Sunday, February 14, 2016

Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

Love Live Thermia and stuff.

After careful consideration (and near-lethal exposure to Tokay, the worst island native stereotype next to Gungans), I decided to pursue a new campaign; I've chosen Blue Dragon for this one.

It's already pretty entertaining, with stereotypes for characters (including a villain that does pretty much everything just for the hell of it).  The whole "Shadows" thing is pretty cool.  They're effectively something close FF VIII's Guardian Forces, with some mechanical difference.  Each character only gets one, and they have a 'job' system that allows you to mix and match skills.  One interesting thing is that some of more diverse skills come earlier than you'd expect, like stealing and multi-target physicals.  Another one is that this game's answer to Final Fantasy's Sorcerer/Magic Knight, the Sword Master is ready and attached to the main protagonist right out of the gate, and is just as awesome as it sounds.

Somebody on the developer's payroll must've played some Gears of War at some point; they've come up with a charging mechanic for magic that's very like the Active Reload from that series.  You hold a button to begin charging a meter, with a 'sweet spot' where the goal to release the button for extra oomph (as opposed to tap and tap again for AR).  I'm pretty terrible at it thus far, but still, it's a nifty idea.

The mooks thus far are fairly hilarious.  You can actually set things up to make them eat each other, with entertaining results.  The survivors are rewarded by becoming subject to The Harvest, but that's vidya for you.  The Harvest is also helped along by making all sorts of things searchable, granting little extras like gold and items, and Nothing.  I'm not quite sure what Nothing is, but supposedly finding lots of Nothing will pay dividends later on.

Oh, and 'stinky' is an actual status effect.  Ask not for whom the smell rolls, it rolls for thee!

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