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slumberinglabyrinth · 4 years

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I've already spoiled the punchline to this post, but the extra boss of Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a joke. A sick joke.

I'm writing this primarily from the perspective of Vanilla and not Encore, but I'll bring up Encore's relevant changes (that I know of) when they come up.

I think that part of the fun of the extra boss, M-DEUS, is finding your own solution to beating him, so I'll be putting how to deal with him at the end if you want to avoid it.

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M-DEUS is based off of the second phase of the final boss, Medeus; he's physically identical and mechanically just. Harder.

Much harder.

Before I get into the boss itself, some background info for the uninitiated:

Your main cast is the characters in battle, your subcast is the playable characters not in battle, and your supporting cast are NPCs who get skills that have passive effects. By endgame, your main cast has 3 people, your subcast has 4, and your supporting cast has 3. In Encore, characters in the supporting cast can also learn a session skill.

The main gimmick in TMS is Sessions; if you strike an enemy's weakness and an ally has a session skill that corresponds to the element you used (which contrary to what the term ‘element’ usually invokes, includes sword/lance/axe/bow), they'll follow up with an elemental attack of their own and start a session. Each team member except for any that perform the initial attack that starts the session can then perform a follow up attack of their own, until either everyone who can act has or an enemy nulls/reflects/drains a session attack.

Some things to note

The game optimizes the session order to maximize damage, so it's possible that the session you perform will not be the longest session possible.

Session skills only go up to medium strength (the highest normal command skills are Heavy strength, but there are a few (like. 4) Severe skills that certain characters can learn), limiting their damage output compared to regular command skills

In addition to that, characters not in the main cast deal half damage.

Bane skills (which cover Wyvern/Dragon, Armor, and Cavalry enemy types but *not* Fliers), always start a session against the relevant enemy type and pierce elemental resistance (including Reflect, Null, and Drain) for both the initial attack and it's entire session.

there is a random chance that during a session you will be granted the opportunity to choose between performing one of two random Duo Arts, which will occur after the session ends. Duo Arts are attacks involving two characters (they have to be alive, but don't need to be in your main cast) and have bonus effects ranging from healing to status ailments to SP generation. Duo Art also have the piercing effects that Bane skills have, and will, most importantly, start another session with everyone who hadn't taken part in the Duo Art. Duo Arts can appear up to twice per Command Skill use.

In Encore, the session skill learned by each supporting cast member (Maiko, Tiki, and B****) performs a follow-up attack based off of if the skill before was a weapon skill or a magic skill (it doesn't include almighty element attacks, which is only relevant in one specific instance). This means you can perform up to 9 follow-up attacks during a regular session and, unlike in Vanilla, start a session from a Body/Spirit-element skill.

Enemies can also perform sessions, under the same rules as you

In addition to regular command skills (which cost EP), you have Special Performances, which cost SP and are stronger across the board than any equivalent command skill (either through flat DPS or the effects they grant). Think of them as something like a meter-based super in a fighting game

SP is generated by performing actions (any skill, a session, using an item, etc.) and taking damage; a gauge fills up as these things happen, and once it's full, you gain a point of SP

you can store up to 3 SP at a time

some skills cost 1 SP, but stronger ones cost 2 (none cost 3)

In addition to their other effects, Special Performances will pierce resistances and always start a session if there's a skill that can follow up on it

When you use a damage-dealing command skill of a specific element, that character may instead do an Ad-Lib attack if they've learned one. Ad-Libs:

behave like Duo Arts/Special Performances (starts sessions, pierces elemental resistances)

are stronger

usually also become aoe

sometimes have a bonus effect (often a status)

there's no real downside, but they’re entirely random

While in dungeons, certain enemy spawns can end up as either 1) Rare or 2) Savage

Rare enemies run away after a few turns but give items used to craft weapons that give off-element skills or have atypical weaknesses and resistances for that particular character.

the level of Savage enemies are scaled based off of your own level, and are always meant to be A Challenge. They are the only renewable source of Detritus, an item you trade for incenses (which give +3 to a specific stat) with an NPC in the arena. You get 2-3 Detritus from each Savage enemy encounter in the main game, and incenses cost 9 each (there's no upper limit on the number you can obtain or use beyond being able to hold up to 99 at once and the hard stat cap (which you don't need to get near for ANY content in the game))

By endgame you'll have a field skill that increases the rate both rare enemies and savage enemies appear at. Farming them isn’t really hard once you get to the point where you’d want to.

One of the dlc maps in Vanilla is literally just "every enemy is Savage and every item on the ground is detritus"; you get 9-12 detritus from each encounter instead of just 2-3, and you can grab another 18 from items laying around on the map. This map is included in the base game of Encore

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okey

Like most megaten extra/'ultimate' bosses, you need to be on NG+ to fight M-DEUS. To unlock his fight, you must trade for incenses with Nieg (who is located in the arena and involved in a seperate sidequest) 36 times. This translates to a minimum of 27 Savage Enemy fights and a max of 36 fights if you use the DLC map, and a minimum of 108 and a max of 162 without DLC, minus a couple fights from the handful of chests with Detritus in them scattered throughout the game and a couple other sources like the Arena itself.

When you hit the level cap these fights become relatively consistently in your favor if you're prepared for them even if you don't abuse Elenora's AoE Special Perfomance which has a sizable chance to proc an instakill on any nonboss enemy (remember that), so this step isn't difficult as much as it is tedious (as is reaching the level cap if you don't use DLC lmao).

This is unfortunately also a megaten tradition.

Because M-DEUS is based off of Medeus, his general pattern is relatively simple:

He takes two actions per turn, like all other bosses after the Prologue

This may sound cheap but... it’s better (for the player) for bosses to take two actions than for them to take one really strong action based off of how atlus makes their games

the alternative is like, stuff like disaster cycle or literally anything mem aleph does

"i don’t know what that is” try to keep it that way

Counts as a dragon for skill interactions

Interestingly, the only boss (alongside medeus) with a unique class that has an effective-weakness

Every few turns, or after he's taken a certain amount of damage, he summons two additional enemies (this does not use up an action and occurs at the end of/”between” turns).

if you let any of the adds live for 2-3 turns, they will use an AOE almighty (untyped and unblockable) attack that kills them and deals a bunch of damage to you and will probably kill you if they haven't already

this isn’t a problem with medeus because he’s like. a normal boss

The enemies will probably kill you if you don't kill them first

His attacks include

Single Target Sword that pierces repel/absorb/null (it doesn't auto-start a session)

AOE Almighty ("Dies Irae", he uses this every 3 turns, this might inflict Seal)

Single Target Elec

Single Target untyped physical ("beast"/"monster") attack (might be the attack that inflicts Seal instead)

As his HP drops, he gains access to a few more attacks that get added to the "things he can do" pool

Maragidyne (AOE Fire)

Energy Drain. Deals damage and steals your HP and EP. (he uses this infrequently, but it doesn't seem to be scripted)

Dark Breath. debuffs all stats (also used infrequently, is probably scripted)

But! There's more:

If there are no adds on the field, he repels every element.

remember how he’s the only boss that has a bane weakness? yeah. that’s why

If there are adds on the field, he's weak to whatever they are and repels everything else

Because of how the rest of the fight goes, you're not going to want to try to take advantage of this.

Damage dealt to him is capped at 499 per attack

literally the only instance of a damage cap in the game

on top of the damage cap, his stats (and the stats of the adds) are inflated quite a bit

Before incenses, I was dealing like. 300 damage while in the main cast at level 99 and half that for the subcast (so a full session of 1500 instead the max of 2495)

The adds are noticably more squishy and DON’T have a hardcoded damage cap, but they pack enough firepower to make up for it.

If a party member dies, his attack increases for the rest of the fight

This is outside of the buff/debuff system, so it can't be dispelled and is effectively permanent.

He has 65534 hp, which equates to a 'soft' minimum of 19 turns for most team comps, assuming no Duo Arts

Encore can cut off a turn or two since it can have 3 extra attacks per session

the adds all suck

By default he only summons two Mercenaries, then at 75% HP he can summon two Axe Generals, then at 50% he can summon two (Lance) Wyvern Riders, and then once he's at 25% he starts summoning two Clerics. the percents are approximate.

The Mercenaries

are weak to Lance and I think Electric

kinda a pushover. mid-line bulk, but dangerous if left along

not immune to elenora's instakill

will use concentrate before their self-destruct which boosts it by 2.5x so you're just gonna mcfukin die

are summoned less often as the battle goes on

The Axe Armors

Weak to Sword, Ice, Wind. Maybe more

deals respectable damage

has like max defense and next to no resistance. physical attacks deal single digit damage and magic damage easily enters four digits.

has high hp (maybe 10,000?)

also not immune to elenora's instakill

The Wyvern Riders

Weak to Axe, Bow, Wind. Maybe more

counts as a dragon for bane skills

deals LOTS of damage

has an aoe fire attack that also poisons you

these guys suck

low res and medium def

still not immune to elenora's instakill *or* Itsuki's sword Ad-Lib (which will instakill any non-boss dragons; there's no luck involved in the instakill once it activates, and even though getting the Ad-Lib itself to activate is luck based if you happen to be using a sword attack from him on that turn there’s always a chance that it’ll come out)

The Clerics

weak to sword/lance/axe. maybe more. probably more.

have 3000 hp and barely any defense

guess what! not immune to instakills

cast mediarahan and nothing else worth mentioning

yes

the aoe full heal skill

extra bosses in a couple other games involve diarahan/mediarahan (like Margeret and Demi-Fiend) but they only use it once, use it around 50% hp (and certainly not when the boss is in the red!) and have their next hp thresholds close enough for you to be able to reach them before they cast their full heal, making it a once-off dpt check that punishes you by effectively just making their HP 1.5x higher instead of a recurring dpt check that punishes you by making his hp nearly twice as high (or three times, or four times...)

this is unscripted and will happen as many times as you let it

the hp thresholds don't reset so he keeps summoning clerics and using all the skills he gained during the fight despite now being at full HP

fuck you atlus

can you believe people thought the worst part about this game was idols?

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Okay, so how do you fight this?

You could just grind until you take like no damage but uh. that's going to be mind-numbingly exhausting and kinda defeats the point of actually fighting the boss. So don't do that. You're going to have to grind incenses no matter what, but it's the difference between being at it for a few days or being at it for a full month.

My general game plan was tailored to

be consistent

reduce the amount of time I had to spend preparing (be it grinding for incenses or materials for weapons or whatever else i needed)

beat the boss in as few turns as possible, mainly to give it fewer chances to make choices that kill you and to make sure you don’t turn it into a battle of attrition (which you’ll lose).

This ultimately means 1) start at least one session against m-deus each turn 2) have everyone hit the damage cap against him and 3) have a person with a dragonbane skill in your main cast (sp consumption is too high to rely on special performances every turn)

be able to kill the adds before they can act because if you can’t do that at the very least for the clerics, you lose.

Some specific points that need to be addressed if we assume you're not spending 100 hours grinding incenses:

The immediate concern is making sure nobody dies. Ever. Medeus already will deal a lot of damage, and he can and will pierce tetrakarn/makarakarn (at bare minimum Dies Irae is almighty and its damage can’t be nullified, only dodged), and if he can ramp that up, you're not going to stand a chance.

He has access to an AOE fire attack and so does one of his sets of adds. Itsuki (who cannot be removed from the party in Vanilla) is by default weak to fire with nearly every weapon of his (including his ultimate weapon), and Mamori, who is your party's dedicated tank, is also weak to fire on most of her weapons. getting hit by something you're weak to will cause any adds to session and you'll die, so you want to avoid being weak to fire.

nobody in the fight has dekaja or dekunda or any buffs, so buffs and debuffs remain effective

Dark Breath will set you back, but if you keep your buffs *up* it'll just negate Dark Breath instead of Dark Breath sticking around for three turns, no matter how many turns they had remaining

The adds will cause problems. just in general. they can kill you or at the very least set medeus up to finish you off, since they tend to go earlier in the turn than him.

going before all of them is a priority, as is killing them before they act (especially the clerics)

Medeus has a damage cap. once you consistently hit 499 with all of your party members in a session, there's not much point to trying to boost your damage output

this also means you have a point where you can skip using charge or concentrate (x2.5 damage to phys or magic skills and phys or magic attacks in their sessions sessions) on anybody starts a session off of M-DEUS, since hitting the cap through stats and passive skills alone will allow you to save an action during the fight

Itsuki cannot be removed from the party in Vanilla which is both a blessing and a curse because

outside of his two rare weapons, every weapon of his including his ultimate weapon is weak to fire (bad, because this usually means more damage sustained)

has a heavy dragonbane skill (good)

He doesn’t need Adds or SP to session off of M-DEUS

itsuki's entire niche in endgame is using bane skills

he has two passives that each boost Wyrmicide by 1.5x (1.55x when fully upgraded) because it's a sword element bane skill. they stack.

this means less grinding for str for him, saving time

One thing to note is that Kiria is the only other character who has access to a dragonbane skill, Naga, but the problems with that are

Naga is Spirit element, which has no corresponding sessions in Vanilla. You should not use her as your damage against M-DEUS in Vanilla at all because you just can’t.

In Encore, Tiki's session can start off of Spirit

Itsuki kinda sucks at support, but Kiria doesn’t, so if you were to hypothetically have both on field, he’d be the one attacking M-DEUS

he doesn't get endgame buff or debuff skills, and doesn't get diarahan/mediarahan, and so on

less of problem when you can remove him from your party in Encore

Kiria's bulk and defenses are the worst in the game, which means more grinding for incenses in order to prevent her from dying

all of Kiria's weapons are weak to sword, which means you can't ensure her weakness is never struck because M-DEUS will, from turn 1, use a piercing sword-element skill

Kiria's main niche is using ice skills, so while she gets a 1.5 multiplier to Naga from True Casting (1.5x to all magic), she doesn't get a second bonus which means more grinding for incenses compared to Itsuki

None of the adds are immune to instakills. this includes both Mass Desturction (Elenora's AoE special performance) and Firm Resolve (Itsuki's anti-wyvern sword Ad-lib)

Regarding Elenora:

Even if Mass Destruction's instakill doesn't proc, she'll still start a session because it's a special performance

One of two characters with access to Debilitate, which applies all three debuffs and saves you at least one action compared to other characters with debuffs, if not two actions (the other character is Touma)

Debilitate is on her ultimate weapon, so while it's a pain to max the skill (which just makes its EP cost lower and is arguably not worth the time), you'll be getting 6 out of 7 of them anyway (for reasons I'll explain in a bit)

also has access to Fog Breath, which debuffs Atk and Hit/Evade but not Defense; this means that in a pinch (ie. energy drain took too much EP), you can apply the debuffs that will help you survive because that's more important than ending the fight faster

her ultimate weapon is only weak to Axe (which should die before her) and wind (which nobody in the fight uses); while she's squishy, you don't need to worry about sessions against her and won't need as much def/res incenses, saving time

Elenora naturally deals very respectable damage in and out of sessions because she has incredibly high Skill and reasonably high Str

Skill increases crit rate

You'll already be boosting her Skill to get Mass Destruction's instakill to proc more consistently, this means less Str incenses

In addition, she has passives that

greatly increases crit rate

increases crit damage

greatly increases dodge rate

applies a 1.5x damage boost to bow skills (incuding Mass Destruction)

that gives her a high chance to act first in the round (ie. before any adds that’ll ruin your day)

increases hit rate

gives all her attacks a high chance to make any enemy hit move to the end of the turn order during the current turn (or the next turn if they've already acted)

makes her less likely to be targeted (not as much of a concern because a lot of things in this fight are AoE and you'll mostly be using AoE healing, but still a plus)

has Radiant skills (seperate passives that don't take up a skill slot) that

make crits deal more damage

increases evade against phys attacks

boosts ailment success rates from any party member as long as she's in the main cast (not something that’ll be relied on much, but if it helps it helps)

While Elenora's instakill is reliant on luck, you can get it to proc reasonably consistently and even if it's just on one and not both of the adds, that gives you a session's worth of damage on the other add, some chip damage on M-DEUS, and one less thing that could wipe the floor with you.

She's not absolutely nessacary, but using her cuts out *a lot* of grinding and even without the instakill the access to both a high crit/evade rate and access to debilitate makes her a very strong choice for one of the characters you'll use alongside Itsuki. If you’re not trying to tank everything (which is... dumb), she’s basically the best choice for debuffs and offensive support

Because we'll be using a 2 SP special performance relatively frequently, it's vital that we increase SP generation as much as possible. In addition to stuff you’d have anyway (ie. Radiant Skills):

Everybody's ultimate weapon gives a passive boost to sp generated from their own attacks

this is why everyone except for Itsuki will have theirs equipped

Itsuki will instead have his lategame rare enemy weapon, which removes his fire weakness and isn't a significant drop in atk

you can kinda. cheese the enemy spawning system in certain parts to just give you rare enemy after rare enemy so once you figure out *where* to do it, you can max that rare weapon’s atk pretty quickly so compared to the amount of time you save over trying to max his ultimate weapon you're really just missing the sp generation

it also gives a passive chance to cause seal but since M-DEUS seems to be immune to it that doesn't really help you directly (niche use if he sessions

In a pinch, you can use Clap Tracks, an item that give you 1 SP but cannot be bought (try to carry as many over through NG+ as possible)

I found that I wasn't really needing to use Clap Tracks much, but, y'know. better to be overprepared than underprepared

Mamori and Tiki also have a Duo Art that grants half a point of SP; unless someone’s about to die and you have a healing Duo Art as your other option, you should always pick it

Okay so we have Elenora and Itsuki, but who else can we use to round off the main cast?

What we still potentially need:

Buffs

Healing

Tanking and/or Dodgetanking (including through buffs)

a source of magic damage (Itsuki has Ziodyne/Thoron, but he'll be busy)

One thing unique about TMS relative to other megatens is that there are no normal skills that apply multiple buffs, only three special performances, which will save you at least one action per turn

Debut Smile (Tsubasa, 1 SP) - Provides a medium heal and raises Def and Hit/Evade

Raindrop Memories (Mamori, 1 SP) - Prevents ailments for 3 turns and raises Atk and Def

Wild Charge (Touma, 2 SP) - Gain Charge (phys attacks and phys attacks in their sessions deal 2.5x damage) for the next two turns and raise Atk and Hit/Evade

Both Tsubasa's and Mamori's have defense, which is good, but hit/evade is more important than raising attack with regard to both surviving long enough to kill M-DEUS and saving time while grinding incenses (hit is Skill based and Evade is Speed, so you have to boost two stats instead of one to make up not getting that buff). The ailment thing is nice but uhhh I’ll get to why that’s not important if you go with Tsubasa in a moment

Touma's costs too much and doesn't raise defense and doesn't have a secondary effect that's particularly useful in this fight. :shrug:

Mamori also has a few problems of her own

No EP-based AoE heal

does get diarahan though

she has a 1 SP AoE full heal which then allows her to take another action (which could be using a clap track. or a sukukaja stone for max buffs, but you can't carry enough to make them last through the entire battle for this method, and it’ll kinda negate the benefits of her buff skill being )

her hitrate is bad.

like. really bad

she has a passive that boosts it, but it 1) comes on her when you get her and 2) isn't on any of her weapons and 3) is the earlygame iteration of the passive despite her coming after the halfway point in the game

she also has no other direct benefits from boosting Skill, unlike Elenora

she also doesn't have access to Sukukaja (unlike Tsubasa, who gets the buff skill that covers the one her SP buff doesn’t apply (tarukaja))

she is not fast and has no way to move herself up the turn order

her main role is also a tank, which could be helpful, but there's some problems with that for her with this fight in particular

she's weak to fire, which Medeus uses

she's weak to sword, which Medeus uses from turn 1

she tanks by drawing aggro and taking blows in place of an ally

she can only negate attacks if she takes that attack in place of an ally

redirecting the attack is random

negating the attack is random

if she's weak to the attack a session will still start

you don't redirect the attack on AOE attacks

the aoe attacks are the main danger in the fight. Dies Irae hurts. Maragidyne hurts. Corrupting Flare hurts.

itai desu

Tsubasa

is weak to axe and wind on her ultimate weapon (and bow, but that's not used in the fight)

can learn absorb wind, covering one of her weaknesses completely

allows you to freely use mazandyne and also heal off of it if it's reflected

two add sets are weak to wind

this is very good

has access to magic damage spells to deal with any axe generals that survive Mass Destruction

the only other characters with magic spells are Itsuki and Kiria

does almost everything

not an exaggeration

only person who learns either mediarahan or its ailment-clearing upgrade, Prayer (the only aoe ailment clear in the game outside of Duo Arts)

learns every buff skill (only needs tarukaja if you use Debut Smile, though having rakukaja or sukukaja helps conserve SP when possible)

learns Fog Breath (useful if elenora needs to do something else that turn)

has a massive EP pool and learns Mana Gain which makes it even larger

her skills are expensive but she can go longer than itsuki and elenora without having to restore EP

can learn Sexy Dance which is AoE charm

Charm is usable in this fight as like. a last resort but it will prevent any adds that it procs on to at the very least eat up their next turn if not the one after and is by and large one of the most useful skills when grinding outside of full on instakills because It's Just That Strong

charm can make them attack another enemy or use a healing item on you which is also good, but it. usually doesn't. they just do nothing

Regarding passives

learns null seal

has a passive that grants 1.5x to wind skills

has two hitrate boosting passives, one of which also boosts her evade rate

has a passive that greatly boosts the amount her skills heal

not relevant for mediarahan/prayer, but it does boost Debut Smile which makes using it over mediarahan so you can refresh your buffs noticably safer

Personally didn't use this one but depending on how many mag/def/res incenses you decide to get it might be needed

has radiant skills that:

boost charm success rate (stacks with elenora's boost to every ailment which really puts the sexy into sexy dance)

let her session off of any charmed enemy with a lance skill

useful if you ever have to resort to sexy dance or, god forbid, Dream Catcher (a Duo Art that does almighty damage -which means it can't extend a session- that offsets *that* by also fully healing your party and inflicting charm on your foes) and she doesn't have to heal the next turn

increase her hitrate

gives her a chance of ignoring turn order calculation and act first during each turn

all and all, pretty good stuff

To give everyone else a fair evaluation:

Yasuhiro's main role is damage mitigation through dodgetanking and he's good at it. In addition

has access to Wallbreaker, which pierces null and repel (not absorb)

this is kinda useless, even outside this fight

you can't session with it unless they're weak to swords, which means it's only useful against enemies under the effect of tetraguard/tetrakarn (which nobody in this fight uses and nearly nobody in the entire game uses)

like yeah he can hit medeus but it's for a max of 499 a turn

can use tarukaja and sukukaja

takes two actions to set this up, and doesn't have rakukaja or *any* debuffs

can use Counter (and Counter EX) to ensure he dodges all single-target physical attacks that attack him until his next action, and then delivers a counter attack. Also draws aggro

only works on physical attacks, not magic attacks

only works on single target attacks, not AoE

most of the skills enemies use in this fight are AoE magic

Sound familiar? yeah tanks kinda suck in this fight

has access to passive skills that

greatly boost crit rate

greatly boost dodge rate

increases his chance of being targeted

pierces null

has access to radiant skills that

boosts evade against magic attacks

make counterattacks always crit

doesn't have elenora's "boost crit damage" skill :(

increase damage from counterattacks and repel effects while he is in the main cast

not really useful but. it’s better than nothing

Overall rating: Not a bad character, but bad for this specific fight. His damage mitigation (through drawing aggro and dodging) focuses on single target attacks, which random encounters have plenty of, but this fight relies too much on AoE and he kinda just. doesn't help there. Elenora has better and more consistent damage output and has debilitate, Tsubasa is the game's best healer, can do AoE magic, and has a slew of buffs and debuffs including damage mitigation through Rakukaja/Debut Smile's defense buff, and Itsuki can start a session off of Medeus.

Touma

has Debilitate!

no buffs though

has a passive that has a high chance of making his target(s) go last

has a passive that greatly boosts crit rate

has a passive that has a chance to make him act first each turn

has a passive that boosts his hitrate

has passives that grant 1.5x damage to each of his main elements (lance and fire)

elenora also has all of those

relatively durable

weak to axe and ice

nobody in this fight uses ice

only person who has luna

helps with the generals if it activates

its random and might not even activate

it can also activate off of sessions

only person who has penetrate, which is an upgrade to pierce (phys attacks ignore resist/null, ellie and yasuhiro also have that) that also ignores drain

penetrate doesn't ignore reflect, which isn't the end of the world since it's not like he could session off of M-Deus anyway

helps him not prematurely end a session against the adds by having his attack be nullified (i think the generals null lance and the wyverns might too)

has a passive that boosts his attack the higher % hp he's at

has a radiant skill that increases his crit rate when performing a followup attack in a session

when he's in the main cast, using an item has a chance to not consume it

useful because the game doesn't let you carry more than 10 of most of the items you'll need to use in this fight

All of that makes him a very good character for this fight, but he doesn't have elenora's instakill :( Unfortunately she does everything he wants to do in this fight *at least* as good as he can, or better :( But! He shines in the subcast for this fight and just in general. his damage output and hitrate and crit rate are all very good, and he needs probably the fewest incenses overall to reach M-DEUS' cap

Kiria

Learns naga

not useful in vanilla

arguably not worth using in encore either

learns both the single target and AoE heavy spells for Fire, Ice, and Wind

also learns the only Severe-tier Ice spell, Fimbulvetr

great utility against the adds

has a passive that gives a 1.5x boost to all magic attacks and one that gives a 1.5x boost to ice spells

these stack

only character with two 1.5 boosts that stack that has them stack on a severe tier spell

knock knock it's fimbulvetr

weak to electricity, which nobody in this fight uses, and swords, which M-Deus uses from turn 1

only healing skills of note that she learns are mediarama (medium HP AoE restore) and amrita (heal all on a single ally, kinda useless in this fight)

doesn't learn mediarahan or prayer

Learns tarunda and sukunda

doesn't learn rakunda, doesn't learn any dual debuffs or debilitate

no buffs either

has other passives that

increases resistance to all ailments

not super useful in this fight

greatly increases EP

has radiant skills that

reduce EP cost of offensive magic

further reduce EP cost of AoE offensive magic

even further reduce EP cost of Ice magic

knock knock it's mabufudyne

increase evade against phys attacks

Kiria is very good at killing things but that's really all she does and M-DEUS needs people to do more. In theory she could replace Itsuki, but her weakness to Swords, which -again- M-DEUS uses for the entire fight, can't be avoided and her HP is so low that you can't even hope that she'll just tank the hit unless you chug 100+ def incenses on top of all the other incenses that you'll be using. You could use her to fill his role, but it's going to be so incredibly inefficent that I think you should do literally anything else.

Okay.

There's one pretty obvious oversight in just deciding 'we'll use these three characters and nobody else in the fight': TMS lets you swap party members in and out (exclusing Itsuki in Vanilla), and it doesn't use up that party member's turn

This has some bonuses...

this means you can swap to people on the fly if you need, say, Kiria to deal with

this means you can adjust to party members who have

you can adjust to basically any situation

...and some drawbacks

swapping party members dispells any active buffs/debuffs/effects (charge, etc.) on that party member and the new one comes in with no buffs on them

in order for the act of swapping itself to be safe, they need higher def/res than what they otherwise would have, which means more grinding incenses

swapping party members means you need those new party members to also get their def/res increased from incenses, which means more grinding

if they stay in the subcast they aren't in danger of dying, so you don't need them to have anything other than their str (or mag, for Kiria) boosted

and the big one:

nobody really does what Elenora and Tsubasa do better than they do, so there isn't really a point in switching to another party member to begin with. during the main game? sure, everyone has their own role to play and you could use whoever you want because you don't have the chance to optimize everything and grind for incenses and the game certainly never asks you to do that outside of M-DEUS, but against M-DEUS you need to bring the best the game lets you make

unless, of course, you grind incenses like no tomorrow

And I don't want to undersell the amount of incenses I felt were necessary because hoo boy i looked at my playtime before and after I started my journey to defeat M-DEUS and it sure Took A Long Time, but using my team the only relevant stats were:

Either Str or Mag on Everyone (based off of the type of the session skill that they use when Itsuki uses Wyrmicide, and only up to the point where they consistently hit M-DEUS' damage cap; subcast needs more because they'll be dealing half damage)

Skill on Elenora (with buffs hitrates become a nonconcern so you're only doing this to get the instakills. more crits are a side bonus)

A Little Speed on Itsuki, Tsubasa, and Elenora (enough so they consistently go first)

Def/Res on Itsuki, Tsubasa, and Elenora (so they don't die)

a Luck incense for Elenora (Luck doesn't work like a typical stat and it's not important for me to explain it outside of the vague idea that it’s like a ‘personal’ stat where people have a different base level (elenora’s is the worst lol) that can be temporarily boosted using an incense or a specific drink from a vending machine, but it'll increase her proc rate)

the general game plan was to have Itsuki use Wyrmicide every turn. Killing Medeus faster gives him and his adds fewer chances to kill someone (or use Mediarahan), which increases your chances of success. I never had Itsuki use anything other than Wyrmicide unless M-DEUS drained all his EP with Energy Drain (he'd use a chakra drop to restore it in that case), but if you need him to kill an add or two it shouldn't significantly extend the length of the fight and will also stop that add from killing you. Generally speaking, you want him to go after Tsubasa and Elenora, but before M-DEUS, so that'll determine how many speed incenses you give him

Tsubasa's main concern was making sure everybody was as close to full health as possible before M-DEUS attacked each turn (and switching to Prayer if he ever procs seal), but having enough def/res across your party to make throwing Debut Smile into the mix safe to keep the buffs up is also key. She's not a bad dps unit either, so because of this you want her to be after Elenora in the turn order so you can adjust to who the instakill fails to proc on.

Elenora's main job outside of add management is casting Debilitate within three turns of the last time she used it, which means you kinda need to anticipate when adds are coming so she can use Mass Destruction to deal with them and use Debilitate on turns you won't need to deal with adds.

This rotation gives you a free action roughly every three turns for Elenora, and whenever you get lucky with dodges or damage rolls for Tsubasa. As for how you use those actions, it depends on the situation, but...

Having a full set of buffs up when Dark Breath comes is important so your damage isn't brought down (and it takes longer to win the fight), so throw in a Tarukaja from Tsubasa or a Tarukaja Stone from Elenora. You can also use these openings to refresh the Def and Hit/Evade buffs prematurely with their skill version or their item version. There's a really low cap to the number of Buff Stones you can bring into a fight, so if its at all possible default to

Making sure you're at 2 SP whenever Elenora has her action and the adds are up is VITAL, especially once the Clerics start being summoned. Use Clap Tracks if you feel like your SP isn't going to be where you need it to be, and try to only use Debut Smile when you don't have any buffs up or when both Defense and Hit/Evade are about to run out (they run out *on* tsubasa's action and not once that turn starts, which is incredibly convenient).

Maintining EP is also somewhat important, but should only be done when close to empty because Energy Drain will empty all of a character's EP and it'd be a waste of an item (though since it deals so little damage, it *could* be a turn where you don't need to heal).

#tmsfe #sharpfe #Tokyo mirage sessions fe #megaten #there's a lot of mechanical depth to this stupid fight #so while it's stupid #it's mostly dumb because of the stat grinding not because of what it does #aside from #y'know #(pic related)#Wrote this a while back because a friend asked me something which i forget what it was #i think like #my discord status was complaining about part of the grind #and it just took me 5 months to do that 10 minutes it took to do the formatting in this post #long post

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passport-guardian-benrey · 3 years

Text

San leaves his AU

---------------------------------------------------

San is laying on his couch, watching one of his favorite TV series, but he can't really focus on it.

There was the signiture loud crackle of Sci's portal opening up followed by a knock at San's door not long after.

San got up and opened the door for Sci, "Hey . . ."

"Hey! Woah, you ok there bud? you're lookin a little rough tibia honest." Sci half heartedly chuckles, looking more concerned than anything.

"Yeah, yeah . . . Just didn't really sleep right . . ."

Sci frowned. "What's up?"

"Just feel nervous I guess . . . Overthinking some things a bit . . ."

"You wanna talk about it? ... And do you mind if i come in"

"yeah . . . Uh come in . . ." San let him inside. Sci nods gratefully and steps in. San closed the door behind him and sat down on the couch. Sci joined San on the couch and faced his friend, worry etched into his features.

"So what's eating you?"

"I'm just nervous that I'll see him again . . . I literally avoid going to my brother because he lives near there . . . Like he could be anywhere and i don't want to see him, it's honestly destroying me . . . Like this constant fear and stress . . . It doesn't let me sleep sometimes . . ." San sighed "Nothing here brings me happiness anymore, only our little meetings . . ."

"Oh geeze... I'm sorry... I didn't know you were having such a hard time." Sci reached out to pat San but quickly retracted his hand. He wanted to comfort him but didn't wish to trigger his sensitivities with being touched.

"it's okay i guess . . . Just have to get over this . . ."

Sci sat in silence with his hand folded in his lap.

"Honestly i wish i could just leave . . . Just for a while, take a break from this life . . ." San wrapped his arms around himself.

"I mean... you could? If you wanted you could come stay with me for a little while." Sci started sounding a little excited as he spoke. "I really wouldn't mind, and I could show you my lab." He twiddled his thumbs in his lap, looking at San with a very faint blush on his face.

"r-really? I could?" San' tone of voice is a bit excited too, he seems happy at this proposition.

"Well yeah! ...I mean, but there are some risks involved...." Sci tugged on his shirt collar.

"Like if this universe was to RESET you could get erased from the code... or there is a very small potential when traveling to get stuck in the anti-void between universes. I haven't had that happen yet... but some of the spiders that volunteered for the time that went wrong... when i managed to bring them back they'd... changed... I'm not trying to spook you though! I'm sorry, I just figure you ought to know what you're potentially getting into." Sci chuckled nervously.

San nodded slightly, he thinks for a moment, before looking at Sci, "I want to do it"

Sci's face broke into a big grin. "Oh hell yeah!" Sci looked jittery with excitement. "I haven't brought anyone back with me before! This is going to be so fun! and oh... the data I could collect from this!"

San is smiling at him, he seems happier now.

"Ok um... So! When do you wanna leave? I assume you'll wanna grab some things before we go..."

"y-yeah, uh . . . I should take some clothes, right?"

Sci chuckled, "That would definitely be a good idea. Think anything you'd take on a vacation. Here, I can even help you pack!" Sci jumped up from the couch and held a hand out to San to help him stand.

San hesitantly grabbed his hand and stood up, "you can help me if you really want"

Between the two, packing went by quickly and they both were standing outside of San's house within half an hour. San with bags in hand and Sci fiddling with his portal device, hands shaking lightly in excitement.

"You ready?" He flashes a wide grin at San.

"yeah!"

"Perhaps you would like to do the honors then?" Sci held out the device and made a grand gesture to the button that needed pushing.

San looked at Sci then pushed the button.

There was a whir and a crackle of a portal trying to start but it quickly fizzled out, leaving the two looking on in dead silence.

"Heh... T-This doesn't usually happen i swear." Sci chuckled nervously. He smacked the side of the device a couple times and pressed the button again, a portal springing to life solidly before them.

"so see you on the other side?" San is still looking at Sci.

"Hold up." Sci holds out a hand as if to stop San and kicks a rock through the portal, watching it with narrowed sockets for a second.

"Ahhhh ok yeah we're good let's go." He picks up some of San's belongings, smiles at him, and confidently walks through the portal.

San picks up the rest of his things and goes after Sci through the portal.

On the other side of the portal Sci's setting San's things on a table in a large brightly lit laboratory.

It's cluttered but organized, everything separated in respective groups. And the air was filled with the sound of machinery whirring.

Some of them were plain and boxy with flashing and blinking lights and some of tem were foreboding and alien looking and along one wall several were printing out a nonstop stream of information on paper that was neatly folding itself into piles.

"wow . . ." San is looking around, clearly amazed by what he's seeing.

Sci turns around and looks at San. "Heh yeah there's alot going on huh? Sorry it's kinda a mess right now though... I wasn't expecting company." Sci rubs the back of his skull bashfully.

"it's . . . it's amazing! this is your lab? Like seriously it's amazing" San is excited.

"Yeah, I-I mean, yeah! Thanks!" Sci chuckled, a light blush dusting his cheeks. "It is pretty cool isn't it? Want me to show you around?"

"yeah!"

"Sweet! You can just set your stuff over there... or wherever here lemme show you the most dangerous one first!!!" Sci's grin took on a slight manic edge to it in his excitement.

San put down his things and came closer to Sci.

Sci's standing by a large dark looking piece of machinery with a nozzle pointed directly into a dusty looking glass case He flicks a few switches and it whirs to life, making a loud grinding noise.

"This is a disintegrator ray! Watch this." Sci pulls out a heavy thick board and places it in the glass case with an apple and shuts the door. He looks to San to watch for his reaction and pushes the button.

The surface of the apple bubbles for a split second before imploding violently and leaving a dusty scorched indent in the board.

"No matter, physical or magical can withstand it's force!" Sci flicks it's switch off, halting the grinding noise emanating from it.

"This could kill everyone in this multiverse if it were to explode!" He said excitedly.

"wow . . ." San is clearly impressed.

"Heh yeah, right? Pretty sweet." Sci chuckled. "Let me know if you wanna try putting anything in there."

"okay" San is smiling slightly, He's clearly happy.

"And this one?" Sci bounds over to a plain looking yellow metal box with a simple red button on top. "I got super wasted one night and made it for shits and giggles. All it does is turn anything you put inside it blue for 48 hours. Probably the least dangerous thing here." Sci smiles at it fondly. "It's so dumb and pointless. I love it."

San chuckled, "sounds like fun"

Sci did this for a while, leading San around the lab, showing off different machinery, telling him all about what everything did until he got to the machinery along the back wall printing nonstop. "And these monitor the au's I've visited!"

"Oh, what do they monitor exactly?"

"The timelines, resets, fun value, number of souls in an au... how many people are takin a shit at any given moment." Sci chuckles. "Nah I'm just messin with you on that last one. It's mostly just basic stats and statistics."

San chuckled, "seems interesting"

"Heh well I think it is at least." Sci watches the machine pumping out information for a moment before turning back to San. "But, yeah... this is my lab."

"it's really amazing, how you thought of so many things, how you built them and they actually work" San is still amazed by everything he saw, He's smiling softly.

Sci blushed. "Thanks... ya really think so?"

"yeah! It's just so cool!"

Sci's face lights up even further at the complement. "Heheh thanks. I suppose you wouldn't mind helping me in here a little bit later then?"

"I wouldn't, honestly I would be glad to help you" San is blushing slightly.

"Cool. Cool. Uhmm cool. Heh sorry I'm done saying cool." Sci chuckled nervously.

San chuckled too, "so what now?"

"Well we-" Sci starts to walk towards the table of San's belongings and stumbled, tripping over his own feet.

San caught Sci, "are you okay?" His voice sounds worried.

Sci looked up at San eyes wide and his cheekbones lighting up brightly. "Ye-yeah. Heheh... I'm just falling for you." His mouth clacked shut as soon as soon as he realized he said the flirtatious pun out loud.

"I-I mean-" Sci stammered nervously.

San blushed too, an orange blush dusting his cheekbones, "I . . . i-it's okay, g-great that you're n-not hurt"

"Thanks." Sci's soul pounded in his chest... This was probably the closest he'd been to San ever... What with his haphephobia... His haphephobia!

"Oh! I'm sorry I can stand!" Sci scrambled to stand and rather clumsily got to his feet, brushing the wrinkles from his lab coat.

San nodded slightly, watching Sci to make sure that everything is okay.

"Well as I was saying we could go get you settled in for your stay." Sci continued to nervously adjust his lab coat.

"Sure"

#san #san!sans #sci #sci!sans #asks and requests are always appreciated and needed #undermine #undertale #undertale alternate universe #undertale ask blog #undertale au #ut #au #utau #utmv #skeleton ask blog #ask blog #science #science!sans #sciencetale

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sazorak · 4 years

Text

Every Game I Played in 2020, Ranked

2020. Boy, what a garbo year huh? Didn't actually play that many games this year all-in-all. Happens! My backlog is getting pretty big, but I just find it hard to focus on games when I could be working on something. Or put off working on something, as it may happen to be at times.

My arbitrary decision from years ago to only attach a numbered ranking to same-year releases is getting increasingly silly, especially given my propensity to wait on playing games until I’m in the right mood, but whatever. That order matters than the dumb numerical numbering anyway.

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

Later Alligator – 2019 – Steam – ★★

The style of this game is very cute, and the jokes are funny enough. But… ok, look, I’m not one to be precious about what is or isn’t a game. But this really isn’t a game. It’s a series of disconnected, unrelated challenges clipped from Atari Free Mini Game Collection 100, wrapped in a very non-interactive adventure-game. It’s cute, it’s kind of sweet, but it’s dull. Dull dull dull. There’s a pointless, mandatory sliding block puzzle early on that infuriated me by its mere existence. Them giving the ability to skip it because “wow you’re bad at this huh”, which, while accurate, also just sold the whole point meaningless of the “““interactive experience”””.

Also: when a huge part of your game is WOW WE ANIMATED EVERYONE REALLY GOOD, text boxes that reveal word-by-word, far away from the animations that occur when said characters talk? Kind of stinks!

8. Carrion – 2020 – Steam – ★★

What Carrion does well— the whole “You’re controlling The Thing and just rippin’ people apart!” shtick— is really neat. They made that bootleg The Thing animate real-ass good.

The actual game as a whole though? Kind of garbage. Imagine a Metroidvania with zero actual exploration, where every opportunity you have to venture off the path instead results in immediate railroading with constant, utterly inexplicable one-way pipes. It’s not that it’s linear, it’s that it actively slaps you when you attempt to explore. It’s very frustrating! Add the fact that the tentacle-monster-shtick makes challenging to actually, y’know, move around and control all your bits… the only reason I finished the game was due to foreknowledge of its extreme brevity.

I think if the game were more open and less obsessed with constantly handing out upgrades, as well as having less of a focus on pure combat, I think I’d have enjoyed it more.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays – 2019 – Steam – ★★

It is well documented at this point that I am both an active Gundam fan, and as well as an on-again-off-again tactical RPG aficionado. A SD Gundam game appearing on Steam with a good English translation and localization is… exciting, to say the least. That said, I have never had much context for this game series beyond the basic facts that the combat tended to be pretty well animated CG, and that it’s vaguely similar to Super Robot Wars. Turns out… it’s really different from SRW? I dunno how the rest of the series fairs, but Cross Rays is weird as hell.

For one, there’s zero tutorialization at all. None. Almost all of what I’m going to explain here is me figuring stuff out by trial and error, or by reading junk online. Gundam is insanely popular, you’d think they’d be interested in explaining how it all works, but… nope. Even Super Robot Wars has multi-level introductory bits for new folks to show them the rope these days.

So: Cross Rays is a tactical RPG where you can playthrough the storyline of various Gundam AUs. You can play through them in any order. These playthroughs are fairly literal translations of the stories. You take control of the lead mecha from those series, fight enemy mobile suits that show up in SRW-like tactical RPG combat, until all reinforcements cease. Pretty straight forward. There are occasionally mission variants like “prevent enemies from reaching X” or “prevent enemies from destroying Y”, but even those can be just reduced to “kill everything very quickly please.”

But here’s the thing: while there is a story progression, the characters in the story itself actually have no character progression. These characters and mecha are actually considered guests, despite it being ostensibly their story. Instead, you are able to field “permanent” mecha and pilots of your own choosing, which do have progressions. There is no plot justification for this or anything like it. The game does not recognize that it’s weird that during Iron-Blooded Orphans intro where nobody knows what a Gundam even is, you can have 25 Gundams show up at once and just fire lasers at everything. That’s because this game is actually about repeatedly grinding the same set of missions over and over.

Pilots are recruited by completing certain in-mission requirements. Mecha are acquired by either by getting enough kills with the progression-less “guest” mecha, combining mecha you already have gashopon-style, completing certain quests, or by leveling up mecha and then “evolving them”. This is the actual core of the game.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays is basically Disgaea, it turns out? You’re grinding story missions at various difficulty levels in order to complete missions, try to recruit specific pilots, equip them with stats and levels to make them stronger, and then hitting mecha together in a sort of quasi-SMT fusion system until you get all the powerful mobile suits you desire.

The combat itself is kind of… bland? There’s a lot of systems, but they mostly seem in service of making an already easy game easier, or burning through tedium. There are four different difficulty modes, because there’s not actually that many different missions you can play through. The expectation is you’ll just work your way through every story beat while ramping the difficulty up over time to where the “guest” mecha would not be able to handle on their own. In fact, letting the story mecha act out the story beats is actually bad after a point, unless you’re still trying to get those lead mobile suits, or if you’re trying to complete some mission requirement in order to recruit Named Wing Grunt Pilot #246.

There is something to the notion of “I want to get N and N and N and N on a team, piloting weird but powerful mobile suits, and just solo every Gundam AU in a row,” but the whole premise seems kind of against purpose. Why bother recreating story beats at all, then? It’s not like the game even acknowledges any of that going on.

If the point is that I’m supposed to be, like in other grind-heavy tactical RPGs, breaking the systems to my own end in order to proceed… why not make the missions you play challenges focused towards that? The story progression literally only exists to facilitate the mission-based unlock conditions, which makes all the energy put into making them JUST LIKE THE ANIME really damn pointless.

I like tactical RPGs, I like breaking RPG systems so as to beat hard challenges (I beat all the insanely hard extra bosses in FFXII for crying out loud), I looooove Gundam. I should like this. But I don’t really have the “god, I NEED TO FILL THIS LIST” gene that some folks have… except as an excuse to continue to engage in gameplay I enjoy. The gameplay here seems in service of the collection, rather than the way around.

7. Pokemon Sword: The Isle of Armor – 2020 – ★★★

Pokemon’s first foray into actually doing DLC is… a mixed bag. As a positive, they’ve improved the Wild Area concept I liked from the main game, and even brought back buddy Pokemon walking behind you. That’s neat. On the other hand: the actual progression in it is completable in like an hour, it doesn’t scale with you, so you’re bound to be over leveled for it, and all the raid stuff, while still conceptually neat, is just as flawed as in the base game. And so, you’re just left with even more new Pokemon to RNG grind on to continue to catch-them-all. Nah, I’m good.

Astral Chain – 2019 – Switch – ★★★

Platinum knows how to make good character action games. They’ve made a bunch of them. Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. They also know how to make some kind of mediocre character action games. Transformers: Devastation, Wonderful 101, their various shovelware character action games like Korra. Astral Chain falls somewhere in the middle, I guess?

Astral Chain has all the production of their good games. It has some stylish, cool action. It has a neat core mechanical idea, in that it’s essentially a two-character action game where you control both characters at once. It has a lot of the old mechanics from some of their best games brought in; witch-time last second dodging from Bayonetta, Nier’s shooting-and-slashing combination, the Zandatsu mechanic from Metal Gear Rising, even Wonderful 101’s multi-unit shenanigans. The setting is different, and there’s some neat world flavor all in all.

But, of all games I’ve played over the past few years, Astral Chain made me more vividly angry than any other. It’s not that it’s too hard— far from it, really, I found its combat incredibly mashy. No, the problem is that it has so many shitty mechanics slathered on that it become a chore to get to the “good bits”.

Why would you put forced stealth sequences in your character action game, especially when your movement controls are not suited for it?

Why the HELL would you put platforming sections in your character action game, constantly, especially when your stupid ghost buddy can accidentally yank you off the edge, your auto-combos can just throw you off the edge, or literally anything can knock you off the edge and make you lose life?

Why would you put so many constant excuses into the world to force me use the digital sensor in the game, that also makes it miserable to walk around while using it?

WHO THE LIVING FUCK THINKS THESE SHITTY BOX BALANCING MINI-GAMES ARE FUN???

These games are supposed to encourage me to perfect everything, right? Why keep putting fucking fights you need to complete in order to get an S rank behind backtracking, or Legions I don’t have yet? That isn’t adding replayability, that’s just wasting my time. There are even in-level missions that have fail conditions that you never even know about. Surprise!!! A lot of them involve chasing after guys and catching them with your chain, which is really obnoxious to do!!!! SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The story is just Bad Evangelion, straight up. Every story beat from Evangelion is here, executed worse. They also make your character have a twin just so they can have a character who can talk and feel emotions, because your boring-ass protagonist is stuck being an emotionless audience cipher. Cool!!!

Tetris Effect – 2018 – Origin – ★★★

It’s drugs Tetris. I personally don’t use, or have synesthesia for that matter. I imagine this game is better if you do. It’s an enjoyable enough experience but it feels incredibly slight for what I was expecting from it, or even compared to something like Lumines, which has tons of replayability by way of its difficulty. Tetris just isn’t that hard, unless you’re forcing yourself to do weird shit to get points. I WILL NEVER LEARN HOW TO T-SPIN. Never.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection – 2019 – Steam – ★★★

Kind of an unremarkable Castlevania collection. Neat that it has an official translation of Kid Dracula in there, but also… look, I prefer Metroidvania Castlevanias, OK?

6. Spelunky 2 – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

I’m not entirely sure why this doesn’t click for me where Spelunky 1 did. More annoying intro levels? Too many fiddly requirements for different ending-progression? Gameplay additions that just make things more annoying? Spelunky 1 was hard, but there was a kind straight-forwardness to it, even with its weird secrets, that made it much easier to grok and continue banging your head against. I’m just not having as much fun with this. Difficulty should be challenging, not a hassle.

5. Stellaris: Federations – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

This is the year that Stellaris just broke for me.

Federations itself is a good DLC; it adds some really interesting mechanics tied to various types of multi-national unions (the titular federations, as well as the Space UN), as well as the addition of unique “origins” that allow you to further specialize your gameplay. The origins in particular are a great addition that allows more specialization and roleplay.

I’m just tired of the sheer amount of busywork Stellaris forces you to do. Every DLC adds more junk you need to keep an eye on, and the fact that the AI doesn’t even bother with it (compensating with copious economy boosts in order to keep up) makes the whole thing frustrating. It’s like playing fetch with yourself; you just get tired of chasing after your own ball after a point.

I have to wonder if they’re pivoting towards a notional Stellaris 2 at this point? Might not be a bad idea for them, though it is weird with all they talked up adding more origins when Federations came out.

4. GranBlue Fantasy Versus – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★

This is probably the fighting game I got most into over the past few years. There’s just this nice, almost Street Fighter-esque ease of execution to the controls, and that Arc Systems Works 3D-as-2D style continues to just do work. I don’t give a single shit about GranBlue Fantasy (frankly, I think I’d enjoy this game more if it wasn’t attached to a property) but the characters are fun enough to play and look at.

The big problem here is two things: no crossplay, and no rollback netcode. In the span of a month, this game became a total ghost town on PC, and it doesn’t sound like PS4 faired that much better.

Ring Fit Adventure – 2019 – Switch – ★★★★

I’ve fallen on-and-off this game all year. At its heart: it works, it’s a fun exercise game. I don’t think it really feels like a “game” (in the sense that I’m not really coming to it for riveting gameplay or anything) as much as just a guided exercise experience, but… that’s fine? The in-game story is kind of flat, but funny in the fact of it existing at all. Buff Nicol Bolas and all.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen – 2017 – Steam – ★★★★

XCOM2: War of the Chosen is a great answer to what XCOM2 struggled with. As I discussed back in 2016 (Jesus Christ), XCOM2 tried to push against player’s worst instincts by incentivizing them to keep being aggressive through a whole bunch of timers— which, kind of just weren’t fun given how much accidentally walking into an ambush could “ruin” dozens of hours of play. War of the Chosen dials that back in some intelligent ways, by instead making the encounter designs themselves, as well as much more grab-and-bail mission types, encourage players to push ahead instead. Smart!

The addition of the Chosen makes the game feel more alive, and they really do make missions harder— particularly early on. But they’ve somehow accidentally fell into the hole, where XCOM just… isn’t that hard? Early on it’s challenging, particularly with the resource restrictions and all. But they keep giving you more and more options (that aren’t especially meaningful choices) that make your team more and more powerful, without increasing the strength of the enemy as time goes on. By the five-hour mark, you basically know if you’re going to steam roll the game or not.

The amount of additional character and variety in the gameplay is great, I just wish it had a more challenging difficulty curve. Maybe make the meta-layer of when enemies show up more targeted to where players are at. If a player is doing well, ramp up the difficulty, if they’re struggling, pull it back a bit. I should always feel like I’m just barely keeping ahead with XCOM, not like I’m bored. And by the end of War of the Chosen, I was kind of getting bored, really. Oh well.

3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 2020 – Switch – ★★★★

This is probably the video game that I spent the most time with hours-wise this year. I’m not entirely sure why? It’s a nice evolution of New Leaf, in that the crafting, environment shaping, and general quality-of-life improvements made are quite nice. There’s clearly been some thought on how people play these games, and ways to make the experience less frustrating.

… and yet, they kept so much tedium in the game. Like yes, the schedule stretching is the point, I get it. As someone who for some reason decided not to play with the clock, I only just recently finished the fish, fossils, and insects for the museum. But there’s just so many weird, little things that just make it hard to keep coming back to it. It’s like… to what end? When I’ve unlocked everything, and basically seen the entirety of the item list at this point, and the holiday events all being the game meaningless collectathons…. Why? I’m not going to try completing the collection; the museum stuff is about my limit, really (and even the paintings I can probably pass on).

I guess even an idealized, digital representation of a quasi-domestic life has the spiritual emptiness of consumerism-for-consumerism sake. Thanks???

Hypnospace Outlaw – 2019 – Steam – ★★★★

I grew up on the internet of the early 00s. I had an AngelFire website, mostly consisting of shitty sprite webcomics and hosted Gundam pics. I remember when Google wasn’t really a thing and you would heavily rely on website compilation sites like the Anime Web Turnpike in order to find anything of value online. It was weird, it was wild. It was exciting!

The internet seemed so different back then. There was a ton of garbage online, but also, like… there was a sense of optimism to it. Folks were shitty, there was plenty of bad stuff online, but it felt so disconnected from the fabric of the physicality of real-life that it was at the same time a perfect escape.

I was young when I first got “online”, something like 12. I remember having this notion that the internet was going to be this great equalizer, that it had infinite potential to change how people behave and interact. Boy, huh.

Hypnospace Outlaw is essentially a splendid alternate universe GeoCities recreation, where you’re a volunteer moderator of a grouping of websites on HypnOS, an internet-analog you access while you are sleep. At the surface level, it’s mostly about poking around the weird alternate-historical version of the internet they created, full of kids feuding, bizarre historical divergences, and plenty of amazing bespoke weirdness. All of this is great; there’s an incredible amount of content that’s just great to poke at, listen to, and explore.

Below the surface, there’s also a rolling plotline about the ethics of this industry-owned platform, those who run it, and the way corporations handle new technology, new platforms, and emerging digital societies. There’s a late game turn that’s pretty damn affecting. And as someone who has moderator his share of internet forums in his time, trying to balance ‘do it for the community’ and what your ostensible ‘bosses’ require of you, it was kind of a weird throwback in more ways than one.

Minecraft – 2011 – PC – ★★★★★

Turns out, Minecraft is really as good still who knew??? Started playing a bunch more of it this year due to Giant Bomb deciding to do so, and yeah: still good!

2. Hades – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again— Supergiant makes damn good games. I’d been holding off on checking out Hades until its full release due to my tendency to burn out on games easily, and I’m glad I waited. Hades is a fantastic rogue-lite experience. The way it makes narrative progression part of the reiterative, randomized rogue-lite structure is just perfect.

It’s got all the usual Supergiant bullet points. Great characters, voice acting, narration, and music. In terms of gameplay, it’s probably their least ambitious game— playing something like a cousin to their original game, Bastion— but it’s also been polished to a mirror sheen. It just feels really damn good to play, over and over and over.

That being said, the second (final?) ending feels kind of…. Tacked on? It’s fine as a goal to go for while continuing to do the game’s relationship mechanics for additional story bits, but it ends up feeling kind of unfulfilling compared to the payoff of the first one.

1. Crusader Kings III – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I never could get into Crusader Kings II. Despite my interest, the sheer mechanical heft and unintuitive interface made the game a wall that I just couldn’t get over. I’m sure if I’d dedicated myself I probably could have learned it, but… ehhhhhh.

Crusader Kings III, on the other hand, has a good tutorial, a cleaned-up UI, and a very helpful highlight and tooltip system that make it much easier to understand how to actually play the game through resources inside the game itself. And, as it turns out: I rather love this game.

I mean, conceptually it’s an easy sell, isn’t it? Historical politics is something I enjoy broadly. I liked Stellaris but wish it had more narrative, roleplaying elements. They outright say that “winning” isn’t really the point of the game. Instead, it’s more about emergent storytelling and playing with the different systems and seeing what you can do with it.

My current game has had me taking the Haesteinn dynasty from its Viking origins into England, forming a London-seated Northern Sea Empire that encompasses all of Britannia, Iceland, Holland, Norway, and Denmark. I am currently working on hegemonizing Norse religious control over enough Asatru holy sites to finally reform the religion, such that more unified feudalization can occur. To that end, my current ruler’s predecessor invaded West Francia and conquered the whole of its territory, substantially reducing the foothold of Catholicism in mainland Europe… which seems to have kicked the hornet’s nest, given the Crusade I’m going to need to contend with next time I boot up the game.

Of course, a complicating matter is that my current ruler— the Emperor of the North Sea, King of Ireland and the Danelaw, liege of the King of Denmark, was elected from the extended Haesteinn family via Thing, the Scandinavian council of his erstwhile vassals. Where the previous emperor, the one who manufactured the invasion of Francia, was quite religious and beloved for his adherence to the old ways, I discovered as I took over as his successor that he really, really is into just boning down across Europe. We’re talking constantly attempting to seduce neighboring Queens and Princesses. His vassals are not thrilled with this. They also don’t care for his propensity for torturing people to death, constantly.

I had no real say in this; attempting to stay on top of a dynasty is kind of like riding a bucking-bronco, so many things are only tenuously under your control that some weird shit can happen. This is especially true when you use the systems that make it easier to maintain the coherency of your domain. The Norse religion encouraging concubinage results in you having a lot of kids, which means there’s a lot of domain partition going on (someday, primogeniture, someday). Naturally, using Thing election reduces that, but also makes you sometimes end up having to play Emperor Stabbo-Fucko because they thought he was the best candidate at the time. Hell, I thought he was the best candidate at the time until I discovered just how many people he’d be laying with on the low. But you just have to roll with it.

The way the game forces you to play ball with character traits is great. Doing things that match with the character’s traits makes them lose stress. Doing things against their character increases stress. Too much stress can force you to make the character take up vices (which can make them suffer health or opinion maluses, as well as altering their aptitudes), or even die outright. And sometimes those vices and attitudes can be boons, given they open up opportunities for different character interactions.

Emperor Stab-and-Fuck-Kingdom is perhaps the most relaxed person alive, it turns out, because his sadism makes him really enjoy sacrificing infidels, which makes the gods happy. It also freaks the fuck out of all of his vassals, so they’re a good supplicant mix of both appreciative of my religious sentiments and also utterly terrified of my skull piles. Some especially brave vassals occasionally try to assassinate me, but my lovers keep jumping in front of the knife and saving my life mid-coitus. Iiiiiit happens! :D

The game can be incredibly fun to just watch, as it becomes emergently weird. Georgia right now is incredibly Jewish in game. I’m not sure how that happened; I guess someone made a random Jewish guy into a vassal, who somehow moved up enough in the world to make it a movement? The Byzantine princes elected a Coptic as Emperor, which over the course of the decade resulted in very accelerated balkanization as Byzantium just lost its shit. The Middle East and notional HRE haven’t really unified in a meaningful way, so I’m curious how things are going to go if/when the Mongols unify and roll-on in.

It’s one of those “Just one more thing” games that can completely devour time. I have more than a few times checked the clock mid-game to see that it’s 4AM and that I’ve totally ruined my sleep schedule in the process of play. Oooooops.

I highly recommend checking it out if you’re curious; the introductory, pre-release video series Paradox put out showing off the game does a pretty good job of showing the core gameplay loop and also how weird it can get.

#GAME OF THE YEAR #GOTY #nonfiction #thinkpiece #2020 #Crusader Kings 3 #Hades #SD Gundam #Animal Crossing

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evilisk-played · 5 years

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DQH2 Speedrun Commentary Part 02: Dunisia Part 1

(Covered in this part: completing the first trip to Accordia, upgrading Desdemona and Torneko, the Grand Dunes, the Oasis fight, upgrading Lazarel, Maribel and Ruff recruitment, Dunisia Skirmish 1)

Accordia:

Twin Swords Teresa? (00:10)

In my later runs, I started to switch Teresa over to the Twin Swords. But honestly? I'm not sure it's necessary at all. The whole "extra DPS" advantage is lost on your party members being dumb.

= = =

Torneko and Desdemona In A Speedrun?

I'll say it now, Torneko and Desdemona aren't getting much use in this speedrun.

Torneko gets a bit of use as he’s technically your first healer (just make sure you unlock his healing ability, since it’s not one of his defaults). In regular play he’s... okay. He’s not my favorite honestly.

Desdemona is a perfectly fine character in regular play, but in a speedrun? She's not so good. Without a full unlocked arsenal, she's just not that powerful, and she has the "early joiner" disadvantage.

The early joiner disadvantage is that the earlier a character is unlocked, the less potent they are for speedrunning. There are number of reasons why earlier characters aren’t so good: characters that join later often join with a higher starting level, and for speedrunning (where you don’t get to grind at all) this is a significant advantage over the other characters. Late joiners also get up to date weapon when they appear (while you need to purchase equipment for early joiners, and this can be quite annoying).

The most important difference is related to the “proficiency” system in this game. Proficiency is basically a second skill tree that is only unlocked by: actively using a character; and talking to the Martial Artist in town. Contrary to what the game says, proficiency is not acquired purely through damage; it’s acquired through killing enemies, and enemies give a set amount of it (anyone whose played DQH2′ lousy postgame knows you hunt Roseguardins for fast proficiency).

It’s a really stupid system in regular play and in a speedrun it’s even worse, as a bunch of characters have key abilities walled behind proficiency like Terry. Desdemona has it really bad off in speedruns, which is a shame as she’s a beast with a fully unlocked moveset. (Maybe one day I’ll try a New Game+ speedrun...)

= = =

Upgrades:

Desdemona only gets used in two battles, and she doesn't get even close to using High Tension in either one, so I recommend upping her damage (so she does more damage, doi) and upping her MP (so she can whip out more Scrap Mettles)

Torneko actually sees a few more battles before being benched. Here I unlock Sage's Stone and up his MP. It should be obvious what this means tbh.

= = =

Getting Zap So here's something that didn't happen in the video but is something I totally missed; if you talk to the Martial Artist at this point, you can totally unlock Zap now. Zap is a very, very important skill to have. While you don't necessarily need it *now*, it's very, very important to pick up as soon as you've unlocked Maribel and Ruff.

= = =

The Grand Dunes

Optional Golem Fight (01:52)

At this point, you can totally skip the Golem with the Twin Swords' C1 Dodge Loop. It's worth noting that this Golem encounter always appears here the first time (and it never appears when you return here).

= = =

Out In The Wild (02:19) Okay, so this bit is about a potential random event that occurs in the open world. I walk past it in the video, but these events involve random NPC's needing rescuing from mobs. Completing these gives a lot of EXP, though I have personally never done any of these events, because I like consistency and outisde of this section of the game (this event will always spawn either before or after the Golem), these things are 100% random.

= = =

Oasis Chest (03:40)

You can get a Mini Medal in that chest either before or after the fight with the Knight Errant. I actually use a few Mini Medals in my runs, but I'm not so sure I'd call this one a necessary one by any means.

= = =

Oasis Fight (03:50) So this is basically a tutorial with the Monster Medal Mechanic. In this encounter, you fight against 2 Mummies, 2 Rocks, 2 Golems and a Knight Errant. The pairs of enemies will all drop a Monster Medal and you'll at least need the Rocks and Golems' Monster Medals to run through this section quickly.

The overall strategy is to kill the small fry and then focus on the bigger enemies. The Mummies will distract the bigger enemies when summoned, the Rocks will unleash a powerful attack and the Golem Medals will let you transform into one for a short amount of time.

To get the most out of this section, make sure that you have Desdemona use Scrap Mettle on the bigger enemies. Then switch to Lazarel and make sure he activates the Rock and Golem medals (remember: to get proficiency, you need to be using the character you want). Make sure to reapply Scrap Mettle in between uses, and also to go Sucker Punch > Cratermaker > Sucker Punch with the Golem to get a high DPS.

This section can be quite random, mostly because you're fighting three big bodies at once and since you're still technically level 2, it's pretty easy to accidentally die. While it doesn't matter if the other members die, you'll want Lazarel alive by the end so he can at least get some proficiency and EXP.

= = =

What Do These Idiots Want With Us?! (07:22)

Okay so I'm gonna say it now: this run of this section was *awful*. The battle goes: starting wave in the middle, then single Golem, then wave with Fires, then the Final Wave with the 2 Golems and the one Hunter Mech.

Typically, what you want to do is, aside from clearing the Waves, you'll also want to pick up a Golem Medal, a Rock medal and a Fire medal. In this run, I almost forgot about the third one, because I got extremely distracted by a Cloud at 08:11

The ideal way this goes is: final wave appears, Desdemona uses Scrap Mettle on all three, switch to Lazarel, use Fire medal, use Rock medal, then use Golem Medal. Doing this properly kills the boss really damn quickly. Here, I start it at 09:15 and I kill it in fifteen seconds which is fast for regular play, but is slow for a speedrun (I can usually cut off an extra five seconds).

The ending of the fight is also really bad. What's supposed to happen in regular play is that as the Final Wave occurs, you're supposed to be next to Maribel and Ruff and a dialogue is supposed to activate with them. I usually don't do this (so that I can clear the Mech and Goelms really fast), but what I forgot at the time was that after killing the Golem, you still need to talk to those two.

I forgot about that, and ended up wasting a bunch of time killing all the enemies (doing this forced the next scripted section, where the Dunisian sounds the retreat). You can see this stretch from about 09:34 to 10:17. While I haven't timed Maribel's dialogue, I'm pretty sure that a 53 second gap between finishing off the final wave, and actually ending the mission is probably what's not supposed to happen.

= = =

Detour to Accordia With that mission done, you finally unlock Maribel and Ruff, who you both want to switch out Desdemona and Teresa for. You also want to upgrade Maribel, Ruff and Torneko, and also buy Lazarel a stronger set of Twin Swords.

Ruff's Upgrades (11:06) Yes, you do want Call of the Wild AND Flame Breath. Flame Breath is basically CotW, but weaker, but also with an element (Fire) and a cheaper MP cost. You'll actually be using it to build up Tension crazy good. Call of the Wild is so that when you get into High Tension, you have a better damaging option.

The only thing worth mentioning is that I'm really not sure about my decision to increase his Critical Rate over simply upping his MP and Strength stats. I think it's way too early-game for his critical stat to be useful.

Maribel's Upgrades (11:17) Make sure you pick up that Kasap skill. Oh, and I guess I'll mention the strangeness of the Wisdom stat. From what I can tell, Wisdom affects two types of attacks: "magical attacks" for magical weapons, and spells (like Zap, Woosh, Frizz etc. though not Whack. Whack doesn't count as a spell. Trust me, I've tested out Ring of Ruin with Whack; it doesn't get buffed)

In Maribel's case, the Wisdom stat only affects her Frizz spell, though some weapons and movesets (like any of the Heroes with the Wands, or Cesar) seem to get boosted by increasing Wisdom. I think. Maybe. It's been a hot while since I looked into the stat.

= = =

Maribel and Ruff In A Speedrun? Both characters are also cursed with the early joiners disadvantage, though Ruff has marginally more use compared to the other characters (and both characters are still incredibly helpful for the upcoming sections).

Maribel is one of those characters that really suffers from proficiency having her best abilities. In this run, she's effectively like having Desdemona "but with a far ranged defence drain skill"

Ruff is luckier, as his two best skills (Flame Breath, Call of the Wild) are easily accessible as soon as he's unlocked. Ruff's specialty is that he's probably the most mobile fighter in the game. I actually reuse him a few times later in the game, specifically because his combat-mobility is better than even Lazarel's C1 Dodge Loop, and it gets him through some of the more annoying open world segments (like the Frozen Foothills)

= = =

March of the Harbans (12:53) This fight is one of those battles with loose scripting that leads to a lot of inconsistent runs of this stage and it honestly sucks. It seems like eradicating all Mawkeepers, then all boss type enemies like the Golem, Clouds, Hunter Mechs, and then killing a certain amount of goons, will lead to Donk spawning at *some point*.

It's worth mentioning that the Clouds (that spawn from the left) are very fast and annoying for the purposes of the getting the stage's scripting to work (you can sometimes have a Cloud reach the King of Harba without you noticing).

So there are these tar pits at 13:16. While I haven't fully tested it, I am like 90% sure that if you kill enemies on those parts of special terrain, enemies will not spawn Monster Medals. Like I'm pretty sure that's what's happening here because the Monster Medal rate of dropping in that area of the level is so consistently bad.

This stage continues straight into the next video.

#dragon quest heroes 2 #dragon quest heroes 2 speedrun #dragon quest heroes 2 commentary

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lvminae · 5 years

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SwSh Opinions

Actually fuck it I'll make an in depth post on swsh since I'm sick and it is 2:30 am and I can't sleep.

Keep in mind that these are my opinions and I’m not out here to argue with anyone, I just want to share what I think. And there is a lot. Since I wrote this in the middle of the night and edited the next day, I probably forgot some things, but it is long enough as is.

I don’t think I actually went into anything spoiler like.

Things I like

- Characters: I adore the variety in the characters and a lot of them are loveable. Some stick out as ones I don't particularly like, and some are silly, but that variety is good and it isn't so common that it becomes irritating.

And I have reasons to care about characters I initially disliked (like Bede; his development is JUST enough for me to not hate him). Some I still don't care about, and some characters deserve more development, but it isn't bad to the point where I am not happy with it (and I will address this more later).

- Pokemon (Variety): I'll talk about pokemon later on the neutral list, but I do really appreciate just how varied and even wild the pokemon are. Design wise, anyways - I don't know jack about competitive stats and don't care.

- Wild Area: The wild area has the silly mechanic of sudden weather changes depending on the areas, and the pokemon who pop up can be repetitive when you are dex filling. But other than that, I LOVE it. It is huge, and immersive, and I much prefer running around there than on routes.

And the pokemon popping up and approaching? Amazing. Can be annoying sometimes when pokemon you don't care about chase you (looking at Tyrouge and Electrike seriously Leave Me Alone), and hunting water types that hop around is frustrating (but makes sense), but it's still a wonderful addition.

- Exp. Share: I know a lot of people are pissed off it can't be turned off, but as someone who cannot get into old games because of not having it/how long it takes to get it, I appreciate it.

Some people think it makes it too easy, but now that you can box pokemon at p much anytime, you can (mostly) avoid the effect by boxing pokemon. I say mostly cause not all situations work with it, but I don't think it is common enough to say it is bad.

- Improvements of life: To add to my point above, I enjoy things that makes the games easier. I'm not a hardcore gamer. I want to have fun and actually be able to reasonably beat a game. Difficult games aren't bad, but these are for all ages. And it is easier to make things difficult than it is to make them easier if they were made difficult, yknow?

Things like showing the effectiveness of moves is one of those things- which I am glad they kept from SuMo- because I have memory problems. Lots of fans do, or are young, or just can't remember Every Single Type Matchup. I prefer having that than having to google type advantages constantly so I don't get a 1 hit ko on either my pokemon or a pokemon I want to catch.

It isn't quite as hand holdy as SuMo was (love ya rotomdex, but pls give me a break), but it is accessible to a range of players. That is how it feels to me, anyways.

- Side quests: Having little quests that give incentive to explore the region and just give a little spice of life to the region. And they aren't super confusing to do.

- General aesthetic: I love how the region looks. It hits so many aesthetic points for me. It is a pretty game with pretty locations, and the graphics are far better than anything I would have expected for pokemon.

Seriously, I've seen people comparing it to BotW and.... That is not the style Pokemon i or ever has been going for. It's an unfair comparison. Also BotW graphics are :/ in my opinion. Beautiful locations, but I don't like how people look. Pokemon? It looks nice, all fit together well. Feels like POKEMON. Not like other games that people compare it to.

There are some graphics that need fixing, like the berry trees and the whole mess they are when you shake them. But it isn't nearly as bad as people pre release were saying. And the battle locations are fine too. Seriously pre release thoughts were a mess.

- Performance: It runs well. I haven't had issues. Frame rate is fine, very rare drops, graphics work fine. I've only had a crash once, and that's because I was chaining max raids and the vibration was too intense for my machine. I took a break, turned vibration off, and everything was fine.

Note: I know that there have been some issues with glitches and stuff, and those are an issue. I haven't experienced any myself so I can't complain. And I'm not any sort of expert.

- Regional variants: I love regional variants in general. It is just So Good. And there are more than just gen 1 variants in these games! Thank god! Obviously many are still gen 1 but they aren't Exclusively gen 1.

I'll talk about that pandering later.

- Gyms: I love how the gyms works. I love the entry trials. I love the feel of the gyms and the competition, and the cheering and the music!!! It is just a great time!

- Character customization: Not quite as extensive as I was anticipating, but still super expansive and I love it.

Things I am neutral on

- Post game: It isn't that bad, but it isn't super interesting either. And I hate the sword based dude. His hair looks like a dick. Yes this is a genuine complaint. Both his and his brother's designs are... silly, and kinda uncreative, and I don't like it.

But they do pose a challenge, and it gives an interesting look at lore and the concept of people believing their assumed ancestry gives them certain rights and just how far these people will go.

- Pokemon: I think we have a good amount of new pokemon, but overall I am... eh on the designs of some. In my experience, regions have either a good amount of good looking pokemon, or a good amount of bad looking/boring pokemon. Obviously this is purely subjective, but this region has me drawn down the middle. I have pokemon I adore and are new favorites, but also quite a few where I just.... Don't like them at all. I've never been this split on them, so while I appreciate their variety like I noted above, I don't necessarily like all of them (especially the fossils. Their story makes sense, yes, but I can't fucking stand them.)

- Dynamax/Gigantamax: I get it's ties into the story, and I love that tie. And it is the gimmick of this region, which I absolutely am ok with. But in use... yeah, having a large pokemon is fun! But I don't really... Care about it? And I only use it in gym battles where I know the leader is gonna Gigantamax (even though generally I didn't need to), or max raids.

I like it more than Z moves, but it does make me miss Mega Evolution. At least it gives people something fun to design. And some of the gifantamax designs are great (and some are.... Basically dynamax. Pikachu and Eevee especially.) The raid make for good leveling though so I do like that.

- Story: I like pokemon for the stories. I actually don't like the style of the games gameplay wise. Pokemon I can handle and enjoy because it is simple compared to other games in the genre, at least enough so where I can be pretty clueless but still have fun and drive to play/grind somewhat. Bur ultimately for me, I enjoy pokemon for the story and characters.

Story... is lacking in this game. I love what we get! It is super interesting! But it is so much on the back burner compared to other games in order to focus on the gyms that it feels... I dunno. I miss a larger, more involved story. The focus on specific characters like Hop do still give me something to focus on, at least.

But the story could have been improved overall had it not been shoved to the side so much. A different, less involved story could have worked better, or something that involved the league and gym leaders more since the gyms were the focus.

Or find a way to involve the player more! It really comes down to the goal of the game, which was the improvements for competitive play. As a non competitive player, this isn't anything I care about or want. But some do, and with that being the focus, I understand the story being a bit lackluster compared to previous games.

Doesn't mean I have to like it, though :P

- Dexit: I don't... care about dexit. Having to play only with the pokemon from the gen isn't bad, and you can still use some. Yeah, a lot of pokemon I like are missing, but that gave me incentive to use pokemon from this gen. I think people making a huge fit over it also made me just Not Care. I'll miss my old pokemon, but maybe I cam actually complete the dex for this gen.

Things I dislike

- The trading system/y link: The fact you have to have nintendo online for this is awful. It is alienating to all those players who can't afford the subscription. All you should need is an internet connection just like the other games. It's a cash grab and I hate it.

The trading system is also irritating to use in general. I know the gts was not the best, but being able to search was nice. And one on one trading was so much easier. Using these codes is problematic because people you don't know can use the same code and you might not know! It fucks up trades! It sucks. It just sucks.

- Gen 1 pandering: Leon's key pokemon is a Charizard. Charizard got a gigantamax pokemon. Most gigantamax not from Galar are gen 1. Most regional variants are gen 1. I Do Not Fucking Care About Gen 1. Meowth has both an alolan AND galarian form AND gigantamax! It's annoying! Give the other regions some light. Please. I am so, so fucking tired of pandering to gen 1. The pandering makes me hate the gen, not want to go back to it.

- Version exclusive gym leaders: This one doesn't irritate me like the other things, I just think it is dumb. Especially since they didn't change the towns to make sense for the exclusive leaders.

- Cost: I am not made of money and I really do believe it should have been the normal $40. But it is a main series game with a lot and switch games seem to generally run at that $60 mark - main ones anyways - so I'm not surprised. Just disappointed.

#anna.txt #pokemon #long post

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crystalelemental · 6 years

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FE Fates Replay - Part 4

Fun facts: I remembered having a difficult time with Chapter 8 when I first played this game, so I went in scared. My initial attempt, I was severely over-leveled, and it wound up being hysterically easy. So I tried again with a normal amount of leveling, and it still wasn’t too bad. I’m not sure what past me was having such a difficult time with? If I had to guess, I was really salty about not getting all the towns or something. Flora being able to Freeze your units is rough, but Corrin with her Dragonstone was just so tanky she could take the upper path almost alone, while the rest of the team went straight across the lake. Anyway, I bring that up because I started over from the decision point and got back here in like half an hour, so that was nice. On to actual plot.

Chapter 7! Having betrayed your birth family like the intelligent being you are, you now realize you failed to account for something really important: that your dad is fucking insane. Garon immediately distrusts you, because you’ve been with the Hoshidans, so obviously you know the truth are consider them enemies. Honestly, this isn’t too far out of left field yet. Iago, however, is a putz. “Ooh, I bet she’s a spy for the Hoshidans!” Moron, what kind of spy for the enemy side waltzes in to the fucking throne room to chat up the king after knowingly conspiring with said enemy? Garon’s also a moron though, so he kinda believes Iago, but doesn’t really push the issue. At least, until Corrin decides to ask about the exploding sword thing. Garon says he had no idea what it would do, which...okay, the obvious answer is he actually didn’t, but like...I have played this game before. I know about Revelations, and about the soldiers from Valla, and that guy that exploded the sword seemed to be an invisible soldier from Valla. So...maybe Garon’s not actually lying here? We see in a moment that he’s kinda just following orders of his own, so maybe he’s not as on top of events as he lets on.

Anyway, when Corrin presses the issue, Iago goes on about his spy nonsense, and Garon falls for it entirely, ordering Xander to kill Corrin. Yeah, that’ll go over great. Xander, of course, refuses. Everyone starts getting heated, until Garon announces that he’ll ask the great Anankos for guidance on this situation. Anankos being some ancient dragon that the king apparently communes with, but no one, not even Xander or Iago, seem to know what the hell he’s on about. Thankfully, Anankos states that Corrin may live, if she proves herself with a test. She must suppress the Ice Tribe rebellion, and she must do it alone. Everyone is fearful for Corrin, as a solo mission against an armed rebellion surely can’t go that well, but honestly? I’m a dragon. What are they gonna do? Unless they’ve got Wyrmslayers, their asses are toast.

In order to reach the Ice Tribe, first we must go through the Forest of the Forlorn. Which is apparently filled with Faceless. Go figure. Corrin gets herself immediately surrounded, and announces a problem with the Dragon transformation. It apparently takes time to transform. Which is why, you know, you can shift in and out of that form during combat. It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Jakob shows up, saves your ass, but is immediately reminded that she had to do this alone or it doesn’t count. Of course, immediately after this, Garon does his bad guy thing of loudly soliloquizing about how he doesn’t trust Corrin and just wants her to suffer, so Xander, having some ounce of sense within him, takes matters into his own hands and arranges for Corrin to have back-up, in the form of four new units!

Silas is the first, and he’s your childhood friend you initially have no recollection of. Corrin does eventually remember he exists, but nothing else. I am really hoping support conversations explain how the hell this happened. Elise also arrives, which is great because we can pretty much stop here. For those who don’t know, when I first played the game, I was so sick of it by Revelations that I basically pumped Elise full of stat-enhancing items, turned her into a Dark Flier, gave her a high crit tome, and had her solo the game. She’s really good, both as a unit, and as a character. She’s your little ball of sunshine, and she’s hysterical. Her retainers, Arthur and Effie, also arrive. I remember not caring about these two first time through, but honestly? They’re alright. Arthur’s a bit clownshoes, but he’s a good guy and can be entertaining. He mostly works by virtue of those around him, though. Elise worshiping him as her idol makes a lot of sense, given her youth. His interactions with Effie provide the knowledge that he takes his role seriously, but puts his duty to the common folk before his duty as a retainer. Supports really drew out the interesting tidbits for him. Effie, by contrast...is kind of exactly as “okay” as I remember? I don’t have anything to dislike her by, she’s just not that interesting. Comically strong and fiercely devoted to Elise, but that’s all she’s got going for her right now.

The chapter is really easy, but more unfortunate, there’s no boss on a throne so there’s no way to level grind yet. Worse, the boss moves toward you, so you can’t mess around either. I don’t remember a ton about the different routes, but I remember Conquest getting tough after a bit, so that’s not ideal.

I then went out of my way to get Mozu. Her paralogue involves a small town being attacked by Faceless. Everyone buy Mozu in the village is killed, and she’s hiding out in the woods, until Corrin hears the screams and comes running to the rescue. Jakob advises that the town’s already gone and they shouldn’t waste time, but Corrin’s insistent on looking for survivors, so let’s get the map started. Based on having only 6 units allowed in Chapter 8, but having 8 allowed in the Paralogue, I’m guessing you’re supposed to get Mozu after Chapter 8, but that’s dumb. The paralogue is really easy, even with only six characters. Effie and Arthur are more than capable of plugging the northern bridge, while Silas and Corrin decimate the path to Mozu. The only difficult part of the map is getting Mozu any experience. Fortunately, my Corrin was built with Dragon in mind, and dealt just shy of a clean OHKO on the Faceless enemies. When paired up with Silas, Mozu was just strong enough to get the KO, allowing her to get some surprisingly decent levels. Aptitude is such a nice skill. Thank god for cheaters giving that skill out on everyone else, I tell ya. After clearing out the Faceless, Mozu joins up because really, the hell else is she gonna do? Everyone’s dead. So, hooray for new recruits!

Now, Chapter 8. A chapter that I remembered having an awful, awful time with. Corrin and Co press forward, into the snowy north where the Ice Tribe is. Jakob and Elise run ahead because they’re goobers (but they’re our goobers), leaving Silas and Corrin behind. Corrin presses forward, but inevitably collapses. She awakens in a bed, with the head of the Ice Tribe tending to her. Apparently they have a strict “no trespassing” rule and were going to let her die, but they saw her sword and thought hey, that seems important, we should save her. So, here you are. Corrin almost spills the beans on her identity, but Silas successfully plays defense, reminding Corrin that there’s a rebellion going on, and they might not take too kindly to Nohrian royalty in their village. Enter the rest of your bumblefuck party, as well as Flora, who obviously recognizes you instantly. Elise...dear, sweet, stupid Elise...announced they’re here to suppress a rebellion, commenting that she thought suppress meant to sit down and have a nice meal and talk things over. Naturally, the Ice Tribe immediately gets ready to throw down, and you’re treated to a pretty interesting, but fairly difficult, map.

The map is a frozen lake in the center, and five houses around it. The soldiers for the Ice Tribe will be going to the villages, and announcing that there are Nohrians present. If the spear soldiers reach the villages first, more enemies appear. If you reach them first, no enemies appear. Now, ordinarily, I’m all about the delicious, delicious experience, but you’re given a free warning about rewards for getting to more houses than they do. If you get to three of the five, you get the most rewards. I think it’s three out of five because that’s realistically all you can get to without serious power-leveling through DLC. One of them is outright impossible. You can’t cover enough distance, and the soldier is right there, as a demonstration of what happens. That said, it’s still kind of a high pressure map. The soldiers that escape the first village they contact are set up in such a way that the soldier is well defended, so you have to be tough enough to punch your way through, or be able to go around and handle everyone that comes after you next turn. But keep in mind, the other side of the lake has two of the villages as well, and a separate soldier slowly making his way there. Your force needs to be divided in two: one faction heading north to handle the first guard before he reaches the northern village, and one heading directly west to intercept the far west village before the other solider.

Thankfully, you get two more allies to help! Niles, who...ugh. UGH. And Odin! Those of you who played Awakening may know Odin better as Owain, Lissa’s son! How the hell did he get here? Deeprealms. No, we would not care to elaborate further. Odin is a bit more...ridiculous, than he was as Owain. Like, they’re still very much the same, but there’s some difference I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe as I get supports with him I’ll figure it out. Niles, though? He annoys me. Very little is going to sway me out of that. While Odin’s a goon who wants to show off his power and the usual melodrama he produces, Niles seems actively cruel. Corrin orders them not to kill anyone, and Niles’ interpretation of that is “So I can hurt them as much as I want, but can’t kill. That’s a neat challenge.” He just seems mean-spirited overall.

Now, the map effectively has two bosses. Flora’s here. She doesn’t move, but she has the Freeze staff, which locks a unit in place. So, let’s suppose, for a moment, that Silas tries to run straight to the west village. As soon as he’s in staff range, Flora locks him down. Now, you can still beat the soldier to the village, but the problem is...he gets to the one above you as you arrive. So now Silas is alone, and surrounded. Odin and Niles help a lot here. Honestly, I think the reason I had a hard time the first time I played was not using the pair up system correctly. See, in Awakening, you got all the benefits in one through Pair Up. But in Fates, they actually did a smart thing and broke it into two types of pair up: offensive, where you occupy adjacent spaces, and defensive where you occupy the same space. Defensive allows for the stat increases of the main unit, and a gauge fills that allows a guaranteed block from the unit in the back. Offensive allows for follow-up attacks, guaranteed, as long as the attacking party isn’t defensively paired. If you have a defensive backup, you can’t get another unit adjacent to you to also attack. So there’s a give and take. Knowing me, I probably wanted to be defensive to not immediately die, and defensively paired them up, which led to too little damage in a short amount of time. Offensive is much better, especially since Niles has surprisingly nice resistance. In combat, Flora’s fairly tough, but Effie and Corrin, and even Arthur if he’s doing good with levels can handle her easy. I had Corrin do it.

The boss of the map, though? He’s what we’ve been waiting for: a fairly frail map on an auto-healing throne, also with a tome that heals him. Glory be, I thought this day might never come! Time to farm out those levels, team! Elise got some excellent levels because she’s a good girl who’s done nothing wrong. Niles, Effie, Arthur, and Silas got some okay ones, while Odin is basically dead to us now! Everyone’s level 10 or above, which means it’s go-time. Really, the boss isn’t hard to handle. Niles with a pair-up that gives any form of resistance means the boss can’t even hurt him. So if you need cheese, there you go.

Once suppressed, Corrin tells Elise to go heal up the wounded on both sides. The Ice Tribe leader, impressed by Corrin’s kindness, agrees to halt the rebellion for the time being, believing that she will be the one to put an end to the hostilities and give the Ice Tribe their autonomy back. Flora also comments that she would like to renew her vows of servitude to Corrin. There are hints that Flora never really liked Corrin, and had always planned on some kind of betrayal, but she’s been won over by Corrin’s honest display. Personally, I think it’s bullshit that Flora doesn’t just join you here, but I guess we have to make My Castle relevant somehow. The townspeople also thank you for warning them of the conflict, helping to keep them save, and give you what is probably their lifetime earnings in the form of 10,000 gold! See, everything worked out great! The Ice Tribe rebellion is over, everyone’s alive and happy, and nothing bad happened at all. “Garon told you to do it alone and you didn’t so he’s gonna be pissed when you get back.” AT ALL!

With that, we await the next part where we face Garon’s wrath. If he’s lucid, anyway. Hard to tell with that guy. So far, I’m still not having much to complain about with the game. The story can be a little heavy-handed. Mostly I’m talking about Garon and Iago, who are just so transparently evil, and aren’t even really trying to make sense about it. I can get Garon being suspicious of Corrin coming back after learning the truth, but their explanation for not trusting her and then his insistence on just wanting to make her suffer is just silly for anyone that’s meant to be taken seriously as a villain. They’re just a bit too ridiculous. I will mention that the Conquest maps, thus far, are pretty decent. Chapter 7 and Paralogue 1 are pretty standard “Clear the map” ones, but Chapter 8 is sufficiently inventive. I actually like how it’s designed to have you not just clear the map, but have little sub-objectives built in that can make the map easier or harder for you. We’ll see how things keep up.

#fire emblem fates replay #fire emblem fates

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bigklingy · 7 years

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In case anyone wanted to know my (brief) thoughts on Fates.

So I got a comment on a Fates video asking if I ever did a “review” of some kind. I thought I might as well copy-past my reply here. Heres my dot-point thoughts on FE Fates. Just... try to be civil. I know everything about this game tends to spark flame wars. Gameplay: -In general, MUCH better than Awakening, especially pair-up. Skills are also nice, being less luck-based and more about flat stat boosts, and personal skills should be in every future game. -Class balance is a bit better. Generals and Snipers got much-needed improvements. Only class I'd call "overpowered" is Master Ninjas. (If they didn't have Poison Strike they'd be fine, but with it they beat both frail units AND bulky ones) -Unbreakable weapons are fine, and for the most part there's still strategy in weapon choice, perhaps even more so. But there are a few problems. Higher-level weapons have drawbacks too large, and Knives are almost completely inferior to Shuriken. Map Design: -Birthright, decent. Conquest, fantastic, nearly perfect. Revelation, bad. -Dragon Veins are a nice gimmick, especially when bosses use them too. -It’s hard to describe (and not really related to map design), but the world map in Birthright and Revelation feels lifeless and boring compared to the ones in Sacred Stones, Awakening and Echoes. Difficulty: -Birthright is a bit too easy. Its Hard should have been harder. Characters range from good to game-breaking. -Conquest is a bit too extreme in its difficulty. Conquest Hard is barely different from Conquest Lunatic. If they'd toned-down Hard to be more of an in-between of Normal and Lunatic, I'd like it better. Character balance is very good overall with the possibly exception of Camilla. -Revelation is all over the place. A few isolated maps are hard, the rest are as easy as Birthright. Many characters are TERRIBLY balanced on this route though.

-I like how higher difficulties aren’t just numerical stat boosts to enemies. Adding enemies, changing equipment, changing objectives, or even changing deployment locations. Please do more of this in future games.

-Lunatic mode is way better than Awakening’s. Less cheap luck-based difficulty. Though its exclusive skills are dumb. Supports/Pairings: -Gaining classes through supports adds depth. -A+ supports are confusing and clumsy. Opposite-sex siblings should be able to A+. You should not be allowed to A+ if you get no classes out of it. (e.g. Azura and Sakura) -Children feel awkwardly shoehorned in and should have been explained better. Paralogues are nice, but none of them have any story relevance. This game either should have had a time-skip or no children at all. -While children aren't as broken as Awakening, and Offspring Seals are great, we're back to FE4 style "some pairings aren't viable at all from a gameplay standpoint". Magic-focused mothers suffer greatly from this, as there are very few magic children. This is more a personal thing, as I pair more for story than gameplay. -I feel like the "every character can marry the Avatar" system hurt some characters/plot points this time. I personally think Gunter, the Hoshidan siblings, Midori, Percy and possibly Soleil should not have been able to marry them. -Before you ask, no, I don’t think Scarlet should have been able to marry Ryoma. I actually don’t like that pairing much. I do think she shouldn’t have been able to marry the Avatar on “that route” though. -Male Avatar can't marry a Gen 1 female without erasing one child forever. -Same-sex marriage totally inferior to straight marriage from a gameplay standpoint, erasing one/two children forever. Spoilers ahead. Also, mostly negativity ahead. Story: -All three routes aren't great.

-WE DON’T EVEN HAVE A NAME FOR THE CONTINENT.

-I am in a VERY small minority that thinks Birthright is worse than Conquest. It adds a ton of random, pointless deaths just to try and give it as much tragedy as the other routes. The final stretch of chapters I found unsatisfying. Sneaking inside the enemy castle so conveniently only evil people get killed is less epic than a full-scale invasion. And it makes Birthright the objectively morally-superior route when they were supposed to be avoiding that. Corrin's characterization is the best of all three routes though. -Controversial opinion: I'm not bothered THAT much about Conquest, it might actually be my favourite of the three. (But that's not saying much) But it suffers from contrivances just to cause tragedy, and the villains often "undo" anything positive Corrin does and can't be rebelled against until it's too late. The siblings shouldn't have been kept in the dark about their father. Corrin not killing things gets hard to believe, and all the "it's not black and white" speeches fall hollow when IT ACTUALLY IS. I disagree with Nohr being 100% evil though. I think the only evil Nohrians are Hans, Iago and Garon. Chapters 21 to 24 are some of my favourite moments in any FE game, though that might only be because the map design is so good. -Revelation is weird. It's the most "complete" route with the best ending, and lets you use everyone. But the plot often hinges of characters being idiots. Corrin here is imo the worst of all three versions, coming off as really stupid at times. The main villain has no backstory if you don't buy the Hidden Truths DLC. -I think Corrin should have been blood-related to the Hoshidan siblings. They not being breaks one of the themes of the game and feels like waifu/husbando pandering. It also requires weird plot contrivances. (Both Sumeragi and Mikoto must have been cheating on/with eachother at the same time??) -Character-wise, they're... okay. I feel like less characters are exaggerated stereotypes compared to Awakening, though they're still present. (Arthur, Peri, Odin) But none of the characters truly grabbed me as amazing. -The children aren't nearly as good characters as they were in Awakening, with only one or two not boring me to death. -Hans and Iago, on all three routes, are irredeemably terrible. Generically evil for no reason. -Controversial opinion: I kind of like Garon. But sort-of ironically. I find him hilariously over-the-top and fun. And he actually has a backstory unlike Hans and Iago. -The final Rev villain is a step up from Grima, but still not that great. (And with Grima's expanded backstory in Echoes, Grima might actually be better than him now) -Mikoto is killed way too early, she barely makes an impact. I like her on Revelation though, as I consider the phantom version of her an exaggeration of her flaws, thus.... giving her some. -Corrin is the worst Avatar so far, and possibly the worst Lord in the series. A lot of their character suffers from player-pandering and the plot bending over backwards to absolve them of any direct guilt in anything. Birthright Corrin is okay though. DLC: -From what little I've played, it's not as good as Awakening's. Hidden Truths is good though. -Grinding DLC suffers heavily from the scaling. At end-game, the only people who can kill the enemies in Boo Camp... are those strong enough to not need the exp anyway. That kind of defeats the point. I like that it's not effortless, but they went a bit too far. Overall: -Conquest has some of the best gameplay in the series by far. I hope future FE games follow its example in map design. -They tried to do a better story than Awakening, but it ended up even worse. Please hire the writers of Echoes to write future FEs from now on. -I like Conquest considerably more than Awakening for its gameplay alone. Birthright is better than Awakening gameplay-wise, but I found Awakening “deeper” overall. Revelation has more characters, but it’s got some big issues.

#Fire Emblem Fates #Thoughts #Impressions #Review

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artyrogue · 4 years

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Blind Date Gaming: The Sword of Hope

I was chatting with my matchmaker PRANG about my next date. Of course, it really doesn't accomplish much since it's a random number generator and doesn't actually listen to dreams, desires, or basic human emotion, but sometimes you just need to unload on an inanimate object, y'know? So there I was, pouring out my experiences thus far in this Blind Date Gaming thing. "I sort of hope I find some neat titles in the next few dates," I said. Without pause, PRANG churned up The Sword of Hope. Maybe machines can listen after all!

I fired up the game and was greeted with a long prologue telling me some dragon was let loose because a sword was taken out of a painting...or something? And then that triggered dark times that turned people into treehuggers. Or wait, no, my bad -- literal trees. I guess they might hug each other if they could, y'know, move after that transformation.

Was it only dark due to the newfound shade from the people-trees...?

Eventually, I awoke as the prophecied Prince Theo in an old man's cave, where, in true Legend of Zelda style, he gives me a sword and tells me to go on and move out. I mean, you're eighteen now, obviously the tax break for claiming you as a dependent has lapsed and he wants to use your old room as a new workout area or something.

By the way, that little portrait of Mr. Old Man? That's your gameplay area. The rest of the screen is your ever-present HUD. You didn't want to get too immersed in the visuals, did you? Nah, let's look at those juicy stats and menus; that's where the real entertainment is!

If you can't tell, this game is an RPG, though it has some Shadowgate-style gameplay in terms of puzzle-solving and movement. Unfortunately, there is no map, so you must either remember or map out the paths to get from point A to point B. Double unfortunately, you get randomly attacked frequently by a bunch of monsters, even for doing minor things like looking at your stats. You'll also semi-frequently go through 3-4 battles trying desperately to move a single screen in one direction sometimes, helping you feel even more lost in where you spacially reside in this world of tree-people. Treeple?

That is the cutest tiny big bat I have ever seen, holy moly

Battles are chunky and require major grinding at times. Your first fights will be crippling, with basic moths bashing and poisoning you. Did I mention poison hurts your HP, drains your dexterity, saps your stamina, and axes your agility...for every action you take? While I applaud them for realism, that's a bit of a drastic affliction, especially for the first fights in the game. I'm sure they'd have taken it further if they could, like making your foot get gangrenous and develop brain hemorrhaging 4 screens later.

The face of pure evil

Combat is a chore, really. Either you're at the magic level where the game says you can actually hold your own in battle (which makes you 1-shot enemies with normal attacks) or you’re scrounging to do any damage at all. There's really no middle ground; you'll do 0-3 damage for normal attacks, level up, and then be doing like 8-15. I swear, you also can't crit until you're at a higher level than enemies. Your spells seem to work fine, though. You'll rely on spells to do the bulk of your damage in new areas. Thankfully they all suffer from the classic malady of translation space limitations, making them have names you really can't understand like BAGEFIR2, RECMIN, and RAISEA.

I...don't think I want to cast that spell.

Oh, and all spells have a chance at targeting other beings on the battlefield, yourself included. Yes, you read that right: you can kill yourself with your own conjured magic. At least the enemy magic does the same thing to enemies, which you'll rely on constantly to help you win fights. Foes also attack each other if they're different races, because I guess that dragon' tree darkness won't let anyone get along! Fear Arbor Day!

You'll see this message a lot. I mean, a LOT.

Anyway, I got about halfway through, I think. It was rough at first, got a little fun a quarter in, and then got maddening. Enemies leveled up sharply, and I had no time to sit and grind out levels. Truth be told, the fighting wasn't so bad as a whole. What was, though, was exploring a maze with teleporting doors, one-way passages, similar-looking and named rooms, and ridiculous enemy spawn rates...all with the game's horrible movement system. It was a chore, but I eventually got through due to sheer determination and my ability to run like a pansy from every fight I could.

So where's the allure in progressing? Honestly, it was the terrible story and translation that kept me going. You'll find several places where things just get goofy. You'll find animal turds in grass, chests full of germs, and all manner of odd statements. Here, have a collage of a few of my favorites:

Beautiful.

The balance of entertainment and frustration was just enough to entice me. In the end, I can't tell if I like or hate this game. It's definitely playable, but I hate forced grinding and sheer spikes in difficulty. This leads well into my newest section for Blind Date Gaming:

Would you go on a second date?

Essentially, would I continue playing this game beyond the short stint this date has given me? I'm leaning to no, mostly because of the ridiculous enemy spawning, mandatory grinding, and terrible navigation. I don't know if there are more mazes in the game, but if so, that's a big minus, too. I do want to see how dumb the plot gets, though, so there's some semblance of curiosity that might spin me back in The Sword of Hope's direction.

Thanks for joining me on this adventure! It's nice that we're seeing a mix of game genres. I can't wait to see what we get next time! Until then, take this Sprite of Passage. Wear it as an emblem upon your breast to show off your fortitude for texty RPGs and reading stupidly long reviews on outdated video game titles!

Well if that ain't the beefiest mimic I ever did see! Was it arm day or chest day?

#blinddategaming #gameboy

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arcticferedir · 7 years

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Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy 2, originally for NES, actually didn’t make it to the states until the PSX remake Final Fantasy Origins, which was the first time I ever played it. It, like final fantasy one, was also paired on the GBA remake Dawn of Souls, while also getting a PSP remake. Also, while I failed to mention before, it like FF1 got a remake for iOS/Android, but I believe they’re just the PSP versions as far as I’m aware.

FF2 is…very different from the rest of it’s ‘family’ in the series. How so? Well let’s go over it.

Story: The story begins with the kingdom of Fynn under attack, suddenly overtaken by monsters literally summoned from hell by Emperor Mateus of Palamecia in an attempt to take over the world through war and force. Four kids try escaping. Firion, Maria, Guy, and Maria’s brother Leon. However, they are wounded and left for dead, but Firion, Maria, and Guy are saved by the Rebel Army, headed by Princess Hilda of Fynn. The story is then the three joining the Rebel Army to save their home, and eventually put a stop to the emperor and his war on the world, all while dealing with the tragedy of war and the sorrow it can bring.

This story is much more involved than the first game was. War is a heavy topic, but the game manages to work it to it’s advantage I feel. There are gains and losses for both sides throughout the story. The three heroes all actually interact somewhat with the other characters, and have…faint traces of personality. Firion seems somewhat brave and headstrong, Maria seems somewhat more cautious, and Guy is…kinda dumb. To be honest if they have more personality beyond that and wanting to save their hometown, I honestly can’t remember. This game’s strength I feel is in it’s supporting cast.

You have Hilda, the princess trying to lead a small rebel force. Gordon, a prince of another kingdom who loves Hilda but is a coward. Plus many others you meet on your journey, including other party members that join and leave your party at certain intervals. Reasons being needing to stay behind to help something/someone else, or…even death. Death of characters plays a somewhat major factor for the story(including for bonus content in the GBA remake, possibly others but I’m not sure if beyond the GBA remake the Dawn of Souls extra bits got added).

Gameplay: Like the first game, it’s a top down RPG. Most things stay the same. Towns and dungeons and bosses and whatnot. Even the ‘choose everyone’s actions for a turn then watch highest speed go first’. There are some…major differences though.

First is magic. Anyone can technically use any magic, there’s no classes or restrictions beyond a person can only know a certain number of spells(but it’s a decent number). They are split into black and white, with black using intelligence and white using spirit for calculations. Also you buy books, and use a book from the menu to teach that character a level 1 spell. As they use the spell, it will gain experience and eventually level up, gaining more power/accuracy/effects, sometimes getting better/flashier visual effects, while also increasing the mp cost, the cost being mp = spell level. You can also use a book in battle to cast a ‘free’ medium level version of the spell. Level 7, I think, but not positive, and the highest level a spell can be is 16.

Another difference, in some versions at least, you have to equip items to use them in battle. People can equip up to two ‘items’ to use in battle, so you have to pick if you want a potion, a phoenix down(the revival item), an attack item, a spell book. Some thought does have to go into it.

There’s also a password system. You can learn certain words, and then ask other characters about these words to possibly get more information or advance the story.

The biggest difference is leveling up. As in, it’s not a thing. FF2 tried to be different, using a ‘stat raising’ system. The more you use/do certain actions, the better your chances of raising stats pertaining to those actions. For instance, casting fire, a black magic spell, has a chance to increase your mp and intelligence. Using an attack with a bow equipped has a chance of raising your strength and will also give you bow experience. Taking damage has a chance of raising your max hp. Some other games use this style of ‘leveling’, mostly notably the SaGa games. The major issue is technically two fold. Sometimes, while raising a stat, you can lower another. Casting magic to raise Int might lower Str. Using white magic to raise spirit might lower int. The other is that everything is ‘chance’. You’ll never lower without a gain, but sometimes it can take you forever to gain stats, forcing you to rely on luck or grinding just to make sure your characters feel up to snuff. Of course, since you don’t need experience to level, many people can grind in the early areas to become super beefy and not have to worry for a lengthy period of the game.

Remake Additions: The most notable addition is the Dawn of Souls ‘expansion’. Without trying to give away too many spoilers, you play a party of eventually four characters from the main game, who end up travelling through literal Hell to essentially help the main heroes out, seeing as how technically the emperor did call monsters from hell to help take over the world. It doesn’t add much to the story, but it is a bit of a nice touch for some more content, I feel.

I believe there’s also a password dungeon in the remake? You can use passwords to generate random dungeons. I’m not sure what else because I played a bit of the PSP version, tried it, and was horribly confused and lost, but at the time I wasn’t really invested in it, to be fair.

Final Opinion: Final Fantasy 2 is something that tried to branch away from what the first one was, while still trying to keep some familiarity. And I give it points for that, I do like when games try something different. However…this kind of flopped a bit for me. While I did enjoy the story and supporting cast, the main characters were…somewhat forgettable, especially considering they start out with not much to them and can be built in any direction you want, with your other party members you get tend to be built in one direction or another already giving them a feel for how they would ‘normally fight’.

The leveling system is also one I never feel comfortable with. I’m okay with random stat gains on level up, like in fire emblem games. But when you have to grind out stats, and you don’t know when you might even get a chance of getting better…it becomes a long, slow grind that drains me. Also to this day still am not sure how to best raise speed/agility on people.

If you want to give it a try, I won’t turn anyone away. However I also don’t blame anyone if it doesn’t appeal to them in the slightest. If anything, maybe watch a let’s play or a longplay of it, and maybe try to at least appreciate the story of the game if you’re at least interested in that.

#blah blah blah #final fantasy #final fantasy ii #final fantasy 2 #ff #ffii #ff2

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Persona 5 Royal review – both better and worse than the original • Eurogamer.net

It’s a great intro: protagonist Joker darting along the casino roof, quick like a shadow. Making fast work of a handful of enemies while leaving others in the dust, his black coat swishing behind him. The excited voices of his team mates over the intercom as he’s almost reached his goal, but then! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! He’s surrounded!

Persona 5 Royal review

Developer: Atlus/P Studio

Publisher: Atlus/Sega

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out now on PS4

The first sequence of Persona 5 Royal acts as foreshadowing and tutorial all wrapped up in one, showing you everything you will regularly be doing in each dungeon you crawl through – jumping between platforms and squeezing through ducts to find a way forward, hiding away from enemies or ambushing them when they’re not looking. Most importantly, in round-based combat you unleash Persona, manifestations of parts of Joker’s psyche who can use different elemental attacks, healing spells and stat buffs. Persona 5 Royal also adds a grappling hook to your arsenal, which you’ll mostly use to find shortcuts and additional treasure.

Joker and his friends, regular students at Shujin Academy in Tokyo, one day stumble into the Metaverse, a parallel reality that manifests Palaces where people live out their worst desires. There’s also Mementos, a sprawling maze of randomly generated dungeons. The group of high schoolers enter these palaces to steal people’s treasures, causing them to let go of harmful desires and confess their crimes.

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Persona 5 Royal brands itself as the definitive version of the game, and introduces an extensive list of improvements – if you’ve played Persona 5 before, you’ll definitely notice how P-Studio worked to fix a few common gripes. New items help in combat, such as talismans that buff several stats at once, more food and drink that replenishes SP and many new accessories, among them rings you can put on your team members so they can use spells they normally don’t have access to.

You can form bonds with two new characters, first-year gymnast Kasumi Yoshizawa and school counsellor Takuto Maruki. Scenes with both are sprinkled in throughout the main story, while an all-new storyline after the main game focuses completely on them. New bonds mean there’s new Persona to catch and new abilities to gain from becoming friends, too.

Speaking of abilities – Persona 5 Royal introduces a really cool new special attack that unlocks as the story progresses. Called Showtime, it’s a powerful attack that unlocks when an enemy is almost finished or you’re really struggling. Two friends in your group will pair off and start a short, eye-popping sequence that briefly takes you elsewhere. They’re really difficult to describe if you haven’t seen them – Haru and Makoto for example start a WWE Smackdown double attack, and Ryuji and Yusuke start a saloon shootout when the enemy rudely interrupts Yusuke feeding Ryuji some ginger-laden donburi. It’ll all make some kind of distant sense when you see it, I promise.

The improvements aren’t all combat-focused, either. Thanks to a wealth of additional options, you’ll find it easier to raise your social stats, and if you time things right it will now only take you a single playthrough to max out every confidant. To justify adding even more content to an already meaty game, the palaces are now shorter, mostly because the layout of each has been streamlined to include fewer rooms, and some puzzles have also been shortened. Notably, you can now collect Will Seeds in each dungeon, manifestations of a palace ruler’s driving feeling. If you collect three seeds and take them to Jose, a small boy who hangs out in Mementos, you gain a powerful, otherwise inaccessible ability.

Gymnast Kasumi appears sporadically throughout the main game, to experience her full story you have to finish that first.

There’s more stuff, but the important question is, does it make Persona 5, an already universally lauded game, any better? Honestly, and I’m making my best Robert DeNiro face while I say this: meh.

When I played the original Persona 5, a handful of things detracted from my overall immense enjoyment – the treatment of some of its characters, the difficulty, which to me felt pretty easy, and the length of the game. It wasn’t just the number of hours, which was colossal, but how long they could feel.

If you’re plugged into the discussion that surrounded Persona 5, you know that certain parts of its plot didn’t land that well: a storyline in which your friend Ann is supposed to pose as a nude model, and a bit where your characters meet a couple of gay men. Atlus West requested the latter be changed, but to me it’s an absolute non-change that while no longer suggesting the abduction of minors, still finds ample opportunity to stereotype gay men. Small mercies, I suppose.

The way Ann is treated is equally off-putting to me, but it’s just part of your standard grab bag of misogyny in Japanese games, so of course that would remain unchanged. Don’t get me wrong, I love Persona 5 a lot, and I recognise that the opportunity for change is limited if you don’t want to downright cut content, but Royal does nothing to fix its larger problem: you get to meet a group of characters that’s perfectly adorable in their own right, but it’s constantly suggested they would be nothing without you.

The Velvet Room now offers battles where you earn battles for particular efficiency.

Persona 5 Royal puts its own characters down – it’s frequently suggested that Ann is a bit of dumb blonde, Yusuke is just weird, Makoto is too uptight, but you’re here to change their lives. P5R adds instances of queer-baiting to the mix, not letting you date your male team members, but putting you in intimate situations with them all the same. Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal take the power fantasy to whole new levels, making sure to call the protagonist, and by extension the player, awe-inspiring, a hero, a leader, whenever the opportunity presents itself. I find the idea of being near-infallible pretty tiring.

This leads me to the combat. I’m confident in telling you to start Royal on Hard if you’ve played Persona 5 before. Royal also comes with two modes that lock you into your chosen difficulty, Safe and Merciless. You now have so many additional abilities and items that I think the standard game is way too easy, and can feel like going through the motions. Boss fights have been retooled with new segments to fit the narrative better, but the balance feels off – overall I enjoyed the fights, but I had trouble with some that had never bothered me before, while others seemed too easy given how far into the game I was.

The last point on my list however, is perhaps one of the most common complaints about Persona 5. I’m pretty happy how on normal difficulty there’s never been a reason to mindlessly grind, even though in essence that’s what Mementos is for. Grinding isn’t what turns Persona 5 Royal into a game of over 100 hours – it’s how characters review and re-review even the most basic information ad nauseum. It’s how you might not want to spend the next four hours driving around in Mementos, but you have to, since it’s a plot requirement. It’s how the game heavily cheats you by suggesting not once, not twice but three times that this is definitely the last battle and the world will be saved any minute now.

The additions here make all of that worse. Absolutely no one I’ve ever talked to said “you know what Persona 5 needs? Another palace. And I also really want to spend more time in Mementos”, yet that’s exactly what you get. To make the plot additions work at all, it needs a massive leap of faith that undermines pretty much everything you’ve done until this point, and it’s so frustrating. After a truly epic finale, another villain simply takes the place of the last. It’s the same principle that often makes movie sequels so grating – the victory you’ve just had was for nothing. For a game that frequently tells you the exact opposite, to stay true to your ideals and keep fighting even when others think it’s pointless, this is especially disheartening.

You use the grappling hook seldomly but to great effect. Wheee!

Without wanting to spoil anything, the new villain does have interesting motives, but they’re the sole upside of a storyline that asks you twice to have the same conversation six times in a row, and that gives you a palace where you fight three new enemies over and over, one of them several consecutive times. The way it is, the new story content feels a bit tacked on, despite giving you the option to keep working on your Social Stats and links – it feels like a DLC. This is an additional month of in-game time, relating to something that’s only alluded to in bits and pieces throughout the main game. It might be fun if you come back to Persona 5 after several months, but put at the end of the main storyline like that, it just makes you wait for it to be over.

If you’ve never played Persona 5, thanks to much of the optimisation this is certainly a safe bet. But Persona 5 Royal doesn’t so much feel like a definitive edition and rather a game made for fans who get excited about collectibles like the Will Seeds or additional Persona, or who are thirsting for new interactions with characters like the twins, who were previously largely neglected. Sadly it doesn’t add enough to justify another playthrough.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/persona-5-royal-review-both-better-and-worse-than-the-original-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=persona-5-royal-review-both-better-and-worse-than-the-original-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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thelongestdamnreviews · 6 years

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Tactics Ogre: One Vision (mod)

As far as I know, One Vision is the only mod for the PSP version of Tactics Ogre. The intent behind the mod was to balance things, make the OP things less so, change things around, make the game different but not change it at its core. This review covers v0.91a, the latest version available when I started playing again. There's now a v0.92 available as of August 15 2018, so that's worth consideration. Download is available here.

The first biggest change is that characters in battle no longer get 0.1 added to all stats when the class they're in levels up. Instead, classes confer a percentage of given stats at each level regardless of their taking the field or not. So if you have a character class change to a Lv20 Dragoon, they would have comparable stats to one who was a Dragoon from level one.

A screenshot of the patchnotes, but this is still a good guide to follow.

Hired generics also are set to randomly be set under four different base stat distributions, for frontline fighters with lots of STR and VIT, archers with lots of DEX and AGI, mages with lots of INT and MND, and all-rounders. You have to look at the blue bars on the hiring screen to tell what archetype they fit into, and they change each time you enter the screen too.

Magic changed substantially too. You're no longer able to use grimoires during battle, so you can't have your Warrior throw out Exorcisms when your Cleric is busy. If you want magic, you actually need to field people that naturally use it instead of stocking up on one-shot spells. Instill spells are now learnable Skills that cost TP and quite often I'd get an Instill off after moving and attacking someone instead of sacrificing my attack to power up. Elemental magic now inflicts Averse of the opposite element so it's possible to set up elemental volleyball combos with two mages. Reagents are no longer used and use MP/TP/sometimes HP to fuel them instead, though the buffing Ninjitsu still requires them plus a pittance of TP.

Healing got buffed. It now scales slightly with MND but it also heals a percentage of the target's maxHP as a secondary effect, but this won't happen when using heals to hurt the undead. This makes enemy Clerics straight goddamned bats because they can and will undo a lot of the damage you're dealing to the enemy leader and several fights field one or two in the very back. Enemies still have a ton of HP so enemy healers are priority one...or you can trick their AI and beat the crap out of another enemy in range so they heal that one instead. I seriously exploited this several times since rushing Hawkmen to deal with them was potentially fatal for my guys. Knights lost the ability to heal too so thankfully all of the enemy leader Knights won't tank and heal all the hurt you'll bring.

Oh, and resurrect magic no longer exists as far as I found. You can save someone from death with two new items, the Lifeline Gem that Shiftstones them from the field (but never to return), or the Lifeline Gem that revives the ally and restores their HP, but removes the user instead so you're still permanently down one ally for that fight.

Magic availability got shuffled around too. Wizards and Spellblades get access to missile spells, but Warlocks can only use indirect magic. Draconic Magic now uses the caster's weapon power in the damage formula and I often had it dealing the most damage between plain elemental magic and using the weapon normally.

Items got the biggest change. Gear is now normalized and every class of weapon or armor now does the same thing with higher tiers having better stats. So 2H Swords all deal damage with a chance to inflict Stagger, and they give a bonus to AGIL, so late-game ones would do more damage and give more bonus stats--weight and RT stay consistent. Armor is split between cloth/caster, light, and heavy. Light armors boost evasion, while heavy armors boost HP and VIT for soaking up damage. Ranged weapons have much higher RT values across the board, to make up for their users not moving as often as your frontliners.

The Cutlass, Khora, and Damasc Sword are all the same weapon, but their stats are different. I didn’t mess with crafted weapons but I imagine they break the ‘same thing, better stats’ pattern.

Crafting got overhauled, so instead of getting +1 gear that's clearly better than the original, you get sidegrades. 2H Sword sidegrades are heavier and more damaging, but come with an AGIL penalty, Hammers have a high change to knock a target back, Cudgels trade caster bonuses for bonuses fighters would enjoy, Fists damage the target's MP as well as HP, and so on. Armor is a bit different, such as light armor getting a slightly heavier and more protective version to heavy armor getting even heavier and tanky. Some caster armor is different, like the standard Wizard Hat's sidegrade having a sharp RES penalty but innate Absorb MP. Crafting also doesn't require anywhere near the dumb number of steps like the original game--Wootz Steel for example can be done in one step and crafting is intended to be 100% successful (but it wasn’t in the early chapters for me, so possibly a bug) too.

Purified Ore isn’t very cheap, but it beats repetitive stress injury.

And of course Skills got changed around quite a bit. Fortify, Strengthen, and the other +stat skills are entirely gone (though enemies currently have dummied-out versions applied), Instills are skills as said above, skills that level up by use do so much faster now (I got Steal up to 2 before the end of the game, even), racial skills are now changed around so you can't stick Anatomy on everyone now (so demihumans have a use for your team), and activateable skills were either changed in function or swapped around between classes. Some skills like Bash or Counterhit or Field Alchemy had entire tiers removed, so Bash/Counter start at 50% and Field Alchemy I grants you use of most items instead of slowly unlocking them through the four tiers. Status Effect resist skills are gone and -Proofs unlock much earlier, and they allow you to cast a 'free' single-target cleanse against that type too. You'll generally have more SP than normal since you're not dumping them into +stat skills.

Finishers were balanced and Brimstone Hail is no longer the be-all end-all it was in the original. Each one inflicts a status effect or hits twice, and accuracy or damage is determined by current TP.

And there's a bunch of other small mechanical changes like changes to RT, cost, range, area of effect, and so on. Many things have new names now too.

Some character sprites were changed. Catiua now wears blue pants, Vyce has a red coat on Chaos/Neutral, Folcurt has a new sprite, Sara and Donalto have different portraits and have permanent sprites like unique characters, Tamuz was made into an interesting hybrid Hawkman that has access to Orc classes and he ended up being a pivotal part of my team as a Juggernaut. Templar Knights were given distinctive colors so you could see at a glance what they were capable of--red Templars were either Wizards or Warlocks so could cast magic, green were Archers or Fusiliers, so they could snipe you, blue with a black collar was Cleric so kill them first, etc. Given how many you have to go through in the last part of the game, having this kind of information is extremely helpful so you don't need to keep checking all of the identical mooks to see who's dangerous and who is easy pickings.

Please brain enemies with your giant hammer, flying heavy armor man. He can get Battering Ram to ignore Rampart Aura, but flying units kinda do that already.

I think the difficulty as a whole was increased somewhat, mostly at the start when you have terrible gear and skills. For example, the very first real battle has Canopus join you as a guest...and he died my first time in that fight. Uh. Canopus, the gamebreaker, died in an easy fight. I wound up making Denam a Cleric and fielded a second one and I still had quite a few incaps. No deaths, but I had to use the Chariot more than a few times because things went south fast. The Chapter 2 Chaos fight against Vyce 1v1 wasn't bad with Cleric Denam, mostly because I used whatever to inflict Falsestrike and gave myself Truestrike, so I could whittle him down. The Chapter 3 Neutral fight to save Cerya was made easier by her being given armor and leggings, but I had more trouble with actually killing Oz than keeping her alive (since you can use Lifeline Gems to ensure your guest lives). That was one of the instances where I had to grind.

I don't really have anything negative to say about the mod. I had to grind a bit and that was off-putting, but I think that was what killed my interest in the original game. The changelog is set up logically, but there's no rolling "this is everything that's different as of this moment" sort of list, so you kinda have to read from the bottom-up to get an idea of how many changes there are. And there are a lot. The PDF changelog is 67 pages long and 65 of them are patch notes, though not all of them are full pages. Still, there's been a lot of work done on this mod and it really shows. And it's not even done. It is kinda annoying to have to actively overwrite your own memory of "oh, well X is different than what I read a few minutes ago" while you read, though.

This isn’t a change that the mod made (as far as I know there’s no text alterations) but this is something that happened while I was going through a second route and I never knew this was possible.

The changes to gear kind of makes new tiers unlocking less exciting, not that they really were much in the original. Every standard upgrade does more than the prior one, but I don't really think it's a negative. The author has also tried to use the crafting system to give direct upgrades to some items that have big gaps between levels so that does help to keep things feeling consistent. I felt the light helmets gap between Circlet and Damasc Helm was pretty wide but that's something that can be addressed later. At least the system is otherwise pretty consistent instead of having one item increasing one set of stats and the next iteration increases something else.

One Vision is definitely worth a look if you're kind of tired of standard Tactics Ogre. I think it does a fine job of cutting off the chaff and streamlining things, but you should take some time to look over the extensive changelogs so you're not going to get your ass handed to you when the tried-and-true tricks of old cease to work. I'd suggest downloading a save that has classes maxed and so on so you can get a preview of all of the differences, if spoilers are no problem for you.

I honestly feel like trying a for-fun run where Denam only has monster allies for some reason now...

Edit: Hi, I’m an idiot and I guess I thought it was the same name as the Deus Ex mod, but nope! I fixed the name here almost a month after the fact.

#playstation portable #game mod #recommended

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theoretical-tactician · 6 years

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Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse Final Thoughts

Quick note before I start: I’m probably gonna make this final thoughts/review thing a normal thing for me to do now once I beat a game available on a Nintendo system since I like sharing games with people. That, and I feel with some of the experience I’m gaining with game-making, I might be able to provide some good thoughts? But mostly because I’m enjoying making these.

So it’s been about a week since I wrote my SMT IV review, so I guess it’s about time to share my thoughts and observations on Apocalypse. So, just like last time, I’ll separate things into sections to make this easy to read/find what you’re looking for in games. Since everyone has different opinions, I apologize ahead of time if I skim over or miss anything you want to know about a game. If I miss something, just ask and I could probably give an answer.

Sections of this review in order:

General Points

Story

Gameplay

Design

Final Thoughts?

General Points

So, what is this game? To sum it up:

This is a JRPG for 3DS

This is about a 30 to 50 hour experience

This is a fairly easy SMT based on my experience and it has 5 difficulty modes (2 of which are free DLC)

This is a sequel of sorts to SMT IV, but you don’t need to play SMT IV beforehand

Story

So what the heck is this game about? Well, for starters, it’s sort of a sequel to SMT IV, or at least an alternate universe of what happens in the neutral ending of SMT IV. Now, even though that’s the case, you don’t necessarily need to play SMT IV to enjoy this game, as the game will fill you in on some necessary details, whether through the story or logs the game provides.

In this story, you play as Nanashi, a hunter cadet who will go on an adventure to save the world from vengeful gods and the conflict between angels and demons. Along the way, you’ll make tons of friends, like 7 or so. The cast is extremely colorful, so you may enjoy at least one character, though that also gives you a chance to be annoyed by at least one party member. (Also, Isabeau is there and extremely OP. I love her <3)

Now, this game is pretty wacky a lot of the time. Actually, scratch that, it’s really wacky at times. You’ll realize that pretty quickly with how dialogue is written. There are a lot of times it acts as a visual novel (yes, game, I know what King Frost looks like, you don’t need to tell me about his lovely locks of hair). I’ve said it multiple times before, but this game basically feels like a giant choose-your-own-adventure fanfic.

Lastly, like any SMT game, there are multiple endings which can effect your play time. This game has 4 endings: law, chaos, dark-neutral (anarchy), and light-neutral (peace/bonds). Now, unlike SMT IV, there isn’t a whole alignment scale, you literally just have two decision points that decide your ending (it’s really obvious when it happens). There are however light and dark points based on your decisions throughout the game which will effect whether or not you’re punished based on your decision point in the neutral route (if you’re worried and wanna avoid punishment, look at a guide).

Gameplay

Gameplay is probably the most important part of any SMT game, and in this game it remains the same as SMT IV, with some wonderful additions to make the game easier/improve combat. Now, this is the easiest SMT game I’ve played, but I’ll keep this warning: if you don’t like dungeon crawling or turn-based JRPG combat, I don’t recommend you play this game! This game is easier, but it still has long winding dungeons, and enemies are capable of killing you if you aren’t prepared.

If you didn’t read my SMT IV review, I’ll repeat how battle mechanics work here. See, this game uses the press turn system: you have one turn for every party member and each move you make costs one turn. The thing is, you can extend these turns. You use half a turn when you pass a turn, land a critical hit, or attack an enemy weakness. Enemies also have turns and they’ll lose turns if you block/reflect/absorb their attacks or they miss.

The thing is, this also affects you, as in if the enemy hits your weakness etc, they’ll extend their turn or if you miss etc. you’ll lose turns. So you always need to be ready for each battle, as this can allow you to die to basic enemies if unprepared (though this also means you can wipe the floor with enemies when you know what you’re doing).

Dungeon crawling is also a huge part of the game, like really big. If you get bored in a dungeon, tough luck, you’ll be in there for a while in order to progress. All the dungeons are like labyrinths, so sometimes you may want to take notes so that you know exactly where to go/what your doing and don’t end up running around in circles (trust me, I was stupid in some of the dungeons because I didn’t take notes).

Lastly, there are the changes. Like before, there are battle partners, but the game improved them this time. See, your partners have their own levels, and they’ll gain their own experience and skills while journeying with you. This means each partner has their own way of fighting alongside you and their own priorities in battle, so you want to choose someone who will fit your play style. Emphasis on choose, because unlike IV, Apocalypse actually lets you choose your partner ahead of time (my hot tips: Isabeau is OP, Asahi is great for keeping you alive during bosses, and Toki is great for grinding XP).

Also, you can finally choose your difficulty level at the beginning of the game for all of you who had a hard time in SMT IV. There’s an easy, normal, and hard mode, but there’s also some free DLC (I advise you to download it if you play), that will (1) add a very easy and very hard difficulty and (2) remove the level cap for those of you who want to be OP (also, you get stat improving items pretty often in the game, so it’s pretty easy). Not to mention that there is no penalty for death. You can just immediately revive right where you left off, no cost (except in one dungeon, that removes this continue ability).

Design

Oh my god, the desgin. Can I just say I love it so much??? The whole cast of characters is amazing and colorful. It’s like a wonderful rainbow of colors assaulting my eyes (like, literally, they’re all so colorful together). Not to mention that all the character designs look wonderful in general. There’s beautiful toot toot boy with his trilby, my beautiful boy Ryuj-I mean Hallelujah, Toki (sometimes (that’s a whole can of worms for another time)), amazing friend Asahi!!!, Isabeau, and many, many more.

Okay, okay, character design aside, how about the music and dungeon design? Well, the dungeons are pretty great. They reused a few, but they added some twists. Not to mention the new dungeons look pretty drop-dead gorgeous. There are a lot of aesthetic updates the game has made since IV, and all of them are pretty nice. Some of them are actual puzzles, and boy howdy, those dungeons in particular were fun (and more of the dungeons were puzzles/mazes than in IV). Also, the protagonist gets to wear dumb and fun outfits.

As for the music? Oh lord, I love it. It doesn’t give me the nostalgic feel the IV does, but that’s mostly because the music no longer sounds like it belongs in a PS2 game. It’s well composed, and dammit, I have the Divine Powers fight theme stuck in my head. I can’t really say much else about the game design since I’m not much of a designer so much as a programmer, so if you’re picky on design, just listen to some of the music and look at some screenshots for your verdict. Design can be a pretty subjective thing with lots of aspects.

Final Thoughts?

Okay, okay, so I talked my ass off about this game, so is it worth playing? Well, I’ve said this before, but that’s totally up to you. If you’re interested in the characters, this is probably the one SMT game I’d actually recommend. And if you like the gameplay and dungeon crawling? Well, I’d recommend this game as a sort of way to ease into the SMT games if you want JRPGs all about dungeon crawling and gameplay (just at least play on normal if you wanna get a feel for the other SMT games).

In my opinion, this is a fun game. The story was just a fun time and little distraction between gameplay. Purely for the gameplay aspect, I enjoy this game, and the difficulty in it was like a breath of fresh air compared to the other SMT games. Also, as someone who got the peace/bonds ending, if you want an SMT game with a happy ending, this is the only one I know of with an actual, normal happy ending.

But, all in all, I’d recommend this game if you want something fun to play that kinda just exudes that fun air that fanfics do, while also being a somewhat serious JRPG with really nice battle mechanics.

#theo plays smt4a #final thoughts #<--- new tag for these things #i'll do these now for every nintendo console game i play for the first time

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steroidusr · 6 years

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golden sun (chaos mode hack) part 10: “an impossible challenge”

i'm actually having a lot of fun with this hack, it's hard enough that finally becoming strong enough to beat enemies you'd been having trouble with feels really rewarding

tbh it always weirds me out when "monsters" in games look this humanoid (also her color palette is awful)

anyway time to try to beat this thing again

still not strong enough! what the fuck!

you know what, fine, im gonna level grind RIGHT HERE

this move is cool because you get to stab the enemy with a giant magical sword that appears out of nowhere

BOOM

also it explodes

Nice

okay, awesome, everyone's at level 13! can we beat that djinni now

............apparently not

JUST KIDDING I DID IT through copious save state abuse

FINALLY!!!!

now that we have two mercury djinn, we can summon...

...another anime girl! she reminds me of the time i had to participate in my high school's fall festival's "dunk a senior" game, where i had to get a huge bucket of freezing water poured on me, outdoors, in the middle of autumn, for the entertainment of tiny children. i had no say in the matter.

high school was pretty bad.

anyway now this is happening

using ply on the statue lifts you up the waterfall (yes), and then...

...teleports you to the summit? not sure how that works

there's a psynergy stone here too, but i recharge by pacing back and forth instead.

is that what that giant floating jittery ball is

h-haha, yeaaahh, about that...

(if you say yes, absolutely nobody corrects you)

.......havent we already had this exact conversation? like, at the beginning of the lighthouse?

whooo's ready for another impossible boss fight

OKAY THANK YOU KRADEN

wait, what are we actually hoping to accomplish by fighting him? the mercury lighthouse's already lit, shouldn’t we be going to the next one?

how much do you wanna bet this wont really give us any advantage at all

[8:17 PM - 19 Feb 2017]

yyyyeah, that couldve gone better

Q: What is the RNG? A: Are you BLIND? Read what ive just typed above!

Q: Are you saying the RNG system doesn't do what its supposed to? A: Oh, GOD! YES that's what ive been trying to say! You are dumb.

Q: So technically its not an RNG, because it doesn't generate a RANDOM number! A: Well, if you want to put it that way... YES I suppose your right.

Q: Why are RNGs important? A: Because without the RNG many games wouldn't have any challenge to them eg. Gambling games and the such.

Q: Is the RNG really this important? Why make an FAQ about such a small aspect in a game? A: As mentioned in the above qustion, many games rely on the RNG to work. On the Golden Sun box, It states the game has "Gambling References" The RNG plays a big part in this. I guess what I am trying to say that the RNG is as important as any other aspect of Golden Sun.

Here are some of the questions regarding the Random Number Generator Flaw:

Q: So couldn't you cheat the RNG by using the same attacks to get the same rare item drops? A: hmmmmmmm......YES duh duh duh

Q: Wouldn't that be cheating? A: Yes, it would.

Q: How do you stumble upon these methods, are they easy to find? A: To find an RNG method, you either need a lot of luck or you need to hack the system. Don't ask me how to.

Q: These methods don't work!!! A: Trust me, they do. Remember you need to do hard, not soft resets, and you need to make sure you are doing everything EXACTLY the way it says on the method instructions.

this rng guide is sassy as fuck

quake... sphere? so like, a giant rock

one of the sirens just high jump kicked garet in the face. now i REALLY dont want to kill her

okay now that's just going too far

[9:45 PM - 19 Feb 2017]

and now everyone's at level 14! time to head back up and give that boss battle another shot

[we died again.]

[10:08 AM - 22 Feb 2017]

oh hey, you can keep track of your stat boosts here, that's pretty helpful

(it's totally standard yet I'm surprised GS has it)

okay, im up ridiculously early but I just finished getting everyone to lv15, let's try this again

..."this" = "this long, unskippable cutscene"

[10:32 AM - 22 Feb 2017]

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BEAT THIS

[3:18 PM - 22 Feb 2017]

we're close, but we still cant beat saturos. back to level grinding!

.....(sob)

[4:51 PM - 22 Feb 2017]

(wake me up) wake me up inside

[5:27 PM - 22 Feb 2017]

ONE DOWN, FINALLY

TWO DOWN ok healing 200hp is nice but when do we get a party-wide healing spell

[7:50 PM - 22 Feb 2017]

SOON

i swear to god if this STILL isnt enough im going to............... play something else

ok let's try this AGAIN

[9:03 PM - 22 Feb 2017]

what the FUCK

also i found this and managed to win 15 battles in a row before dying horribly. yay?

anyway, i found out while fucking around with djinn setups that if you give mia a mars djinni she can learn douse early

which you can then use to put out the fire here, letting the water freeze...

...into a pillar...? (how does that work)

........i thought this'd allow you to access a new area but i cant find anything. fuck.

[9:54 PM - 22 Feb 2017]

Fight later enemies earlier

Southwest of Vault, there is a broken bridge leading to Kalay. If you stand on the southernmost point on the tip of land a bit east of the bridge, you will fight monsters you would normally fight later. Once Ivan gets 85 HP, it becomes much easier. (Most monsters you find in this spot like 4 or 5 types, will have Normal attacks that hit on average between 45-55 damage with mostly all heavy attacks between 70-89 damage). It is highly recommended to save after each successful battle. This earns a great amount of EXP and coins this early in the game.

saturos is an asshole so I'm looking for this now

hey, it works!

death head looks very #aesthetic

[11:05 PM - 22 Feb 2017]

(cant wake up) wake me up inside

Nice

[1:55 AM - 23 Feb 2017]

it's almost two in the fucking morning but i got everyone to level 17

NEXT TIME: this shit again

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nuzblog · 7 years

Text

November 29th, 2017

MORN

At 4:30 in the morning, I healed my team using the fight against Bugsy and headed West to Ilex Forest, to be confronted by my rival, Luster, with IndieCindy switched for Rainwater.

Rainwater's Mud Slap took out Gastly with no issue. Rock Star's Rock Throw does similar for Zubat.

And then... well, I already knew thanks to the fishermen on route 32 that I've been having issues with water types, and unfortunately, the answer to that problem is on the other side of this battle.

Luster's Croconaw one-shots Rainwater. As they say in the business... "oh fuck." I switch to DrinkyBird, trying to get SOMETHING going, but she gets critically low on health, and Rock Star is 4x weak. I get stuck just using potions over and over, but I'm either gonna run out or he's gonna crit and I'll be done for, so I make a snap judgement and switch to Rock Star. As expected, he does down, but it gives me that extra turn of healing, and it lets me reset his Leers.

At this point I notice that he's using Leer and Scratch instead of the STAB Water Gun he's got, because he knows that my Special Defense is my highest stat. I Growl him down and try to survive as best as I can until he changes gears and starts using Water Gun instead, healing when I can. I use a found X Attack, and keep attacking and healing, trying desperately to hold on, at one point being dropped all the way down to 1 hp but managing to survive... and after an awful slog of a battle, losing two dear friends, I beat him. This was very nearly a run-ender.

Ilex Forest is my next stop, for a Pokemon capture and Farfetch'd herding. Now, my initial plan here was to enter at night, where I would essentially either capture an Oddish or a Paras, both of which would cure my Water problem, and then also get Headbutt and be able to potentially catch an Exeggcute, which would do similar but would also be a Pokemon I haven't used before.

Of course, I entered in the morning, so I got a Weedle. Which, is fine, it just means I can DEFINITELY get an Exeggcute from Azalea Town. I name it "KnifeFight" and, with a lack of anything else I particularly want to teach Cut in the party, I start backtracking to collect berries and grinding it to level 10.

Speaking of grinding, the level curve in this game is already bothering me. Why is the highest level Pokemon encountered in Ilex Forest at Level 6? We are two gyms into the game, have fought Level 16 Pokemon with trainers behind them, and yet, the wild Pokemon aren't even level 10. They're 2-3 levels higher than the ones found on the first route of the game. This is dumb! Why is it this way???

Anyway grinding takes six eternities but whatever, eventually I have a Beedrill and I can teach it cut and actually progress through the game. I also get to knock out some of those cut trees from earlier in the game, which mostly just makes the walk easier.

Back in the forest, but not for long, I grab Headbutt and re-exit to Azalea Town, find a nice tree and start butting it.

After 6 Weedles, followed by a Beedrill, followed by 11 more Weedles and a Kakuna, FINALLY, some eggs fall out of the tree. I mean, an Exeggcute. NOW I can progress through the game! Its name is "Deliver", and...

Hm. I hadn't actually checked its movepool until now. It might not be as useful as anticipated. The TMs for Psychic and Giga Drain are both in Kanto, and while it'll get Confusion in just 9 levels, the first and only STAB Grass move it gets by level up will be... SolarBeam at Level 43.

My only other option is Mega Drain... which is an egg move. Well, fortunately, I am about to be at the Pokemon Daycare... so, I guess that's what I'm doing - catching a Sunkern at the National Park during the day, hoping that's my first encounter, and hoping it's male so I can breed it with my thankfully female Exeggcute. That's a lot of hopes. And, to muddy the issue, I then stopped playing for the day, and the next day was Thursday, which means the Bug Catching Contest is on, which if my understanding is correct, would have prevented me from catching a Sunkern.

November 30th, 2017

MORN

I drop Deliver off at the daycare, and head for Goldenrod, where the Name Rater lives, allowing me to change the name of my Hoothoot from DrinkyBird to T.I.M.E.

Speaking of time, just do be extra safe, I decide to play around with it a bit. I set it exactly 36 hours forwards, putting me in the daytime of Friday, and safely outside of the reach of the Bug Catching Contest. I do this by holding Down, B and Select at the title screen and inputting a password that is generated from my character's name, ID Number and current money total. Thanks, PsyPokes.com!

I head to the National Park ASAP, and... yes!! The Sunkern I need is exactly what I get! I name it Sundial, shove it right into the daycare, and go attend to some business in Goldenrod. I grab the Bicycle, I fight some guys without meaning to... actually, can I say some stuff about the dialogue in this game? One guy said he gave his Pokemon a haircut, which would make sense cause the haircut place is right there by him... but then he sent out a LICKITUNG. Which, if it has hair... I super duper don't want to know where. Also, one trainer said "Behold my graceful BALL dexterity." Like, capitalized like that, because of this game's weird thing with capitalization. (Seriously, how did it take until Gen 5 for them to fix the antiquated adventure game CAPITALIZATION of KEYWORDS?) Which is just hilarous.

Anyway, while waiting for my eggs and seeds to breed, I run to some freshly available routes and catch some new boys for my team.

On Route 34, I find a Drowzee, who I name Nightmare. Again, this is a Pokemon I used recently, so... boxed.

On Route 35, I found a Male Nidoran! I name it Showdown, and since it has Double Kick, I'm definitely at least gonna use it for Whitney! Speaking of, that's a whole dangerous thing. She's well known as being a difficult fight. As I collect andrun around to grind and hatch the egg, I think about my strategy. I also backtrack for berries while trying to hatch it, and rematch Hiker Anthrony while I'm at it.

Eventually, the egg hatches into more eggs, which I name Fine, and I'm grinding it from Level 5 to something usable! And yes, it has Mega Drain! I use both my heals in the process of grinding, the one in Goldenrod and the one from the Luster fight at the beginning of this post. Also, wow, they are REALLY pushing the Game Boy Printer in this game, huh? Like, wow.

NITE

I slept, and kept playing when I woke up! I fought the gym trainers, and backtracked ALL THE WAY to New Bark to heal, and then went back to Goldenrod, and... sigh, bluh, FINE. I go ahead and fight Whitney.

The really dangerous thing here is that since she only has two Pokemon, well... so do I. Showdown and IndieCindy accompany me, while the full-health T.I.M.E. and Fine (and the essentially obsolete KnifeFight for that matter) are boxed, and I head for the leader herself.

As with most gym leaders, their non-ace Pokemon are basically meaningless. Clefairy goes down quick and easy. Miltank, though... hff. I lead against it with IndieCindy and get off two Smokescreens before his health got too low to keep going. I switched, healed, used Double Kick, and was disappointed by how much damage it did. Showdown (who had evolved in the process of grinding) was infatuated, so I switched back to the restored Cindy and got off some more smokescreens, and so it goes. Friggin' Milk Drink... such garbage.

Showdown got killed by a critical Stomp, which leaves me one Pokemon away from the end of the run, yet again. Ember burned Miltank, but I was infatuated back. It could be a simple war of attrition thanks to the burn, if not for Milk Drink making it last way longer.... but I did, EVENTUALLY, manage to do it!!

I lay Showdown to rest. He wasn't with me for long, but he served his purpose very well. I pull TIME and Fine from the PC, and head off towards Route 36, to fight that Sudowoodo!!!

Rock Throw takes down a solid half of Fine's health. That's less than ideal. I manage to put it to sleep and heal, and drain its health, catching it handily! I name it Wiggles. Since I'm close enough, I run back to Cherrygrove, and heal there, finally.

On Route 37, after 3 Hoothoots, I run into a Stantler! But... I ran out of balls trying to catch it.

While exploring Ecruteak, Luster appears, catching me off guard. Fortunately I match his team size (4 to 4) but I'm unprepared for the battle.

I mostly get through it alright. T.I.M.E. evolved into Noctowl. And Fine... well. Fine died. Which sucks, and means I wasted a lot of time, but also... I have an infinite supply of fresh Mega Drain Exeggcutes. I run back to the daycare after talking to Bill in the Center, retrieving another egg egg, and in Goldenrod I visited Bill's house, and he gave me an Eevee, which I named Furries! Which also means I can't get a Pokemon from the Goldenrod Game Corner. :P

You may notice that “Furries” doesn’t lead to a link to the song in question there. That’s because the official video from Neil’s own Youtube channel featuring that song has been wrongfully taken down based on a false copyright claim, despite it being Neil’s original mashup work. If you want to listen to it, it’s track 3 on the freely available album Mouth Silence.

I catch Pokemon in the Burned Tower (a Koffing, named Fuzzy) and on Route 38 (Meowth, named Cat Hacks) and box them both before going to work... and then I put off writing this for nearly a week! But I did that, so I'll be playing again soon.

#pokemon #pokemon silver #entries #nuzlocke #neil cicierega #lemon demon

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cactus-cutey-blog · 7 years

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Hack Summoners War

Basically, i have become of come across a undoubtedly ensuring title, Summoners War Hack Torrent: heavens field, as well as surfing around the application form business 1 week ago. to breakout into combat and also the only resolution have been indeed being to create an field to remain alternatives. You will discover many others that stack health care insurance and reap the benefits of shields or chain recuperation. |an exciting monster isle, but what’s the situation? Basically, like a great many the same shield premiums, that you offers wide-ranging “pay-to-win” attributes involved with it. superstar rarity online form. Summoners combat inugami could very well look and feel alarming primarily, but he’s a proper huge doggy. I give Summoners War Hack Torrent: heavens field an over-all 4/5. Actually the only big difference is when the offer appearances. Summoners combat not summoner conflicts to never be wrong because of the paypal or credit card generator summoner conflicts, heavens field qualities noticeably magnificent images and manufacturing importance, and stretched root mechanics to be together with the standard unit assortment mechanics an internet-focused field warfare - all as well as staying open-to-have fun with playing, inside of-generator expenditures. Eliminate scheme stop is similar to basic gaming console rpg kinds by which any unit, your workforce and also the enemy’s, adhere to a flip-focused scheme ruled by their individual full speed stats. Particular strikes may cause situation influences - a lot of which have been unusual, or at most suitable, extraordinary during the rpg style, like developing units unable to change into cured, or doing business cause damage to proportionate to one’s healthiness (think gravitational pressure miraculous on the ff collection). |Skillzoom a fireplace-form fairy, in particular, doesn't simply just have a further elemental positioning when compared to customary waters-form fairy, even while they are working at contribute the same base stats. Choosing and amassing new bases soon after which you'll grow new, more efficient brawlers is obviously one of many game’s largest charms. Runes are embeddable assets that increase your monsters’ stats. Summoners combat details any kind of monster has their particular gang of unusual animations in stop, in triumph along with idle states. Summoners combat guide the machine offers a bunch of freebies just about every oftentimes. 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Should you be interested in But unfortunately, its flaws and also the set you back time for completely full pay money for-in mean that it isn't for everybody, if you are free to becoming an adaptable iap scheme indicates that it's seriously worth focusing on in either case. If golfers sign up for the developer's hive community base, com2us corp. Towards the way, customers can acquire items and improvements with genuine cash with your in-generator business. While officially it is focused on overcome, the around-nonstop dealing with is simply path to an end. But unfortunately, we will also visit a constant amount of mid-to-awful comparisons showing up on a regular basis. Let us take advantage of the very important matters to find out what some golfers experience. Environment is mostly a gigantic straight for |Find out how to make golfers would like to invest, not should have to. Pokemon with fusion mechanics together with a significant overcome scheme, beautifully cartoon. Beware the ai is kind of dumb when utilizing aoe spells or ressurections some battles with quite different tactical innovations have to be dealt with yourself. Phase monsters, rate groceries to fuse your monsters completely to another superstar rate (6 in most, and also the 6th is considered to be tiresome when you are weaker), grind essences to awaken your keepers, grind runes (that make a major difference) to prepare and supercharge your monsters, grind scrolls of diverse high quality to obtain prospects for more effective monsters, grind guild and field battles to apply their significantly better businesses. The positives is the addicting scheme, feeling if you are acquiring a handy monster, and planning to attain a level while using monsters you possess. It's considerably more than merely a progressing-up generator, there's edge in becoming "good" through measures. 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The included factions attracts quite a few alternative have fun with playing kinds, and are generally often sensible (even if most people are genuinely much harder gain knowledge of as opposed to others). |It-not just gives you your own personal stats (is the winner/burning/forfeits), although your profit/burning stats for every faction. Orcs and dwarves v. Or what ever mode of festivity he deems designed for profitable a card generator. I understand that it will require additional attempt to account balance a game title title from where The game seems to consider somewhere between 20-40 a few minutes, but there's not necessarily slowly activities holding all across. Whether base set in place components a participant with all of that they have to participate in the generator. 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Basically it is not necessarily the scenario that you could only guarantee some other amounts as compared to the orcs free of cost. And chances are good you did not undoubtedly learn about farmville until such time as 2010… or undoubtedly consider it result in a splash until such time as 2011 - which does not alter the basic fact that it is a superb shield premiums scheme that you ought to try… even though you may aren't ordinarily an illusion stop kind of game addict. |And my admiration from compartment attains this region put - there's space not just to the six faction decks included during the compartment but on top of that slot machines for five considerably more decks.

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