Various thoughts on a variety of topics.
On the way back to the surface following their grueling battle on the 18th floor, Bell and the others stumble upon a hidden hot spring.
An ecchi OVA featuring a small amount of action that takes place shortly after the main series‘ 13th episode.
More Information:
aniDB
Wikipedia
Taking place a little while after the end of the second game, this third installment in the franchise is basically a combination of the first two with an overhauled combat system. Making it easily the best of the bunch (once you install the re-translation project to reduce the terribleness of the localization).
Character-wise, with the DLC, you get access to the whole cast and don’t have to jump through any hoops or waste any Plan space to unlock characters (although Uni, Ram, & Rom don’t become available until the last chapter). Story-wise there’s only some especially cringy moments in the 6th chapter or so. And as for the re-used assets… well, there’s still a ton of those.
The most notable improvement here over the previous games though is the revamped combat system:
Instead of having an EX Bar that the entire party has to use (and which has to be re-filled every time you enter an area), each character’s SP pool doubles as an EX Pool. Meaning now you can pull off multiple 3-bar EX attacks in a row. Even better, the game now tells you when an enemy you’re attacking happens to be weak/strong against an element and even specifies whether an attack you’re about to use is magical or physical.
Another new addition is an in-game achievement system. By doing things with each character like running, jumping, taking damage, switching in combat, using items in combat, and so forth, that character will get stat boosts and unlock character-specific Plans to further boost their stats or add new abilities (like a 5th combo slot).
Really, the only flaw with this entry (besides the localization and re-used assets) is that the DLC character Events are bugged to appear a chapter earlier than they should. So if you’re only able to get one of the three games, this would be the one to prioritize.
On her 15th birthday, Chiya travels from her home in the mountains to Labyrinth Town in the hopes of finding her mother. While there she becomes an apprentice to an urara, a type of fortune-teller the town specializes in training, alongside three other girls from different backgrounds.
A mostly light, comedic series with a moderate fantasy bent that mainly consists of cute girls doing cute things. The lesser focus is on glimpses of a darker supernatural world related to Chiya’s parents lying just beneath the surface.
More Information:
aniDB
Fansub.co
TheAnimeNetwork
Wikipedia
A couple years have passed since Sasuke left the village. Naruto and Sakura continue their search for him while Akatsuki persist on their quest to collect all of the Tailed Beasts, and all eventually get caught up in a catastrophe of world-ending scale.
Continuing from where the first series left off, this one ultimately isn’t much different besides having a fondness for flashbacks: It’s still a mix of comedy, action, and drama peppered with Anime-original filler content to extend the duration. The characters do behave less childishly though, and most of the canon content leans more toward the dramatic.
More Information:
aniDB
Crunchyroll
Wikipedia
The misfits of the Kunigaoka School of Magic’s Class E are being taught by none other than the demon king himself, since only their bugged combat abilities have any hope of defeating him. Thus begins their strange adventure.
A parody re-telling of Ansatsu Kyoushitsu set in a fantasy world that does away with the dramatic aspects, focusing almost fully on comedy.
More Information:
Amazon
aniDB
Crunchyroll
Wikipedia
It shouldn’t be surprising, yet it is: This sequel is in almost all ways worse than the first Re;Birth.
The localization got worse (install the re-translation project modification to make it merely equally as bad), Nepgear is a far less engaging protagonist compared to Neptune, there’s a bunch of ecchi events straight out of an Agarest game, and the new themes are atrocious.
No, I don’t want to be constantly lectured about how piracy and cheating is bad in this game I bought… especially when said game just so happens to include cheat items in its paid DLC.
The only things this has going for it are giving the characters a couple extra combat abilities, Boss enemies not having any insane HP regeneration abilities, a Super EXP option which effectively eliminates level grinding (added by the DLC), and the somewhat large variety of possible endings.
Huh. I sort of regret putting off playing this for so long just because I knew it had a trash-tier localization and suspected it was extremely grindy.
It certainly has more than its share of issues (the awful localization, it is pretty grindy, the constantly re-used assets, mind-numbing/cringe-inducing plot developments, quite a number of auto-lose battles, a host of painful side-characters, tons of trap items to waste your limited resources on), and yet there’s just so much to collect while bap-bap-bapping away at enemies that I can’t help but enjoy playing it. Some advice:
Picking up the DLC Pack is well worth it for the two extra characters alone, as they make the early-mid game much less punishing due to being notably more powerful than the two you start with, and you should limit your Plan creations to unlocking and adding enemies to the 16mb dungeons (the ones that cost 100+ are DLC content and can be saved for a second playthrough), removing the damage cap, increasing the jump height, and unlocking two of the CPU Candidate characters (who cost 1024mb each).
Then on any potential NG+ playthroughs you can unlock the other character, the Colosseum, the DLC dungeons, and the highest level equipment (completely skipping all the weaker stuff, which is just a waste to unlock).
One final thing that may be worthwhile to be aware of, is that pressing the L1 button will skip attack/transformation animations.
When your game world has 4 methods of increasing travel speed (faster walking upgrades, teleport bottles, ship travel, & geoboard riding) and still ends up a chore to navigate… well, that’s a serious problem. Especially considering that right before the final battle a ton of sidequests become available, and finding/completing them requires backtracking across and re-visiting everywhere you’ve been before. The Xillia cameo is also pretty painful.
Ultimately I would have to say that this game is not worth bothering with unless either:
A) You have not played Zestiria (and want to)
B) You have not watched the Zestiria Anime adaptation (and want to)
As the background here will help enhance the story and events there.
This game is indeed the second coming of Planescape: Torment.
Which raises the question: If the above statement is true, why exactly have I spent 40+ hours backtracking and grinding random things in Tales of Berseria (a game which by all appearances I’m not very fond of)? Several reasons.
The first and largest is resource management. Resource management in an RPG, especially a story-driven RPG, is a terrible idea pretty much 100% of the time. Each of the three attributes in this game consists of a separate resource pool which you can spend to increase your chance to complete various related challenges/checks. These pools do not automatically refill; rather there are three separate item types that can restore them. That’s atrocious. The one-time-use unique items system is a lesser issue, but also pretty bad. Having unique consumable items is an awful enough idea on its own, but to take it a step further and restrict how many you can carry? Shameful.
A more subjective reason for not playing it much right now is the lack of guides/walkthroughs. I can play RPGs without them (I did so for Pillars, Tyranny, and most recently Staglands after all), but would prefer not to. Generally speaking I only play most games once, so I’d like to make sure I’ve seen/done everything in the first playthrough and not missed anything. And this seems like the kind of game where it’s incredibly easy to miss things.
The final reason being that (comparatively) Berseria is a known factor, where you can just sit back and grind/collect whatever without having to really think about anything or worry much about missing a chunk of the story/characterizations. This game however requires more of an active investment.
I do indeed eventually plan on making that effort, as from what little I’ve seen so far it looks like it rewards such many times over, but it will have to wait until after Berseria‘s finished… and may end up getting sidelined again in favor of the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda.
In Act IV now, having returned to Loegres post-Temple.
The game does indeed open up a little once you get through the sea gate and unlock ship expeditions. This doesn’t really last though and the enemy-infested areas get ridiculously long at times: There’s that insanely oversized mass of tunnels after you first escape the Earth Pulse for instance, and the seemingly never-ending stretch of Reef before you reach Palamides Temples.
Making these areas worse is that they tend to be (over)populated by only 3-4 varieties of enemy groups. Presumably this is a result of the new equipment mastering system, to give players a decent chance of finding the unique equipment drops each enemy has. Which is dumb. They should have went with an increased drop chance and reduced the number of enemies and repetitious pseudo-corridors instead.
The railroading has also been pretty bad so far. Areas are often blocked off and returning to previous locations is heavily restricted, sort of forcing you to grind each area to get all the monster-drop equipment the very first opportunity you get… since there may not be a second chance anytime soon. The Katz chests can be skipped though since all they reward you with are either fashion items or an invitation to the Katz Corner location (which can only be visited just before the final dungeon).
Worst of all I think, is that at this point the storyline takes a dive and starts heavily mimicking Zestiria. Suddenly Malevolence is the focus and starts visibly showing up out of nowhere.
The actual combat is okay I suppose, though I’m not really feeling the Soul System. Against most random trash mobs it’s fine, but against bosses and boss-like enemies it’s pretty easy to get stuck with a low Soul count and be unable to combo or Soul Burst. I’ve been using Velvet exclusively, now with the following Arte setup:
Avalanche Fang -> Soaring Dragon -> Grounding Strike -> Scale Crusher
Mega Sonic Thrust -> Slag Assault -> Defiant Conviction -> Moonlight Cyclone
Cerberus Wave -> Binding Frost -> Heaven’s Wrath -> Infernal Torment
Swallow Dance -> Gouging Spin -> Searing Edge -> Shadow Form
With the 4 guard Artes being set to whatever weakness the current boss(like) enemy has. I’m not all that fond of Heaven’s Wrath though; while cool, it takes rather long to finish (which is an issue when Therionized). So I might try to switch it out eventually for something else. Maybe another Stunning attack.
