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Game Progress Topic Omicron
CLOUDBOND007 Working on archiving and reading The Sicilian.
Crawl and 1OOO At this point, based on quality, I'd probably recommend Might and Magic first. I am enjoying Etrian Odyssey, though. Thought I should be clear on that. I'm not sure how special it will turn out to be, but it's keeping my interest. I mapped a whole bunch of floor three. The game has a day / night system, and you wake up after sleeping at the inn at 5 am every morning. Frequently, I had been returning to town to sleep before noon! But on my most recent expedition, I stayed out until 8 PM. Also, you can only carry 60 items at a time. Since, like I said, you do not get gold from enemies, but spoils (like hides and bones) you can sell in town, I ended up with 58 items when I returned. I mapped almost three-quarters of the area available TO map for floor three. I have already found the 4th floor, which looks to have wolf FOE enemies. I haven't fought any yet, though. The third floor has a Hexer (NPC) who can heal you. That might have helped with the length of my expedition. I also found some treasures and "take" points. I fought a few other FOEs there, too. After the two stalkers, the others I've fought were just the same sort of FOEs (eg., Ragelope) that I fought on floor two. I found a one-way passage ... well, you first find it and can't go through it, then you find the other way and can ... and it seems like after that, you can go either way. Or maybe I needed to find a character that gave me a clue about it, and that let me pass it both ways. That could be a short cut into the deeper parts of the third floor. My medic (like a white mage) now has the ability to case a resurrect spell. (Actually, I had that since at least last night). I'm not sure if I have any other new abilities worth special note. My characters are at level 14, and were the last time I entered the labyrinth, but they're getting close to level 15.
Crawl and 1OOO On the other hand, on a previous game, I went into a room on the third floor that had two FOEs. You don't know what they are until you fight them, so I thought maybe they'd just be Ragelopes. Nope, Stalkers! Now, yes, I've beaten Stalkers before, and at lower levels. But FOEs sometimes can move around on the map screen, even when you're in battle! And when they can, what they do is run for you! So, I was halfway through the battle, and I already had one character dead (and though I have revive, it only revives them with ~20 hp out of ~100 hp max, and Stalkers maybe do 60 hp damage, so it's tough to recover a dead character), and then another one showed up. There was pretty much no hope to survive two at once. Other than that room, I've mapped all of floor 3 that I can so far. There must be another area (maybe I need to get to it from a higher floor) because there's a one way path I can't get through yet. And, oh, yeah, that answers this question. I found a one-way passage ... well, you first find it and can't go through it, then you find the other way and can ... and it seems like after that, you can go either way. Or maybe I needed to find a character that gave me a clue about it, and that let me pass it both ways. It must have been going through it that opened it.
Crawl and 1OOO And the "flee" skill did not live up to my expectations. It's supposed to have you escape from a battle and end up on the previous floor. HOWEVER, what that means is that you go back to the previous staircase you took. Here's what happened: I used it on the fourth floor, and went back to the third floor as expected. But when I tried using it on the third floor (and I must have tried half a dozen times) it kept telling me it didn't work! So, I trudged to the second floor on foot. Then I used Flee on the second floor ... and it put me back on the third! So, that's why I had to escape the whole dungeon on foot.
Crawl and 1OOO When I entered his lair, a whole bunch of wolf (except they were named Skolls) showed up as FOEs. I beat one, but then Fenrir was right in front of me, so I just decided to fight him. FOEs basically look like giant floating orange testicles, but Fenrir's was black, so I guessed it was the boss. It seems to me that the defender's "Front Row Guard" ability needs to be used every round. It takes some edge off the attacks made to the front row, making them easier to survive. So, that's what I did. Other than that, the fight was straight forward. The Skoll FOEs were closing in on us as the fight progressed, but I beat Fenrir right before two overlapped us. When I won, the other FOEs disappeared. After that, at the beginning of the 6th floor, you find the first "Geomagnetic Field". This is a two way warp that leads to the town. It can also be a save point (but since you could warp to town and save there, that function is probably not that necessary). Thank goodness this game has warps like that. It was starting to take quite a while to get back to the furthest spot I explored, and if the game just kept adding floors... I also beat the remaining Stalkers on floor 3. I used the Front Guard thing like I mentioned for the Fenrir fight. I even beat the first Stalker before the second joined the fray. I haven't finished mapping level 5, but it'll be a lot easier to do so starting from the Geomagnetic field than it would be to start from floor 1. I fought one FOE on level 6 so far. It looked, I don't know, like a werewolf? Or a bigfoot? Or a humanoid badger? Anyway, it was tougher than Fenrir. It killed my archer (I think this game's technical name for that class is survivalist), but I managed to win. But it was tough enough that I decided to warp back to town after that rather than try another fight.
CLOUDBOND007 I got a little puzzle game called Critter Crunch for my phone. It's about feeding critters to other creatures until they explode but it's cartoony so it's okay! My cursor just disappeared. I'm more than halfway through The Sicilian. It's not The Godfather but it's a page turner. I'm not sure that linking the two books together by way of Michael Corleone was necessary or effective, though. I'll wait until the end to make any final judgement on that. I haven't been playing much but I'm going to try and complete another mission or two of Dragon Quest Swords tonight. The new job has been on my mind a little but and it's going to be hard for me to really relax until the first day there is over and done with.
Crawl and 1OOO
CLOUDBOND007 I didn't end up playing any games, but I did finish The Sicilian. I still don't think the chapters from Michael's point of view added much, and even felt slow and out of place. Still, I really enjoyed the book and I'll find another book by Mario Puzo to read next.
da dick on the flipside, the post 1.10 patches do make my more specialised skill sets more efficient than hybrid/jack-of-all-trades skill sets.
Crawl and 1OOO I went back to the fifth floor and fought a spider FOE. That completed another quest (another party was beaten by that spider, and wanted revenge by proxy). The Cutter FOEs on the sixth floor have already regenerated. I also fought a Moa FOE, which looks like an ostrich or emu or something. It had a powerful attack that hit everyone in the party. Fortunately, I have Salve II (but not salve I - I didn't bother with the prerequisites for it) which healed every character back to full health. By the end, I had no more magic left for Salve II, but on that last round, he only attacked one character. It was the last round anyway. My alchemist has TP up leveled to level 7. That let me get the warp ability, which warps me to the geomagnetic field (and from there I can go to town). Now going deep into the maze isn't so tense. The pace of the game might be picking up a bit. I think I read a review where someone said that eventually you get the ability to warp back to town. What, right away? I've had access to Warp Wires for a long time (if not from the very beginning). Although we all know that reviewers barely play games before reviewing them.
Psycho Penguin I also beat Forgotten Worlds as part of the Capcom Classics Collection on XBOX.
Crawl and 1OOO I got a mission to try to steal a wyvern egg from the 8th floor. (You have to steal it because you're probably too weak to kill the wyvern at this point).
CLOUDBOND007 I didn't play anything yet again. I've gotten into the habit of reading every day, but after finishing The Sicilian, didn't have anything I was too interested in. I remembered liking the Star Trek book, Crucible McCoy a great deal and decided to look at the next one in the series since I bought it a while ago. Crucible Spock is decent so far, but like the first one, he works in as many references to episodes of the show as possible, often retelling parts of them with minimal new content. This because the trilogy of books is meant partly as a Star Trek 40th anniversary tribute. Still, when he does original stuff, it's not bad.
Bomberguy221 I've picked up some more hints as to what happened in the past, but no word on Trucy's mom yet. There IS the possibility she's been adopted, too, but that eliminates the fun of it.
TaroSH Wario got this wand that lets him change into a variety of forms with different abilities. You have to unlock them, and when you get those forms you change into them by drawing little pictures on Wario. For example, you draw a zig-zag lightning bolt to turn him into... uh, an electrified Wario, I think it's called Zappy Wario. You draw a tail on him to turn him into Dragon Wario, and a check mark turns him into Thief Wario. It works a lot better than I'd have expected it to, but it does frequently turn me into Genius Wario (you draw this thing like a Q, but with the tail going through the circle) when I wanted to become Arty Wario (you draw a box with a line connecting two corners, I'd been getting away with just drawing a no-smoking sign) You find treasure chests which you unlock by completing some stupid minigame, like smashing cockroaches, or coloring in a picture. These are probably my least favorite part of the game so far. Okay, it's really easy. I've only died once so far against the fourth boss I think it was (a giant snowball that inhales you, and you run around the inside of it like a giant hamster wheel), and I unlocked a skill for Arty Wario that lets me refil my health when I want to. But the bosses have been fast-paced and creative, the levels are maze-like, and I've laughed out loud at some of the dialogue and treasure descriptions. And I really liked that water ruin level.
da dick I got NCAA Football 09 for PS2 and have been starting my Maryland Terrapins dynasty. Did all the preseason stuff and won my first game, 42-10 over Delaware. now i know you are evil. and all the people i know who like soccer are evil.
Psycho Penguin Looking for a good RPG to get mindlessly addicted to for a few days again. I have quite a selection.. which may be the issue.
TaroSH It started pushing my buttons with some of the near end bosses. One is a dolphin that goes through several phases and in its third phase you have to juggle the dolphin around. Wen I figured out exactly how I was supposed to be hitting it it become much less irritating, but for the longest time I couldn't figure out why it kept falling back into the water when I punched it, and I had to go through this level about four times to get the treasure from the doors that vanish if you don't get to them fast enough, and the only way to make them reappear is to restart the level. The other is a really rigged race with a guy in a suit, you have to keep transforming to get through the obstaclesand the game suddenly got really snuffy about the designs I had to draw to transform Wario and place blocks and shit. But still, it was a decent game. Better than Wario Land, at least. Unless you count the five or so time I lost that race, I still only died once in the entire game. Beating the game unlocked five bonus levels.
Psycho Penguin Started up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for PS2 again. I rented this a long time ago, disliked it, and got stuck on a boss before having to return it. Hopefully I can beat it this time. Got through stage 1 and unlocked the jump attack.
TaroSH I finally got back to Condemned and picked off two more levels. Level 6 is bloody short, could probably be beaten in five minutes. Level 7 is an abandoned library, and is the first level I collected everything in (I collected all the dead birds in an earlier level, but I'd only collected one metal piece before this level, funnily enough in the same level I collected all the birds in) and got through using only melee weapons, which got me an achievement.
Psycho Penguin In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for PS2, I cleared out two more stages, finally getting past the boss I got stuck at when I rented the game years and years ago. I also did the second dojo stage and increased my offensive power.
Bomberguy221 Trauma Center: Second Opinion - I decided to attempt the last two surgeries, and managed to beat them. Of course, as soon as I tried surgery X1, my patient almost immediately died. I'm not sure if the two different doctors have some sort of perceptable difference. They seem identical to me. But that aside, it was a fun game. Much less buggy than its DS counterpart, and the extra missions weren't bad, either.
Minerva K Red
CLOUDBOND007 I've almost finished with Crucible: Spock. I started it because I simply had nothing else, but the Star Trek fan within started to emerge and I ended up liking it a lot. I was going to continue with Dragon Quest Swords but at this point, I think I might as well wait for FF4 DS. It's the game I'm more interested in, and I know I'll end up dropping DQS to play FF instead, so it's the best choice.
TaroSH
Crawl and 1OOO CLOUDBOND007 wrote: I've almost finished with Crucible: Spock. I started it because I simply had nothing else, but the Star Trek fan within started to emerge and I ended up liking it a lot. Crucible: Spock is just a big rip off of Crucible: McCoy. http://www.cb007.com/mccoy.html
CLOUDBOND007 The intro to Crucible: Kirk says that it goes in a surprising direction or something, so we'll see. Flipping through it, it seems to be more related to the movie Generations than to City on the Edge of Forever.
TaroSH I also completed the bestiary, and got the best rank. I want to slap whoever thought this up: to get all the treasure, you have to play each level at least three times. The first time you have to get the powerups, like costumes and lifeups from some of the chests. The next time the chests you got those items from will contain normal treasure, but one of the chests will be "possessed" and you can't get the treasure from it that time. You could get lucky and the possessed chest will be something you already got, but it's unlikely. Also, your total money is the sum of your high scores for each level, and if a chest with a pricey treasure is possessed, you can't get a good score without going through the entire level again. I went to GameFAQs to find out what levels some of the treasures were in (not where the treasure were exactly) because of this, and the only FAQ had two treasure locations on the Treasure List wrong . One was right in the actual FAQ, the other wasn't even mentioned in the FAQ but I found the correction in a forum topic, the rest of the content of which which made me weep for humanity, like people asking how to beat the first boss and every other person was asking where the Yellow Crystal in the ice level was.
CLOUDBOND007 Anyway, it works fine now, and has new classes and stuff. I almost always use the barbarian-type character, so I decided to shake things up a bit by using the vampire knight lady. There were a couple of other characters I was thinking about, but their voices were a little annoying and their classes were just a little more generic. The game is a pure Diablo clone but it's better than most and everything is very intuitive. This is the kind of game I can play a little at a time without it interfering with my enjoyment of FFIV. You can save and quit at any time for one thing, so even if I want to just put in 10 minutes, I can do that and make progress.
Bomberguy221 I have to say, this game hasn't been as enjoyable as the ones with Phoenix. I have no problems with Apollo and actually enjoy him as much as Phoenix (while Phoenix himself has adapted to his new role well). Trucy also has the same quirks as Maya and fits her role appropriately. It would've taken a lot to fill Dick Gumshoe's... uh, shoes... but Ema has become just as endearing. And Klavier is a more likable character than Godot (and at least suggests he's a human with flaws). I think the issue is that there doesn't feel like there's the same conflict as there was in the other games. Edgeworth, Franziska, and Godot all had personal reasons why they wanted to beat Phoenix in court. Klavier almost works for the defense as much as he works for himself. And Kristoph would be a great reason to want Apollo to lose a case. It's the same thing with Ema - Gumshoe didn't trust Phoenix immediately, and part of the struggle in the game that made it interesting was trying to get certain characters to cooperate. Ema practically throws the evidence at you. Another thing is that I'm several steps ahead of the cases, and that didn't happen with the previous 14 cases. There was always at least one thing I got stuck on and couldn't figure out until I thought of things in a different way. I have to think in new ways to solve specific cross-examinations, but I haven't hit any global "walls" yet. The game has another chance to change my opinion, and if #5 comes out, I still like this series too much to quit now.
da dick my druid's in act3 now. found the gilim or whatever you call that dagger and khalim's brain. now i have find the city of kurast. damn long winding road of a jungle. i think i prefer act4's vast wastelands to this. feels so claustrophobic. the river barriers in act 3 do make it easier for my iron wolf merc kill off enemies on the otherside of the river while i just walk around to bait the them. the ligtning-based iron wolf i hired can do more damage on multiple enemies, but it can't seem to kill off enemies quite as fast as my previous rogue merc. can't control the amount of damage my iron wolf can do(he only uses spells to attack), but he should be more durable than a rogue with that shield. only type of merc in the game who can use a shield. that shield would work better with a cold iron wolf's frozen armour spell, but he doesn't use glacier spike(has area effect) spell to attack until you hire him in nightmare mode. better to stick with a fire or ligtning iron wolf for better crowd control. got a killed a 2nd time by a flayer shaman's inferno attack. i had no fire resistent armour at that time, and i charged at it when my life was low. the 1st time, i got careless fighting a cold-enchanted(i can't remember if it was cursed) made a magical socketed maul using the horadic cube. wanted to wait a superior socketed giant axe or maul, but finding one with just the right number of sockets for the runewords i could make seems impossible. later gambled for a rare maul which had over 30% increased damage, had 22 charges of the barbarian's bash attack(that skill's useless for my werewolf), and had a single socket. i put the wrong rune in that rare maul. put it one which increased its max damage by 9. it already had more than enough damage. i misread the properties of the rune. i thought it would allow me to absorb 15% damage taken into my mana, but that property works only on armour. i rather keep my rare armour and i can't find a 2 socketed eagle headgear.put an amethyst(sp?) gem in my helm so i can equip the mauls earlier. good thing i didn't decide to train a caster druid. noticed the latest patch turned most of his cyclone spells into physical attacks(used to do cold damage). however the patch pumped up the damage for all of the druid's attack skills/spells. MW4:
da dick
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 I finished Crucible: Kirk. It had it's moments, but you could tell the author was just running out of steam at this point. Even though he never mentions it again on the show, I could maybe buy Kirk being severely emotionally damaged by Edith dying, but Spock having this crippling, life changing guilt for decades is maybe a little too much for me. And WTF at the ending with the duplicate Kirk. I'd explain but it would take me an hour. I've read about 30 pages of Voyage of the Jerle Shannara (it's a pretty massive compilation of three books). I haven't read any other books in this universe but it's interesting so far. I like fantasy books in theory but I haven't had much enjoyment from anything other than Dragonlance. And since I was a bit younger when I read those, I don't know how if they were as good as I thought they were.
Psycho Penguin My stepdad used the PSP, so I lost all my Exed Exes progress and did not even get the credit points for what I actually accomplished (The game tracks stuff like game time, button presses, etc. and gives you 'coins' to spend in a slot machine like game which unlocks secrets for games like pictures, music, etc. Lame setup - I like Remixed's idea better where you actually have to accomplish stuff in the game to unlock its features, but I digress.) So, I am pretty pissed now because it took me like 3 1/2 hours to get that far, and it's not a very good game to begin with. This is the second shooter I've had to abandon hopes of beating this month on PSP, the other being Varth (Capcom Classics Collection Remixed). That one pissed me off equally because I got to like stage 24 and met a boss I just won't be able to beat. Took me all day to get there, too. And that game definitely doesn't save progress. Today, I fired up the old XBOX Ninja Gaiden and actually didn't do too bad. I've been scared to play it, since the last time I tried it I could not even wall jump consistently without getting pissed off at the controls, camera, and my suckiness of all things 3D, but today I wall jumped fine and got all the way to the door of the boss, but it was locked. So, I turned it off and will play again later, and figure out how to unlock that damn door.
TaroSH There was one part near the end that really pissed me off. You go into a drained swimming pool with a bunch of debris in the bottom, Ethan has one of his hallucinations and is attacked by a bunch of zombies. What makes this irritating is most of the zombies are weaponless, and I find this more problematic than them being armed. Like bums, when they're empty-handed they attack by lunging at you and strangling you, and you have to shake the control sticks to get them off. It not only takes off a nice chunk of your health, but it also blinds you for a second, and there were so many zombies here that as soon as I shook one off, another had jumped on me. I went to GameFAQs and read about finding an Uzi in the pool, which has, like, three seconds worth of rounds in it (I found this out the hard way). When I got out of that, I hd maybe a fifth of my health, and almost got taken down by a soldier (I would have been pissed if he had killed me). I'll probably replay the game and try to get all the achievements. Most of them are unlocked by finding birds, metal pieces, and TVs. A few are unlocked by your weapon choices, and I'll probably go through on easy (playing on Normal now) so I don't have to try to do that swimming pool segment with melee.
TaroSH Condemned has had its moments that pissed me off, but that was on an 'oppressive combat getting my butt kicked five times' level. But it hasn't offended me until now: After I gathered the four pieces of the riddle, Rosa put them together and gave me the clue "The dark path to righteousness is beyond which you see yourself to be." Well, okay, it's kind of flowery and maybe you could arrange the pieces into different meanings, so it might have taken me a while to put them together and get the clue myself, I can accept this 'gimme'. Then I figured it meant I have to find a mirror and smash it to reveal a door. But first I only needed one more Metal Piece to get the First Propoganda Report Achievement, so I went to look around for a little bit and maybe find that mirrow while I'm at it. So I do, and a few minutes later Rosa calls in and says something along the lines of "Hey Thomas? Think about that riddle. I think it means there's a secret tunnel behind a mirror." I am not making that up.
Crawl and 1OOO
CLOUDBOND007 I caught some of the new Willy Wonka movie on TV. From what I saw, it just doesn't compare to the first one. But I might still be interested in watching the whole thing eventually. I was hoping Gamestop would ship FF4 DS today, but I guess not. Some people said theirs had been shipped today, so who knows why. I'll probably be too tired to play much of it until Saturday, anyway.
da dick i think his wolfhound is made of much lighter stuff than the wolfhound in MW4. there's no way i can fit 14 heatsinks into that MW4 wolfhound and still have a similar weapon config and 6.5 tons of armour. i could only fit 7 , if i remove the medium laser which is suppose to be a rear weapon in the original config.i think i can only use this MW4 imitation of his config as a hit n run mec. overheats too easily with 3 med pulse lasers,1 ER med laser and 1 ER large laser.
ACC KAIN I completed every stage, too, although I P-Winged through a couple of them. Now what to do next... I'm thinking an RPG or adventure game and Willow has always interested me.
TaroSH
Psycho Penguin So I said fuck it and tried.. Nanostray DS - Much better, pick up and play shooter that took me a while to figure out, but it's pretty addictive.
CLOUDBOND007 I should be getting the game tomorrow if UPS doesn't screw up again. Hopefully F. Rontdoor will come through and accept the package for me if someone else isn't around to sign. For some reason, the tracking page says 15 pounds. The first DS game released in a solid steel case?
Captain Ladd Spencer I'll wait a little while to bang out my thoughts on the game as a whole. I might start a new game on Easy so I can go back through and collect all the crap.
Psycho Penguin I love this game. Nanostray 2 is next on my list.
ACC KAIN
Psycho Penguin Nanostray has been defeated. I'm doing some of the challenges now, then restarting FF4 DS again.
CLOUDBOND007 The translation is comparable to others I've seen for this game lately. There are so many now I can't keep track of them all. There was an extra flashback scene to Kain and Cecil training. Touch screen use seems much less useable than in FF3 DS unless I'm doing it wrong. Bottom-screen map is interesting. Safe areas, you see the whole location (minus any secret passages). Dangerous areas, the map is revealed as you explore. It's easy to read and well implemented. I'll play and comment more later. For now, I'm having trouble keeping my eyes from closing.
Crawl and 1OOO I wonder if there's a chance that I'll ever fanboy out and get that game.
CLOUDBOND007
Psycho Penguin UNDERGROUND WATERWAY GOT TELLAH SAVED AT SAVE POINT. 100 PERCENT MAP COMPLETION SO FAR. ON ALL MAPS. WINNER IS ME.
CLOUDBOND007 I think this game might really be something special. There are so many impressive little details I keep noticing, like the enemy animations, animated aspects of the already nice backgrounds in combat (such as moving mist), the way Cecil has his helm down during battle and up during conversations. The way your character will have a more impressive weapon swing animation if they get a critical hit. The victory pose animations. The random encounters and the Mist Dragon were noticeably more powerful, though not overwhelmingly so by any means. However, I did find that while I was messing around to see if you could fight enemies using the touch screen, wasting a fair bit of time, I had been turned to stone and killed. This was right outside Baron, possibly what killed Psycho Penguin if I had to guess. This leads me to believe that while it's likely EGM and others exaggerated the difficulty a bit, it may in fact be the hardest version of FF4. I should be able to give a pretty definitive answer on that after another hour or two. The controls are best if you use the stylus to move around as the d-pad just doesn't feel right due to the camera. You do have to revert to traditional controls for combat, as there just doesn't seem to be another way. The bottom screen gives you some useful detail, like what each character is doing, what status effects they have, etc. After the battle, you see bars representing experience needed to level up and other info. This is all maybe not the most creative use of the extra screen, but certainly handy and time saving info. Once I got to the town of Baron and the Mist Cave, I started to appreciate how carefully and skillfully these areas were converted to a 3D engine. I think when I criticize certain details, I forget that I'm playing this on the underpowered DS. I find myself very excited to see the places I remember so well and find out how they'll now appear. The cave gave me my first taste of mapping, and I earned a 5 potion reward for exploring the entire area. It seems like it'll add a lot of incentive to actually look around instead of heading right for the boss. It's very early, I know, but I feel like the team that did this remake were themselves fans of the original. (/FF4 fanboy)
Psycho Penguin I think they exaggerated the challenge. I haven't heard many complaints on GameFAQs about it (and a bunch of losers there are already on new game plus), and besides the cheap enemy bird tactics at the beginning (when I got game over I got ambushed by them both times and missed a few hits on them) I have not had many issues. But I am not even to the second boss yet so we shall see. I know they did make FF3 DS harder than the Famicom one, I could definitely see that when playing FF3 DS. (They added about 5 or 6 new scenes also.. can't wait to see Edge do you know what to his parents in 3D!)
Captain Ladd Spencer
CLOUDBOND007 In FF4, Rydia joined and I'm leveling her up. I have nothing bad to say about it, it's just a fantastic experience so far and I'm already praying that they do something like this for FF6. FF5 can rot, though.
Psycho Penguin Make sure to cast protect on everyone during the Mt Hobs boss fight. I guess that would be the solution to the fact the boss exploding did SEVEN HUNDRED DAMAGE to everyone. 3rd game over now. :/
ACC KAIN I'm sorry about 11 people post here and therefore it's going to be hard to find someone to discuss a specific game with, but the internet is a big place and all. Lol. He can't count either. Willow - I leveled up to 3 by fighting the slimes outside of town. I got the Gold Statue and fought Bogarda in the cave. I beat him pretty easily and got the magic of flowing fire.
Psycho Penguin EDIT: You were right. I can't count. Nine people posted in this topic. At least I said "about".
James FP
ACC KAIN Psycho Penguin wrote: I was being TOTALLY SERIOUS. At least I can beat a warthog in Willow. And so can I, as per my previous post, I'm now at the dragon's cave. Was just a little surprised to get killed almost instantly by something like that. I guess it's like that first bee in Ys 3. EDIT: You were right. I can't count. Nine people posted in this topic. At least I said "about". Scroll down to the bottom of the forum and click the "Active Users" link. Pages 1 and 2 are full of people I would call Port Saiid regulars. Page 3 has a few semi-regulars. That's way more than 11.
Psycho Penguin I meant in this topic since he was implying he had no one to talk about the game with in this topic except me. SERIOUS BUSINESS. In the aforementioned game, I am about to turn Cecil into the Harbringer of Light.
CLOUDBOND007
Flying Omelette I don't normally like to get involved in situations I'm not involved in, but I can see where the "here" in saying "only so many people post here" can easily be interpreted as meaning the whole board. I personally don't think of individual topics as being places on their own. Anyway, it's been years since I've played Willow, but I remember noticing a spike in difficulty around the Dragon's Cave. I had to specifically level up a bit to get past that part. The game's difficulty doesn't spike again until sometime later, although I don't remember exactly where. All I do remember is how I leveled myself up to the max level to deal with it.
Captain Ladd Spencer The metal plates are almost always marked by eyes on the walls (there have been a couple instances of there being eyes but no metal, but there was something else there, like a murder scene) and some birds are still alive and flapping around and squaking, or your gas spectrometer pops up. However, other birds are given no hint. Supposedly, you're supposed to listen for buzzing flies, but I can't hear them and when I tried to turn up the volume I almost crapped myself when some debris went banging around. And I'm finding stuff I didn't my first time through, and not just birds and metals. While combing for the birds I looked over a guard wall to a lower floor and a bloody-lipped bum lunged at me from below.
CLOUDBOND007 I still think the enemies are tougher than before, but the usual strategies apply (mainly having Tellah electrocute everything while Cecil looks cool and Rydia just stands there). I don't have the interest to investigate this further, but the gil earned from battles and the effectiveness of curative spells may have both been reduced a bit.
Psycho Penguin
CLOUDBOND007 Anyway, I mapped the waterway up to 100%. Octomammoth didn't seem much stronger, except that he takes longer, and when you have it almost defeated, then it can get in some good hits. I think it's balanced out by Cecil's Darkness, however. In the original, the dark wave wouldn't be any use, but the ability to do super-critical hits at will is much more useful against a boss. What I noticed and thought was a really nice touch is that when you equip a new weapon, you actually see the change visually. When I got to Damcyan, there was another voice acted story scene. I think Tellah and Yoda are related. Edward and Rydia's voices seem pretty much like what I expected. I didn't like Cecil's voice in the intro but I guess I've gotten used to it and it seems fine now. If anyone's wondering, you CAN turn them off. Spoony bard is still in the game (not voiced). I almost wish they'd change the line at this point, though. I'd have to say that the Antlion Cave is one of my least favorite parts of the original, so we'll see how it is here.
ACC KAIN Flying Omelette wrote: Anyway, it's been years since I've played Willow, but I remember noticing a spike in difficulty around the Dragon's Cave. I had to specifically level up a bit to get past that part. The game's difficulty doesn't spike again until sometime later, although I don't remember exactly where. All I do remember is how I leveled myself up to the max level to deal with it. So I noticed. It took all night, but I leveled up and got through that part. I got the Magic Cane after meeting the Fairy Queen at Lake Cheef. I met Madmartigan and I need to find a key to free him.
CLOUDBOND007 The Antlion is different. It'll still counter attacks but that changes by the color of it's eyes. If the eyes are normal, it will counter physical attacks but not magic. If the eyes are red, it's the opposite. The eye color changes frequently and with no warning. My "strategy" was to have Edward hide the whole battle because I couldn't think of anything he could do. Cecil used "darkness" and attacked when the eyes were red, and Rydia summoned the Chocobo a couple of times. The battle was nothing to write home about. The Chocobo summon is fairly impressive visually but the satisfaction of actually seeing the chocobo make contact with the enemy is gone. You basically see a movie of it charging, then a fade to black, then the enemy takes damage. I got attacked by a giant worm in a random battle in the same room where the Antlion was. That had me a little spooked as it was pretty powerful and I hadn't healed completely, so I warped right out after that. Went to Kaipo where Rosa joined up and I played through Edward's little scene with Anna's spirit. I thought that in the original version of this sequence, Edward ended up with lots of experience points, but he gets next to nothing here. Whenever you open the main menu, you see what Cecil is thinking at the time, usually about Rosa. "Rosa, please hold on just a little longer." "Rosa, it's wonderful to be near you again." IIRC, Rosa comes equipped with a bow and arrow in previous versions, but here she starts with a staff. I ran into a party of skeletons in my first encounter at Mt. Hobbs. Edward was dead before I had a chance to act, so I decided to use that as an excuse to stop for the night.
CLOUDBOND007 The boss (the bomb-thing) you fight with Yang was exciting. It killed the hell out of me the first time. When it explodes, if you don't defend, the whole party is going to die. Period. If you do defend, you'll be barely alive with several weaker bombs picking you off one by one before you can even try to get organized. I managed to have Yang do a kick before he was killed, which eliminated half of the bombs. I basically had Cecil use a hi potion and defend as the other ones self destructed. He was the only one left. Yang seems comparatively over-powered for his level. --- For Star Trek, I've watched "The Man Trap" and The Naked Time" via my new DVD set. I plan to watch every episode of the show over the course of the next few weeks or however long.
Bomberguy221 I just got past the point where you control Phoenix in a flashback. Gumshoe made a very welcome appearance, though the whole thing had a feel of "this happened and we need to talk about it," rather than the more relaxed pace of other court events. Understandable, given the context, but felt a little artificial. And I don't think I'll find out who Trucy's mother is, but it's not the two suspects I had from the start (but I did learn a lot about her father). I'm wondering when game 5 of this series is coming out, or if that Edgeworth 3rd-person game will see American shores. I'm looking forward to both.
CLOUDBOND007 In FF4, I've made it to Mysida where Palom and Porom have joined. The defense of Fabul was pretty easy and basically unchanged from previous versions. Edward died during the first battle, but it wasn't exactly a big loss. Yang and Cecil were able to handle the enemies with ease. You know those battles where you have the commander who gives orders to two troops? Have Cecil hit the back one, then have Yang kick, and they all die. I'm sure it wasn't that easy to do before. There was the big scene with Kain and Golbez, where I found myself questioning the voice acting all over again. Cecil is simply not believable as a dark knight, even as one who wants to repent. On the other hand, Golbez sounds so evil, he's like a bad cartoon villain. Kain is... well, Kain is better by comparison. It looks like the Deathbringer sword's chances of causing instant death have been greatly reduced. I miss the darkness wave so much. It was so fun to clear a screenful of annoying but weak random enemies with it. I'm looking forward to Mt. Ordeals. Haven't had a satisfying dungeon since the cave to Damcyan where you fight Octomammoth. It was large and fun to map, and your party was useful enough. --- For Star Trek, I watched "Where No Man Has Gone Before" both with and without the commentary subtitles (featured on selected episodes). What's interesting that as this episode was basically a second pilot, it didn't yet have the Shatner voice over at the beginning. "Space, the final frontier...", etc. That voiceover was partly inspired by the title of this episode, though. The episode has a much different look than anything else in the series. It was made to show the executives that Star Trek could be produced quickly and on a tight budget, and be a weekly show. They were still using sets and props from the original pilot episode with Pike. McCoy isn't a character yet. Sulu is there but he's not a helmsman. The uniform colors and their meanings are different, and they have a cruder look. Many other things. It's even more jarring because instead airing the episodes in production order, they first showed several of the more "normal" looking episodes beforehand.
CLOUDBOND007 Scarmiglione. His dialogue was better than usual. The first phase of the battle was really easy. The second phase seemed fairly hard since the twins both died and Cecil and Tellah were getting weaker by the time I won. I had decided to go ahead and save but also give the battle one more try to see if I could do better. Things went badly wrong, with every character being silenced and put to sleep. I don't know if it was a counterattack to a particular thing I did or just random, but it was devastating. So I decided to be happy with my earlier victory. I think that the paladin transformation scene benefited from the move to 3D more than a lot of the other sequences so far.
CLOUDBOND007
Flying Omelette
CLOUDBOND007 Baigan, who could be tricky, was again very easy. I used twin spells twice, and that pretty much did the job. They aren't reflectable and do massive damage to the arms and body. Cagnazzo now has a fancy eviler name. "The Drowned King, Cagnazzo". And his speech during the wall crush event is pretty sinister as well. The battle was extremely difficult, one of the closest I've ever come out ahead on. In the original, a few lighting spells and he's dead. But he no longer has that weakness except for when he's preparing to do a Tsunami. You have very little time to cast it before he uses the spell. And it's incredibly devastating. It does massive damage and seems to be able to cause instant death if I was following the situation correctly. He'll counter almost everything you do by silencing you, paralyzing you, etc. And then after taking hits, he retreats into the shell and starts rapidly healing, and almost nothing has any effect on him, even the strongest spells doing only "okay" damage. Luckily, he did go into the shell at a good moment, when everyone was dead but Cecil who couldn't take another hit. I used Phoenix downs on a few characters and healed up and then tried to just chip away a little at a time using Thundaga and attacking. I was constantly running out of MP. There was another Tsunami attack and I thought I was finished but a couple of weak attacks later and he finally died. I was stunned that I didn't Game Over on that one, it was pure luck. The wall trap was a scene I really enjoyed seeing "acted out" in 3D with voices.
Crawl and 1OOO Flying Omelette wrote: When he comes out with his true feelings for Robin. Chester might have a few words to say about that.
Flying Omelette
Psycho Penguin I defeated Rubicante and now I have to get the upgraded ship I believe.
Bomberguy221 I'm currently playing a time-travel game where I control Phoenix through his actions in the past and the present. I can't say I've been stuck at three spots like this before, but... well, I am. I needed a stopping point, anyway. I'm glad they brought back the Magatama scenes, and given it a musical update. And I learned who Trucy's mom is (though I was expecting her to be that person when I had eliminated my other two "suspects.")
Crawl and 1OOO Flying Omelette wrote: Not that Robin. Sheesh. Whether she's in her Earth Demon or human form, she's still the same Robin.
Rushifell
Captain Ladd Spencer I did the first investigation in Apollo Justice.
Captain Ladd Spencer I also need the Melee Mayhem, Fire-Arm Freedom, and Gold Melee Master awards. I'm hoping to get the Melee Mayhem and Gold Melee Master awards, as I've been picking up whatever debris I come across and killing at least one enemy with it, and only used a gun in my retry of the first level.
CLOUDBOND007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bZKEhgieoc
CLOUDBOND007 Melee Master awards LOL, is it an award for being confused all the time?
ACC KAIN One thing I didn't realize was happening for awhile is that when you get a new sword, Willow swings it really slowly at first and you have to level up to be able to swing it faster. That's one of the reasons I was having a hard time earlier. When I got a new sword, I'd just equip it right away but it's not always useful to do that. This game has good music and the visuals are a little grainy, but I like the little touches like the grass blowing in the wind. I didn't know any game before Secret of Mana did that.
Captain Ladd Spencer CLOUDBOND007 wrote: LOL, is it an award for being confused all the time? You get it for taking jokes seriously and asking the topic to be locked after the question you erased has been answered. To be serious, you get it for completing all the levels using only melee fighting, and that means pistol whipping the first two enemies in the first level because you can't fire your gun and you can't drop it in favor of a lead pipe or something. I watched the first three episodes of the Sam & Max cartoon. It's not great, but it has made me laugh several times. I cringed when I first heard Sam, and while I've gotten sort of used to it I keep expecting him to start going on about a couple of meddling plumbers interfering with his plans to take over the Mushroom Kingdom.
CLOUDBOND007 Edit: And again. I tried some different things, but that one attack wipes me out completely. Looks like I may have to level up a little. Or a lot.
Rushifell Sword of hope - Currently at level 14. beat the yeti boss and got the sapphire. Gave the sapphire to poliniyak and that earned me platinum armor. after that i got into a fight with an imp theif that didn't take any damage from magic spells. i lost to him so i guess it's time to level up again.
Captain Ladd Spencer I got the Gold Melee Master award at the end of Chapter 9, but I didn't beat Chapter 10 without firearms. I got 29 Metal Pieces but it has not given me the Third Propoganda Report. I found all the birds (I have the Silver Bird awards for all ten chapters), but it has not given me the Gold Bird Award. I also got the glitch wherin your weapon disappears after you tear out the final boss's shoulder thing, and you can't pick up any of the other weapons. Had to reload my save.
Captain Ladd Spencer I've also run around picking up birds, hoping the Gold Bird Award will finally kick in.
Facilitypro CLOUDBOND007 wrote: Um, because they're GAMESTOP, that's why. They know they can do whatever they want and you'll keep spending money there. I hope you got a rewrapped used copy.
da dick Not that Robin. Sheesh. strange hiro robin sez: "sorry, not my type. i'm actually in an open gay marriage with fat robin." Sword of hope... that makes me miss my gameboy. that was the funniest game(unless you think mana trees are funny) i ever played on a GB. don't forget to hit on the pigeons.
CLOUDBOND007 I hope you got a rewrapped used copy. Like I care. I needed to buy the game online and I wanted it to arrive quickly. Other online stores that I've tried either charge more for shipping or take forever to ship. And why do you care? I thought you didn't even buy games anymore?
Captain Ladd Spencer
Captain Ladd Spencer They did it with both He-Man DVDs...
CLOUDBOND007
Captain Ladd Spencer There's also Amazon Prime, which as well as making me think of the Spider Prime arc every time I see it is some Amazon service where you pay a monthly or yearly fee and get free overnight (or maybe two-day) shipping on as much as you want. Okay, I just looked this up. It's $79 a year for two-day shipping (pay $4 at item for overnight), so if you aren't buying much from them it ain't worth it, although I have some free two-month trial offer I haven't activated yet. And as Freakazoid just taught me, the "shipping early so it arrives at your door on the release date" deal might depend on if the suppliers give them the goods early.
CLOUDBOND007 http://fuckinthingsucks.ytmnd.com/ (NSFW)
Psycho Penguin Why use Thundaga against Cagnazzo? it takes a while to pull off! Thunder works quick and just as effectively. And he's not weak against any magic? Have you used blizzard magic on him? Also, Dark Elf is the easiest boss in the game so far. Silence him, slow him, haste your party up, and unload on him when he turns into the Dark Dragon. He doesn't stand a chance. I just beat the 4 Fiends in a row in the Giant of Babil, now THERE'S a shitty fight to deal with. Up to the final dungeon now I think, but I'm going to take care of some side quests like Bahamut first.
Bomberguy221 I'm proud to say that, after inspecting the Court Record, I had one of my "Elise Deauxnim" moments. Not only does it fill me with pride that I just discovered a huge secret of the game, but it fills me with shock as to what that secret was. Of course, I didn't expect a large number of other things to happen, so as far as this game's story, it is on par with the Fey family secrets.
CLOUDBOND007 All it took to kill him was to cast Firaga twice, but I never had the opportunity before the last attempt. I did have Cid use the ability where you change his weapon's element, but he got one hit killed the next round so I didn't get to enjoy the results much. If I had the fire claws for Yang, that would have been a big help, but I ran out of Gil upon returning to Baron and didn't feel like saving up for them. Then, by the time I had the money, I'd forgotten about it completely. Why use Thundaga against Cagnazzo? Because it annihilated him in the original versions and I wanted to see what would happen here? I know they changed a lot of things, but it doesn't mean everything is different. I did learn to use the weaker thunder spells to break his tsunami, but remember that this was all one attempt and that it turned south very quickly, so I didn't have a lot of time to try different things. By the time I would have gotten around to trying blizzard, at least one or both of the mages was probably dead. --- I wonder what your levels were for these sections?
Captain Ladd Spencer http://www.codiekitty.com/File/p0rn/index.htm
Facilitypro CLOUDBOND007 wrote: And why do you care? I thought you didn't even buy games anymore? I don't like seeing people get away with malicious activity.
CLOUDBOND007 Barbariccia. I hate that name to no end, so I'm using Valvalis from now on. Anyway, Valvalis killed me before I had a chance to really act. I had Cid, Yang and Cecil attack in the first turn. She countered each attack with lighting on everyone, doing about 700HP damage. By the third counter attack, it was Game Over time. So I've learned that I have to attack very cautiously next time, maybe only one character per round.
Captain Ladd Spencer Okay, maybe they changed something for FFIVDS, but doesn't Kain's jump negate something about Barbariccia? She'd turn herself into a tornado and Jump would set her back? Though frankly, I don't know what the tornado even did, since I always negated it quickly.
CLOUDBOND007
Rushifell
Captain Ladd Spencer
Captain Ladd Spencer I'm worrying the game gave me the Gold Melee Master Award when it meant to give me the Gold Bird Award (it gave me the Gold BoF2 Cat Award when I hadn't actually fulfilled the requirements for it, but I think I had gotten all the birds by that level), and now I can't get it. I guess if I go through the whole game one last time and still don't get it, I'll have to move my data to the memory card, wipe it off the hard drive, and go through the game all over again. Preferrably after some time away from the game. EDIT: Okay, found a topic on GameFAQs that said I have to collect all the birds in one start-a-new-game playthrough. In my second playthrough I missed a bird in the school. And if it doesn't kick in, start a new game again, collect all the birds, and THEN it should kick in within a couple levels. *hangs head and cries a little*
Captain Ladd Spencer Unlocking Achievments in Condemned also unlocks things like concept art and production videos, and the video for the Gold Bird award was this video of Condemn's, for lack of a better word, prototype. It was gameplay video of some psychic going through an early version of the school, and actually lasted a while. Some parts were virtually unchanged for Condemned, some were kind of changed like the locker you find the mutilated teacher in just contains a shovel, and other parts are radically different, like one scene you go into some mystery room, open a drawer, and find a severed head.
Psycho Penguin
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH
Bomberguy221 The end didn't feel as climactic this time, though. I knew exactly what to present most of the time (I goofed once), but I almost coasted through everything near the end. I still liked it, and I'm still happy with how it threw me for a loop or three, but I really hope that the next one is better. Soul Calibur Legends - Attempted Fafnir again. No go. I remember I had a hard time when Ivy was with me (she died and Seigfried only had a millimeter of health left), but with just Seigfried fighting the monster, it's near impossible. His attacks are just too powerful, and I can't dodge half of them (like his in-flight fireballs, the majority of my damage). The furthest I got down the energy bar was half, but it doesn't help Trauma Center: New Blood - I'm up to Chapter 2. This game plays almost identical to its predecessor, with a few differences:
Overall, not too bad.
Rushifell
TaroSH And why did they feel the need to censor "wine" for "grape juice" in a game where every other person is killing or getting killed?
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH I only briefly played System Shock 2 so I don't know how finding items compares, but I am picking up a lot of ammo, though I'm not really using the guns. I was always low on First Aid Kids, then I realized I should stop using the them because when I die I'll just respawn a couple rooms away with half my health. The game is not that scary, certainly not on the level of Condemned. Everything is slate colored, which I guess is preferrable to brown, but still. Hacking is retarded. You're given this grid of Super Mario Bros. ? blocks that you run over, pressing A to reveal pipes. About four panels from the starting point are available, some blue stuff starts through the pipes after a few seconds, and you go around, picking up and setting down pipes to form a path for the blue stuff to flow the exit. You can't move pipes the blue stuff has already flown into. If the blue stuff hits - for lack of a better word - a dead-end the machine shorts and you take a little damage. But as I've already established, there's no penalty for dying. So yeah, you might say I'm not impressed.
Bomberguy221 TaroSH wrote: I beat the second chapter of Apollo Justice which was much less cynical than the first one. And why did they feel the need to censor "wine" for "grape juice" in a game where every other person is killing or getting killed? Adrian Andrews was drinking tomato juice from a vessel that clearly indicated alcohol, as well.
CLOUDBOND007 She would sometimes turn into a tornado and use the spell "tornado" on one character, but again I would just immediately heal. There was no followup. You still use Kain to break the Tornado, and with no retaliation, so I'd get an extra hit in whenever that happened. Sometimes there would be a direct physical attack on a character but not enough to bring most of them down. Yang's claw was able to poison her, and there was a pretty constant HP loss that definitely sped things up. I remember Valvalis using a petrify attack in older versions, but no sign of that here.
CLOUDBOND007 The Calbrena was pretty easy, anyway.
TaroSH CLOUDBOND007 wrote: I remember Valvalis using a petrify attack in older versions, but no sign of that here. Maybe in the rematch, like how in FF1 Lich doesn't use Nuke the first time around?
CLOUDBOND007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAAGtdl2vqI
CLOUDBOND007
Psycho Penguin Bahamut's Cave still sucks. But I have not turned my DS on since Thursday anyways.
honestgamer
CLOUDBOND007 Update: I beat him, but borderline cheated by using Elixers on him when the reverse gas was in effect. Yang's "death" scene was fine, but Cid's "death" scene made for a much better cut-scene. It ranks up there with the twins turning to stone as one of my favorite sequences in the new version. Even though he sounds like Yoda, too. This game has an augment system I haven't really been using. It's basically when a character dies, you can give their ability to someone else. But if you give abilities to the right people and they leave the party, you get even better augments. You have to play the game three times apparently to get your characters really maxed out. But there's also a limit of three times, so that if you haven't accomplished what you wanted by then, you can't do another run. This of course means nothing to me, as I rarely replay anything, but I thought I should mention it.
TaroSH I fough a mad doctor who was almost insultingly easy. I entered the fight with a hacked security robot, and that took off about 90% of his health before he finally destroyed it. Also, he kept firing at the robot and ignoring me, so I was free to get in a few shots when he ran by, but spent most of the fight twiddling my thumbs in a corner. I fought some Big Daddies. After you kill the Big Daddy, you can either kill the Little Sister or kill the parasite and turn them back into little human girls instead of red-eyed walking corpses. You still get Adam for saving them, just not as much as if you killed them. I've decided to save all the Little Sisters. Most of the stuff you buy with Adam is useless, it's not like you need to be that powered up because as I've already said before when you die the only penalty is you get sent back a few rooms, and after I had saved a few they gave me a teddy bear with an Adam bonus and some other goodies. And I get 100 Achievement Points for it. And I'm sorry, but I think the Big Daddies are cute. Okay, I also think Jack Jumper Ants are cute, and one of those little bastards can kill an adult, or at least put one into a coma. After you deal with all the Little Sisters in a level one way or another, you might find one hanging around those holes the Sisters come out of, bang on it for a bit, and when a Sister doesn't come out he mopes off moaning sadly. So long as you don't attack they totally ignore you if they don't have a Sister, and I wanted to reach into the TV and give him a hug. Oh, and I maxed out my money. I wasn't buying much, because there just isn't much to buy because I'm finding whatever I'd want to buy lying on the floor. I'm in some fishing dock. I think part of the problem with this game not being that spooky is I can't take a lot what's happening seriously. The vending machines are goofy, those advertisement cartoons give me the giggles, the Big Daddies are cute, much of the dialogue is laughable, and did I mention I was given a teddy bear? The other part is being immortal. I probably died ten times against one Big Daddy alone, because I ran in, fired my machine gun at him, he killed me, I respawned, and Iran back and continued until he finally died.
CLOUDBOND007
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH Iran back and continued until he finally died. Politically incorrect typos ahoy! I got a camera to photograph enemies with before bludgeoning them with my wrench, which gets you attack bonuses against those enemies, achievement points, and even tonics and plasmids. How far did Cloudbond get into this game? I remember him saying he didn't even reach a Big Daddy.
CLOUDBOND007 Update: I beat Rubicant in a very bizarre battle. Every round went exactly the same with no variation at all. Rubicant: Uses Inferno. Kills everyone but Cecil and Kain. Party: Phoenix downs on Rosa and Rydia. Rosa: Curaga, Rydia: Summon Shiva when Rubicant's cape opens Party: Phoenix downs on Rosa and Rydia. Rosa: Curaga, Rydia: Summon Shiva when Rubicant's cape opens Rubicant dies.
CLOUDBOND007
Crawl and 1OOO
CLOUDBOND007 I had used slow on him, but somehow neglected to use haste on myself. I also want to use berserk. I don't know why those weren't the first things I did. Update: The haste/berserk strategy worked perfectly. I've got the Lunar Whale and I'm on the moon now. I got an augment that increases experience earned. It was just sitting there on the floor! Neat.
TaroSH I haven't been geting excited about almost reaching my goals, because I know a door's going to ask for a key, or Ryan is going to blow up or gas whomever I was trying to get to ten feet from the finishing point. Do I need to reiterate how inane fighting is? I entered a forest, which while kind of pretty didn't make me go "OMG WOW!" but more "Hmm. Noted. Moving on." Another thing making this game unintentionally goofy is my old friend the Havok physics engine, which turns dead enemies into rubber ragdolls. This made me raise an eyebrow in Painkiller, and it's making me giggle here. When I kill enemies they tend to keep moving, like when they get their arms stuck in the air wave at me, or when a corpse on the table keeps swinging its hanging arm back and forth like a motorized pendulum.
CLOUDBOND007 Update: Turns out the Giant is workable. And if I can leave one weaker enemy alive or use Stop on one, I can use Fusoya's Bless ability to recover MP at a pretty quick rate. This would make me self sufficient. Although there is a place within the Giant to buy some supplies, too. That might be new to the DS, I forget. I'm not even going to try fighting the Four Fiends for a while, as the likely obliteration would kill my morale.
TaroSH
TaroSH I guess I'm in the final third of Bioshock. Something significant finally happened. Spoiler: I killed Andrew Ryan and my buddy Atlas was really some smuggler named Fontaine I've heard about in audio diaries. I knew Atlas was going to backstab me from the start although I kind of didn't want to believe it since he seemed like a nice enough guy, but I'm kind of ashamed I didn't guess he was the smuggler until he started laughing menacingly a minute before announcing who he really was. And Jack, the character, is actually from Rapture, has been conditioned to obey without question to the phrase "would you kindly," was sent out of Rapture or something and brought back during the plane crash to help Fontaine rise to power. The mother of all the Little Sisters is helping me now.
TaroSH First I went to some entertainment plaza and helped some artist complete his "masterpiece." To do that, I went around assassinating three of his four pupils and taking a picture of the body, then placing the pictures in frames in a plaster sculpture of a bunch of spilcers in masks. One of them was killed by a bomb the sculpter put in his piano, but I had to photograph his body too. Then I went to the bottom of Rapture, did an irritating fetchquest to find parts for a bomb, and blew up a reactor with it.
CLOUDBOND007 Leveling inside the Giant is a torture like no other.
TaroSH I did two more annoying fetch quests. The first to get two vials of antidote to keep Fontaine from controlling me with key words, and the other to get the suit parts and dress up like a Big Daddy. Better than dressing up like Santa Claus, I guess.
CLOUDBOND007
CLOUDBOND007 After that.... PLAYABLE CHILD GOLBEZ FLASHBACK WTF?
TaroSH The last level was a slightly annoying escort mission. I had to protect a Little Sister as she led me around and opened doors I couldn't, but one thing that made it VERY annoying is that YOU can hurt the Little Sister, so I had to take off the tonic that let out a shockwave when I was hit because it'd hit her, and my attempts to beat a splicer off her often ended with me giving her a whack or two. Didn't seem to be a penalty for letting them die, except I had to backtrack and call another one. And I got the "virtuous flowerchild with love and a smile for all the shiny coated beasts of God's kingdom" ending. I watched the "hybrid of Hitler and Skeletor whose very piss is pure liquid malevolence" on Google, and it was melodramatic to the point of goofy. I think I got 720 GP. I remember looking at my score before I got the Beat the Game and Little Sister Savior awards, both worth 100 each, and it was 520. One achievement for 100GP requires me to go through the entire game on hard without dying. No thanks.
Rushifell
TaroSH Maybe when I get home I should jump back on Lost Planet or Sonic Heroes, or try Assassin's Creed or LEGO Star Wars 2 or something, because the only game I've beaten this year and hated was Rez, and I only disliked Mega Mans II and III on Game Boy, and I'm starting to wonder if I've gone soft.
CLOUDBOND007 I'm thinking that in general, the game is a bit harder than any previous version, but not enough to completely overwhelm anyone, especially anyone who's played FF4 before. There are a couple of brutal bosses, but they're far from invincible if you exploit their weaknesses. I think augments are an important consideration, though. I've hardly used them. For someone who wants to "collect 'em all", I have to imagine that they'd turn the game into little more than a toy for babies. Fortunately, you have to play the game three times consecutively, no more, no less, and do so perfectly, probably with a guide, to become completely powered up. So only the most pathetic segment of the gaming population will manage it. That segment is probably only about 99% of everyone who bought the game. I guess the reward for spending dozens of hours playing the same thing again and again and getting a party of Gods is to fight some super-boss. --- I've also been continuing to watch Star Trek: TOS on DVD. I'm a little over halfway through season 1. Really the best value for the money of anything I've bought in a long time. There's almost 100 episodes across all three seasons, I think.
CLOUDBOND007 Asura was easy but annoying. I totally beat the crap out of Leviathan and loved every second. Update: Got Excalibur and then beat up Odin really badly. He didn't even start a countdown or do whatever it is he does in this version. Will Bahamut fall next?
Flying Omelette TaroSH wrote: I guess I'm in the final third of Bioshock. Something significant finally happened. Spoiler: Huh. I wasn't aware that Yuku had a spoiler tag. That was the only problem with changing the background from black to green is that now all of the spoilers that have ever been posted will be visible. The tag is probably the best way of doing that from now on. |
