Various thoughts on a variety of topics.
A gigantic cube suddenly appears in the air one morning above an airport and proceeds to absorb a passenger plane carrying 252 passengers. From within the cube emerges a being calling itself Yaha-kui zaShunina, an ambassador of sorts who wishes to communicate with and advance humanity.
A shortened version of Seikai Suru KADO featuring a modified conclusion.
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The everyday adventures of the two cats Azuki and Daizu, who were recently adopted and now have to acclimate to a new home inhabited by an assortment of strange people.
A short-episode slice of life comedy with picture drama style visuals.
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The time of the All-Star Weekend has arrived and both Xiao Tang and Guo Chen end up selected to play during the second day’s audience participation events. Meanwhile, Xiu is deeply conflicted about the event as this will be the first time since it began that he’s an observer rather than a participant.
Picks up from where Quanzhi Gaoshou left off and requires having already seen that to understand the character dynamics.
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At the end of the journey I find myself with the same opinion now that I had after finishing the prequel: The game isn’t bad, but you should wait to play it until after a major patch or two has been released.
Once again there’s a collection of bugs that range from the baffling (how did no one notice that reputations maxed out after only a couple choices?) to the more insidious (save import inconsistencies and quest-step completion order conflictions) which can really ruin your day… particularly if you’re any flavor of completionist. However, at least those issues can be fixed in theory; a more permanent problem is the abundance of quests that force you to run back and forth between city districts.
The character selection though is pretty solid, there’s quite a range of unique equipment (although heavy on sabers and I don’t think I ever found an estoc), zipping around the world map is remarkably engrossing, and there’s a fairly large amount of character banter. Another thing worth noting is that the game can at times get remarkably sexual. While the first PoE had Hiravias, in here not only are both Serafen and Tekēhu overflowing with innuendo, but there’s also fully-nude models present in the bathhouse location along with Ondra’s fertility-deity-like vignette portrait (the content isn’t ill-fitting mind you; just surprising).
When all’s said and done, while I did enjoy myself for the most part, just as with PoE I I’m likely not going to touch this game again until the eventual/potential expansion is released.
While similar in many ways to its predecessor, Deadfire ends up bearing a nearly equal resemblance to Storm of Zehir.
The way companions can now weigh-in on dialog skill checks, the new style of world map (though there’s no random encounters here), the collection of resources (ship-based here instead of trader-based there), ability to find pseudo-companion henchmen, and the encounter style (small maps and auto-refilling health) all bring Zehir to mind. The text-adventure vignettes, general class abilities and leveling system (though expanded), and the core combat mechanics on the other hand are pure PoE.
I’ve only cleared the first island, Deadlight, and two small islands on my way to the capitol city so far so I can’t say much about the story or companions just yet. What I can comment on are the expanded class/skill system, reduced feat system, and overhauled combat:
The multi-classing options are pretty fantastic, the new skill setup (while a bit overwhelming) is a definite improvement over how generally superficial they were in the prequel. The greatly reduced feat selection on the other hand hurts a little (though only a little, as most general ones were useless/ineffective for most builds). The combat changes could be viewed either way, but I’m greatly in favor of it having adopted a more NWN2 style of encounter setup with health being automatically refilled after each battle (which makes healing abilities more useful since you no longer have to worry about them causing accidental perma-death).
It actually goes a step further though and makes the wizard/priest spells encounter-based as well, greatly enhancing their usability at the cost of versatility. Priests for instance no longer get access to all spells and now have to pick them as feats, while wizards can no longer learn every spell they find (they also learn spells as feats and can use the spells found in spellbooks only while they’re equipped). So far I like the change overall, but it leads to some oddities like the ability Grimoire Slam now being considered a spell.
Not all the changes are so drastic however. One particular minor yet incredibly useful change from PoE I would probably be the decoupling of Mechanics, Hidden Items, and Scouting Mode. Stealth is now purely for sneaking (which has been upgraded with visible detection radii and distraction options) while the checks to find hidden items occur even when walking around normally and are now based on Perception. The inclusion of a pickpocketing mechanic is another minor change that serves to make things feel a bit more dynamic.
Pros:
– Far more character creation/development options.
– Enhanced stealth system.
– Greatly enhanced party AI system (akin to Dragon Age: Origins and FFXII)
– Party-wide skill checks.
– Expanded skill system.
– Customized weapon/armor enhancement options.
– Expanded crafting system.
Cons:
– Combat seems a bit too hyper/fast.
– Limited feat selection.
– Many local area maps are pretty small.
– Ship to ship combat seems wonky (vignette says they have 2 crew, board them and they actually have like 10).
– Smaller party size.
– Resource management, minor as it is, is a hassle I could do without.
– Playing in fullscreen mode with vSync enabled can cause system-crashing freezes.
I’ve occasionally seen this game compared to Diablo, but I don’t see the resemblance. It’s far closer to a combination of Ys‘ combat style and Zelda‘s grass-slashing and key item collecting.
It’s certainly on the more difficult side of things as far as RPGs go and you’ll probably die quite often until you get the hang of ‘dodging’ enemy attacks. The limited number of active skills you can have is another issue and leveling up is a bit of a trap; you get 6 attribute points to distribute however you want each level, but if you don’t spend them 2 Str/1 Int/1 Ref/1 Con/1 Will there will be a ton of weapons and equipment you’ll be unable to wield by the end of the game. Having to often swap between key items (limited to 4 active at a time as well) is also annoying.
Length-wise it’s pretty short (my playthrough clocked in at a little over 9 hours), though it doesn’t feel short… the final dungeon in particular goes on for ages (and requires something like 40 keys)… and will definitely take longer if you avoid using any sort of walkthrough and/or have a bad sense of direction.
Overall I suppose it’s decent enough, although in the end it might be better to get invested in the Ys series instead if you haven’t already.
Transported, along with his allies and all of Arkham Asylum’s inmates, to what appears to be feudal Japan by one of Gorilla Grodd’s contraptions, Batman must find a way to both untangle the mess history has become and return to the modern day.
An action movie with both martial arts and mecha action along with a bit of comic relief in the form of the Joker and Harley’s personality. Be aware that it requires some basic knowledge of the Batman franchise to understand the character dynamics and that the English script differs significantly from the original Japanese version.
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Finally got around to playing the Zodiac Age version of Final Fantasy XII earlier this year, only to find out that aside from the ability to speed up time and the easier chest respawning it wasn’t really much of an improvement over the original. The new job boards are actually a step backward, as now you’re forced to specialize (with no re-spec option). Yeah it was easy to be a ‘master of all’ and have samey characters in the original, but you didn’t have to; it was a choice and you could’ve just as easily specialized them instead. Regardless, I made it up to the Stillshrine in this version and then just kind of burned out.
Another game played a bit earlier was Pier Solar and the Great Architects, which I picked up during some sale or other for no good reason. For the most part it’s a pretty average JRPG experience with the only really notable things about it being the ability to set the encounter rate at will (extremely helpful) and the rather disconcertingly DeviantArtish character design. I can’t say much about the storyline since I’ve only gotten up to the point where the juggler-guy joins your party, but it’s very odd that no one seems to notice the budding-archaeologist girl is an elf.
Despite being terrible at action games, I decided to try Tokyo Xanadu eX+ based on its connection to the Legend of Heroes games… and ended up getting pretty far into it (currently in the middle of Chapter 7).
It’s half RPG and half action game. The action game aspects are a bit over-complicated (three super moves with three separate resources, two buttons to swap party members) but are easy enough to grasp that even someone with terrible reflexes can get S-rank stage-clear scores (on normal difficulty). The RPG aspects on the other hand are straight-forward but suffer from character behavior and storyline events that fluctuate between stereotypical and awful. That you have to continuously re-canvas the maps in order to collect the various character info pages and find hidden quests also quickly becomes tiresome, and the way it blatantly taunts you with content which can only be completed in a second playthrough is just plain annoying. I do like the way the upgrade system relies on loot rather than money though.
Overfall was recently bought on a whim and unfortunately ended up nothing like what I was expecting. Rather than being RPGish it’s more a strategy game (with the goal being to unlock new starting weapons/abilities/traits rather than winning). Worse is that only the battles are turn-based and each playthrough apparently has a time limit of, according to the tutorial/guide on Steam anyway, ~14 minutes. The time limit alone would be a deal-killer even without the focus on unlocking things solely to unlock more things.
Retsuko is a 25-year old accountant who constantly has to put up with all sorts of unreasonable demands and annoying behavior from her superiors and co-workers. She can never express her feelings directly however and so instead vents her frustrations through death metal fantasies and karaoke sessions.
A workplace comedy with a chibi artstyle. It’s a remake of the previous series featuring mostly new content.
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