Completed: Suikoden IV

System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Completed
Currently: Got all 108 stars, beat both optional bosses, finally beat final boss...game locks up.

As the currently states, the game decided to add insult to injury, and froze up right as the final boss died. The sad thing is, I care so little about the finale of the story, that I'm not even going to try again. I got all 108 stars, I beat both optional bosses, I can call the game completed with no remorse.

The sad thing is, my last post was pretty bashing towards this game, yet I was all up for it redeeming itself. Random encounters are annoying, but it could be overcome. The game didn't even try. I truly now believe the horrendous amount of random encounters and the tons of bland characters that serve only for you to spend more money on leveling up weapons and getting gear serve purely to pad out the game. I believe my final time clocked out to be around 25 hours...at full completion. Yes, I followed a brief guide on collecting all the characters, and used Viki to teleport everywhere (you try spending hours just traveling between islands), but the game literally has nothing there. The stars serve no purpose whatsoever. They don't have any plot significance, even the ones you have to get beyond a few lines, and really don't contribute anything overall. The entire story is basically 'go here, do a naval battle, free the island, recruit more characters' rinse repeat for every single island. You will literally go to an island, blow up two ships, and step on the island with hardly any scenes to commemorate them being rescued or anything further.

The game is just offensive, all around. Too many random encounters, too many entirely useless characters, too many bland point A to point B events, a complete lack of any true story to the game whatsoever. This game is utterly terrible, and I now regret playing it even for completions sake...it just felt like a waste of time.

Oh, and the final dungeon, the pinnacle of the entire story? A spiral staircase. 4 screens of the same spiral staircase with random encounters. In addition to half communicated story that we long stopped caring about five hours ago.

I am so glad Suikoden V turned this shit on its head, or I probably wouldn't have many fond memories of this series. I need to play something to wash the taste out of my mouth...

Daily Review: Suikoden IV

System: PS2 (Played on PS3)
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Just allied with Middleport.

I was still in the mood to play more Suikoden after I finished III, and since this was the only standard Suikoden game I haven't finished yet (and I couldn't find I to do a full completion at the moment), this one went in. I had tried playing it before...twice in fact, and both times I had been driven away by the noticeable and obvious flaws with the game. I actually have a bit more will to finish it now, since Suikosource has great star lists that make it nigh impossible to miss stars, and make completion (and only having to play the game once), so much easier.

This is easily the weakest game in the entire series, which is sad because they had some good ideas. The naval theme to the game is unique and was what got me really excited about it at first, sailing around and fighting naval battles is a nice change of pace. The game returns to the more 'standard' combat and storytelling from the first two in the series, in that its turn based, and your main character is more of a blank slate, and doesn't speak except in choices you make. The runes have been changed back, so you no longer nuke your party with fire runes and the like, and everything is more reliable and standardized.

The problem is, in changing it back...well, the three heroes of Suikoden III were interesting and unique, and you could reliably relate to at least one of them. The rest of the cast was pretty interesting, though the optional stars were limited and optional for a reason. This game has far more pure optional stars to pick from, but most end up being standard 'after this point in the story, go back to this place, talk to this guy', and the characterization beyond that is nonexistent. Without the skill system from III, which was one of the best features, there is nothing to differentiate the characters beyond their stats, unique runes, and sometimes combos. Most of the characters I do quick upgrades to their weapons, take them to a few random encounters to get them to a decent level, then let them sit while I use a more standard team of reliably strong characters.

The main character is the worst offender in the entire lineup....he's dull, he's boring, there's no reason for him to be in the story beyond the rune he gets, which other than being the Macguffin the bad dudes are looking for, really has nothing to do with the story. Being a blank slate doesn't help, in a voiced game, it just makes him seem utterly dull and a passive person in all thats going on. Far more interesting and sensible characters, like the king of Obel, will step aside and state you should be leading...but why? The character was a knight trainee who got framed for murder...that's it. That's a similar plot-line to the first two games, but it doesn't work here. In I, you were the son of a famous general, inherit a rune that gets you hunted by your own country. Your character was defined by the people who worked for your father and stuck by you, and that drive to save yourself and fight back. In II, you were betrayed by your own country in a false flag operation, nearly killed with your best friend, and end up joining and leading the resistance against them. There, you were defined by your sister, best friend, and other major characters you picked up. In this game, the blank slate really has no characters that help to define him. You can choose two other recruits who accompany you through the first part of the game, but they give no reason for being so attached to you, and after the opening part is over, they really have nothing to do with the story. This lack of grounding makes the main character feel entirely out of place, as others come up with weak excuses as to why you matter.

The worst offense in the entire game though, is the random battles. To be fair, I've played games with horrendously difficult and common random battles. This game however, makes the triple offense of random encounters so common you could get in two or three just turning your ship around, the random encounters themselves rarely being of note beyond hitting the auto command or a set few commands to kill them quickly, and lastly...the world map being bare of any detail. Yes, the ocean is vast and mostly empty, but this is supposed to be an archipelago. In the entire game, there are 13 places to go. Only thirteen islands to visit, and several of them have nothing beyond a treasure hunting minigame or a few characters to recruit. Sailing to a new location means about a solid hour of sailing over featureless blue water, holding down R1 to go a little bit faster, and reading a book. Occasionally, you have to put down anchor and rest, but the encounters really provide no challenge, or add anything to the game. They just take up lots, and lots of time.

Gah.

Completed: Suikoden III

System: PS2 (Played on PS3)
Status: Completed
Currently: All 108 stars, extra chapter finished, so completed!

I love the Suikoden series, though I never really owned one until way later on, mostly due to getting the playstation very late in its cycle. I actually played it first by borrowing number 1 from a friend a few times, and beat that without owning it. 3 was actually the first one that I purchased, and since then I've gone on to get all 5 of the main series, plus tactics. I love collecting the characters, the well designed stories, and the very tactical combat the whole series has.

Three is no exception, and the series made a good jump to the ps2 and 3d at the same time. The 3d models are very clean and the art style ages very well, so much so I doubt this game will ever look truly bad compared to modern games. The story was well written and kept me going the entire way, even though technically this was my second time playing through (on my first I realized I had gone past the point of no return for getting all 108 stars, and kinda put it down, this was several years ago). The added fact that the second half can change in story based on which main character you pick, adds a bit of re-playability (though I doubt I will unless I try to do a challenge run). Overall it is one of the most solid JRPGs you can play, and I heartily recommend it to anyone.

My main complaints about the game are more comparisons to others in the same series, and noticeable parts where they changed things, and made them worse. The most noticeable part is the army battles. Where the previous two games took two completely different tacts (the first is more rock paper scissors with special cards, the second is more fire emblem), each time you felt as you gathered up your army and collected all the stars, that your options in combat were growing, and you were becoming noticeably more powerful as an army. Since you really don't get your castle till halfway through the game (where its clear you actually control an army), and since the story is split half the time, most of the army battles have predetermined rosters. In addition, practically every fight is purely scripted, you last a certain number of turns, something happens, its over. You can't really win, just not lose. Even later in the game, the second to last battle is specifically scripted to prevent you from winning too soon, which ended with me decimating the entire enemy army, then the last commander becoming invincible at half health and killing my units until the game finally ran its scripts, and let me kill him. The only battle you truly feel you lead your own combined army is the last one, and its a brief flirtation. The other major complaint is the stars of destiny seem...sidelined for this game. A full half are ones you get automatically through gameplay, and the rest are minor additions. I fully expect if I tried to beat this game with only the stars you get automatically, abusing the ones that are -very- powerful, the only major problem I would have would be the lack of blacksmithing over a certain point.

Still, as all my blogs tend to be, I write more about the little nitpicks than the overall good. I gave this a 4 star rating on my Backloggery, and would easily recommend it to anyone. Its a good game, whether you enjoy the series or not.

Beaten: Wolfenstein 3D

Beaten: Wolfenstein 3D

System: PS3 (PSN Download)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just finished on the 'normal' difficulty, which leaves hardest for completion.

This game definitely does not hold up to the test of time. I really hate to say that, because this was always a game I wanted to play since I could only rent it on the SNES (which was buggy and censored). The PSN collection came with all 6 episodes, but its rather clear that the first 3 have the best design out of all of them, and the other three, which seem to have been sold together, were of far lower quality. Its not like the graphics or anything were of lesser quality, but the first three episodes kind of had a nice flow to them, a new enemy in each one that you had to get used to (albeit any differences are minor other than how fast they kill you), and a steady progression in difficulty. Once you hit episode 4 though, the little things you hadn't really noticed before start to kick in.

The damage as I noted in a previous post, is all kinds of out of proportion, especially when you're right next to an enemy, and they can nearly take your head off with two shots (even the grunts). The enemies probably just deal more damage the closer they get to you, which means being able to see them first and not let them get close is very important. Once you get to the additional three missions, the designers seemed to realize the only way to up the difficulty was to make it much harder to see the enemies first...and thus follows about 27 solid stages of tight corridors with alcoves that you have to check every step, and even when you do, sometimes they'll pop out and blast you before you can reasonably react. This isn't challenge, its fake difficulty, and often I was blasted down to near dead and had to backtrack because of an enemy you couldn't possibly see unless you knew he was there beforehand. This is made even worse by the fact that one bad turn of luck kicks you back to the start of the stage with a pistol and hardly any ammo, which means you might have to reload or get really lucky depending on the stage. This design also means a lot of the stages are a lot of walking down very tiny corridors, looking for a key, and getting lost, hoping to not run into an enemy at the wrong time and get blasted. The rewards for finding secrets and exploring are not worth the hassle, since you can only find more health, ammo (with a max of 99), or points which give you extra lives. At no point did I ever feel necessary to go exploring for secrets.

Overall, it is a classic and its worth a play, but I would almost just recommend playing the first three episodes, they're a more solid game.

11/17: Quickfixes

Unfortunately, I've been stuck in one of those moods where I really can't get anything in particular done, so been pecking at a few games idly.

Name: Beyond Good & Evil
System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Just finished the second story dungeon.

I feel really bad that I've never gotten to this game before, especially since I know it to be a solid game the few times I've booted it up and played it for a while. It also wasn't a big investment, and a great deal since I snagged it for 6$ from a Gamestop, like most of the later additions to my PS2 collection. I really have no complaints other than the strange graphical glitches that happen occasionally, which I have gathered come with the PS2 port of the game (and the PS3 may be making worse, I don't remember my PS2 doing the weird thing with the water). Overall the gameplay is solid, the partner system is fairly well implemented, there's nothing overtly annoying about any aspect of the game. The Pokemon Snap-like camera subquest is actually really fun, though once you get the radars that tell you where the animals you don't have are, it becomes rather trivial. Still, it seems a game that is full of collection sidequests, where the designers did their best to make sure they were not frustrating, which is always a good idea. Just need to put a few more hours into this and I can probably tick it off my completed list rather quickly.

Name: Wolfenstein 3-D
System: PS3
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Finished Episodes 1-3 on 'normalish' difficulty.

An oldie that I never got around to truly playing other than the horrendous SNES port I rented a few times back in the day. The PSN port does a pretty good job of capturing the game without mucking with it really at all. They even left in the old text screens after each episode advertising the next...along with all the cheesy text detailing you 'kicking Hitler's skull off'. Fun. My wife has all sorts of trouble watching me play this, and I have some issues as well, the game is smooth except when you start to turn (strafing and the like), where it gets a bit herky-jerky, and tends to give me motion sickness a bit. The damage also seems way out of line for the enemies even on the lower difficulty I'm on. One shot from pretty much any enemy can nearly kill you...or just nick you, and there doesn't seem to be much reason for the differences, not range or if you were moving or not. Still, the game is loaded with ammo (and all guns use the same type), along with plenty of health, so its really not that difficult. Taking it easy though so I don't make myself sick with the herky-motion. Twin-stick controls I think are the best way to play these old games though, its even how I prefer to play the original Doom 1/2 games now.

Name: RetroMUD
System: PC (Portal GT client)
Status: Null
Currently: Levelling up my Fallen alt, trying to get my Psi main money to train.

A real oldie for me, and a classic MUD, though the player base has shrunk in recent years due to a good solid year or so of crashes and unstableness. The core of the game is still great, with numerous classes, lots of options as to how to build characters, and all around freedom to do what you want. The community is always great for the game, and half the fun is chatting with the good people there. I really can't review the game much more than that, especially since a lot of it is personal experience, and not many people play MUDs anymore. Still, if I'm not playing something else, I'm playing this, much easier to cram in an hour or so of farming now that you don't have to worry about putting your gear in boxes if you carry it around.

Beaten: Parasite Eve

Beaten: Parasite Eve

System: PSX (Ps1 Classics)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat the game, leaves Chrysler Building on Ex Game.

There are games that stand the test of time and are pretty much always great, no matter how far in the future you play them. The old turn based Final Fantasies still hold up, the original Super Mario Bros. still holds up. Parasite Eve...does not. To be honest, I've only played this on emulator, then finally purchased it from the Playstation Network PSOne classics category, and started to play it. I finally settled down this week and pounded out the rest of it in two game sessions.

The first big warning sign is the game is only 9 hours long, if you don't include the optional dungeon. For an RPG, that is insanely short, and you can tell this was an early playstation title. Clearly they were pushing disc space, but a two disc game is only 9 hours long? Too many FMVs, not enough game. I will pretty much wave off the ugly polygons, the odd looking FMVs (though still better than some of Final Fantasy VII popeye-armed FMVs), and the prerendered backgrounds that make finding boxes a pixel hunt. All of that pretty much came with the generation, and I enjoyed the old Resident Evils.

The second big warning sign is how clunky the combat is. It does 'cut' away to random battles, but they still show up on the prerendered backgrounds. Since the detection of where you can walk is so wonky, often times you are never quite sure where you can and can't go, especially in spots with odd angles. Since the game is an action RPG, and you have to actively dodge attacks, this can lead to you getting nailed by attacks where you had plenty of warning, but just couldn't move with the arena. Other times, you'll get nailed because Aya moves at a speed that suggests a leg injury (despite her animation insisting she is running full out), and the only time she can be called agile is when she casts Haste...which lasts maybe three attacks before wearing off, and uses up valuable healing magic points. Other times, you'll get nailed because...well, the monster just doesn't like you, and despite early monsters giving you nice warnings, sometimes the designers just coded a monster that'll nail you, nothing you can do about it. Bosses are really bad about this, they move much faster than your character, and will use attacks that hit nearly the entire screen...or just rush up and knock you down to one HP.

The game did something right in that you can customize guns by adding and removing attributes from them, and unless you're so stupid as to remove an ability from an armor you've bumped the attributes up insanely high on, thus losing those, you're never directly 'screwed' out of the defense/attack bonuses you add to your armor and weapons. There is an oddity that you get numerous weapons with multi-shot capabilities....when all that does is make Aya sit still for each shot, and get nailed by even more attacks (See above). Most of the game I went with a weapon with 1 or 2 shots, and that was it, sitting still any longer was an invite to use up even more heals. Still, if you find a great weapon but don't like the fact that it has 5 shots, you can always change it.

The final gripe has to do with the final boss fight, which surprise (Hi Squaresoft!) is a multi-parter. First part is fine, you can read his attacks, dodge out of the way, slide in to blast him, barring the cheap 'I'll knock you to 1 HP so fast you can't dodge' move. The second part splits, so you have one bird moving around like its on meth, and a beast shooting lasers across the whole map...difficult, but doable. Then the third, again, gains a 1 HP no warning attack, an attack that knocks you to half instantly, a melee attack that is near impossible to dodge, and a ranged attack which is your only chance to deal damage to him without getting hit...assuming you can move Aya under him fast enough so you don't get nailed several times. It's basically a roulette, if he spams the ranged attack, you can get numerous attacks off for free. After that? A chase scene, where one wrong turn is instant death...and repeating the whole boss fight over again. Whoever thought you could describe this as fun instead of 'controller breaking frustrating' was an idiot.

The games main sin though? It's dull, and it's boring. The story is gibberish (not literally), and they toss so much philosophy and pseudo-science babble that at some point you can just insert 'Mitochondria did it' into everything and be done with it. The random encounters are mostly waiting to shoot them, and running in circles till your gauge charges up so you don't get hit. Unless its one of the few random encounters in the game that does a decent amount of damage, you are at more risk of getting distracted and getting nailed a few times than actually dying. I had on a Youtube video of some other games music (By the way, music, not that great either, spent the game with it muted), and I got distracted by the videos, numerous times. Doesn't  help when you walk around a museum ten times looking for that one door you missed.

....Damnit, still have the Chrysler building to call this completed.

Daily Review: Diablo, Skyrim, and Monster Hunter

Daily Review: Diablo, Skyrim, and Monster Hunter

Going to be a bit of an odd daily review, since I've been playing three games...and its been a few weeks since my last posting. Mostly due to work and weird schedules, but also due to the fact that I've basically been playing the same three games, and really have nothing new to say about them each day.

Most of the time, I'm playing:

System: PSP
Currently: Up to 6 star village, still need to clear some 5 star.

The game is still great, I marvel at how different having a different full set of armor makes combat feel, and how easy it is to swap between various sets and weapons without ever getting locked in. You have so much storage space you never feel you -have- to get rid of armor to make room. Every hunt still feels like a new challenge, so much so that I do research on the wiki's before trying it, mostly to preserve my sanity of a half hour quest that ends in me croaking and gaining nothing. It is a very stressful game still, the quests never become easy even if you go down ranks to farm so old materials. I can not imagine playing this on the bus, though I may try on occasion when I come back from my morning classes. (Either that or a long walk to muse about my tabletop game). The only oddity I noticed is that often you will meet for the first time a new monster....yay, new armor set! And then immediately you'll get a quest to kill the offshoot version, which gives the same kind of armor from its pieces, just slightly better. Weird design choice, but doesn't really hurt the game itself. Some of them are true variations, so its not always bad (Garuga, while being basically a palette swap of a Yuan-Kut-Ku, has wildly different weapons and armor from its body parts). Still, its stressful enough that sometimes I need to play something more relaxing and easy:

System: PC
Currently: Actually finished Inferno, so Completed! Still playing of course.

Which I can't say is necessarily easy, I kinda died my way through the last bits of inferno then did a group for Diablo himself. I've gone back to Act 1 with the new Monster Power feature they added to farm gear. Always nice to have the 'shiny thing drops and fun times' mechanic to relax too, but it is a bit of a guilty pleasure now. Really not a game you'll ever finish, just get slightly better gear, and I know I should be playing other things in my spare time. Still, its easy to load up, do a quick run for the new keys for the uberbosses, and hop off and head to work. Much less of a large block of my time.

And when my wife is not on the PS3 and I get the urge to:

System: PS3
Currently: Completed a long time ago, trying a hardcore character for a 'Master' run.

I love this game, unabashedly. It has its flaws in some rather buggy parts, but I just can't get enough of playing it or watching my wife play it (and squeal and hand me the controller when she sees spiders). Still, I completed it a while back, and I don't consider the harder difficulties true difficulties, they just add more hp and damage to the monsters. That's it. So instead to have another reason to play, I decided to try playing a hardcore character. No reloads, if you die you stop playing the character. Otherwise playing the game normally and avoiding abusing bugs. Makes it actually rather stressful, because when that dragon drops down and snaps at you, that might be the end of things right there. Playing a Khajiit thief/archer, with a sword/shield for backup when bandits come swinging. My first hardcore died around level 11 to 'not noticing the second giant'.

Daily Review: Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

Daily Review

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

System: PSP
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Finished 1 Star Gathering Hall, and 1/2 Star Village quests, working through 3 star.

I suppose it is a good thing when I've been playing a game so much and so often over the past week or so, that I've been too busy to do daily reviews of it. That, or I can't resist the call to pick it back up every time I put it down and try to do something else.

The game is for me, unequivocally good. It is at that perfect level of challenging without being cheap or drawing things out too much. It also gives you a very clear work to reward ratio, and you can constantly see your rewards on your character. Even though it is an RPG, the only benefits and gains you get through the game come from killing big nasty beasts, and hacking them up to make new gear for yourself. So when you get that new bow, you know you slaughtered eight wyverns or so to make that damn thing, and you're proud of it. It does induce a bit of grinding, especially if you want to be ahead of the curve on gear somewhat. Right now I'm repeating a quest to kill an Iodrome because its the closest clear upgrade for my armor, though the helm will be a rare drop of the things skull. Next up is slaughtering a Kut-ku to make myself a new crossbow.

The only problem so far with the game is the PSP itself, and the fact that I've gotten it so late I am sure I will never see any of the online only quests, just because no one else is playing it, and none of my friends will get it or a PSP. The latter is rather simple, you can always group up through the game to take down monsters, but some Gathering Hall (aka online group area) quests are more than just higher HP, they're a whole new level I doubt I'll ever be able to solo. Just doing the 1 star quests was a pain, because they require you to kill so many more enemies, and the bosses have so much more HP...for obvious reasons, its designed for up to 4 people. The PSP is the other issue, and that is the noticeable lack of two joysticks...and the tiny little bugger that serves as one. I've mostly overcome the wonky camera controls, I've gotten used to doing little shifts to realign the camera with the 'face forward' button, but if you do want to move and look around at the same time you have to do this awkward claw motion with your hand. I'm already getting a cramp holding the joystick steady in one direction for long, like I did on Peace Walker.

I always manage to gripe more about the little things than rant about the larger things...but sincerely, those two little whimpers are all I have, and all I foresee having. The game is a great challenge, every time I die I know its my fault for getting too greedy, not dodging in time, dodging the wrong way, and the like. Every boss takes skill and timing, and decent gear to back you up though I am sure you could do some of these (and some crazy people have) without any armor. It's like an MMO...except requiring actual skill in combat, instead of clicking the same four buttons.

Beaten: The Witcher Enhanced Edition

Beaten

The Witcher Enhanced Edition

System: Steam
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat normal difficulty.

This may be an oddity considering my previous posts where I mostly nitpick games, but I truly have nothing negative to say about this game. It is a well balanced game, the story itself is well done gothic horror, and the only issues I had were more with my poor PC than the game itself (crashes, herky graphics, etc).

I can unabashedly recommend this game, mostly due to the fact that it feels like an old school PC RPG, difficult but not overtly so, with a well crafted story and a well balanced combat system. I was playing on normal mode, so the enhancements that make up most of the back end of your character creation were helpful depending on what you focused on, but not entirely necessary. I drank a few boosting potions and used weapon boosts before the last fight, and having done nearly all the quests, I curb-stomped the final boss(es). Through most of the game though, one boost or so is enough to get you through difficult fights, with none really required for standard groups of enemies. The chapters do have a sort of progression, though its hard to tell until you walk to do a quest and get slaughtered, but essentially there are a set of easier quests, and harder ones, and you should do them in a big chunk of each to get through. The game is set up so that if you skipped some stuff in an earlier chapter, you aren't screwed, you just have to focus more on the easy quests for the next chapter first. There never felt like there was any object that if I missed it I was screwed later on, it just made it easier...which is perfect, though I still felt I had to do -everything-.

The only downside of the action combat system is there really isn't much variety or strategy to the actual combat. Occasionally you might have to switch stances or swords mid fight, but usually you can go wading in. Victory is more determined by your prepwork than any actual skill in the combat, though if you constantly screw up timed clicking you might have issues. I can gather hard mode puts even more emphasis on prep, given the descriptor even states 'You will have to use alchemy to survive'. Should be an interesting challenge when I get around to it, but that won't be anytime soon. Long PC RPGs take it out of me.

Post-Move Quick Fixes

So yeah, moving really puts a kink in your gaming schedule. It's also really hard to play enough of one game to come up with a full post for any one in particular. To get back in the habit, here's some quick fixes for what I've been playing:

 

Man, I really want to like this game, mostly because of its status as a classic, but its getting really hard to keep playing this and even finish it with how bad its getting at times. I've never had to check a FAQ for an FPS game before, but I have to do it near constantly with this one. One moment, you're supposed to avoid a mined area, and the next a guy with a shotgun near one means 'clear it out'. There is almost no intuitive 'you should go here next' going on, and choosing wrong could either waste supplies (some of which you -need- to keep going), or get you some more depending on your luck. The movement is still slippery, and yet at the same time I keep getting caught up in corners. To top it all off, the game itself uses a weird memory load procedure, and thus my playtime is entirely limited to when it starts to get jerky, then I have to either quit out and reload, or just stop for the night. The bugs are really getting bad, I'm at a point where you need to cross in front of a sniper, so obviously you're supposed to toss a grenade up into his nest (his netting for some reason is bullet proof). Except A) Gordon tosses like a girl and its near impossible to get any distance on the grenades, and B) A total of 8 grenades went in, didn't explode due to some bug. This is about where I stopped.

This is almost entirely a guilty pleasure now, considering how long I have to get to 'complete' status and how random any progression is. Still very fun and challenging though. Trying to get through the challenge mode so I can have some more options in the main game. As with all rogue-likes though, I feel bad playing them because it is never definite progress. Means the game is truly fun though.

I actually beat this game a long time ago, but 'beaten' for it is only beating the Elite 4 the first time, and there's so much more to do. Over the past two weeks, I basically beat all the Kanto Gym Leaders, beat Red (the hardest match in the game), and re-challenged the Elite 4. That leaves re-challenging the gym leaders, which is a pain due to them only being available to get their numbers at a certain time...then you can only challenge them again at another time. I may just sit for an evening and screw around with the DS clock so I can finish it. Other than that, need to snag all the legendaries and I can call this complete.

To this games credit, its a near perfect mobile game experience. You can pick it up, complete one or two missions, save, put it back down, and when you next pick it back up you really don't have to remember where you were. I'll do a larger one on this one later because there's far more to cover, but essentially they improved on everything from the first game, removed a lot of the annoyances, and made the class system more intriguing (and way less broken). Still some small little quibbles, but I've been enjoying it. Mostly doing sidequests, I -think- I'm almost finished with the story, based on the quest list.

I actually try not to mention this one, and I'm kinda avoiding doing a full review since so much has already been said and its constantly changing still. I do have to say though, I love this game. There are minor quibbles, but I do truly enjoy booting it up, killing some monsters, having shinies drop (even if they end up not being upgrades), then logging out without any requirements to log back in. I put it down for a month or two, picked it back up recently, and had no problems swinging back in. I think its going to be a 'pick up at patch to see whats new' for most people though.

Daily Review: inFAMOUS

Daily Review

inFAMOUS

System: PS3 (PSN Download)
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Almost done with the Warrens

I am very mixed on this game so far. So many elements of it to me are rather fun, but it is very telling when you stop playing a game due to frustration rather than at natural stopping points.

Guess I should start with the good first, so I don't forget to mention them. So far, the game feels very realistic, and does a good job of pushing you to play smart rather than just rushing in to enemies. Your character is very susceptible to bullets despite being a superhero, and the game reminds you of this. The powers you get are rather varied, though to be fair are mostly just different methods of 'electrical death', and I do find myself using the new powers to compliment the old, but the game makes sure to give you situations where you don't forget them (in example, enemies behind fences or guardrails where its a good idea to use that new electrical rocket attack). The parkour aspect is different, and while it takes you a while to get anywhere unless you ride the trains (and get motion sick), it does let you naturally discover the little items the game wants you to collect, and makes the city feel more realized than just something you skim past.

However, all that said, the parkour aspect itself is the most frustrating aspect of the game. Your character will cling to -everything-, which is good at some points, but you can never anticipate what he will cling to. Do the same jump twice, and you'll stick to different parts of the building for no apparent reason. Ostensibly you can see the 'lines' where you can grab and the 'knobs' where you can hold on, but the graphic style is so gritty that often times you start scaling to get to a spot, and wonder why you can stick to this ledge, but not this other thing that looks like a ledge. In addition, the thing will just glitch out on occasion, and while you're under fire, your character will dance around for a bit like he's trying to find a place to stand...on a perfectly level roof. This does seem more prevalent on angles and slopes, but it really detracts from the game.

The entire reason I quit today was due to a sidequest where you race rooftop to rooftop, connecting uplinks on them. So far, these have been difficult, but fair, you find the right path and rush, barely finishing after a few tries. This one was complete and utter bullshit though. The first two are seperated by wires you glide on, all good. The third one for some reason is on the other side of a ladder and a jagged outcrop of building, which requires about five jumps to get him to stop sticking to everything and just touch it. The one after that is across a gap too far to jump, so you end up clinging to the building and taking forever to scale up. The one after -that- is the same deal...and there were at least two more after it. Most of these tend to be one or two links, three at the most. I do get the feeling I'm supposed to have the 'flying' power before I do this, but there's no indication in game of that, and I make a habit to complete everything as soon as possible.

The other gripes are more in general. I hate silly polar alignment choices, in this game you're either a serial killer or a true hero, nowhere in between if you want to get the good powers and the trophies for being good and evil. The open world aspect has been fun in other games, but beyond little blue shards and quests that are marked on your map, the world itself is devoid of -anything- to do. All the sidequests are variations on the same subset of missions, and the combat while realistic, gets very frustrating. The game is only difficult because of the wonky controls, the normal difficulty is offset by very forgiving waypoints, so forgiving sometimes it is just better to die so you get ported closer to your next goal.

Still, I'm going to finish it, hopefully soon, but thoughts of beating it again on evil are making my brain twitch.

Completed: Dawn of War II - Retribution

Dawn of War II - Retribution

Completed

System: PC (Steam)
Status: Completed
Currently: Finally finished Extra Hard

Overall, I really liked this game, though looking back on it, I find it hard to recommend to others. The game itself is fairly good, though the single player campaign is definitely lacking.

It is worth playing once of course, the semi-RPG system to it keeps using the same heroes through multiple missions in a squad format interesting. Playing it more than once though, to do the different races definitely exposes issues with the game overall. The campaign is very short, and yet the different races really don't have a different campaign. The Space Marine campaign was clearly intended to be the main campaign and probably the canon one, and all the other campaigns follow the same missions, with minor differences. In essence, if you want to see every races ending, you need to beat the game six times, which means the same missions, same bosses, everything. The minor differences between the races alleviates it somewhat (the orks were notably fun due to their sense of humor), but they also highlight how unbalanced it is. I beat Extra Hard with the Tyrannids, mainly because they are clearly broken. You only get one hero, and their units are far more expensive in terms of resources, but they steamroll through every mission in the game very quickly.

Quickly is a debatable phrase though. The missions take forever to crawl through, since in essence after a point, your strategy is 'build the biggest units you can, roll to the next spot on the map, build more'. It may be a factor of my computer, but the loading times for some maps were utterly atrocious, and the unloading times were even more so. These two factors together mean you'll spend a lot of time going through the campaigns to do the same missions. The only factor that kept me from completing it much earlier is just how dull it gets to do the same missions over and over, and how long it takes.

The only thing I can really recommend (take note I have never even tried the standard multiplayer), is the Last Stand mode, where you team up with two other heroes and take on hordes of enemies, getting exp and wargear as you go. They realized this was probably the best part of the game, since you can buy that part as a stand alone. I would recommend that part of the game more than the overall, unless you are heavily interested in Warhammer. Its hard to recommend the main game over something like Starcraft 2 though. At least they finally got away from Games for Windows, which is the reason I didn't buy the first two packs of Dawn of War II.

Completed: Atelier Iris 2

Completed

Atelier Iris 2

System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Completed
Currently: Finished everything.

So yeah, going to be a complete 180 on this from last time I posted, but I basically spent the last few weeks playing this solid (and Diablo 3), and at first, my hopes were rather high. The alchemy system in the game was very promising, the combat system was solid, they did a lot of things right in the game. The story wasn't the greatest, but it was passable.

Then the game just...died. The story went from passable to so full of glaring plot holes that I was yelling at the screen...to basically flipping the player off. The ending was a wonderful montage of 3 second clips that explained nothing whatsoever as to what happened, just showed the characters smiling then, roll credits. The game never followed through on any plot threads, and near the end of it, started doing things that just made me think 'Wow, my team is either stupid, or outright heinous'. It really does not make your team seem endearing when you destroy one character's wedding ring (albeit to save the world, but still), and then say he's being a baby because his wife will be mad at him. Two priceless objects (to the characters who they belonged to) are destroyed near the end, and its given about as much weight as stepping on someones toe. "Sorry for destroying this." "It does not matter, it was only a symbol to the entire kingdom." Practically quoted. The games story is so laughably paper thin you see where everything is going from the start, and any attempt at charecterization falls so flat it makes actually playing the game painful, because you know you'll have to listen to these idiots talk some more. Note to the creators, we do not need flashbacks for everything. This was a 20 hour game, there were upwards of ten flashbacks in the game, sometimes to events that happened literally five minutes before.

The combat system started out promising with all sorts of little options. Then as the game winded on, you realized rather quickly...that the designers didn't have any idea on how to make the game challenging, or to do a little difficulty curve to it. You are either curbstomping -everything- without grinding at all, or are up against something with insane amounts of HP. The post-game challenges seemed to be the most promising, but the enemies there (and the final boss) would basically one shot every character, so you learned to just keep tossing revives and not bother with healing. Most of the 'challenge' came from the fact that the bosses would heal themselves every turn naturally...which just made the fights even longer. I enjoy a good challenge, but the fights basically ended up being a challenge to see whether I would run out of revives first or win.

The item and alchemy system was by far the most promising part of it. Turning items you find into others with recipes you buy or find along the way. Certain items you could create more of with just mana, allowing you to make healing items as you go instead of buying them. The first thing you notice after a while though, is it is very trivial to just make 99 of all your healing items, and thus never run out. The second thing you notice is that everything pretty much uses the three or four most common mana types. The last thing you notice is there are about 15 types of mana, and some of them are used for one or two items. It felt like the designers just petered out on this part halfway through, and though you have tons of mana, you always need the most common ones, and almost never need everything else. The crafting system itself allows you to substitute different items to get different effects, but since most of the effects don't work on that item type, or are rather ill defined, you never really bother with this or even need to. The only time you do substitute is when the game points it out to you, and you realize you can make a truly different item...for the three or four items that actually works for.

The other aspects of the game are passable. The isometric view is interesting at first, but after a while you realize every dungeon is going to be square cubes going at angles, and it starts to look very fugly. The sprites themselves are well done, but battles are always zoomed out so far you can't see any details but for the brief moments it zooms in for an attack. The game is rather short, and that would have been fine personally, but near the end there's a very noticeable series of painful attempts to lengthen it out (fetch quests, dungeons with constant unending random encounters in a game that made a large point that after a while random encounters stop in an area, having to retread old areas constantly).

Most games leave me with a "Damn, I want to play more of that" feeling, even ones I'm somewhat ambiguous about. About six hours before I finished this game, I had the thought cross "I can't wait to finish this so I can play something else." While watching the ending, my thoughts were "Well, that is the game flipping me off." When I was finally finishing the post game, my last thought was "Thank god I never have to play this again."

Quick Fixes

Not that many this time around, just two, but I don't have quite enough to say about one or the other to make a Daily Review.

 So this kind of came out of left field, but I hit the fortune cookie option on the Backlog, and it gave me this. My wife bought it a while back from a Gamestop for about 5$, and neither of us have really touched it. Quick thoughts on it though: The art style is beautiful, the sprites on 3d backgrounds actually work really well, and the art in the battles is very well done. Not quite Valkyrie Profile 2 level, but hey. Another thought is that I'm really enjoying the alchemy system, since its mostly collect recipes, have the other character craft it, then you can make them with mana from then on. This means that healing potions almost never run out, since they need just 1 Wood mana, which you can get from anywhere. I have 99 of several items just to not let my mana go to waste. The combat system itself is rather fluid, though for some reason seems to have brief load times mid fight, as in a half second or so. Not a major deal, but it does make the otherwise fluid action kinda herk at times.

The title of the game is "God Catching Alchemy Meister" or Kamidori Alchemy Meister (kinda prefer the latter since the direct translation is silly), and yeah, its a great game. I'm always a sucker for strategy RPGs with very in-depth aspects of crafting and character building. This doesn't have so much on the character building, kinda leaning towards Fire Emblem in that they just level up, gain stats, and go from there. The main heroines get outfits you can make that radically change their stats and skills, and the main character gets far more customization through his menu, but mostly its just swapping gear. Still, the strategy aspects of crawling around the maps and fighting monsters, and collecting materials to make new items is pretty fun. The game is split up into chapters, and they do warn you when you're about to change chapters since you can miss out on quests. All the quests tell you what chapter you fail them on too, which is very conveinant. The only thing you'd have to look at a guide for is the level certain characters have to be at to get events. Of course, being a strategy RPG with set characters...some are rather useless or ungodly slow, and very hard to level to get those events (in this case, mostly the earth elemental Aht since she only moves 2 spaces). Also, yes, it is an adult eroge game. Doesn't change the fact that the game itself is damn good, dirty pictures or not.

Beaten: Front Mission 4

Beaten

Front Mission 4

System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat the game, need to go again and do the optional simulators.

Ah, another game that while great, took me forever to beat. I do love the Front Mission series, especially this game with how it portrays fairly realistic mechs. Its a fairly old game by today's standards, but the graphics still look very crisp (barring the wonky trees of course), and the little details they put into the terrain and combat make all the difference in the game and its presentation. The only odd spot there is when people are talking, they have a still image with their jaw moving up and down...which...looks really weird. The voice acting itself is pretty good though.

The characterization and story of the game plays out well. It never gets too deep into philosophical nonsense that has nothing to do with mechs, instead pretty much sticking to the people, their job (or goal), and having you follow them along. The oddity being that the game actually has two stories, one based on a team in Europe, and one based on a team in Venezuala. You would think that with an RPG with two stories like that, eventually they would combine to one final mission...nope. Eventually they do contact each other and exchange information, but you never have a mission where you use both teams. So instead you end up ping-ponging between the stories, following and enjoying each separately.

The game play is fun and enjoyable, though very slow at times. Some missions you can chew through pretty quickly, others are rather rough, and you have to go slow so as to not make any mistakes and keep healed...and that can lead to a mission lasting thirty minutes or so. There is a quick save function so you can resume in the middle of a mission, but sometimes the objectives you need to accomplish are borked by early decisions. The AI is both stupid and brilliant at the same time. They tend to lock on to one target and never change no matter what happens, which is dangerous for you, but it also means they ignore more vulnerable targets. Units that aren't close to you will either get 'pulled' by you getting close, or are activated on a certain turn. Usually this means you slow crawl across the map, pulling units one group at a time so you don't get overwhelmed. The mech designing aspect is simple enough, and you can tweak it to your play style, though there are noticeably better styles than others. Still, with two teams who have different skillsets, you get to experience a lot of different mechs without having to retool everyone, or worry about switching guys in and out.

Overall, a very good game, and considering I got it used for like 10$ it was well worth it. All I have to do to complete it is to do the optional simulator missions, but that requires a replay through on new game+, given by the time I realized they were there, I was already past the point of doing them for the European team.

Beaten: Bionic Commando: Rearmed

Beaten

Bionic Commando: Rearmed

System: PS3 (PSN Download)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat the game, leaves super hard, the challenges, and the secrets.

Well, that was a little dissapointing. Picked the game back up on a whim, knowing I had been struggling on the final stage, and apparently somewhere along the line they patched the game to have infinite lives. So a stage where previously 3 lives didn't even get me through the first three parts of it, beaten in about ten minutes or so. Probably a good change though, I doubt anyone nowadays has the patience to do Ninja Gaiden level memorization of every jump and swing, especially with Bionic Commando's strange jumping mechanics.

Review wise, this is a great game and worth the price to pick it up. It is a true and true platformer, and very old school in design. The jumps are unforgiving, especially given they stuck to the original design in that you can't actually jump. You can only attach your arm and swing around, so a lot of the game kind of confused my wife until I reminded her that you can't actually jump in the game...so two platforms going back and forth is much harder, since to get from one to the other, you have to fall off one, shoot your arm up diagonally to catch the other platform, and then swing up top. With infinite lives this is less annoying since you don't have to start the entire stage back because you messed up 3 jumps. The boss fights are fun and quirky, though very short, once you learn the trick you can have them beaten in a minute or two. The game itself has far more replay if you're a perfectionist and want to get high scores, but for everyone else I doubt you'll play the harder difficulties. We'll see about them if I ever get back to completing this.

Completed: Pokemon Leafgreen Version

Completed

Pokemon Leafgreen Version

System: Nintendo DS
Status: Completed!
Currently: Completed!

It is always a great thing to add another game to my list of completed. I may have to touch this again to send up starters, but I think you can get them and the other fossils in the other games without issues. I have kind of adjusted my views on this game, since I remembered it was the first remake, and the games were still working on a few things back at this point.

If you go back and play it now, yeah, it seems very bare bones. You can barely catch anything beyond the original 150, and the post game content consists of a few small islands with some Johto pokemon, Mewtwo of course, and the ability to rechallenge the Elite 4, and one of the legendary beasts from gen 2 wandering around. I did the islands yesterday, and the rest of that basically took this evening to finish up. The Elite 4 were actually rather challenging the second time around, the first time I curbstomped them.

Overall, its a mixed bag for the game, it clearly shows its age, and it lacks the refinements that the 4th gen games have, and also lacks the novelty of a new story and mons that the other 3rd gen games had. Overall, I would say pass on this unless you can find it rather cheap (hah), or you really want to get the legendaries associated with it (of which, I think only Mewtwo is unattainable elsewhere, could be wrong).

Quick Fixes: Some games I've been touching on

So my issue lately is that I've been playing a few games in small amounts, and don't have enough thoughts on them to do a full on review post. Instead, I decided to cram a few into small little blurbs, with my thoughts so far about them.

A few missions in to this. It seems ok, though its clearly designed for controller use, despite only having 3 buttons you actually use during the game. At the same time, I just can not get my controller to synch up with the game ( a nice standard logitech controller), and thus I'm stuck using the keyboard. With the keyboard, the driving is all kinds of slippy-slidey, and I hurt myself more often than not slamming into objects because of the top down view and limited sight range. You really can't go that fast without slamming into something outright. The game itself isn't bad with the zombie crushing, but the controls and view distance really make it frustrating. You get guns and the like for your car, but its so hard to aim them properly while driving, I often just drive through zombies, then drive backwards and shoot at them.

I downloaded the free DLC "You have to name the expansion pack", which has added some more classes and a bit more variety to the game...and for some reason, wells that completely block hallways. Odd. Anyway, the game is growing on me a bit, I'm still playing with permadeath on because that is how I roll. Still, at the easiest setting, its very easy to get yourself killed on the first floor via bad luck...or on the 20th floor due to bad luck. Either or.

I actually played a bit of this, and I am on the second city. It seems more like a puzzler than anything else, figuring out how to destroy everything with limited tools. Still, the slowdown is horrendous on my computer, and large stages are all kinds of herky-jerky. I can run Dawn of War II with fairly nice graphics, but this thing bogs me down?

I'm actually a big fan of the Metal Gear series, I enjoy the stories and the boss fights are always a blast. My main gripe has always been the stealth elements are boring and tedious, with little midway between that and just dying. Crawling across a large map, inch by inch, stopping and starting to avoid patrols, is just tedious, and the shooting controls are often shoddy and make for poor fighting. This is...pretty much the same. The sneaking requires you crouch and walk slowly across areas, hiding when necessary. Too bad walking slowly requires you press your thumb ever so slightly on the PSP's tiny joystick, and hold it there for up to a minute at a time, praying you don't shift slightly further and accidentally run. The shooting controls are junk too, on the most natural setting you have to hold down the right bumper, use the camera controls to aim (which is the right buttons) and then press the down key to shoot...if you want to move while shooting, you have to use the joystick at the same time. I may fiddle with the control settings a bit, and there is a tiny bit of auto-aim, but dammit, if you don't have twin sticks, you need -way- more assist, or fewer buttons to press to hold it like this.

Almost forgot this one. Bought this a long time ago when I first got my PS3, and haven't played it in a long time. Finally started to sit down and play one game at a time, slowly learning the later stages (already have the first rhythms basically memorized) and earning more points for more lives. A simple game, I'll call it beaten when I finally beat all the stages, and complete when I unlock everything.

Daily Review: Pokemon Leafgreen Version

Daily Review

Pokemon Leafgreen Version

System: Gameboy Advance (Playing on a DS)

Status: Unfinished

Currently: 4 badges, working through Silph Co.

I really don't have much to say about the Pokemon games. They are kind of review proof. You either know you like them, you know you don't, or you haven't touched them since a certain game. Since the Leafgreen game is a remake of the first ones, its a bit strange, since it has a lot of the changes that have made them more balanced since the first incarnations, yet because it sticks to the same monsters being found throughout the world as in the original game, you really don't get a lot of the balancing advantages.

So yeah, this is probably the most 'eh' of the two remakes they've made so far. There's very little added to the game that isn't entirely superfluous other than the post game area where you can catch some different monsters than the original. If you've played the first gen already, you'd probably only want it to get the exclusive monsters that you need this version to get (which I think is only Mewtwo at this point, since the birds can be caught in HG/SS), and if you haven't played this gen already, there isn't much here to surprise you over the other versions with much wider selection initially.

My biggest trouble with the game is the system though, since I'm playing it on a DS, I'm so used to being able to close it and walk away, and have to remember the GBA games don't let you do the idle mode. Minor issue though, and not to do with the game. Does suck when you walk away, forget about it, and it dies on you though.

Daily Review: Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Daily Review

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

System: PSP
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Near the end of Chapter 1

So yeah, I normally don't buy remakes if I already have the original, usually its not enough changes to spend more money on, but this one is well worth it. Mostly for one reason, and that's the redone translation. Say what you will about the purple prose and overly flowery and British language they go through, it doesn't dip into Dragon Quest "Thee Thou Thine" and it fits the tone...more importantly, it is far, far better than "Dragon casts Ice Bracelet!" that the original game had. That alone should be a reason to get this game even if you have the original.

My only complaint with this one is the slowdown...and it is horrendous, and I have no clue why. The original graphics were not that amazing, and yet the game slows to a dead stop whenever anyone uses any ability beyond basic attacks. Even if it doesn't have a complex animation, the game will sit and think about it for several seconds until it processes it. It doesn't seem to be a graphical issue but a processing issue, like the game has to switch gears to perform anything complex. Still, its not enough to sink the game, just makes the battles take a bit longer (while you watch the chocobo quiver in place preparing to attack).

The game itself is the Final Fantasy Tactics everyone remembers, great depth, a cool job class system, and a game system that is very unforgiving, along with story battles that range from easy to cheap. Yes, you will grind, you will grind very early, since the 4th story mission almost requires you to be 9 levels higher than the enemies to finish it without losing a character. Yes, you can still lose characters, someone keels over, you have three turns to revive them or finish the battle, or they are gone for good. Yes, for some reason protect and other spells that aren't straight up heals can miss outright due to low faith (even raise, which is great when you cast raise to bring a guy back whose death counter is about up...and it misses). Still, the game is never outright unfair. They give you tough challenges, which you can use the job system to beat with enough tactical acumen, and the tutorial actually makes sense now!

Definitely one to pick up if you own a PSP, even if you own the original. More review though as I get through it, now that I can actually understand the story.

Daily Review: Swords and Soldiers HD

Daily Review

Swords and Soldiers HD

System: PC (Steam)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just finished the campaign.

So this was a short and quick little game, definitely what I would call bite sized. It has multiplayer elements, but I definitely can't see myself playing them. I'm actually debating to just call this completed, since all that's left otherwise is achievements, which I can't fully complete since I won't play the multiplayer. Either way, this will be my only post about it.

The game is pretty straightforward, and reminds me of numerous flash games I've played before. You create troops, they walk right until they run into enemies and die. Your objective is to usually just destroy the base on the other side of the map, building certain combinations of troops to overcome what they're sending you. It is a very simple design, which isn't a bad thing, once you get the hang of the game the difficulty curve is nice and even right up until the end of the campaign.

There are three 'races' to play, though the differences are there, in essence all you need to learn is which units are best against whatever race you're playing against, and make them over and over. If you play Aztec, you want the priest to make zombies and the melee dudes to rush in. If you play China, you want the old men to instakill anything, and a mix of warriors and rocketeers. If you play Viking, you make regular melee and ranged and just lightning bolt everything else. Other than just clicking the buttons to create the units and occasionally casting spells to help them work through blockages, there's really little strategy to it. Some of the campaign missions throw weird things at you, but after you overcome them, it boils down to the same thing.

The campaign is 30 missions, and can be completed in one sitting if you're determined, two if less so. There are three challenge maps that just serve to get achievements, obviously a skirmish mode and the multiplayer. They really think that people will play the multiplayer, because the campaign bugs you to go play it...every three missions. Seriously.

If you see it cheap on steam, it might be worth picking up, but if I had the choice to buy it individually I wouldn't even bother. I got it as part of an indie pack, and the other games made up the value, not this one.

Daily Review: Q.U.B.E

Daily Review 

Q.U.B.E

System: PC (Steam)

Status: Unfinished

Currently: Sector 5

Just some quick thoughts on this game, its obviously rather short and probably will only do one more post on it when I finish it.

Portal comparisons are obvious, so I'll avoid them. Suffice to say its a rather simple puzzle game in a first person engine, where you control various cube objects to get through each area. Each color has a set function, that you learn rather quickly through trial and error, and each puzzle gets slowly harder. Rather standard. The atmosphere is nice, a wierd grey-tone broken up by the colorful puzzle pieces that kind of reminds me of a children's playset at times. The addition of new elements is gradual enough that you never feel there's a huge jump...except for my one major gripe of the review so far.

When you get to sector five, you can tell rather quickly that its a one trick pony that is more annoying than challenging. Sector five is dark, and after the second or third puzzle, you can only work elements you have 'turned on' by hitting their power switch for their color. Essentially, this means you can't see anything but the currently on elements, and have to swap which ones are on to work with them. Given you have to move green pieces through the area and thus have to constantly check their location by turning that part on...this is really annoying. It adds nothing to the difficulty of the puzzles, it just makes you constantly have to turn the pieces on and off to make sure you didn't screw it up. If it was lit, it would be like the puzzles in the area right before it (albeit without the timing elements for obvious reasons). This entire sector is more frustrating than anything else, and really jerked me out of what had been a fairly simple and fun game.

I'll get back to this later and finish it, but gah, what a terrible design decision.

Daily Review: Avadon: The Black Fortress

Daily Review

Avadon: The Black Fortress

System: PC (Steam)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just finished normal mode. Need to play on harder difficulties to complete.

So, finally finished this game after working on it all week (hence the lack of posts, didn't want to post about it till I finished up the last bits.) My thoughts are still unabashedly positive about it, it is a more than worthy game to purchase, especially if you like old school PC RPGs, and was a fun adventure game I will probably play again. It did have some flaws, though they were minor.

The first major flaw is the bossfights are...well..boring. Either the boss is far too easy and you overpower them rather quickly, or they come in two flavors: Minion deluge, and way too much HP. Due to the battle system's style (which I liked overall), there's really not much variety in the boss fights. They will throw around some buffs or debuffs you can't really do much about unless you want to waste a turn you could be doing damage, and you wail on them. If they have minions, you either ignore them because they don't do enough damage to be a pest and just make it hard to move around, or you have to track down the one minion shielding the master, then wail on them till it is resummoned. This is not a major problem in and of itself, except that due to the class system being rather limited (you advance, get some skills through a tree), your skill choices are at most 8-9 skills, most of which are variations of AoE damage or some status. So pretty much every boss fight runs down to whether or not you can deal damage faster than they can.

The other major flaw is the game seems seriously weighted towards the difficulty being foes dealing a lot of damage, getting a lot of attacks, and swarming you. Admittedly, while only playing on normal, I was going for the achievement where you only use one ally (instead of two) throughout the entire game. My partner for this was the mage, who I thought complimented my main character (warrior) rather well. The warrior class once you get to a point if you build it well...is near indestructible. I had over 80% or so damage reduction to most things, parried/dodged most attacks, and had a good chance to just start regenerating whenever I got smacked.  The mage was great at dealing damage, but couldn't take many physical hits, and with the abundance of archers, she often went down like a wet sack. This usually left my warrior to slowly slaughter every single enemy, so I could leave combat and have her auto-revive (still got the achievement for no-revives too). As it stands, I can't see how you could ever play this game without using the warrior, every enemy gets 2-3 attacks or turns to your one, constantly buffs themselves and their friends, and deals enough damage to take out the squishier classes in a single turn if you're unlucky. What makes it worse is that with the daze and charm spells being thrown around constantly, you can be either chainlocked/stunned for the entire combat and just die...or your warrior gets charmed and murders your other party members brutally, leaving him to solo the encounter. Again.

Still, with those two flaws being apparent, I will still be playing it again on a higher difficulty later. For some reason, the game reminded me of fallout, mostly due to the high amount of personal choices you were allowed to make, and how they actually affected things later, including little blurbs at the end talking about unresolved quests or changes you made to lands for the better. They definately put a lot of work in making you feel that all these grey and grey choices you make in the game actually matter to various characters, and not making you feel like you have to take a quest you think is wrong to max out your level.

A very well done game.

Daily Review: Valkyria Chronicles

Daily Review

Valkyria Chronicles

System: PS3
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat it, finally!

So yeah, I love this game, its unabashed. I'm really regretting it took me so long to beat it, especially since there are sequels on the PSP, and I actually have one now. Not to say its perfect, but it is definately a great game. Its really surprising that lately Sega has been making awesome games (Yakuza series as well), as long as it isn't Sonic franchise.

The game is beautiful, it is drawn in this 'paintbrush' style that makes the entire game look like a painting (including whitened out sections at the top and bottom). The world is a stylized Europe, set in pretty much World War 2, barring certain technology (Its all land war). As a strategy RPG, it works well, you have to carefully consider your movements, jump from cover to cover, guard your approaches, lay down covering fire, hide behind tanks, etc. The missions are usually quite fun, tossing you into situations where you have to adapt and adjust your tactics, and at the same time try to rush to get a good grade for more experience and cash.

Any gripes I have are really nitpicks, and some of them were misconceptions on my part, I'll handle those first. First of all, I played this game like Fire Emblem, and that was wrong. At first I would restart a mission if I lost someone who wasn't important....except all but the character's who you can not let die during the particular mission, anyone who falls you can run up next to, call a medic...then call again in the same mission. Once I realized this, I abused it, in one mission I had a mechanic who would run up, repair the tank, and get nailed by crossfire. I would call the medic, then at the next base I captured, call her up again, and go again. I literally had her shot down four times, and called back into action four times. As long as the enemy doesn't get to that person, they don't die permanently (but will if an enemy touches them).

The other weird part was realizing I could save scum. You can save in the middle of missions...I put the game down at first because I would go through a 5-6 turn mission, and screw up near the end, having to start all over. Once I realized I could save mid mission, I would save at the beginning of a turn where nothing really went terrible, and be able to reload if I made a really bad move. This saved me from having to start all over, and at times wasting hours.

So, other than those two misunderstandings, my main gripes lay in some minor elements. The first, is that for most of the game, the game is played as a straight war stories. There are some 'land battleships' that are too big to be believed, but its kinda acceptable with the mysterious fuel source they use. However, at the later part, you have super-powered beings tearing up battlefields, and the final enemy general goes 'one wing angel' and takes on your entire squad by himself. It doesn't ruin it, but its rather weird since the game would have worked fine as a war story (an idealistic one, but still a good war story).

The other nitpick is on certain missions, you're going to have to go into it, fail, and reload entirely. This is because halfway through the mission, something happens, and then suddenly the team you brought is useless for what the 'real' objective of the mission is. This is in general a complaint for a lot of RPGs, where you have to trial and error a boss, going back through once you find out what they do. Its not really good in any game, you should be able to figure out the boss as you go. In a rather realistic war story, its kinda silly that you have to presciently position your troops to get enemies before they can screw you over. Again, its a nitpick, once you know the happening you can usually give it one more shot and make it.

The story is good, the game is great (albeit stressful at times), the whole thing is very solid. If you see it and you like strategy games or war games, pick it up, completely worth it.

I have it listed as beaten, as the game has in-game medals that you can acquire, and you need to A rank all the missions along with getting all the weapons, maxing troops, etc. I'll consider it completed when I get all of those.