Various thoughts on a variety of topics.
Though Mo Lan has long had a crush on Yifeng Liu he doesn’t see her as anything more than a friend… and a male friend at that. One day she comes across a magical flower that has the ability to transform her into a long-haired beauty, a form in which she gets to see an entirely different side of him.
A school-life romance with a large amount of comic relief and minor fantasy elements which become more pronounced toward the end.
While investigating a power outage on the roof Xiong Ma Ying discovers a girl floating in mid-air who promptly gets knocked unconscious by a bolt of lightning. Not believing his eyes but wanting to help her all the same he attempts CPR, only to be violently rebuffed as the girl, a cultivator by the name of Muzi Li, suddenly regains consciousness. Not quickly enough to prevent some of her power from transferring into Xiong however, and now he’s faced with a choice: Join the secret world of cultivation as her partner… or die.
A multi-genre series, featuring a relatively even mix of romantic comedy, action, and drama, with a small amount of ecchi content.
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Unlike the first game (which got kind of annoying with everything being underground), I actually managed to complete this one at character level 14.
While I’m not a big fan of puzzles, most of the ones here are thankfully logic-based and can be solved with enough trial & error. There are only a couple that require the use of specific items or codes based off obscure messages (and for those I suggest consulting a walkthrough). The biggest puzzle is really what sort of party composition to make and to determine that I strongly suggest reading through this character creation guide. Classes play much differently than you would think and you absolutely must have someone with a maxed out Alchemy skill.
As for combat, some of the encounters can be a bit tricky but none of the enemies ever come across as unfair or require obscure and/or unintuitive tactics. Really the worst I can say about the combat aspects are that when/where you acquire injuries seems to be completely random. Another complaint would be the hunger system, as I unilaterally hate all hunger/thirst systems, but that’s easy enough to disable using a Save Game Editor (simply set the “food_rate” CHAR STAT to 0).
So all in all it ends up an enjoyable experience with only a handful of occasional annoyances.
If you’ve ever played a Gothic or Risen game before, then the content of ELEX won’t be much of a surprise: Clunky melee combat which deals notably more damage than ranged or magic attacks, no character respec option, large open world with pre-leveled enemies, uneven voice acting, and a choice between several joinable factions.
I’m almost level 17 at the moment, having explored a chunk of Edan, some of Abessa and the Volcano area, and a small part of the Desert… and I do not think I’ll get much further. The main problem is the combat, which is the second worst out of the developer’s catalog (Risen 2‘s being the worst). You see, in addition to the clunky combo system they’ve added the requirement that attacking, dodging, and blocking all use Stamina… meaning you’ll often find yourself utterly helpless to avoid enemy attacks which, and here’s the real killer; do not require Stamina. Creatures don’t lose Stamina from attacking period, and NPCs can attack/parry even at 0 Stamina (though, admittedly, they usually won’t).
Ranged attacking does not require Stamina, but the trade off is that those attacks are only as strong as an equivalent melee weapon’s fast attack. There is no equivalent to melee’s strong/heavy attacks, which is a major problem since that’s where most of your damage is coming from. So ranged, at least in the early/mid-game, is worthless unless you want to spend like 5 minutes slowly whittling something’s health down.
Even were the combat less unfun though, there’s another issue: The conversations and quests. You literally have to exhaust all dialog options in order to receive and/or advance quests, and the dialog choices range wildly in tone. Aggressive lines that sound like you’re trying to pick a fight are all mixed together with understanding/passive and uncaring/cold responses making the protagonist come off as schizophrenic at best. In a way the dialog is nearly as painful as the combat.
So I can’t really recommend playing this game.
Speaking of which: The Age of Decadence. I heard a lot of good things about it and finally got around to playing a bit earlier. Didn’t get very far though because while the combat is fine the way text-adventure-like events kept popping-up almost like QTE‘s quickly became infuriating.
Six thousand years before Sora and Shiro were brought to Disboard the world had been reduced to rubble by the constant warfare between the various races. Lacking magical power or equivalent physical abilities, humanity has been reduced to the role of scavengers, picking through the wreckage looking for anything that will help them avoid becoming collateral damage. Leading them is a young man named Riku, who with the help of an abandoned android just may be able to light the spark that brings change to the world.
A flashback prequel to No Game No Life which features comparatively little comedic content. While meant to be watched after that series, it can also be viewed as a stand-alone.
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I’m about halfway through this game (based on a short comic series) at the moment, at level 18/19 with the main party of Gully/Monika/Alumon (Tank/Support, CC/Striker, Healer/Striker) at the steps of the fifth dungeon (out of eight). There are a lot of things to like and only a relative few annoyances.
I’ll list the issues first since they tend to be what people focus on:
– It’s very strange you can’t click to move.
– The voice acting is… highly questionable.
– There’s a notable amount of re-used assets where the enemies and even the dungeons to an extent are concerned.
– Switching party members is needlessly restricted (and illogical as well, since the entire party is constantly traveling together based on event dialog).
That’s it really. Aside from those hiccups it’s a remarkably fun turn-based RPG with quite a bit of content, a large number of fairly diverse combat abilities, and engaging visuals. A couple things in particular to keep in mind are that Attack Power affects the strength of all abilities and you can break through certain dungeon walls (they produce a little static dust cloud vfx) to find treasure with Gully’s Groundsmash ability. And though I’ve heard complaints about grinding, so far simply running through each dungeon twice (on Legendary; only the first dungeon had to initially be completed on a lower difficulty) while completing the various side-quests has been enough to stay equal to or above the enemy levels.
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.
