 |
|
Jul 20th, 2010 at 09:18:13 - Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2) |
Valkyrie Profile is the sequel (prequel?) to the PS1 classic (which I actually disliked for the combat and timed play)
You play as Alicia, a young princess. She shares her body with the spirit of Silmeria, a valkyrie. Silmeria disobeyed Odin and so was reincarnated in Alicia's body. Being a child with a second person inside her, she was feared, thought insane or possessed, and so was cast out by her father, who told the kingdom she had died. Alicia/Silmeria escapes capture by another valkyrie for return to Odin and embarks on a journey to prevent a war between Midgard (human world) and Asgard (heaven).
Valkyrie Profile 2 is beautiful. The attention to detail in the character models and especially the backgrounds in towns and buildings blew my mind. I was in love with this game’s exterior at first sight. My favorite scenes were home interiors. Wind ruffles the curtains and light plays off the plates on the table. Exploration in towns and the world is 2-D side-scrolling. Push left or right to advance those directions, push up to enter buildings, etc.
The game play matched the visual quality. You basically progress through a series of towns and dungeons with a really cool map feature that tells you what % of the map you’ve explored and what % of treasures you’ve acquired. You’ll usually explore the whole map getting from A to B, and that treasure % was fun to increase because of the challenging puzzles. Alicia/Silmeria has a photon gun she uses to manipulate the environment. Like a typical platformer, she can also jump and swing her sword. Photons temporarily freeze enemies in place. Enemies are visible in the dungeon and one can generally choose to fight (by running into them) or avoid (jump over or freeze them). Shooting a frozen enemy swaps the position of Alicia and the enemy. Photons also bounce off surfaces, allowing for angled shots to shoot enemies (and thus switch places with them by shooting them again) in hard-to-reach spots. Alicia can also push frozen enemies, and if she jumps and shoots a (flying) enemy, that enemy will switch places with her and be frozen where she was mid-jump, allowing the player to essentially 'build' steps with enemies. Puzzles consisted of manipulating enemies in this way, and this was usually optional just for treasure chests.
The game also has a 'sealstone' system in dungeons. Sealstones are objects with special properties that grant buffs or area effects to the party or the enemies, depending on who is holding the stone and where the stone is placed in the dungeon. Whenever you encounter a new type of sealstone, you can 'store' it, making it available for use later. At a 'spring,' you can retrieve stored sealstones and store others. On a 'dais,' you place sealstones to grant area effects. On a 'shell,' you nullify the effect of the sealstone placed there. For example, if I found a +25% damage sealstone, I would put it on a dais to get the benefit. If I found a +25% damage taken sealstone, I might put it on a dais or a shell. I'd put it on a dais because it effects enemies as well, so maybe I'd do this if I was feeling strong. Otherwise, I'd spare myself some deaths and put it in the shell to cancel the effect. I enjoyed being able to play with areas of effect, debilitate enemies, and buff myself, although I mostly used 2 orbs the entire game: 200% experience/0 gold and the 200% healing one. I found that I made the game a bit easy by using the experience orb, as my characters were waaaay higher than those I read about when consulting walkthroughs and arriving at the last boss.
I generally found the battles easy, even the boss fights (except the last one the first couple tries, who slaughtered me), and I admit to button mashing my combos instead of thinking them out. Whatever, it worked fine. Battles are 3D fields in real time containing your party and enemies. The battlefields varied in geography. You have a stock of Attack Points, which are depleted when using abilities or dashing. Oddly, you can't jump in battles, but you can dash, quickly closing in on an enemy. Each character in your party (of 4) is assigned to a button. Pressing their respective buttons makes them attack in sequences you set up in the party menu. Characters have up to three attacks. I honestly, like I alluded to, didn't pay much attention to the finer points of stringing together combos or anything. Some attacks launch enemies in the air, others knock them down, and you're supposed to time and use your characters' attacks in a logical sequence such that all the attacks land and you do lots of damage. I found button-mashing to be a find tactic. I just didn't use attacks that lifted enemies in the air because when that happened, subsequent attacks missed because the enemy was flying still. Special abilities I hardly used either because the menu was clunky and I did fine just attacking. If you string together enough attacks, you build a combo meter and can unleash a powerful attack. Also, in each batch of enemies, there is a leader. The battle is over when you kill the leader, so I'd usually make a break for him if I could to end the battle sooner.
There are a couple other aspects of the game that seemed kind of neat but that I didn't need to succeed. Enemies have distinguishable 'parts' that can be broken off based on which side you attack them from. So, a knight enemy might have a sword and shield. If you position your characters so they attack the shield, the knight may block a lot, but if you break the shield, maybe a 'broken shield' or some item drops after the battle. Same with the sword. These body parts can be used to make special items at shops. I hardly made anything and didn't find it necessary to grind these items. At shops, there is a reward system for spending cash. The more cash you spend, the more items become available. This was a neat idea, and I definitely thought I'd have to spend ridiculous amounts of money to see some rare items. It turns out though that the rare items are crafted with these body parts and the unlockable shop items are usually good, but not totally awesome. It usually didn't take long to unlock most of the shop items just from potion and regular item upgrade purchases.
I found the skill system to be very cool. There are three 'colors' of equippable items. Various skills are unlocked by equipping combinations of color and type of item. So, maybe you learn a skill to do more damage against dragons by equipping a green helmet, green boots, and a blue trinket. You fight a while with that combination of equipment and eventually learn the skill, which you can equip. Skills cost points to equip, and as characters level up, they gain more points, increasing the amount/strength of skills they can equip at once.
It's been a couple months since I beat this, so I don't remember story details too well. I remember enjoying it and thinking it was pretty good. Suffice it to say there are several twists of secret identities, who is who, and one of your party members betrays you to pursue his twisted fantasy of creating an alternate universe that doesn't exist under the rule of the gods, and seeks to rule it with another valkyrie as his (unwilling) mistress. Thinking about approaching the final battle still gives me chills because the last boss/ex party member is so deluded with power and lust for his captive valkyrie. It was kind of disturbing. You enter a path circling his chamber and have to run around the circumference watching him through the pillars and listening to him "Oh, my love" "Finally we are together" while he makes these weird moaning noises. Yeah, kind of disturbing.
Anyway, I totally enjoyed this game. It looks great, is loads of fun, and has a decent challenge level.
add a comment  - read this GameLog  |
|
Jul 18th, 2010 at 05:15:35 - Overlord (PC) |
Finished Overlord today. By finished I mean lost interest and don't intend to play anymore. I'm on the next-to-last boss and just don't feel compelled to try and beat it. This boss requires that I grind for minions. Since I hate straight up grinding in games unless it serves a purpose other than leveling up or progressing in the game, and since x hours of grinding for extra minions will net me about two boss fights and an ending, it's just not worth it.
I feel like Overlord was fun in large part for its minions. They are entertaining to watch because they're so silly and adoring of the Overlord. Over time, they become less interesting, and since I feel there's not a strong story line or anything else to keep me interested, I became tired of the game. It doesn't help that I began Rogue Galaxy and am enjoying it far more than Overlord.
So I found the last boss and the various endings on YouTube. I was close enough. I experienced winning vicariously through YouTube videos.
One expectation I had for this game was that I would be able to command a vast army of minions. '100 or so' was what I was thinking. I made it up to 35. On the YouTube videos, the players had up to 45. Speaking of grinding, the way to increase your minion pool is to sacrifice minions to upgrade your helmet. How many minions does it take to upgrade your helmet all the way? About 2000! Want to grind for 2000 minions to sacrifice? Mmmm, no. I have this tension playing games because I'm somewhat of a completionist an perfectionist, but I hate wasting time. I would love to upgrade all my weapons and armor to max everything out, but there's no way I want to spend the time doing it. At the premature end of a game like this, I'm just irritated that if I want more minions, I have to spent way more extra time to get them. Of course it's an extra challenge, and it's a way to get people to spend more time with the game, and it's rewarding. Anyway, I'm glad I checked this one out. Controlling allies in this way was new to me, and it was a creative game. It just got a little boring after a while and I lost interest.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jul 14th, 2010 at 07:58:54 - Rogue Galaxy (PS2) |
I take back what I said about liking all my characters. Jupis reminds me of Jar Jar Binks. Therefore, I do not like Jupis.
I quit playing today because after a very long time without saving, I died. This comprised the boss fight in the Juraikan ruins and following cut scenes, cut scenes and story progression for obtaining all three artifacts, Zegram's betrayal and associated mini-boss fight, tons of cut scenes and CG sequences in the Rosa desert, including another (2?) mini-boss fights and one real one. I died on the real one. My fault for forgetting to save after the Juraikan ruins, but man, that's a lot of crap to go through again. Hopefully most of it is skippable.
The Frog Log is getting filled out. I have the feeling I'm quite a higher level than intended, now a good 10 levels over my highest level items, and some special fights are very easy. If you find all the save points on a planet, the map shows all treasure chests left so you can go pick up what you missed. I'm still missing the Sun Key, so whatever chests are left now on those planets require that. Insectron is still nearly untouched, except I'm rich now so I've bought a ton of battle food and I think I'm slowly leveling up my bugs. I'm up to 11 or 14 or something in the hunter rankings. I've got a lot more quarries to get and should get up more spots once I tackle them. My Revelation flow charts are getting very filled in, with a few noticeable items missing. There's a four-leaved clover spot and a couple others I've never seen yet. I found my first rare item following a hint from a boy in Vedan about a beating heart he threw in the trash. Dumpster dove and found it.
One cool thing this game does is catch you up on the story every time you load. I find this a great way to remember exactly what I was doing, not that I've had gaps in my play of this, but I could see it being really nice.
I'm unclear as to why the character designers made Dorgengoa a morbidly obese man. I actually thought he was confined to a chair most of the game until I think he was out of it in one scene. I'm still not sure he was and think my mind was playing tricks, or perhaps I dreamed it, because he's always in that chair and I don't see how he can walk.
Haven't touched the factory more, but have obtained a few more recipes. I figure I'm 2/3 - 3/4 of the way through the story. I like guessing this.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jul 11th, 2010 at 23:09:36 - Rogue Galaxy (PS2) |
After spending a lot of time over the last week with this game, I claim it's the best RPG I've played in...years probably. The last one I remember liking this much may have been FFX. Seriously, it's phenomenal. I haven't written my Valkyrie Profile 2 entry yet, but that was my favorite for the past year or so, until Rogue Galaxy shoved it off the top of the mountain.
I've already mentioned story, which is still great. Each character has an intriguing back story that ties into the main narrative. Steve the robot was created by a Dr. Piccochio (sp?), who you meet when stopping a computer genius and disgruntled fired Daytron employee (who becomes a party member), Jupis, from using Daytron's mainframe to take over the capital city of Zerard. Dr. Piccachio lost his son somehow and kind of recreated or implanted him or something into the body of Steve. So as Steve travels the galaxy, Piccachio's son gets to go on adventures and tell his dad about the outside world. Vedan, a mining planet, is ruled by the mob, basically, and there you meet Deego, an anthropomorphic dog (lots of anthropomorphic characters in this game, sharks, dolphins, cats, dogs, etc.) who drinks a lot. In his military days, he and a top person in the mob were close friends, but they parted ways after an incident in which they were set up to kill civilians. They are both weighed down by their past, and the first Vedan level involves killing Deego's old friend. The level culminates in a 1-on-1 fight between the two. When Deego wins, his old friend/enemy stands up to the past and decides to go kill those who used them in the past. It's very tragic when the son of the man he kills knifes him. Anyway, point being the back stories are very well tied to the main story and it makes me care about each of my 8 characters.
The overall goal thus far is for my team of pirates to find the lost planet, Eden, which is rumored to have great treasures and resources that if distributed fairly will cease material suffering across the galaxy. Unfortunately, the evil corporation, Daytron, is also searching. I'm currently traversing three ancient ruins on 3 different planets looking for keys for something-or-other to tell me how to do something-or-other concerning Eden. One of the only negative things I have to say about this game is that the dungeons tend to be too long. The first set of ruins I found was a pair of towers constructed by bickering brothers who each wanted to claim their father's throne. These towers together took me nearly all of Saturday to play through. The first one alone may have been like 5 hours long, and the second one no more than half that. And it's not the type of dungeon I can save in the middle of and come back to days later because the paths are winding, the two towers are interconnected, there are 8 floors on each with pathways from one tower to the next at certain floors. I would be hopelessly lost if I'd set the game down without completing the towers. This is definitely the longest by far of areas in the game to now.
The funny thing is that even though the towers took forever to get through, I was totally engrossed. The exploration of the maps is just so damn fun. I love exploring the maps in this game, and on a more general point, the game makes it interesting to explore, and you're intermittently rewarded for doing so. Treasure chests are scattered throughout the world. Check every corner and you will find chests. Some chests are locked with various keys: earth, star, sun...maybe another. I've had the earth key a while and just found the star key in a spot where I could have gotten it much earlier in a chest that required the earth key. So most of the chests I find I can open because they don't require a key. Others require a key I don't have. Others are Mimics. Mimics are vicious in this game. In fact the first time I encountered one, I couldn't believe it was so strong, thought I was in an area too high for me, burned my inventory of potions, and cursed the game a lot for being cheap. Now I've figured out how to defeat them without much hassle, but man, they hit hard and have tons of HP. But, when you kill a Mimic, they drop a Hunter's Coin. Hunter's Coins are accumulated from Mimics and challenge battles. Sometimes instead of a regular battle, you'll get a challenge battle with conditions to meet like "Win without taking damage" or "Defeat all enemies in 18 seconds" or something. Hunter's Coins upgrade your Hunter's License, which gives you discounts at shops. I currently have a Silver License that gives me a 10% discount in shops. At 40 coins I can upgrade, and I've got 38. There are various items in shops, including some rare ones, that require a Platinum License. So defeating Mimics and challenge battles is in my favor and it's always exciting because I tend to save my AP (ability points) for these fights and then go all out to get my coins.
Long dungeons are also rewarding for increasing your Hunter's Rank. I explained about this in the previous post, but basically if you kill a certain amount of each type of monster, you get points that increase your Hunter's Rank, and you get prizes for advancing. I'm currently 23 out of 100, so am doing quite well. I found out where you can get information on quarries, which are powerful monsters you have to lure out with vaguely described items. I just killed one quarry before turning off the game last night for like 18,000 points and moved up from like 40 to 23. The rewards so far haven't been great, mostly just weapons I already had and a Hunter's Coin, but I'm sure the higher rewards will be amazing. I'm nearly at 20, and I still have a lot of quarries to find and kill, plus many dungeons to go through, so I'm pretty confident I'll take #1 before I'm done with the game.
Finally, the last reason playing for a ridiculous amount of time through those two towers wasn't boring was because I'm constantly leveling up weapons. I found this frog, Toady, who due to pollution and mutation, can eat maxed out weapons and combine them to make a new ones. When you use a weapon for 10 or 15 battles, its 'skill' gets 'maxed out,' meaning it's as strong as it's going to get, aside from elemental attributes that continue to level up. Then you have Toady analyze the weapon, and he will suggest which other weapon to combine it with. This results over time in a large database of item combinations that you can play with to see what results. It's always a better item than the two you put in, and sometimes some special variant of a 'normal' version of an item. The secretary for the Galaxy Corporation is named MIO. You spend the first huge portion of the game after joining Dorgengoa's pirates trying to renew your galactic travel visa for your ship through MIO. She has a 'completion guide' and tells you what % of various secondary game objectives you've completed and will give you a prize for completing them. One is analyzing 100 different weapons and creating 50 new ones, which I've done, but haven't gone for a reward yet. I'm enjoying seeing what all weapons there are and what the combinations make. Doing this often requires using low level weapons in place of better ones I have because I need the low level ones to combine with others. This keeps the game challenging because at level 40 I'm running around with a level 8 sword doing crappy damage. I always keep at least one person in my party with an up-to-date weapon so we're not all totally weak.
Finding items to fill out the Revelation chart is also very much fun. Sometimes vendors have limited supplies of certain items, and by now I know which are more rare or valuable than others (usually the ones with limited supplies), and now I'll just buy out all the limited ones if I have the money. The Revelation charts are very big and a couple characters have most of theirs completed. Items are also useful for the factory and the Insectron. After the Jupis and Daytron quest, your reward is Dr. Piccachio's item factory where you can create items you have blueprints for. You obtain blueprints by finding NPCs with little orange or blue circles by their names and talking with them. They'll give you clues about what items to use in the factory to create a new one that will be available in shops. An example might be "Combine 2 Dreamflower Ash, 2 Hellpot Flame, something very cold and something named after a monster." You've got to think a bit about what you have that's cold and maybe trial and error the monster one. There are seven legendary swords that I think can only be crafted through the factory.
And then items are useful for the Insectron tournament, which I haven't played with much. You have insect traps and rearing cages. Bait the traps, leave them around, pick them up when you've caught an insector (insect) inside, and put the insector in the rearing cage. Each rearing cage holds 5 insectors, and from there you can feed them food that increases their stats, have them battle one another which increases stats, or have them mate, producing offspring in place of the parents. I've caught like 6 or 7, played around with feeding them and making them fight, but it seems really slow to get their stats better. The point of this is to win the Insectron tournament where you fight your team of 5 against other NPCs in the galaxy's most popular competition. I tried it as soon as I had 5 and got obliterated in the lowest rank, E. It appears I'll have to raise their parameters with food, fighting and mating before trying again. There are a lot of different families of insector that have different special moves, strengths and weaknesses. The game is played out on a grid like a chess board and essentially is battle chess. One insector is designated the king and the objective is to kill the other player's king. Raising insectors seems to cost a bit of money though for the food and stuff, so could be something to give the game extended life after I'm done with (most of) the rest of it.
I originally planned to knock this out before my trip home in 2 weeks. I'd read it takes around 50-80 hours to beat the game, and the game itself boasts over 100. I figured it'd take me 80 since I'm usually on the long end, which was like 4 hours a day over 3 weeks. That would be just playing it at night during the week and half the day on Saturdays and Sundays. I'm ahead of the goal so far, but have a serious load of work that I need to get on doing before leaving. I'm considering pausing it now. That would be good to focus on working, but bad because I'd have to shelve it for one-and-a-half months. If it really does take up to 80 hours, I could do it, but if it's going to take over 100, then I might not make it and it'd be even worse to have to shelve a game 90% complete than 33% or 50%. We shall see.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
