinging (dammit SaGa).
On a final note, there will not be a Wreckonomics post about Tales of Legendia. The cash is very plentiful, with the only notable sinks linked to the cooking system. The only real barrier is that you can only carry 15 of any given item (NG+ has options for 20 or 30 if you so choose), which is a mild inconvenience if you're like me and grab a wad of curatives when you can. I wound up having to leave full chests behind in dungeons since I had the maximum amount of Panacea Bottles very quickly, and rarely needed them to begin with.
Anyway, off to Tale of the Abyss!
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Off Ramp To Punchytown
Blogging, like a targ, awakens hungry after a sleep...
I've been busy as usual, a lot of personal issues decided to explode in my face, and things are still pretty much on fire, but I'm at a point where I can take something of a breather.
I've been tearing my way across Tales of Legendia for the PS2, and everytime I'm about to get bored, things actually start shaking themselves up and I'm having a blast again. I'm currently in the final dungeon, and probably will not pick up the controller again for a while, since I know a boss rush is coming up, and I won't have three hours where I'm coherent for a good few days.
It's still a fun game, and I'm amazed I didn't hear and start on this series sooner. A more in-depth discussion will be posted later, since I'm still gushing (this is a game where you can suplex divine beings, dragons, tank-sized behemoths, but sadly not trains) and I don't want to get too crazy until after I beat the game entirely.
I also do not plan in a Wreckonomics post, simply because this game hands out cash like crazy and doesn't stint on other loot. Bring on the swag!
Wandering off for now, and remember that only in death does booty end.
I've been busy as usual, a lot of personal issues decided to explode in my face, and things are still pretty much on fire, but I'm at a point where I can take something of a breather.
I've been tearing my way across Tales of Legendia for the PS2, and everytime I'm about to get bored, things actually start shaking themselves up and I'm having a blast again. I'm currently in the final dungeon, and probably will not pick up the controller again for a while, since I know a boss rush is coming up, and I won't have three hours where I'm coherent for a good few days.
It's still a fun game, and I'm amazed I didn't hear and start on this series sooner. A more in-depth discussion will be posted later, since I'm still gushing (this is a game where you can suplex divine beings, dragons, tank-sized behemoths, but sadly not trains) and I don't want to get too crazy until after I beat the game entirely.
I also do not plan in a Wreckonomics post, simply because this game hands out cash like crazy and doesn't stint on other loot. Bring on the swag!
Wandering off for now, and remember that only in death does booty end.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Chasing Tales
As ever, the spambots have failed in their struggle to keep me from posting!
Since I can't do online stuff with my BorderlandsBox, I've decided to jump back into my original gaming specialty, the old-school JRPG. A month or so ago, I decided to go ahead and get into the Tales series. This foray met immediate resistance due to my insipient DAR Syndrome deciding to manifest. In English, I bought Tales from The Abyss and then a guide for Tales of Legendia by mistake. After realizing what happened, I had to choose between shilling $40-70 (!) for an Abyss guide, or just grabbing Legendia for $20-$30.
I bought Legendia. And it's a fun little JRPG. It's got lots of old time flavor: The endless random battles, the angsty hero, ridiculous stuff to use as weapons, inexplicably cute things trying to murder you, evil empires and magitek, the list goes on.
Some of the fun stuff included a real-time battle system built like an RPG take on 2-D fighting games. It's actually somewhat refreshing, and helps a lot that it's not built for the dexterous finesse fighting games usually required (the only fighting series I don't suck at is Soul Calibur). Another nice thing is that your protagonist is a martial-artist monk type instead of a swordsman. Unfortunately, while you can suplex all sorts of huge monstrosities, trains are not on the list.
Unfortunately, there are some bits I don't like, mostly characters I don't really think much of. The main love interest is your typical high-pitched bubblehead with an addiction to getting captured. It would have help immensely if she didn't sound like Pinkie Pie on helium. I've been given to understand once she becomes Calypsophiroth, she's much more enjoyable, so we'll see. The early villains really come across as lame (except for the first Big Bad), and one minor villain really come across like a crappy Pokemon villain knockoff.
The good news is that we get Will Reynard in return. He's the closest thing JRPGs will get to the muscle wizard. He's this built dude that hauls around a hammer usually reserved for industrial machinery and fries fools. He even gets to dope-slap the other characters when they're being too JRPG-ey to stand. He gets this game's awesomesauce award, and need a fic where he and Space Elf Robocop and Iron Bull tear about the multiverse in the name of manly nerds everywhere.
Well, I need to wander off, but more inanities about this game are incoming, so beware!
Since I can't do online stuff with my BorderlandsBox, I've decided to jump back into my original gaming specialty, the old-school JRPG. A month or so ago, I decided to go ahead and get into the Tales series. This foray met immediate resistance due to my insipient DAR Syndrome deciding to manifest. In English, I bought Tales from The Abyss and then a guide for Tales of Legendia by mistake. After realizing what happened, I had to choose between shilling $40-70 (!) for an Abyss guide, or just grabbing Legendia for $20-$30.
I bought Legendia. And it's a fun little JRPG. It's got lots of old time flavor: The endless random battles, the angsty hero, ridiculous stuff to use as weapons, inexplicably cute things trying to murder you, evil empires and magitek, the list goes on.
Some of the fun stuff included a real-time battle system built like an RPG take on 2-D fighting games. It's actually somewhat refreshing, and helps a lot that it's not built for the dexterous finesse fighting games usually required (the only fighting series I don't suck at is Soul Calibur). Another nice thing is that your protagonist is a martial-artist monk type instead of a swordsman. Unfortunately, while you can suplex all sorts of huge monstrosities, trains are not on the list.
Unfortunately, there are some bits I don't like, mostly characters I don't really think much of. The main love interest is your typical high-pitched bubblehead with an addiction to getting captured. It would have help immensely if she didn't sound like Pinkie Pie on helium. I've been given to understand once she becomes Calypsophiroth, she's much more enjoyable, so we'll see. The early villains really come across as lame (except for the first Big Bad), and one minor villain really come across like a crappy Pokemon villain knockoff.
The good news is that we get Will Reynard in return. He's the closest thing JRPGs will get to the muscle wizard. He's this built dude that hauls around a hammer usually reserved for industrial machinery and fries fools. He even gets to dope-slap the other characters when they're being too JRPG-ey to stand. He gets this game's awesomesauce award, and need a fic where he and Space Elf Robocop and Iron Bull tear about the multiverse in the name of manly nerds everywhere.
Well, I need to wander off, but more inanities about this game are incoming, so beware!
Monday, July 20, 2015
Rated A for Angst
HaHA! You still have not been rid of me!
I've been busily unleashing the harvest in Tales of Legendia. It's given me the chance to scratch that JRPG itch I've had going since I wound up with a HaloBox (of course, for me its more of a BorderlandsBox). The ride thus far has been pretty fun, though admittedly I can't seem to binge on it like I used to. Maybe I'm growing up.
Nah. It's probably just too much caffeine. Which is crap, since coffee for me is like dakka for orks. NEVAH ENUFF!!!
This game has brought out my bad habit of screaming advice at the screen, however. Then somebody gets dope slapped, and I am appeased. "Grow a synapse, dammit!!" *bonk* "Thank you, Will!" If that has actually happened in Star Ocean 4, preferably to that blasted fluffbrain Sarah, I would have loved that game a lot more. It took Space Elf Robocop to redeem that character line-up, I can tell you.
Anyway, what is with Japanese games and angst? I know life isn't all sunshine and rainbows and ponies. Well, maybe it is if you're a pony. But they seem to just love piling on the emo, I swear. At least I know that everybody will be mostly well-adjusted or dead by the time the game is over. Unless your name is Cloud. Damn Advent Children taking a perfectly good badass away from character growth and keeping him an emotional cripple in perpetuity. What we need for that is authentic Bulgarian Miak. Great for trolls.
Well it's time to go back to wrecking monster faces! The harvest begins anew!
I've been busily unleashing the harvest in Tales of Legendia. It's given me the chance to scratch that JRPG itch I've had going since I wound up with a HaloBox (of course, for me its more of a BorderlandsBox). The ride thus far has been pretty fun, though admittedly I can't seem to binge on it like I used to. Maybe I'm growing up.
Nah. It's probably just too much caffeine. Which is crap, since coffee for me is like dakka for orks. NEVAH ENUFF!!!
This game has brought out my bad habit of screaming advice at the screen, however. Then somebody gets dope slapped, and I am appeased. "Grow a synapse, dammit!!" *bonk* "Thank you, Will!" If that has actually happened in Star Ocean 4, preferably to that blasted fluffbrain Sarah, I would have loved that game a lot more. It took Space Elf Robocop to redeem that character line-up, I can tell you.
Anyway, what is with Japanese games and angst? I know life isn't all sunshine and rainbows and ponies. Well, maybe it is if you're a pony. But they seem to just love piling on the emo, I swear. At least I know that everybody will be mostly well-adjusted or dead by the time the game is over. Unless your name is Cloud. Damn Advent Children taking a perfectly good badass away from character growth and keeping him an emotional cripple in perpetuity. What we need for that is authentic Bulgarian Miak. Great for trolls.
Well it's time to go back to wrecking monster faces! The harvest begins anew!
Friday, July 10, 2015
Stabbin' Dragons
Been busy at the job business. I'm surrounded by the biggest collection of complexes this side of the internet, I swear.
I've taken advantage of losing my Xbox Live Gold (or rather, they lost my money because it didn't taste right or something) and wailing on the bonus boss in Dragon's Dogma. The critter in question is known as the Ur-Dragon, so named because most players go "UUUURRR," and then "splat!" the first time they come across it. The online version is technically harder, but the only real difference is that it has a ridiculous hit-point pool, and multiple players are wailing on it at any given time. Unfortunately, being the guy who makes the kill is pretty much a crapshoot. You can literally pick and play any strategy game by NIS long enough to beat their bonus bosses, and still have not gotten a kill on this beast in an equivalent amount of time. Play the offline version of the boss to get the achievement, okay?
In any case this game is still very much one of my favorites, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to pick up and play again. Definitely a point in its favor, and I hope we see a true sequel, not some bizarro MMO like the interwebs claim.
I've also heard some news that is already ancient now: They're finally going to remake Final Fantasy VII. I'm cautiously excited. FFVII holds a special nerdy place in my nerdy heart (I actually owned the game before I bought a PS1, which is saying a lot) and I hope things actually go well. Unfortunately, my auto-snark button got pushed when I head the words "gritty reboot." Lolwut?
I thought up some ways to make this more "gritty." Here's a random collection, in no particular order:
1) Cait Sith is shanked and replaced by Belkar Bitterleaf.
2) Cloud is voiced by Hugo Weaving.
3) An option for a Mortal Kombat-like blood effect. Imagine Omnislash now with patent pending 3-D Gore-O-Rama!
4) Barret stops talking like Mr. T and acts like (dammit I forgot his name) that black guy from Expendables.
5) Trenchcoats. Public flashing optional.
6) New Game+ option to have Sephiroth shank other characters including, but not limited to: Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie, Sora, Squall, Face McShooty, Wesley Crusher, Chris Pine!Kirk, and Jar Jar Binks. Also the cast of FFXIII.
7) Fuck it, give everybody guns!
That's about it, really. I also really hope they fix the damn Chocobo racing, though. Preferably with the old shoulder-button cheat still intact.
I've taken advantage of losing my Xbox Live Gold (or rather, they lost my money because it didn't taste right or something) and wailing on the bonus boss in Dragon's Dogma. The critter in question is known as the Ur-Dragon, so named because most players go "UUUURRR," and then "splat!" the first time they come across it. The online version is technically harder, but the only real difference is that it has a ridiculous hit-point pool, and multiple players are wailing on it at any given time. Unfortunately, being the guy who makes the kill is pretty much a crapshoot. You can literally pick and play any strategy game by NIS long enough to beat their bonus bosses, and still have not gotten a kill on this beast in an equivalent amount of time. Play the offline version of the boss to get the achievement, okay?
In any case this game is still very much one of my favorites, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to pick up and play again. Definitely a point in its favor, and I hope we see a true sequel, not some bizarro MMO like the interwebs claim.
I've also heard some news that is already ancient now: They're finally going to remake Final Fantasy VII. I'm cautiously excited. FFVII holds a special nerdy place in my nerdy heart (I actually owned the game before I bought a PS1, which is saying a lot) and I hope things actually go well. Unfortunately, my auto-snark button got pushed when I head the words "gritty reboot." Lolwut?
I thought up some ways to make this more "gritty." Here's a random collection, in no particular order:
1) Cait Sith is shanked and replaced by Belkar Bitterleaf.
2) Cloud is voiced by Hugo Weaving.
3) An option for a Mortal Kombat-like blood effect. Imagine Omnislash now with patent pending 3-D Gore-O-Rama!
4) Barret stops talking like Mr. T and acts like (dammit I forgot his name) that black guy from Expendables.
5) Trenchcoats. Public flashing optional.
6) New Game+ option to have Sephiroth shank other characters including, but not limited to: Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie, Sora, Squall, Face McShooty, Wesley Crusher, Chris Pine!Kirk, and Jar Jar Binks. Also the cast of FFXIII.
7) Fuck it, give everybody guns!
That's about it, really. I also really hope they fix the damn Chocobo racing, though. Preferably with the old shoulder-button cheat still intact.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Early FAQ = WTF
Yikes, GameFAQs can be such a mess.
I've decided to throttle down on Dragon Age Inquisition for a while. I'm at the point where I'm pretty much steamrolling the main questline, and and (spoilers) I lose a party member after the final boss, and I want to do some DLC with them around, and even becoming the Lord of The Harvest has lost it's charm for a while. Don't get me wrong, the game is still very good, but I've done too many binge sessions for the moment.
To get a break, I broke out Seiken Densetsu 3 AKA the missing World of Mana game. It is definitely a jewel in the Square RPG lineup, and (as the internet has stated ad naseum) its a damn shame that the game didn't get a proper localization.
Anyway, it's actually a very challenging game, and has some old-school obtuse elements on top. So I looked through GameFAQs stuff, and I stumbled on what really felt like a TXT rip of a forum topic disguised as an FAQ. The damn thing really just lost track right before the meat of the whole thing got started.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the older, nerdier games get crappier FAQs and/or general discussions? Just because a game is obscure doesn't mean the info you're collecting, collating, and publishing needs to be covered in ASCII art and interspersed with (albeit pretty well-behaved) arguments and random comments from fan fora and emails. You wind up with people getting fed and up and not reading your FAQ, and you do want this thing to be read, right? You went to all this trouble to help people play and enjoy a game you like, right? You want people to think that you care enough about the subject to keep things organized, right? If you're gonna go for nerdier than thou, do it right damn it!
Have a dedicated section for things like "WebDude24601 sent me this" and "RPGeekLEEThaxxors and I had a discussion about when not to unleash the magics of doom." Preferably near the end, especially if you couldn't be arsed to set up tags and codes for a browser's Find function. Make sure that you properly attribute stuff, but dumping in a whole paragraph because SephirothxApplejackOTP emailed you about how his party "rocks" before you actually start the walkthrough is frickin' tacky, OK?
Going away, now, getting a little too far on my nerd rage-o-meter.
Seriously, it irks me that I can find intelligent, organized, well-written FAQs for Call Of Duty, but heaven forbid I can find the two facts I need for a piece of old-school Square craftsmanship.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
The Inquisition, What A Show
Ha HA, the interwebs are not rid of me yet!
Been tearing about and wrecking evil in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Somebody at Bioware likes Mortal Kombat a lot, since they made a wonderful little combo of Scorpion's Get Over Here with a Sub-Zero's Freeze of Death (my terms) that makes the mooks go squish.
The characters are pretty inspired too. I love Varric AKA Snarky the Eighth Dwarf and his Bianca AKA the +10 Crossbow of Killing Stuff. Iron Bull is also very much the shit, especially with that pack of loonies he leads. Sera is...well when she's not being funny I want to scream at her to go back to her tree and make some damn cookies, to be honest. Like hot sauce, Sera is best in small doses before burnout sets in.
The loot is also pretty awesome, too, and is accompanied by the return of Badass Dress-up. The armor sets aren't quite as extensive as, say, Dragon's Dogma, but it's balanced by having a nice crafting system, plus lot's of customizing for you death-dealing pleasure. You can even tint your swag, so my dudes are tearing about in Luer's Raiders colors for damn once.
Psst, Bioware! Work out a deal and give Butt Stallion a cameo as a DLC mount!
Been tearing about and wrecking evil in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Somebody at Bioware likes Mortal Kombat a lot, since they made a wonderful little combo of Scorpion's Get Over Here with a Sub-Zero's Freeze of Death (my terms) that makes the mooks go squish.
The characters are pretty inspired too. I love Varric AKA Snarky the Eighth Dwarf and his Bianca AKA the +10 Crossbow of Killing Stuff. Iron Bull is also very much the shit, especially with that pack of loonies he leads. Sera is...well when she's not being funny I want to scream at her to go back to her tree and make some damn cookies, to be honest. Like hot sauce, Sera is best in small doses before burnout sets in.
The loot is also pretty awesome, too, and is accompanied by the return of Badass Dress-up. The armor sets aren't quite as extensive as, say, Dragon's Dogma, but it's balanced by having a nice crafting system, plus lot's of customizing for you death-dealing pleasure. You can even tint your swag, so my dudes are tearing about in Luer's Raiders colors for damn once.
Psst, Bioware! Work out a deal and give Butt Stallion a cameo as a DLC mount!
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Congratulations, EA
You have achieved a new status today, "The Shin-Ra of Gaming." Forcing me to sit there and do nothing but wait for and installs and updates on a fucking console game (from the damn disc) for two hours is a new one. I avoid PC games because of crap like that, thanks very much. May white-haired bishies with Oedipal Complexes figure BIG in your future.
Still better than Disney, AKA "The Hyperion of Entertainment." I keep waiting for them to buy the moon and go full crazy tyrant on us.
By the way, a Shin-Ra/Hyperion merger would be terrifying and crazy damn awesome.
Still better than Disney, AKA "The Hyperion of Entertainment." I keep waiting for them to buy the moon and go full crazy tyrant on us.
By the way, a Shin-Ra/Hyperion merger would be terrifying and crazy damn awesome.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Space Scurvy
Blarg-a-rant to the spambots that "read" this stuff.
Been tearing about in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel some more. According to their website, legendary drops have been tweaked for this game and for B2, but I'm not seen any real increase in the orange glow. That said, I've only done 1 1/2 playthoughs, and all of it normal difficulty thus far, so I can't expect too much.
That said, the rate I've seen them in vending machines is absolutely epic so far. I've managed to find two Moonlight Sagas, an Oxidizer, a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a Nasty Surprise, an Avalanche, and a Logan's Gun (I tragically couldn't afford that last one, *sob*), making for a whopping seven legendaries on Normal (and five of those solo). That's a ridiculous amount compared to my long B2 run with at least six playthroughs, including True and Ultimate VH difficulties. All together, two Bitches, a Quasar (!!!), a Sledge's Shotgun, a Fastball, and...I think that's it actually. Five legendary pieces in regular vending machines. (NOTE, this doesn't include the Torgue machines, which have a guaranteed legendary Torgue item)
While the actual drop rate is still somewhat ambiguous right now, the vendors in PS seem to have been tweaked for the better thus far. I really hope it stays that way.
Tell you what, the vehicles in PS are crap, though. I want my damn Truck-a-pult back!
Been tearing about in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel some more. According to their website, legendary drops have been tweaked for this game and for B2, but I'm not seen any real increase in the orange glow. That said, I've only done 1 1/2 playthoughs, and all of it normal difficulty thus far, so I can't expect too much.
That said, the rate I've seen them in vending machines is absolutely epic so far. I've managed to find two Moonlight Sagas, an Oxidizer, a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a Nasty Surprise, an Avalanche, and a Logan's Gun (I tragically couldn't afford that last one, *sob*), making for a whopping seven legendaries on Normal (and five of those solo). That's a ridiculous amount compared to my long B2 run with at least six playthroughs, including True and Ultimate VH difficulties. All together, two Bitches, a Quasar (!!!), a Sledge's Shotgun, a Fastball, and...I think that's it actually. Five legendary pieces in regular vending machines. (NOTE, this doesn't include the Torgue machines, which have a guaranteed legendary Torgue item)
While the actual drop rate is still somewhat ambiguous right now, the vendors in PS seem to have been tweaked for the better thus far. I really hope it stays that way.
Tell you what, the vehicles in PS are crap, though. I want my damn Truck-a-pult back!
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Why Torgue Should Love Lasers
It's actually very simple. A weaponized laser actually delivers thermal energy to the target, and happens so fast that things explode. While Borderlands PS laser weapons don't do that, so what? They're also used in, y'know, rock concerts.
Fun fact: did you know that the "sandwich" coins (in the US these would be dimes, quarters, and half-dollars) are actually exploded during the initial process. The copper and nickel parts are rolled into sheets, explosive gel applied to each side, and BOOM! This forces the layers together. Then the sheets are cut into round blanks, and minted into coins.
See, even making money can be badass!
Fun fact: did you know that the "sandwich" coins (in the US these would be dimes, quarters, and half-dollars) are actually exploded during the initial process. The copper and nickel parts are rolled into sheets, explosive gel applied to each side, and BOOM! This forces the layers together. Then the sheets are cut into round blanks, and minted into coins.
See, even making money can be badass!
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
All Ur Mythril R Belong 2 Us
Blarg-a-rant! I live!
Finally have a bit of a breather for a couple of days. Things are going mostly ok, but springtime at work is somewhere between a riot and a Cub Scout meeting.
In the nerdy front, I'm going to put my playthrough of Shining Force EXA on ice for a while. It's not bad, really, but it's getting really bland and same-y. I have some thoughts on the game to share, in no real order.
The Good
The combat is ok, but one thing I really did like was the defensive battles concept. While tearing about, your home base gets attacked by a semi-random pack of mooks and a boss. The fun part is that you have to defend a big shiny generator from big-ass swarms of nasties, and not only do you get good rewards for beating the baddies, you seem to get a boosted drop rate for cash and gear.
Another nice thing is that you actually can call in support fire from your base (which is pretty much looks what would happen if Aztecs got their hands on a Death Star). Canonizing freaks doesn't get much cooler than this.
One really cool thing is the base itself. You get to upgrade its capabilities, with nifty stuff like blowing more stuff up harder, robot buddies for defensive battles, radar abilities for shiny hunting, and an randomized dungeon you can tear around and plunder in.
The Bad
Could be the hardware, could be somebody at Sega just not thinking things through, but getting a certain threshold of enemies on the screen starts some serious slowdown. Unfortunately, this is a hack-and-slash style RPG, with extra emphasis on reflexes and mobility, so things can get really crappy really quickly.
One major flaw in the game is that combat overall just doesn't really evolve for your characters. Toma the warrior is your archetypical beatstick with two similar styles. One handed weapons which hit faster and allow for shields and more mobility, and two handers which...don't. Cyrille the Sorceress gets spellbooks which allow for you to cast spells of various kinds and smack fools with a big-ass book. She also gets crossbows, which tend to be suited for particular enemies. None of these are crap in and of themselves, but in a genre where one expects at least some game-changers over time, in the from of special loot or level unlocks, this stuff gets monotonous quickly.
The difficulty comes in two flavors, and unfortunately is almost exclusively determined by the character chosen at any particular time. Toma is simply much beefier and more nimble than Cyrille. He's far from invincible, but he has a much easier time with both big bosses and swarms. Cyrille is powerful, escpecially when you can exploit elemental weaknesses, but one unlucky hit and it's game over. For me, this had the bizarre effect of primarily using Cyrille in the field, since Toma is much more viable in defensive battles, which are all about big swarms and being able to tank some hits to get going. The end result is that I have to save every five minutes now, since any time I confident, Cyrille dies. Fricking Horrible.
The Shiny
The loot drops in this game are your standard gold and gear. Gear is randomly generated, with up to two special properties (usually along the lines of stat boosts, hits a mook type harder, elemental properties, though sometimes a special move comes along). An interesting twist is that you get "Secret Arts" which act as a third special property and have specific bonuses. These are earned though various challenges throughout the game like fighting supersized enemies or arena battles. Another interesting twist is Mythril (not mithril!), which you collect like a second currency, and can spend on "Power Arts" which are basically stat boosts. Mythril is harvested from big crystals out in the field, can be extracted from gear with special properties (vanilla gear has to be sold or discarded), and dropped by monsters (boosted by a special Change Mythril trait), and also is gained in large quantities from denfensive battles. Get all the Mythril you can.
On a final note, natural Mythril Crystals look an awful lot like the mineral crystals from StarCraft. If I get enough Mythril, can I build a Goliath or Siege Tank? That would be the shit, man.
Finally have a bit of a breather for a couple of days. Things are going mostly ok, but springtime at work is somewhere between a riot and a Cub Scout meeting.
In the nerdy front, I'm going to put my playthrough of Shining Force EXA on ice for a while. It's not bad, really, but it's getting really bland and same-y. I have some thoughts on the game to share, in no real order.
The Good
The combat is ok, but one thing I really did like was the defensive battles concept. While tearing about, your home base gets attacked by a semi-random pack of mooks and a boss. The fun part is that you have to defend a big shiny generator from big-ass swarms of nasties, and not only do you get good rewards for beating the baddies, you seem to get a boosted drop rate for cash and gear.
Another nice thing is that you actually can call in support fire from your base (which is pretty much looks what would happen if Aztecs got their hands on a Death Star). Canonizing freaks doesn't get much cooler than this.
One really cool thing is the base itself. You get to upgrade its capabilities, with nifty stuff like blowing more stuff up harder, robot buddies for defensive battles, radar abilities for shiny hunting, and an randomized dungeon you can tear around and plunder in.
The Bad
Could be the hardware, could be somebody at Sega just not thinking things through, but getting a certain threshold of enemies on the screen starts some serious slowdown. Unfortunately, this is a hack-and-slash style RPG, with extra emphasis on reflexes and mobility, so things can get really crappy really quickly.
One major flaw in the game is that combat overall just doesn't really evolve for your characters. Toma the warrior is your archetypical beatstick with two similar styles. One handed weapons which hit faster and allow for shields and more mobility, and two handers which...don't. Cyrille the Sorceress gets spellbooks which allow for you to cast spells of various kinds and smack fools with a big-ass book. She also gets crossbows, which tend to be suited for particular enemies. None of these are crap in and of themselves, but in a genre where one expects at least some game-changers over time, in the from of special loot or level unlocks, this stuff gets monotonous quickly.
The difficulty comes in two flavors, and unfortunately is almost exclusively determined by the character chosen at any particular time. Toma is simply much beefier and more nimble than Cyrille. He's far from invincible, but he has a much easier time with both big bosses and swarms. Cyrille is powerful, escpecially when you can exploit elemental weaknesses, but one unlucky hit and it's game over. For me, this had the bizarre effect of primarily using Cyrille in the field, since Toma is much more viable in defensive battles, which are all about big swarms and being able to tank some hits to get going. The end result is that I have to save every five minutes now, since any time I confident, Cyrille dies. Fricking Horrible.
The Shiny
The loot drops in this game are your standard gold and gear. Gear is randomly generated, with up to two special properties (usually along the lines of stat boosts, hits a mook type harder, elemental properties, though sometimes a special move comes along). An interesting twist is that you get "Secret Arts" which act as a third special property and have specific bonuses. These are earned though various challenges throughout the game like fighting supersized enemies or arena battles. Another interesting twist is Mythril (not mithril!), which you collect like a second currency, and can spend on "Power Arts" which are basically stat boosts. Mythril is harvested from big crystals out in the field, can be extracted from gear with special properties (vanilla gear has to be sold or discarded), and dropped by monsters (boosted by a special Change Mythril trait), and also is gained in large quantities from denfensive battles. Get all the Mythril you can.
On a final note, natural Mythril Crystals look an awful lot like the mineral crystals from StarCraft. If I get enough Mythril, can I build a Goliath or Siege Tank? That would be the shit, man.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Metallurgy, Mineralogy, and Monster-Mashing
Blarg-a-rant!
Let's not mince words: I love games that have crafting systems. Going out and finding stuff, then bringing it back to base to make your own special shinies just doesn't get old. It has also sparked something of a real life interest in how stuff like swords and armor are made, what ores and techniques are involved, and how to alloy, temper and otherwise alter things.
In light of all this, I've done a bit of IRL research into stuff, and compared my finding to how various "craft-heavy" games I've played relate to it. Some of it is actually pretty close along, some of it not so much. In any case, I'd to talk about a few things I've found and/or inferred along the way.
TES V: Skyrim
Let's bring a big name right out of the gate. This open-world masterpiece manages to benefit from a whole ton of both RL research and both in-house and in-universe traditions. Put very simply, what you can smith, brew, or magically enhance is directly related to how good your character is at these respective tasks. While somewhat inefficient compared to getting paid instruction, the act of crafting improves your abilities, with the improvement directly related to the value of the final product i.e. make costlier products to get more experience. Some of the more interesting things here is that we have iron and steel as separate things in game (with steel as an alloy of corundum and iron), where I've notices plenty of games that treat them as identical or near-identical in properties and strength. We also have analogues to several "traditional" materials as well: Corundum for copper, quicksilver for mithril, and Dwarven metal for orichalcum. While there is an orichalcum named as such in the game, Dwarven metal actually fits much closer to the classical definition, being a brazen or golden colored metal with special properties and associated with an advanced, long-extinct civilization al a Atlantis.
Of interest is that, in-game, alchemy and metallurgy are treated as very separate disciplines, with few connections beyond skill enhancement potions. The closest in-game connection is a minor "radiant" quest involving bringing an unusual ore sample to a nearby alchemist. Amusingly enough, your character identifies the mystery sample immediately, but there's no way to just tell the guy instead of ferrying the thing to the shop. Interestingly, this is the same town (Riften) where fetching alchemical agents for specific purposes is a commonplace thing. Maybe the local "expert" is the lazy idiot he seems, since people actually know a thing or two themselves here.
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song
I'm deliberately contrasting here. This game is very much an opposite to Skyrim. It's a tragically flawed JRPG for the PS2. I won't go into details about the game as a whole (I plan on doing a Wreckonomics article at some point), but one of the more interesting points is the smithing system it has. The gist is that you 'temper' equipment with various materials ranging from ores to monster parts to special patented alloys available at certain guild-affiated shops. While in most RPGs you just get straight stat boosts (and the odd penalty) right off the bat, you actually have some immediate changes (usually in durability), while the full effect of the alteration only coming into play after using the weapon, with the change coming faster the harder you are on it. It's quite possible to break a weapon and then re-temper it before the full effect appears. To add a bit of depth, most weapons have 'harmonious' materials that when used and broken in result in stronger versions (+X) that end with a final, 'named' weapon at the end of the chain. This is usually worth doing, by the way.
The very interesting part, is that the ores in this game are, to date, the closest to real life i have encountered in a video game. There's plenty of fantastic ores, monster parts, and such-like, but real life ores and terms are present. Notable ones include marcasite (iron ore, related to pyrite), meteoric iron (besides the traditional mystical significance, the best way to get nickel-iron alloy in pre-industrial times), native silver (native as in found in a mostly pure, not compounded state), electrum (despite the traditional disdain among some older D&D fans, this stuff was very real), and finally, mullocks (a term for waste ores.) You are quite welcome to run a search on this stuff, in fact. Also of note is vermillion (a red pigment, containing mercury); I believe that this was a mistranslation of the mercury ore cinnabar, but I have no real proof.
One final note is that, as mentioned above, this game has two 'patent' alloys, Vernie and Garal. Two separate guilds hold the patents on these and jealously guard it, to the point that while the player can have these alloys tempered to equipment, they will never find any out in the field. Both have very separate properties (Vernie for light gear, Garal for heavy stuff), and are the trademark specialty of the patent holders, much like how various alloy blends are patented and guarded by real life organizations.
Quite a level of depth for a game that expects to race your way through it.
Well, I have plenty more to say, and a few more games to talk about, which I'll be covering in a future article. Stay tuned, and keep smacking them monsters!
Let's not mince words: I love games that have crafting systems. Going out and finding stuff, then bringing it back to base to make your own special shinies just doesn't get old. It has also sparked something of a real life interest in how stuff like swords and armor are made, what ores and techniques are involved, and how to alloy, temper and otherwise alter things.
In light of all this, I've done a bit of IRL research into stuff, and compared my finding to how various "craft-heavy" games I've played relate to it. Some of it is actually pretty close along, some of it not so much. In any case, I'd to talk about a few things I've found and/or inferred along the way.
TES V: Skyrim
Let's bring a big name right out of the gate. This open-world masterpiece manages to benefit from a whole ton of both RL research and both in-house and in-universe traditions. Put very simply, what you can smith, brew, or magically enhance is directly related to how good your character is at these respective tasks. While somewhat inefficient compared to getting paid instruction, the act of crafting improves your abilities, with the improvement directly related to the value of the final product i.e. make costlier products to get more experience. Some of the more interesting things here is that we have iron and steel as separate things in game (with steel as an alloy of corundum and iron), where I've notices plenty of games that treat them as identical or near-identical in properties and strength. We also have analogues to several "traditional" materials as well: Corundum for copper, quicksilver for mithril, and Dwarven metal for orichalcum. While there is an orichalcum named as such in the game, Dwarven metal actually fits much closer to the classical definition, being a brazen or golden colored metal with special properties and associated with an advanced, long-extinct civilization al a Atlantis.
Of interest is that, in-game, alchemy and metallurgy are treated as very separate disciplines, with few connections beyond skill enhancement potions. The closest in-game connection is a minor "radiant" quest involving bringing an unusual ore sample to a nearby alchemist. Amusingly enough, your character identifies the mystery sample immediately, but there's no way to just tell the guy instead of ferrying the thing to the shop. Interestingly, this is the same town (Riften) where fetching alchemical agents for specific purposes is a commonplace thing. Maybe the local "expert" is the lazy idiot he seems, since people actually know a thing or two themselves here.
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song
I'm deliberately contrasting here. This game is very much an opposite to Skyrim. It's a tragically flawed JRPG for the PS2. I won't go into details about the game as a whole (I plan on doing a Wreckonomics article at some point), but one of the more interesting points is the smithing system it has. The gist is that you 'temper' equipment with various materials ranging from ores to monster parts to special patented alloys available at certain guild-affiated shops. While in most RPGs you just get straight stat boosts (and the odd penalty) right off the bat, you actually have some immediate changes (usually in durability), while the full effect of the alteration only coming into play after using the weapon, with the change coming faster the harder you are on it. It's quite possible to break a weapon and then re-temper it before the full effect appears. To add a bit of depth, most weapons have 'harmonious' materials that when used and broken in result in stronger versions (+X) that end with a final, 'named' weapon at the end of the chain. This is usually worth doing, by the way.
The very interesting part, is that the ores in this game are, to date, the closest to real life i have encountered in a video game. There's plenty of fantastic ores, monster parts, and such-like, but real life ores and terms are present. Notable ones include marcasite (iron ore, related to pyrite), meteoric iron (besides the traditional mystical significance, the best way to get nickel-iron alloy in pre-industrial times), native silver (native as in found in a mostly pure, not compounded state), electrum (despite the traditional disdain among some older D&D fans, this stuff was very real), and finally, mullocks (a term for waste ores.) You are quite welcome to run a search on this stuff, in fact. Also of note is vermillion (a red pigment, containing mercury); I believe that this was a mistranslation of the mercury ore cinnabar, but I have no real proof.
One final note is that, as mentioned above, this game has two 'patent' alloys, Vernie and Garal. Two separate guilds hold the patents on these and jealously guard it, to the point that while the player can have these alloys tempered to equipment, they will never find any out in the field. Both have very separate properties (Vernie for light gear, Garal for heavy stuff), and are the trademark specialty of the patent holders, much like how various alloy blends are patented and guarded by real life organizations.
Quite a level of depth for a game that expects to race your way through it.
Well, I have plenty more to say, and a few more games to talk about, which I'll be covering in a future article. Stay tuned, and keep smacking them monsters!
Friday, March 27, 2015
Moonstruck Brain Barf
HaHA, you spambots will never be rid of me!
Been tearing about on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I'll talk about that later, mostly because I'm pretty frustrated with the game. Whoever did the vehicles probably did programming work for Battletoads' Level 3. Thanks a lot for making moon buggies suck.
In other vidya game news, I've also gotten my hands on Shining Force EXA, better known as "Sega Really Wanted To Make Diablo." It's actually pretty damn fun, and has a distinction of being challenging in a fun way, which I haven't run into lately.
It's actually kind of weird. Both games have a habit of randomly kicking my ass, they go about in different ways. Borderlands PS really comes across as trying to steal Dark Souls fans. I'm hoping it gets better down the line. 2 could be really damn hard at some points, too. And to be fair, this shit is still awesomesauce. LASER SHOTGUNS! YOU'RE WELCOME!
Shining Force here, when I die, I know I screwed up. I can go back and do the right thing (or grind) and I just jump aboard the train to PwnVille. Oh and you can smack things with spellbooks. I don't mean use the spellbook to burninate things (though you can do that too), I mean physically beat people with metaphysical literature.
Dammit, now I want to watch...oh...Raistlin and Snape whack the hell out of some Twilight characters now. Preferably with copies of The Simarillion. With Yakety Sax blaring in the background.
Oh, and I'm planning on writing a semi-intelligent post on a semi-serious topic. It will be entitled "Metallurgy, Mineralogy, and Monster-Mashing."
Been tearing about on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I'll talk about that later, mostly because I'm pretty frustrated with the game. Whoever did the vehicles probably did programming work for Battletoads' Level 3. Thanks a lot for making moon buggies suck.
In other vidya game news, I've also gotten my hands on Shining Force EXA, better known as "Sega Really Wanted To Make Diablo." It's actually pretty damn fun, and has a distinction of being challenging in a fun way, which I haven't run into lately.
It's actually kind of weird. Both games have a habit of randomly kicking my ass, they go about in different ways. Borderlands PS really comes across as trying to steal Dark Souls fans. I'm hoping it gets better down the line. 2 could be really damn hard at some points, too. And to be fair, this shit is still awesomesauce. LASER SHOTGUNS! YOU'RE WELCOME!
Shining Force here, when I die, I know I screwed up. I can go back and do the right thing (or grind) and I just jump aboard the train to PwnVille. Oh and you can smack things with spellbooks. I don't mean use the spellbook to burninate things (though you can do that too), I mean physically beat people with metaphysical literature.
Dammit, now I want to watch...oh...Raistlin and Snape whack the hell out of some Twilight characters now. Preferably with copies of The Simarillion. With Yakety Sax blaring in the background.
Oh, and I'm planning on writing a semi-intelligent post on a semi-serious topic. It will be entitled "Metallurgy, Mineralogy, and Monster-Mashing."
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Brain Barf
Blarg-a-rant!
I've decided to get off my ass and make a list of Star Wars lines that can be improved with the word 'pants'. I saw a short list of such things a long time ago on an old SWCCG trading site, but never encountered another one, so I throwing them back out there with some additions. They will be a fairly random bunch, and probably far from exhaustive.
Original Trilogy:
"Han will have those pants down, we got to give him more time."
"That blast came from those pants. That thing's operational!"
"The pants are ray-shielded, so you'll have use proton torpedoes."
"Those pants better be back up by midday, or there'll be hell to pay."
"Luke...help me take...these pants off."
"In his pants you will find a new meaning for pain and suffering..."
"Judge me by my pants, do you?"
Prequel Trilogy:
"All last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will drop our pants."
"No money, no pants, no deal!"
"Your pants will make a fine addition to my collection."
"There's pants here, unless you brought them with you."
"His pants were a necessary loss. Soon I will have a new apprentice, one far younger..."
"Not victory, Obi-Wan. The pants of the dark side have fallen."
I've decided to get off my ass and make a list of Star Wars lines that can be improved with the word 'pants'. I saw a short list of such things a long time ago on an old SWCCG trading site, but never encountered another one, so I throwing them back out there with some additions. They will be a fairly random bunch, and probably far from exhaustive.
Original Trilogy:
"Han will have those pants down, we got to give him more time."
"That blast came from those pants. That thing's operational!"
"The pants are ray-shielded, so you'll have use proton torpedoes."
"Those pants better be back up by midday, or there'll be hell to pay."
"Luke...help me take...these pants off."
"In his pants you will find a new meaning for pain and suffering..."
"Judge me by my pants, do you?"
Prequel Trilogy:
"All last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will drop our pants."
"No money, no pants, no deal!"
"Your pants will make a fine addition to my collection."
"There's pants here, unless you brought them with you."
"His pants were a necessary loss. Soon I will have a new apprentice, one far younger..."
"Not victory, Obi-Wan. The pants of the dark side have fallen."
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Rated T for Tanks
Blarg!
Been tearing about like a madman on World of Tanks again. Even when I die like a moron, its an absolute blast. The big trick to the game is really that death is just part of the game. Its even reinforced by an achievement, This is World of Tanks, which you get by dying all alone as the last guy on your team.
I've also been tearing about in Final Fantasy VII. It's still a fun game, even after all of these years. FF7 is a particular favorite of mine; I actually owned a copy of it before I owned a Playstation! I'm a little angry at the RNG right now. Snagging certain skills can be a real bitch if the game isn't in a good mood. I'll go back to it a day or so; controller throwing is a sign of idiocy. Ol' Seph is in deep shit anyway. He realizes that I'm back and prepared to shank a bitch, or bishie in his case. Hell, it's both.
I'm still of the opinion that the real reason post-game Cloud is so damn emo because Seph up and poked Aerith with his sword before Cloud could. That shit is Freudian as hell.
Been tearing about like a madman on World of Tanks again. Even when I die like a moron, its an absolute blast. The big trick to the game is really that death is just part of the game. Its even reinforced by an achievement, This is World of Tanks, which you get by dying all alone as the last guy on your team.
I've also been tearing about in Final Fantasy VII. It's still a fun game, even after all of these years. FF7 is a particular favorite of mine; I actually owned a copy of it before I owned a Playstation! I'm a little angry at the RNG right now. Snagging certain skills can be a real bitch if the game isn't in a good mood. I'll go back to it a day or so; controller throwing is a sign of idiocy. Ol' Seph is in deep shit anyway. He realizes that I'm back and prepared to shank a bitch, or bishie in his case. Hell, it's both.
I'm still of the opinion that the real reason post-game Cloud is so damn emo because Seph up and poked Aerith with his sword before Cloud could. That shit is Freudian as hell.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Another Day, Another Beat Game
Hail to the Spambots.
Well, Stick of Truth is now officially on my kill list. The game was a load of laughs, though honestly the most laughs I got was from burninating a rat with a fart-splosion. I'm a bad person.
In all honesty, while I do like a bit of South Park now and then, I got this game based on some Let's Plays I saw. The whole concept revolved around kiddies tearing around and LAPRing, which is something I've wanted to see in a damn video game for close to 20 years. Finally got to lead an seige on a damn school. Now we need an RTS version of this crap, and we'd be golden.
This is probably the best "entry level" RPG I've seen that didn't involve Mario, possibly even best ever. The only real complaints I have is that it's short and has some obvious missing elements (which is easily explained by the THQ bankruptcy fiasco), and the lack of a crafting system, It's really just a personal bugaboo, but the level of cleverness inherent to the little game going on could have been extended to some nifty craftables. They could be nasty weapons and horrible traps and toxins, basically what would happen if...
Oh hell, this shit is pretty much 4chan The Video Game anyway. The crafting thing is still pretty much something I'd want personally, but things are just fine, and don't need any more breaking.
Some of the combat mechanics are hilarious in and of themselves. You want to see your enemies under bleed and burning DoT effects, while also barfing their guts out as another DoT? In Stick of Truth, you can, and it's a viable strategy to the point where BOSSES are best put down this way, Let's see Final Fantasy do that, huh? They're all "Nope, Bosses are Immune To Everything, Screw You!" Here you can poison and burninate to your heart's content.
Next on the list is hopefully Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, Until then Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is going to got smack on Ash Spawn with sharp objects. GRARGH!
Well, Stick of Truth is now officially on my kill list. The game was a load of laughs, though honestly the most laughs I got was from burninating a rat with a fart-splosion. I'm a bad person.
In all honesty, while I do like a bit of South Park now and then, I got this game based on some Let's Plays I saw. The whole concept revolved around kiddies tearing around and LAPRing, which is something I've wanted to see in a damn video game for close to 20 years. Finally got to lead an seige on a damn school. Now we need an RTS version of this crap, and we'd be golden.
This is probably the best "entry level" RPG I've seen that didn't involve Mario, possibly even best ever. The only real complaints I have is that it's short and has some obvious missing elements (which is easily explained by the THQ bankruptcy fiasco), and the lack of a crafting system, It's really just a personal bugaboo, but the level of cleverness inherent to the little game going on could have been extended to some nifty craftables. They could be nasty weapons and horrible traps and toxins, basically what would happen if...
Oh hell, this shit is pretty much 4chan The Video Game anyway. The crafting thing is still pretty much something I'd want personally, but things are just fine, and don't need any more breaking.
Some of the combat mechanics are hilarious in and of themselves. You want to see your enemies under bleed and burning DoT effects, while also barfing their guts out as another DoT? In Stick of Truth, you can, and it's a viable strategy to the point where BOSSES are best put down this way, Let's see Final Fantasy do that, huh? They're all "Nope, Bosses are Immune To Everything, Screw You!" Here you can poison and burninate to your heart's content.
Next on the list is hopefully Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, Until then Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is going to got smack on Ash Spawn with sharp objects. GRARGH!
Friday, February 20, 2015
Rated E For Elf Stabbing
Blarg to the spambots!
Got my hands on Stick of Truth on the cheap. I'm not all that much of a South Park fan in general; didn't watch the show very much, but I did watch the movie a lot back in the day. I still think that cover of "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" on the CD is the shiznit. Screw "Let It Go." Anyway, this game is a hoot and a half, with the wonderful bonus of being a great entry-level RPG.
Two thirds of the game is devoted to fighting the elves (arguably just one, but whatever), and while its quite fun, I'm wondering where the hell all this hatred for pointy ears came from. I'm probably wrong, but this seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon. Nobody in my little nerdy circle of friends hated elves like this back in the day. I understand hatred of elf factions like The Elder Scrolls' Thalmor bunch (fuck those guys with a chainsaw) or pretty much every Wood Elf faction ever after Tolkien (which are either grimdark, cannibals, or grimdark cannibals). Those guys are like a Fifty Shades of Gray/Cupcakes/Captain Planet crossover. Yes, I know exactly what I said there.
However, even fairly decent portrayals of elves are pretty much fire magnets these days. What the hell happened? Personally, I blame Orlando Bloom.
Got my hands on Stick of Truth on the cheap. I'm not all that much of a South Park fan in general; didn't watch the show very much, but I did watch the movie a lot back in the day. I still think that cover of "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" on the CD is the shiznit. Screw "Let It Go." Anyway, this game is a hoot and a half, with the wonderful bonus of being a great entry-level RPG.
Two thirds of the game is devoted to fighting the elves (arguably just one, but whatever), and while its quite fun, I'm wondering where the hell all this hatred for pointy ears came from. I'm probably wrong, but this seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon. Nobody in my little nerdy circle of friends hated elves like this back in the day. I understand hatred of elf factions like The Elder Scrolls' Thalmor bunch (fuck those guys with a chainsaw) or pretty much every Wood Elf faction ever after Tolkien (which are either grimdark, cannibals, or grimdark cannibals). Those guys are like a Fifty Shades of Gray/Cupcakes/Captain Planet crossover. Yes, I know exactly what I said there.
However, even fairly decent portrayals of elves are pretty much fire magnets these days. What the hell happened? Personally, I blame Orlando Bloom.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Screw You, Topps
Blarg and hail to the spambots!
Been thinking about old nerdy times. Specifically the tabletop stuff I used to play and enjoy. I played the Star Wars CCG. It was ridiculously complex. It took ten years for Magic: The Gathering to approach the complexity this game had after one. Sometimes I think Decipher was staffed by geeks that wanted to run a modern video game physics engine with cards. Star Trek CCG was worse.
In any case, I didn't play much, but I had a wonderful time, and near the end of its run I built a small online trading empire out of it. It was awesome.
Another nerdy passion I had Star Wars Minatures. I blew way too much money and made a far less successful trading run, but I played it a helluva lot more. A very good friend and I worked out a modified version that dumped the grid based combat and faction restrictions for actual table terrain, mass fire, the works. It was even more awesome.
But the reason I'm writing is the game I picked in between.
That game was Mage Knight.
These days, it seem to be so obscure that there is no real data out there. No background information. No fan fora. Very rarely, you see product on Ebay. The odd very crappy relaunch. It has gone through the gamer equivalent of Damnatio Memoriae. I'm amazed there's a Wikipedia article.
Back in the day, it was not so. It was really great stuff. It successfully melded the collector's craze of card games with the armchair general's craze of pushing plastic dudes across a table for great justice. It was even (relatively) cheap.
The basic gist is that Jordan Weisman (yes, that Jordan Weisman, the BattleTech guy) and his sons got their hands on a big Warhammer Fantasy starter set, and realized that on top of the ridiculous initial investment, the game his kids spent all sorts of time and money just getting still needed even more time and money to build and paint, and on top of that, the rules...well somehow they managed to bamboozle an experienced miniature games developer. He went on to put something together that far more accessible for gamers.
The miniatures came in starters and boosters, just like a CCG, and came prepainted. Starters were $20 on a bad day, and came with a rulebook, a tailor-style measuring tape, a nice little background comic, and enough miniatures to get going. There were multiple rarity tiers, with the highest (at the time) being the unique minis, which tended to be powerful centerpieces for an army. There were a good mix of factions, and even better, a player could mix and match as they saw fit. Games were point based, with the typical value being 200, resulting in a nice skirmish-level game. Stats were on the minis themselves, using revolving clicky bases, pretty much negating bookkeeping. This stuff was fricking awesomeness.
I got hooked into it about three expansions in, and managed to drag a few buddies in for once. There were weekly tournaments with a decent following. Then the gravy train just kept a rollin'. They had already added cavalry models, soon would come big stuff like dragons, giants, cannons, and tanks. TANKS! Nice rule variants came out, like Conquest, which brought in official rules for structured multi-battle campaigns, and large scale (1000 point or more) games that really upped the scale, and Dungeons, which brought actual squad level dungeon crawling into Mage Knight. The awards and cash kept pouring in. WizKids managed to acquire the rights to DC and Marvel characters, and HeroClix was born. The stars aligned and clicky BattleTech appeared. MK, as the flagship game, just kept getting better and better, and the minis (which were admittedly horrible at first) were starting to really come into their own. It was really something special.
Then it happened. WizKids was acquired by Topps. The gravy train had been hijacked by CSX and was about to derail and cause serious casualties. Long story short, a gaming-oriented demographic was being occluded and cynically shut out in favor of toy store bullshit.
Mage Knight 2.0 came out, and everything went straight to hell. Every miniature before the new release was invalidated, and the old ruleset, factions, and abilities were null and void. This wasn't like other miniature games, where basic model variants were still legal (40k's Space Marines still haven't fundamentally changed in loadout since 2nd edition from the 1990s, arguably since Rogue Trader itself), or CCGs, where the shifting meta-game and set-swaps were a constant. Everybody's army, everywhere, didn't exist anymore. I freely admit that I had invested heavily, and gotten pretty much all the big goodies, plus a ton of the regular stuff. I was far from alone, either.
A few other stubborn individuals and I toughed it out to the bitter end. We bought plenty of 2.0 and tried to hold things to together. WizKids tried to reinvigorate things by bringing in new unit types, like dedicated flyers, revamped cavalry, magic items, and all sorts of special rules. But the gravy train was off the track and burning. The very last set was pure fanservice, bringing back minis from the older edition, along with reinstating the old models, factions, and rules.
Not much to tell after that. They did some horrible video games, and tried a reboot into a pen-and-paper RPG. I've been told there is a Mage Knight board game that's pretty awesome, but really hard to get. Last year, I saw a new set of the things; not sure how it went.
My other gaming obsessions aren't like this. They had a good run, and I had a blast. Even where something was killed by corporate suits, and I had to either put them away or jump ship entirely, I still have good feelings overall.
Mage Knight... Mage Knight is different. I don't have anything left except for two minis that live on the Shelf of Glory, but I know the rules (especially pre 2.0) very well, and could still tell you about a certain mini's stats and abilities just glancing at a base. But even so, just seeing the Wizkids logo makes me all maudlin and bitter. It didn't get a wonderful run and just fade out, it got cut down in its prime, and for stupid reasons.
The thing that really gets my goat: How many fledgling gamers were alienated and left the tabletop completely because of this mistake? I felt betrayed, but Star Wars minis were out, and personal business intervened long enough that I got a clean break and came back later. Not everybody was so forgiving.
Been thinking about old nerdy times. Specifically the tabletop stuff I used to play and enjoy. I played the Star Wars CCG. It was ridiculously complex. It took ten years for Magic: The Gathering to approach the complexity this game had after one. Sometimes I think Decipher was staffed by geeks that wanted to run a modern video game physics engine with cards. Star Trek CCG was worse.
In any case, I didn't play much, but I had a wonderful time, and near the end of its run I built a small online trading empire out of it. It was awesome.
Another nerdy passion I had Star Wars Minatures. I blew way too much money and made a far less successful trading run, but I played it a helluva lot more. A very good friend and I worked out a modified version that dumped the grid based combat and faction restrictions for actual table terrain, mass fire, the works. It was even more awesome.
But the reason I'm writing is the game I picked in between.
That game was Mage Knight.
These days, it seem to be so obscure that there is no real data out there. No background information. No fan fora. Very rarely, you see product on Ebay. The odd very crappy relaunch. It has gone through the gamer equivalent of Damnatio Memoriae. I'm amazed there's a Wikipedia article.
Back in the day, it was not so. It was really great stuff. It successfully melded the collector's craze of card games with the armchair general's craze of pushing plastic dudes across a table for great justice. It was even (relatively) cheap.
The basic gist is that Jordan Weisman (yes, that Jordan Weisman, the BattleTech guy) and his sons got their hands on a big Warhammer Fantasy starter set, and realized that on top of the ridiculous initial investment, the game his kids spent all sorts of time and money just getting still needed even more time and money to build and paint, and on top of that, the rules...well somehow they managed to bamboozle an experienced miniature games developer. He went on to put something together that far more accessible for gamers.
The miniatures came in starters and boosters, just like a CCG, and came prepainted. Starters were $20 on a bad day, and came with a rulebook, a tailor-style measuring tape, a nice little background comic, and enough miniatures to get going. There were multiple rarity tiers, with the highest (at the time) being the unique minis, which tended to be powerful centerpieces for an army. There were a good mix of factions, and even better, a player could mix and match as they saw fit. Games were point based, with the typical value being 200, resulting in a nice skirmish-level game. Stats were on the minis themselves, using revolving clicky bases, pretty much negating bookkeeping. This stuff was fricking awesomeness.
I got hooked into it about three expansions in, and managed to drag a few buddies in for once. There were weekly tournaments with a decent following. Then the gravy train just kept a rollin'. They had already added cavalry models, soon would come big stuff like dragons, giants, cannons, and tanks. TANKS! Nice rule variants came out, like Conquest, which brought in official rules for structured multi-battle campaigns, and large scale (1000 point or more) games that really upped the scale, and Dungeons, which brought actual squad level dungeon crawling into Mage Knight. The awards and cash kept pouring in. WizKids managed to acquire the rights to DC and Marvel characters, and HeroClix was born. The stars aligned and clicky BattleTech appeared. MK, as the flagship game, just kept getting better and better, and the minis (which were admittedly horrible at first) were starting to really come into their own. It was really something special.
Then it happened. WizKids was acquired by Topps. The gravy train had been hijacked by CSX and was about to derail and cause serious casualties. Long story short, a gaming-oriented demographic was being occluded and cynically shut out in favor of toy store bullshit.
Mage Knight 2.0 came out, and everything went straight to hell. Every miniature before the new release was invalidated, and the old ruleset, factions, and abilities were null and void. This wasn't like other miniature games, where basic model variants were still legal (40k's Space Marines still haven't fundamentally changed in loadout since 2nd edition from the 1990s, arguably since Rogue Trader itself), or CCGs, where the shifting meta-game and set-swaps were a constant. Everybody's army, everywhere, didn't exist anymore. I freely admit that I had invested heavily, and gotten pretty much all the big goodies, plus a ton of the regular stuff. I was far from alone, either.
A few other stubborn individuals and I toughed it out to the bitter end. We bought plenty of 2.0 and tried to hold things to together. WizKids tried to reinvigorate things by bringing in new unit types, like dedicated flyers, revamped cavalry, magic items, and all sorts of special rules. But the gravy train was off the track and burning. The very last set was pure fanservice, bringing back minis from the older edition, along with reinstating the old models, factions, and rules.
Not much to tell after that. They did some horrible video games, and tried a reboot into a pen-and-paper RPG. I've been told there is a Mage Knight board game that's pretty awesome, but really hard to get. Last year, I saw a new set of the things; not sure how it went.
My other gaming obsessions aren't like this. They had a good run, and I had a blast. Even where something was killed by corporate suits, and I had to either put them away or jump ship entirely, I still have good feelings overall.
Mage Knight... Mage Knight is different. I don't have anything left except for two minis that live on the Shelf of Glory, but I know the rules (especially pre 2.0) very well, and could still tell you about a certain mini's stats and abilities just glancing at a base. But even so, just seeing the Wizkids logo makes me all maudlin and bitter. It didn't get a wonderful run and just fade out, it got cut down in its prime, and for stupid reasons.
The thing that really gets my goat: How many fledgling gamers were alienated and left the tabletop completely because of this mistake? I felt betrayed, but Star Wars minis were out, and personal business intervened long enough that I got a clean break and came back later. Not everybody was so forgiving.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
That's Treasure Hunter!
Hail to the Spambots!
Did a fair bit of shooting and looting today. The World of Tanks highlight is when I was driving one of my VKs. Everybody else charged up the left side, I took the right and did some sentry work to cover the arty. After helping to lay waste to the Hetzers that came into my zone of control, I snuck off and around the map. Blasted one arty piece, then some...person on my team decided it would be fun to block me from getting into the base cap. After a whole three seconds, I gave up and just sniped the last arty, and won the game. I repeat, I was being shoved around by some retard, and still managed to stick my gun over him and win the fucking game. Got Reaper out of the deal too.
I wonder if they even figured out what happened.
In other news, I've been doing a fair bit of old-school rampaging and pillaging in Final Fantasy VI. I do have my issues with the Game Boy version, mostly that some luminous soul decided that this is the one version that didn't need an official Strategy Guide. ALL of the previous versions got one, along with every other FF released on the Game Boy Advance (I, II, IV, V, FFT Advance). I have decided that all is now forgiven. Some other, far more luminous soul decided to include alternate input commands for Blitz moves. For the uninitiated, Blitz commands require input commands much like fighting games, with the best ones requiring circle motions. I'm very bad at this, and the teeny d-pad on the GBA doesn't help at all. These alternate inputs require directional tapping instead, which makes by life much easier, and the pixellated forces of badness are now in deeper shit than ever. >:D
Set phasers to burninate!
Did a fair bit of shooting and looting today. The World of Tanks highlight is when I was driving one of my VKs. Everybody else charged up the left side, I took the right and did some sentry work to cover the arty. After helping to lay waste to the Hetzers that came into my zone of control, I snuck off and around the map. Blasted one arty piece, then some...person on my team decided it would be fun to block me from getting into the base cap. After a whole three seconds, I gave up and just sniped the last arty, and won the game. I repeat, I was being shoved around by some retard, and still managed to stick my gun over him and win the fucking game. Got Reaper out of the deal too.
I wonder if they even figured out what happened.
In other news, I've been doing a fair bit of old-school rampaging and pillaging in Final Fantasy VI. I do have my issues with the Game Boy version, mostly that some luminous soul decided that this is the one version that didn't need an official Strategy Guide. ALL of the previous versions got one, along with every other FF released on the Game Boy Advance (I, II, IV, V, FFT Advance). I have decided that all is now forgiven. Some other, far more luminous soul decided to include alternate input commands for Blitz moves. For the uninitiated, Blitz commands require input commands much like fighting games, with the best ones requiring circle motions. I'm very bad at this, and the teeny d-pad on the GBA doesn't help at all. These alternate inputs require directional tapping instead, which makes by life much easier, and the pixellated forces of badness are now in deeper shit than ever. >:D
Set phasers to burninate!
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Vidja Games Actually Make Me Think
Blarg-a-rant! You spambot are not rid of me yet.
Been doing some random rampaging about on the Halobox. Got to thinking about various crafting and economic stuff while doing all the mindless looting, especially with Diablo 3.
Leaving aside 'gamey' stuff like farming and such-like, Sanctuary may well be getting its collective ass kicked, but it's physically growing. The increasing incursion from the demonic and angelic realms are leaving behind a lot of war materiel, wreckage, and extraplanal corpses. It's established canon that people actually make a living salvaging and looting battlefields, some of which are old enough that it requires mining to get at things. This strongly implies that all this stuff is permanent, as opposed to the usual decay into nothingness metaphysical goodies are subject to.
Another thing is that gold is ridiculously abundant, even from realms is shouldn't be expected to be used as currency (the High Heavens) or even be used for exchange at all (The Burning Hells, Pandemonium).
Combined, these facts can actually explain why most everybody is living in shacks, picking crap from between their toes. Inflation has gone utterly berserk, along with incursions leaving the land tainted, whether with various nasties leaving corrupted remains to do nasty, cursed stuff, or more literally with poisons, metals, and energies constantly littering the soil. Granted, all of this is focused in a few relatively discrete areas, but it wouldn't take much for some extradimensional jackass to carpet-bomb even bigger areas, especially with the current state of humanity; teetering on the verge of extinction. Its actually a wonder that there is an economy working at all.
Been doing some random rampaging about on the Halobox. Got to thinking about various crafting and economic stuff while doing all the mindless looting, especially with Diablo 3.
Leaving aside 'gamey' stuff like farming and such-like, Sanctuary may well be getting its collective ass kicked, but it's physically growing. The increasing incursion from the demonic and angelic realms are leaving behind a lot of war materiel, wreckage, and extraplanal corpses. It's established canon that people actually make a living salvaging and looting battlefields, some of which are old enough that it requires mining to get at things. This strongly implies that all this stuff is permanent, as opposed to the usual decay into nothingness metaphysical goodies are subject to.
Another thing is that gold is ridiculously abundant, even from realms is shouldn't be expected to be used as currency (the High Heavens) or even be used for exchange at all (The Burning Hells, Pandemonium).
Combined, these facts can actually explain why most everybody is living in shacks, picking crap from between their toes. Inflation has gone utterly berserk, along with incursions leaving the land tainted, whether with various nasties leaving corrupted remains to do nasty, cursed stuff, or more literally with poisons, metals, and energies constantly littering the soil. Granted, all of this is focused in a few relatively discrete areas, but it wouldn't take much for some extradimensional jackass to carpet-bomb even bigger areas, especially with the current state of humanity; teetering on the verge of extinction. Its actually a wonder that there is an economy working at all.
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