#their special stats are story based and not gameplay based because. well.

[miyakuli]

Triangle Strategy

My obsession since a month. I finished all the routes and played so many hours, I'm finally ready to present it to you and I hope my review will pique your interest and that you'll join me in this then xD (because I LOVE IT TOO MUCH).

Triangle Strategy is a tactical rpg that also flirts with the narrative genre, in which you juggle between fights, cut scenes and choice phases that will influence the fate of Lord Serenor and the future of the continent of Norzelia. Let's say it right away, I devoured the game; I haven't enjoyed a tactical game this much since Fire Emblem 3H! The game has a lot going for it, both in terms of gameplay and narrative, but there are a few disappointing points that could have been better executed by Square Enix.

❤ The story is excellent, very well written and very engaging. The geopolitical conflict is coherent, and we don't just see everything through the eyes of the MC, there are also side moments to follow the plot from other points of view. It's easy to see that the game isn't at all Manichean; each character has their own vision of the continent's prosperity, and as a result, nobody really embodies evil or good. There's a real maturity of writing here, making TS not at all predictable or cliché. ❤ This feeling is reinforced by the choice system, since in wartime, no choice is fair to all, and concessions have to be made. This makes it almost heartbreaking to decide. The game offers us 2 forms of choice. First, dialogue choices to reinforce your character's convictions, revolving around 3 main themes: Morality, Liberty, and Utility. Then, scenario choices that will influence your game, based on a debate with your group; in fact, the convictions you've strengthened will help you win debates. It's an essential part of the story, and adds a lot of spice, if I may say so, as well as replayability (4 endings, including a "true end"). ❤ Let's talk about combat. The tactical aspect is fairly basic and easy to learn. On the other hand, it offers real diversity in terms of combinations. Each recruit has their own combat specialities (2 archers will not have the same attack and defense characteristics, and will have very different skills too). As a result, you really get caught up in studying the field, weather and enemies to come up with the best possible strategy. What's more, the game offers a fair amount of challenge in certain battles, so you'll sometimes have to start them all over again, which really pushes you to persevere and find the best possible combinations; it was extremely addictive for me. ❤ In terms of artistic direction, the 2d-hd pixel art is really beautiful, with superb lighting effects and depth of field. ❤ For the audio, the game is already fully dubbed (Japanese or English), which greatly strengthens our attachment to the characters and our immersion in the story. I played it in Japanese and recognized some big names in dubbing, so it really is a top-quality cast. Now I'd like to turn to the thing that most amazed me about this game: the music. Composed by Akira Senju, whose music for FMA Brotherhood I already greatly admire, he created here an absolutely incredible soundtrack! All the themes are memorable and effectively accompany the atmosphere of every moment in the game. I can say without hesitation that this soundtrack has immediately become one of my must-haves <3

+/- The group's main characters are very likeable and pretty well developed over the course of the game. It's a pity that this is not the case for the other units in our group. Their recruitment is done in a very expeditious way (the characters are accessible as soon as you've increased your convictions enough) based on a short scene like, "Hi, I've come to fight by your side". And then you unlock 2 extra stages if you raise their stats enough, and that's it…at least in Fire Emblem, the appearance of secondary units was done through combat, which allowed us to learn and test their skills, it was much more useful. +/- NG+ is really cool if you want to keep playing and unlock new characters or scenarios. On the other hand, why doesn't the option just appear in the menu, it's pretty confusing to launch (because yes, I relaunched another day and had forgotten about the little explanatory window, but come on!).

✖ Some combat animations are quite slow, and you can't really get past them even when speeding up. ✖ The exploration phases are not very interesting (only 2 phases have a real impact on the scenario, otherwise it's just to recover items). ✖ The game's OST is neither sold on Steam, nor accessible on Spotify or anything else, I want to tear my hair out in frustration. PLEASE SQUARE ENIX, LET ME OWN THIS MUSIC!!!! (;;)

As you can see, after 80 hours of play, Triangle Strategy is for me an excellent game in its genre, thanks to its narrative and strategic qualities, and I can say that I felt a great sadness to have finished it x') However, I'd recommend it to those who like to read, because yes, the dialogues are rich and abundant, and I think that might put off a lot of people expecting more combat and less blah-blah.

As far as I'm concerned, it's this balance between narrative and combat that gives this game its charm and strength, and which I'm sure will convince other lovers of the genre. I'm convinced of it.

➡ My Steam page

[therobotmonster]

Power Armor Stuff it seems weird Fallout 4 didn't have

I'm feeling ramble-y.

Junk/Salvage Armor Types for the Minutemen, Railroad, Children of Atom, and Atom Cats. With the role power armor plays, variants of the "Raider" type for other factions with slightly different stats but very different aesthetics would have seemed a no-brainer. (That and making all the paint jobs work on all the models so you can mix-and-match your look, but hey.)

Minuteman armor would be junk-y but cleaner than raider armor and with revolutionary touches to the plating. The face-shield of the helmet would be repurposed from a destroyed minuteman statue, and the helmet would have a tri-corn hat design. It would have the option for a backpack mod for the chest for extra storage, since transporting supplies is part of the whole "help-the-commonwealth" ethos.

Railroad Armor would be locomotive themed and designed around fighting robots and synths. Special options for a stealth chest mod that would give a big bonus against robots/synths with a lesser one to other enemy types. Railroad paint job provides protection against energy weapons, etc.

Children of Atom armor would be like raider armor but made of higher-tech parts, while being more ramshackle, with glowing green chunks of exposed power source visible in the armor. Rad-emitter mod. Has almost no radiation shielding.

Atom Cat Armor would be made of car parts. Exhaust pipes, bumper-shoulders, basically think an Autobot not designed to transform and made out of a muscle car. The Atom cat paint deco should be as shiny and clean as imaginable without looking completely out of place.

And while not faction-based, a raider armor type that clads their armor in repurposed super-mutant armor is just... so obvious.

As for DLC Power Armor:

How is it that the Rust Devils don't have an armor type built from robot parts? How does the faction of robot-obsessed weirdos not have robot power armor?

And imagine how cool it would be if the custom power armor for Nuka world was an anamatronic park mascot armor? Cartoony Nuka-Bear Head, the kids would love it.

You could put the Children of Atom armor in Far Harbor, but the lack of a diving suit armor is striking.

Some of these could just be specific parts, like helmets, but the power armor just seemed undercooked for how big of a mechanic it was.

-

And speaking of power armor, there should have been a power armor factory in/outside of Boston.

Or, if not a factory, a military depot specifically for power armor, or an armor-developing vault. This would be a higher-tier area, one you'd hear about in rumors. This is the first Fallout with a heavy power armor focus, and the first with salvaged/junk armor, so tying that to a regional abundance of armor makes sense and would put the concept front-facing in the story as well as the gameplay.

When you get there there's actually not much in the way of power armor left because you've been beaten to the punch... which is why every Tom, Dick, and Immorten Joe has power armor by the time you're high level. The Commonwealth has been raiding this place a bit at a time since the war, and the use and maintenance of power armor is now a part of the post-war society.

This could be its own area, or it could be a better use of Fort Strong (More power armor in the basement would be a big temptation for the Brotherhood, maybe unlock a new brotherhood armor style post-mission).

[atwas-gaming]

The base game of Sonic Frontiers completely spoiled this fandom.

Is Final Horizon difficult? Yes. Do I suck at it? Heck yes! But do I hate it? NO!

So far, I've only gotten past the first trial tower. And yeah, I do wish Sega had warned us that the new DLC would have a MAJOR difficulty spike. I thought I was doing badly as Amy, Knux, and Tails because their stats weren't levelled up and I was having trouble adjusting to the new abilities; and that could be some of it, but even playing as Sonic is more difficult than the base game.

I've seen a lot of people say that Sonic fans are lousy gamers in general, and... I think they're right, ha! Some of the platforming in Final Horizon feels like a 3D Metroid or Hollow Knight- one slip-up and if you're not dead, or you've at least lost several minutes' work.

Don't even get me started on those Cyberspace time trials, ugh. I only opened 1 portal, and never found the goal.

Even the map is more difficult. The puzzles themselves are much more challenging than in the base game, and they only reveal about a half dozen map squares.

But... it makes sense. For one thing, this was where the Ancients gathered for prayer and reflection. The people gathered here would have no means of defending themselves; and besides, this seems to have been the center of all their knowledge and technology. So, it HAD to have the most sophisticated cybersecurity (which, for the Ancients, extended into the physical world as well as the digital- hence the lunatic platforming). Anyway, Elder and Hermit Koco already said Ouranos was designed to hide and protect the Emeralds.

The story gets even more complicated when you start defeating the Trial Towers (I've only defeated the 1st one) and you have to fight the Titans' pilots. The other Koco might be forgiving of Sonic for what he did to the Titans, but not the ghosts of the pilots. Makes sense to me that they might be influencing cyberspace and even the Ouranos security system to keep Sonic from doing any more damage.

As for the gameplay itself- yeah, it's hard. But I don't think it's unfair (altho, again, I think Sega should have warned us about the difficulty spike). Given time, I think I can figure out how to get thru these. They're not too much worse than some of the Special Koco from the 2nd DLC, or the Rhea Island towers.

And am I complaining a lot about it? Yeah, I am. But at the same time, I can admit that the main problem isn't the design, it's my skill level (although I will forever complain about Sega's camera angles...). The level design is actually not bad, IMO. I just need to learn how to use it.

[dangan-kagura]

Why I Love Senran Kagura

I need to use this blog for things besides Danganronpa stuff. Now, for the first time, I’m finally gonna talk about something related to Senran Kagura.

If you’ve never heard of Senran Kagura, it’s a series of anime-based games involving big breasted ninja girls. The theme of the series is of course fanservice and the genre depends on the game, but officially the main games are of the beat ‘em up genre. For this blog, I’m gonna talk about how I got into Senran Kagura, what I love about it, as well as the downside about being a fan of the series in the 2020s.

How I Got Into It

I can’t remember if it was 2016 or 2017, but one of those years was how I found out about it. I went to Youtube and saw someone’s video of Ikaruga’s story in Shinovi Versus. The gameplay is kinda what caught my attention. It was an anime game that wasn’t an RPG. At the time, I had learned about the Neptunia series from the same Youtuber (who closed his account in 2017 I think) and even though Neptunia is a series of RPGs, I wanted to be a part of it because I loved its fanservice moments and its concept of being a parody of the video game industry, so I played their hack ‘n’ slash spinoffs.

Moreover, at the time, I stopped playing Guilty Gear because I couldn’t tolerate how people were favoring Blazblue which I didn’t think was as cool as Guilty Gear, and also because I couldn’t stand to see the fandom obsessed with Bridget. So trying to find a new series to replace Guilty Gear was almost challenging because most anime games aren’t fighting games, for the majority, they’re all RPGs, and nothing came close to what Guilty Gear is like. Senran Kagura however was a beat ‘em up/hack ‘n’ slash game, which were genres that I was more into. As soon as I found out about the theme being fanservice with big breasted anime girls, I probably thought to myself, “Holy shit! I gotta play this game!” By summer 2017, I finally got the opportunity to play Senran Kagura Estival Versus and have been a fan since then.

Now, I’m gonna explain what I love about this series.

1. Gameplay

The main Senran Kagura games are action beat ‘em up games. Its gameplay is similar to games like Dynasty Warriors and Streets of Rage, but without the mission-based stuff from the Warriors series. A key thing is Shinobi Transformation where the girls will change into their ninja outfits and have increased stats and the ability to use Ninja Arts which work like super specials. At the end of each stage, you’ll usually fight one of the other playable girls, and as you do, using Ninja Arts will cause the opponent to strip their clothes. If successful, you could strip your opponent until they're only in their underwear, or even until they're fully nude.

The spinoffs are also interesting. There’s Senran Kagura Bon Appetit which is a rhythm game, Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash which is a third-person shooter involving water guns, Senran Kagura Reflexions which I can’t really describe since it’s not an action game, and Senran Kagura Peach Ball which involves pinball. Out of these four, Bon Appetit and Reflexions are my favorites.

Basically, because of its gameplay and different genres, I saw Senran Kagura as a series that stood out from other anime games, since the majority of them are RPGs.

2. It’s Rated M for Mature

Since stripping is something you’ll see in the series, of course it would have to be rated M by the ESRB. By comparison, most anime games are usually rated T, which feels just as average as playing your typical Japanese RPG that isn’t rated M. Like, I mentioned that I do enjoy certain Neptunia spinoffs, but the fact that the series is rated T wasn’t enough to satisfy me. So because Senran Kagura was rated M, again, I saw Senran Kagura as a series that stood out from other anime games. Strangely, only the first game Senran Kagura Burst, released for the 3DS in 2013 (localized) that game was rated T, so Burst is not quite as explicit compared to the sequels.

I mean, the fanservice in the sequels are a little more explicit. Like, when you strip the girls naked, there’ll be shining lights where their breasts and private area will be. The only time the series ever showed the girls’ breasts was in the OVA. It was quite shocking to me and felt more like I was watching High School DxD. While I do have some taste in fanservice, even I have limits and High School DxD was too much for me to handle. Why would I be into Senran Kagura fanservice? The answer is in the next section.

3. I Hate My Little Pony and Can’t Stand Bronies

This next section is quite longer so heads up.

I’m not ashamed to admit it, I don’t like My Little Pony and don’t take very kindly to that subculture of adult male fans. Now before you come after me ranting that I should at least consider watching Friendship is Magic, I already have 10 years ago and didn’t think it was that good of a show even to this day. Literally, MLP looked like a really cheap kids cartoon.

It’s like this, when I compare My Little Pony to some of my favorite childhood cartoons, like the ones by Klasky Csupo (e.g. Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys, Rocket Power, As Told by Ginger) MLP just falls flat for me. Everything from the songs, jokes, writing, animation and art style, it has no appeal to me. And knowing the real kind of target audience that show has, no way in hell would I wanna be an enthusiast for the franchise. Yet it sickens me to see that there is a group of people out there who actually have a thing for it. There’s other things about the show I don’t like, but I’d rather not talk about it here. And I would share my other taste in childhood cartoons, but maybe some other time.

Now you might be wondering, what does this have to do with being a Senran Kagura fan? Easy. To me, Senran Kagura is my way to counter all the brony nonsense I see on the internet. Ever since I learned about bronies in 2014, I only learned about the toxicity they came with, such as making dark humor jokes and fanfics that depict the ponies as serial killers. And it might not be toxic, but I was disgusted from seeing bronies make dubstep remixes of songs from the show. It was so ridiculous, I didn’t wanna trust dubstep nerds out of concern that all dubstep nerds are bronies. Moreover, the majority of bronies don’t seem that interested in other kinds of kids cartoons (except for SpongeBob), by stereotype, bronies would instead talk about their taste in violent video games.

Things only got worse years later. In 2016, every time I went out in public, I saw lots of people wearing shirts that had that mascot guy from the Fallout games. Obviously it was to capitalize on the release of Fallout 4, but I was suspicious that these people were all bronies, because I was aware that there was a Youtube series called Fallout Equestria (or something) which if I’m right depicts the My Little Pony cast in the Fallout series setting. I mean, I probably thought that because I was also aware that there was a pony mod in Skyrim, so in other words, I couldn’t trust fans of either The Elder Scrolls or Fallout due to suspicion that everyone in their fandoms was a brony. The fact that I don’t trust bronies is pretty much the reason why I chose not to play either of those two games.

There was no escape from bronies, they were everywhere on the internet, and I don’t just mean p0rn sites. Later in 2014, I was visiting TASVideos to see tool-assisted speedruns for my favorite classic games. Yet some people on the site were bronies that I didn’t want to interact with. 2015 was the year I learned about Twitch, and sure enough, there were occasions when in the comments, someone would try to put a pony reference and I didn’t think of that person as trustworthy, because I figured that person was your typical brony stereotype, someone who would watch an episode or two for an hour, and afterwards they would play their favorite violent video game. Since then, I’ve done my best to avoid anything related to bronies, even if it was something like avoiding The Living Tombstone’s music.

Basically, ever since I learned about bronies, I lost all faith in humanity. It's one reason why I hated the 2010s. It’s also one reason why I don’t have many friends, because I don’t want to make friends with someone who actually likes to watch a cheap-looking cartoon about ponies that is meant to have a little girl's target audience. But my prayers were answered when I got into Senran Kagura years later, because I knew that it had what a man like me is looking for. I don’t get off on ponies, I get off on big breasted anime girls, and thankfully, I don’t think anyone I’ve met in the Senran Kagura fandom has admitted that they’re bronies, and frankly, I don’t even wanna know. So when someone throws brony or pony shit in my face, I’ll do my best to ignore them and just think of Senran Kagura instead. So long as I’m a Senran Kagura fan, I’ll think to myself that it makes me a better person than bronies. And if you’re a brony reading this, I do apologize if I might’ve offended you or sounded prejudiced.

The Downside About Being a Fan

This won’t be divided into sections, I’ll try to briefly explain the recent downside about being a Senran Kagura fan in the 2020s.

Basically, the series creator/righteous boobage producer, Kenichiro Takaki, left the series’ publishers Marvelous, and it was announced that Senran Kagura 7even was canceled. Why? Well, since 2018, the latest PlayStation games with sexual themes, which mainly includes anime games, have been given censorship regulations. For the localized PS4 release of Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal, a minigame where you can tickle the girls and kiss them ended up getting removed. This new regulation, to my knowledge, caused Senran Kagura 7even to face development hell since they knew that what they intended for the game was not gonna be approved. Fans like me were pretty upset about this.

Currently, the latest game in the series is Senran Kagura Peach Ball, released for the Nintendo Switch in 2019. Since then, there hasn’t been any new kind of announcement for a new installment to replace the unreleased Senran Kagura 7even. But that doesn’t mean new games aren’t being made. In 2020, Kenichiro Takaki released Kandagawa Jet Girls before leaving Marvelous. It has the same fanservice theme Senran Kagura is known for, and I like that it’s a racing game. Of course, the game is rated T so it's been toned down, and unfortunately, it's a stand-alone title so there isn't a sequel. And in 2021, Senran Kagura got to have a crossover game with Neptunia. While it doesn’t have a lot of characters, it’s probably my favorite Neptunia spinoff, I say Neptunia because Idea Factory, not Marvelous, own the publishing rights, not to mention the setting is more related to the Neptunia universe. The only other latest news regarding Senran Kagura comes from the Japan only mobile gacha game Senran Kagura New Link. Since it probably won't have a localized release, obviously I don’t get a lot of news about it (to my knowledge, the latest update for New Link includes a crossover special with Azur Lane).

Getting back to the reasons I got into Senran Kagura, some of them are for the same reasons I got into Danganronpa. For that series, I love its gameplay (the class trials I mean), the fanservice and the series being rated M. With Senran Kagura not doing well recently, I really hoped that getting into Danganronpa would be a new kind of love. Boy was I wrong, the Danganronpa fandom was not what I was expecting it to be. I thought fans would have the same point of view as me and were into things like the fanservice and which girls were their waifus. Instead, the fandom would make headcanons that certain characters were gay, and before I knew it, the most popular Danganronpa ships involve either yaoi or yuri, any straight ship just gets a ton of hate.

Not only that, but there have been recent occasions on TikTok where I would meet a western Danganronpa fan who is also a brony. As I said, I do my best to ignore those kinds of people and just think of Senran Kagura. Yet the fact that Senran Kagura isn’t doing so well makes it hard for me nowadays. Not only was Senran Kagura my remedy from having to deal with bronies, but I now like to think of Senran Kagura as a remedy from having to deal with all the Doki Doki Literature Club nonsense I’ve been seeing in the Danganronpa fandom. I’ve already written a rant about just how terribly awful DDLC is, yet I didn’t think the game would be THAT popular in the west. It makes no sense to me that today’s gamers and otakus (at least in the west) would think that a visual novel about suicidal anime girls would be something enthusiastic. It’s not, suicide is not okay and should not be enthusiastic!

I mean, chances are, it’s probably gonna be like that no matter what kind of anime fanbase I end up joining in the future. Like, if I get into a new kind of series and find out that the majority of fans are making memes using DDLC references, that’s not cool to me and it might make me lose trust in the anime subculture. Heck, I’m not even sure if there are people in the brony subculture making My Little Pony memes using the DDLC setting. That’s just fucking toxic and it’s enough to make me think that DDLC fans are no better people than bronies. Me? I don’t get off on ponies and I don’t get off on suicidal anime girls. I get off on big breasted anime girls. If I had to choose between seeing the DDLC girls kill themselves by stabbing themselves multiple times with knives or seeing Katsuragi sexually harass her classmates in Senran Kagura via groping, I would much rather see Katsuragi grope the other girls. Yet because Senran Kagura doesn’t have a new installment, it makes it hard for me to counter DDLC’s western popularity.

Even so, at least Neptunia is still doing well. I mean, I’m trying my best to not get too involved with that series’ fandom. Like, I don’t want to come across anything hateful regarding Neptunia ReVerse having some censorship issues. I mean, the later games after that one don’t have any other issues, and frankly, I’d rather not find out. But even so, it’s not a big fandom like with Danganronpa, but at least I haven’t met anyone who calls themself a brony. And seeing cute girls transform in magical girls is still and always will be better than watching cute girls commit suicide. So if I wanted, I could use Neptunia as another remedy to deal with bullshit from either bronies or DDLC, but even with Neptunia still going strong, it doesn’t come close to being as sexy as Senran Kagura.

Overall, I love Senran Kagura no matter what is happening to it right now. Yet being a fan of the series in the 2020s has become difficult for me. There aren’t any new games, and in terms of what other anime games are out there, they don’t come close to what Senran Kagura is like. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop playing the series. I’ll still play my favorite installments and spinoffs no matter what happens to this series.

[jessjustplay]

Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition - the BEST story I have experienced this year!

September 20, 2023

Game: Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition First Time/Replaying: First Time Game Time: 24 hours Console: Nintendo Switch Started: September 1, 2023 Finished: September 19, 2023

I finished Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition yesterday. When I tell you it is the best story I have experienced this year in a video game, I'm not even exaggerating. And that's coming from someone who has finished a lot of good games this year!

Ara Fell is 2016 indie RPG, later released as the Enhanced Edition in 2020. I got lucky and came across it while browsing the Steam store. I remember looking it up on the Nintendo eShop too and being excited to find it there! (I played it on Switch.)

From the Steam sale page.

Story:

In the game, you play as and control a spunky 16-year-old human named Lita. She's skilled with a bow and arrow and has a close friend named Adrian. Together they come across an artifact that changes their lives forever.

3 party members join you in the epic quest to save the world, a floating continent called Ara Fell, from vampires. You are guided by elves and complete quests that boost your party's strength.

Along the way you learn SO MUCH about the history of Ara Fell and ALL THE CHARACTERS, including the rivalry between the elves and vampires.

The story is a SOLID epic fantasy, with intriguing backstories, so much interaction between the characters, funny dialogue, and of course the cozy pixel art, relaxing nature sounds, and beautiful music come together to make Ara Fell a very special JRPG game.

Gameplay:

I played on "Story Mode", which made for a very fun and enjoyable gaming experience.

• Battles are turn-based. You can avoid battles by avoiding the enemies on screen. (Which is easy to do.)

• Story Mode has a "Story Mode" option in-battle which is handy for leveling up because it saves you a lot of time when grinding for levels. Using this will KO your enemies in one shot. I don't recommend using this for bosses because the whole point of fighting a boss (in my opinion) is the struggle of finding the strategies to defeat them yourself, but it's a handy for grinding levels with enemies you're already beating over & over.

• I think this is just in Story Mode: your HP and MP automatically replenish after each battle. During the battles, your HP and MP will gradually restore too after each attack you make. It's very useful.

• There are "limit breaks" in this game - there is one long gauge at the bottom of the screen and when it fills to a certain point, only one of your characters (depending on the point that the gauge is filled) at can use their limit break, so will need to strategize which character's skill is most useful at the time.

• There is a Crafting feature in the game. You can craft items (healing potions, revival potions, etc.) as well as weapons and armor. You also upgrade your weapons/armor through crafting. All of the crafting supplies that you need can be found for FREE around the world, they are glimmering/shimmering. You can also buy crafting supplies from various shops.

• You can also upgrade your abilities using... well, they're like crystal balls. I can't remember their name lol. But you will find a bunch and you use them to upgrade your abilities.

One thing I didn't like...

I have ONE negative, and that is the walking controls. I am very used to using the joysticks to walk and control my character, but for some reason this game essentially requires you to use the 4-directional buttons. You can definitely tell that Lita is walking on a grid in up/down/left/right movements and is unable to walk diagonally. It's a bit weird, a little wonky and awkward, but I think it's a bump worth getting over because everything else is wonderful!

Finishing Stats:

Without a doubt the hardest boss for me was Maranda. I think I tried fighting her like 20x until I finally beat her. Final boss was a lot easier compared to her!

Overall, I loved this game! I was always excited to start up the Switch to play more. I enjoyed getting to know all of the characters and learn more about Ara Fell's past. I think the ending is perfect. Everything really comes full circle. I already said it, but it's solid storytelling. Highly recommend!

[robotsprinkles]

okay I know very few people would actually want to play this (and that it'd probably not be very good and be really hard to make) because it'd be. a lot.

but there's a part of me that really wants a mech game that's just. completely over the top in its customisation and combat system (kinda like. armored core times ten)

gonna put the rambling under a readmore because it got long

not quite like mass builder, because while the cosmetic customisation is probably the best in any game (regarding mech construction), the only parts that affect your gameplay are the weapon cores. and mass builder's gameplay and story are. passable at best

(to memory the armour you chose used to actually affect your stats like weight and armour and health — and by extension fuel efficiency and energy load and the like — but they did away with that at some point and made it so you can build a mech that looks like a walking fortress that performs like a lightweight frame and the only things that affects your stats and gameplay are weapons and os tuning. and weapon customisation doesn't matter outside of the barrel type for guns and the handle type for melee)

basically, I want a game where you can customise just about every cosmetic aspect of your mech (like in mass builder), from individual aesthetic components to the systems and materials that everything operates off

ideally the parts customisation would be somewhere on the level of mass builder (the only part of that game that doesn't suck complete ass and actually manages to be good), broken up sort of like

head>faceplate, side/back, skull/top of head

arm>shoulder, upper arm, elbow, forearm, hand

torso>primary chestplate, additional chest armour (optional), waist, back armour/flight unit, front pelvis armour, back pelvis armour, front skirt, sideskirt, back skirt

leg>thigh, knee, lower leg, ankle, foot

or at least fall of cybertron

head

shoulder

forearm

chest/torso

leg

class-specific/mod parts/special parts

maybe also mass builder's additional "accessories" where you can add four to each component (though that would be a lot harder to design around if they were treated the same as normal components)

and then you can choose like. what kind of armour and material your mech's armour panels are made of (ideally you'd be able to pick the type for each specific part separately)

armour type being things like rha, composite metal foam, tiled ceramic-metal composite, etc, and material being the type of metal and ceramic and polymer

and as well as that, things like sensors, warning systems, targeting systems/fcs, and the type of frame/motor/mobility/joint systems your mech uses

and for weapons, something similarly stupid, so you'd be able to pick like. a weapon type — laser, plasma, conventional kinetic, railgun and coilgun, particle beam, missiles/rockets, etc, then you'd get a selection of cores to which you could add and select barrels, loading systems, targeting systems, ammo, etc that all affect not just the performance but the key traits of the weapon

and then in combat you and your enemies all operate under component-based damage and your armour has different resistances to different types of damage, and different threshold levels (something like negate>resist>overwhelmed. but with better names)

so if your armour gets hit by something it negates, you don't take any damage from that and your armour is unaffected, but if you get hit by something it resists the component under it takes either no or greatly reduced damage but the armour loses some amount of durability based off the damage of the attack, and if the attacking round is overwhelming then the armour fails (and different armour types fail in different ways) and the component beneath it takes most or all of the damage from the attack

And then you've also got the ac style repair and ammo costs and the like (possibly adding a fuel/energy cost to it?). and maybe if you screw up badly enough you can either choose to end up in debt like the old ac games or you can try to play with your mech in a state of disrepair (and if you keep getting screwed and your mech gets completely trashed you need to rent a mech from some corporation and you fall into debt anyway)

[ninjapotatohead]

Sonic Chronicles, a Sonic RPG from Bioware back when they still had a perfect reputation & is the closest we got to a game based on the comics continuity. It got B's & 80%s from various review sites & magazines. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh God it hurts, please make the hurting stop.

Here's 3 quick facts about me: A. I can play Sonic games B. I can play RPG C. I can't play rhythm games to save my life

Which of these 3 facts would you say is the most important to playing a Sonic RPG? Well it turns out the answer is C because every damn attack & spell requires the player to do some Elite Beat Agents bullshit to work. Made worse that the you-did-it-wrong sound effect sounded more like a you-did-it-right SFX to me, so I didn't realize how badly I was screwing up for the longest time.

In fact, the audio top to bottom is just terrible Shadow's "voice" is the falling-down-the-tube SFX from Sonic Spinball. & the music, Hoolee Moolee the music. Apparently Bioware ran into legal issues with their soundtrack in the 11th hour or some other shit & at the last minute replaced most of the tracks with MIDIs from a fan site. The results weren't pretty.

Story is.............ok. To Bioware's credit, they've done some homework & tied previously unconnected threads from multiple past games together to form this game's backstory & this was probably the last time any Sonic game remembered the Master Emerald. However, some of these callbacks don't really amount to much in the long run. OK, so the Dark Brotherhood built the Gizoids from Sonic Battle, what of it? The gizoids in the game might just as well have elite Brotherhood troops for all the difference it makes. If Gemerl from Advance 3 made an appearance they could've gone somewhere with it but he doesn't so nevermind.

Speaking of the Dark Brotherhood, the other disappointment is that this is like the only Sonic game to incorporate elements from the archie comics canon, except not really. Instead of the Dark Legion/Julie Su/Dimitri, SC has the store brand knock-offs Dark Brotherhood/Shade/Ix. It's like getting Kylo Ren instead of Jacen Solo. I hate to imagine a sequel having substitute Freedom Fighters if Bioware kept going.

Dialogue choices seem to be there for the sake of Bioware tradition, not to actually add anything of note. You can either choose from sarcastic Sonic or serious Sonic, but the results the same regardless. This probably would've been a better game to work in a custom player avatar instead of Forces, Bioware at least could've done more with it. Tails is so insufferable about reminding the player to save the game, he continues to do it even after telling him to stop. That's how inconsequential choices are.

Stats are so weirdly implemented. Damage output is not a visible stat, you can equipped items that increase your damage but they don't show by how much. There's an "Attack" stat that you can see, but it actually refers to the attack's accuracy, which I didn't know for the longest time & was hella confused at why I was doing so little damage. You give party members protection from different elemental attacks, but there is no single enemy in the whole game that even deals any sort of elemental damage so the shields are pointless.

In short, it's a game where every facet of it fails. Crap graphics, terrible audio, lousy controls, half-assed gameplay, weak story, & a cliffhanger ending that'll never get resolved thanks to a lawsuit from a dumbass ex-writer. It may not be the worst Sonic game ever but it was the 1 that broke my heart the most.

Though, to be fair, Chronicles also sold like shit. If memory serves me, there were special "Viral" Chao that were supposed to be given out at special events, but they never were due to poor attendance from the players.

Chronicles is only just barely passable as "baby's first RPG", but it's when the game is shown to someone who's played many better RPGs that the game's many glaring flaws are laid bare for all to see.

[theabstruseone]

This is a question I kind of hate, probably because of my lifetime spent in the tabletop RPG community.

EDITION WARS ARE BULLSHIT

Every one of the Fallout games has their own vibe and feel through the gameplay and world design plus their own themes that they are trying to explore. All of them also have their weaknesses.

And it frustrates me SO MUCH when people try to proclaim one game as inherently superior to the others when it's just straight up flat out not the case. Leaving out the side-games like Tactics, Brotherhood of Steel, and Shelter...

Fallout is rough around the edges, the hidden timers, several quests have objectively bad endings if you make what seems to be the right choice, and in a game that is built around exploration there are entire areas that will be completely lost to you if you take too much time to get to them. Meanwhile, it is the template builder for the entire franchise, a technological achievement thanks to the attempts to make it compatible on NT as well as Windows 95 systems that makes it still playable today without DOS emulators or massive compatibility issues like so many games of the era, and the worldbuilding and satire are some of the best the medium has ever seen.

Fallout 2's Temple of Trials is a god-awful mess and I don't know why anyone at Interplay thought it was a good idea because it bottlenecks players right from the start into a specific character build and the other early parts of the game don't help matters, and the easter eggs and pop culture references are turned up to 11 distracting from the game. Meanwhile, the writing is some of the sharpest in the series, it had the guts to follow up on plot threads in a way that made you feel a connection to your past game even decades after the fact, and dove head-first into some tough themes in its story.

Fallout 3 was a proof-of-concept more than a fully-developed game to prove that a 3D Fallout game could work, the VATS system doesn't replace turn-based combat and the shooting is still tied to character skill which makes it feel sluggish and clunky, there are several major plot issues surrounding the main quest, and a lot of the gameplay aspects like the tunnel system for traveling combined with the quest markers obscure what few parts of the game they did well. Meanwhile, the game hammers home the feeling of the chaotic and dangerous wasteland, the world design at the start eases you into the new gameplay in a way that's brilliant for both new players and returning Fallout fans, the game rewards exploration of the world by putting so much content off the beaten path adding to replay as you will find new places you've never seen before even after a dozen playthroughs, and each quest has so many subtle ways to approach them that you probably won't even notice unless you're specifically looking for them.

Fallout New Vegas was a buggy mess that was never properly patched and I think people cut it way too much slack thanks to user-created mods that fix a lot of major bugs and glitches, the crafting system is half-baked, the rebalanced SPECIAL/skill interaction wasn't well thought out leading to the Charisma 1/Speech 100 mixmax build and Intelligence and Luck as god-stats for gaining skills and caps, and only one of the DLCs are any good with a couple being just straight-up god awful. Meanwhile, the gameplay from FO3 was tightened up, the writing is absolutely amazing, the interactions between all the factions leading to no real "right" solution and a couple of very wrong ones, the depth to the options for some quests like Beyond the Beef are mind-blowing, and Old World Blues is fucking hilarious.

Fallout 4 botched the writing on their main quest so hard it requires a massive amount of headcanon and fanfiction to fix it, the over-tutorializing in the various gameplay aspects make them feel like they're all mandatory rather than optional (you don't HAVE to do settlements or crafting if you don't want to but the game makes it seem like they're necessary), many of the quests have easy solutions that just aren't an option (especially when it comes to faction lock-outs with the Railroad, Institute, and Brotherhood where you could easily explain you're still a double-agent well past that point in the story), and there are so many obvious missed opportunities in cut content like the robot racetrack and the infamous Combat Zone while some god-awful quests like Kid in a Fridge are still there. Meanwhile, the theme of the game is the tightest of any game in the franchise with many side quests and companion quests directly feeding into the concept of rebuilding, the Survival Mode is actually well-implemented for the first time in a Bethesda title and adds so much to the gameplay, the companions are the best the series has had, the new Perks system opens up the ability to create a wide variety of unique and interesting character builds that are all viable in their own way, and the crafting and settlement system not only feeds back into the theme of rebuilding but also finally makes use of all the random crap floating around the game world that used to be just decorative assets.

Fallout 76 was a botched, broken mess at launch that was barely functional with so many glitches and bugs, the lack of NPCs before the Wastelanders expansion made the entire storyline feel depressing as hell as the only storytelling came from listening to the stories of ghosts via holotape, the survival mechanics are a slog and annoying busywork more than adding anything to the gameplay the way it was in Fallout 4, the entire game concept seemed to misunderstand what players wanted from a Fallout game to a distressing degree, the premium currency store shifted from "cosmetics only" to "pay-to-win" advantages shockingly fast, the crafting system is ass-backwards where you have to destroy the best weapons and guns to be able to mod them combined with the degradation mechanics and carry-weight limits meaning you can lose progress after spending hours out exploring if you didn't get enough junk to repair all your stuff, and WE STILL DON'T HAVE OUR PRIVATE MODDABLE SERVERS YOU PROMISED US AT E3 PETE HINES WHERE IS MY PRIVATE SERVER?! Meanwhile, the updates made to the game have turned it into a fun experience, the story is still lackluster but the addition of NPCs makes the world feel more alive, at the current prices of about $10 on console or frequent Steam sales is more than a fair price for the amount of content provided, and it's fun to run around exploring the Wasteland with your friends.

All of the games have their good points and bad points and I wish more people would realize how great it is that we have so many choices for what kind of game we want to play in the Fallout world instead of constantly turning it into one-upsmanship over which specific game is somehow objectively better than the other and telling people who like different games that they're having fun wrong.

[apple-pecan]

Star Ocean: The Second Story R (2023)

for years star ocean has been a very strange JRPG series to get into. it's a series that peaked in it's second entry, but still somehow managed to survive despite it's glory days being long behind it; it's the JRPG equivalent of the simpsons! but now, finally after all these years, star ocean has been made good again. and they did it by... remaking the entry that peaked the series. but don't write it off just because it's a remake... because it has managed to completely eclipse the original and become the new best entry in the series' 27 year long history.

if you haven't played a star ocean before, think of the tales series from namco, but with more emphasis on decision making, item crafting, and character growth. in fact, this series was developed by triAce, which consists of the team that made tales of phantasia. the combat is not turn based but consists of action gameplay. you run around in battle arenas with three other party members and beat up all the enemies in a sort of similar fashion to a beat em up or fighting game. it's pretty fun, although by the end of the game it kind of becomes button mashy once you have all the best abilities; in this game, equipment, items and stats matter more than reflexes.

second story is a PS1 game from 1998 that i always liked quite a lot, and this remake does what the best kinds of remakes do and made the original completely irrelevant. THIS is the definitive version of the game. there's no stupid plot changes that plague the FF7 remake; the plot remains exactly the same, and while it's not the most deep or amazing plot out there, it has some fun likable characters (except leon) that you'll love to spend time with. in fact, spending time with party members (similar to social links in persona) affects the ending of the game you get. there are 99 possible endings, good fucking luck getting them all.

the graphics are obviously awesome, but they've made so many quality of life changes that make the best star ocean even better. you can now see enemies on the screen instead of random encounters. you can actually see during item creation the success rate and what items you can or have made. you can craft multiple items at once if you have the resources. you can fast travel out of dungeons if your supplies are dwindling or if you need to by items.

all good stuff, but the things that made the original so unique are all kept! you can still compose music that grants special effects to the party as long as the music is playing. you can still wear a thief glove and pickpocket any npc in the game, even your own party members. you can still request the aid of birds to go back to town and buy stuff for you if you don't feel like leaving the dungeon. you can still ride on the back of a giant bunny and zoom all over the overworld. the original had so many crazy things you can do and you can still do all of it just fine in this remake, alleviating my fears.

i could go on, but long story short, this is now the gold standard for JRPG remakes, and if any dev wants to attempt one, just study this game and see what it does right. if anyone wants to attempt to get into this series, this is the perfect place to start (although it might make all the other games inferior after playing it). this could very well be the best JRPG that comes out this year, unless the mario rpg remake that also comes out this month manages to dethrone it. can square enix beat square enix? only time will tell!

9/10

NOTE: if they remake star ocean 3 next, can they remove the fucking shitty ass minigame near the beginning of the game where you ride on a giant turtle, and navigate a labyrinthine series of railroad tracks where you find the right path by trial and error, and have to manage it's stress levels or else it collapses in the middle and you have to do the fucking dumb mindless minigame all over again!?!?!??!?!?!?!!?!?!?! thanks

[my-personal-place-to-write-blog]

This year (while playing through the games that I was missing from Falcom) I’ve also decided to replay all the Ark engine game in the Ys series. These are Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, Ys: The Oath in Felghana (a remake of Ys III) and Ys Origin. These 3 games have the same engine as a base, with Felghana and Origin being build upon the foundation that Ys VI gave them.

I originally started with Ys Origin, but after I’ve finished Yunica story I got distracted by Zwei II. After I’ve finished it, it was time to pick up once again Ys, but this time around, before returning to Origin, I’ve decided to play Ys VI and Oath in Felghana again and then finishing Origin once again.

When I originally played them, I remember liking all of these 3 titles, but I wanted to revisit them to see if some of my opinion changed or not. And honestly, I’m glad I decided (after Yunica story) to go in order with them, because I will see all the improvement made to the various game in order.

Now I will start to talk about Ys VI, and I think the best starting point here is the story.

Adol, after falling from a ship in the ocean, finds himself washed up ashore in a beach (in an island which is part of the Canaan Island). He is saved by 2 girls, Olha and Isha (who are part of the Redha tribe), who treats his injuries.

After his injuries heals, Adol manages to gain the trust of the Redha and after this, he starts his travelling on the 3 island of the archipelago, learning other things about the Eldeen - a race which its first introduced in Ys I&II, and in the meantime, meeting other people (Geis, the rest of the human who washed ashore and they are living in another island compared to the Redha etc.), reuniting with the crew of the ship you were part of before falling into the ocean, Dogi crashing walls.

Ys VI story is very simple, but it’s a fine story and serves his purpose well. It’s refreshing and familiar at the same time.

But the part where Ys VI really shines is the gameplay. Ys VI is fun. Like I mentioned before, it’s the first game on its engine (which the engine used for 3 titles is called after this game) and in a way because of this its combat is the less refined out of the 3.

The combat is a blast, fast-paced and really fluid. If I had to define the combat in a single word, I would say: fun. And this is the case for all the Ark engine game: even though Ys VI is the first game in this engine, it’s still a fun game. Oath in Felghana and Origin were built upon the foundation that Ys VI gives and improve the engine, but these 2 games wouldn’t been good if the foundation wasn’t strong (it’s worth mentioning that the combat speed was increased so you will kill the difference enemies faster in the next 2 titles).

I need to make some other comparison with the next 2 titles in the engine: unlike Oath in Felghana and Origin, there’s no boost mode in this title and the potion system (these will give you passive stats booster while fighting). In this sense, the combat in this title is more basic compared to the next 2 games, but it’s still fun in its own right.

Adol can use 3 elemental swords in this game: Livart, the blue one which deals wind damage; Brillante, the red one which deals fire damage and Ericcil the yellow one with deals lightning damage.

The color and the elemental damage aren’t the only change: each of the 3 swords has a different style of play. The 3 weapons have different attack speed, range and they do a different elemental spell attack (for example, Brillante is the stronger sword in terms of pure damage, but it’s slower one).

I mentioned earlier the lack of a boost mode, this game replaces that with a magic meter - when the meter is full, you can use this attack when you press the button. You can keep all the 3 swords charged while exploring, you can also have all of them charged before the boss battle. This is kinda broken since you can jump on every boss with the special attack immediately at the start of the fight.

These 3 weapons can be upgraded 10 times with special ore (which is dropped by the enemies - there’s also an item that increases the drop of said ore and it’s easy to obtain overall), and these upgrades improves the sword capabilities, attack etc. It’s a simple system but one that works.

You can also upgrade your armor and shield, and you can equip different accessories through the game (some of them might be hard to obtain without a guide, mostly because of their positioning - in fact 4 accessories can be obtained only if you defeat 3 miniboss in the overworld: the first one (a bell) is obtained when you are fighting on of the 3 in his regular version; after this you have to beat a stronger version of them again later in the game and this time around, all of them drop accessories).

In terms of pure exploration, Ys VI has the biggest world out of the 3 games in its engine (Felghana is a remake of Ys III, and while they have expanded the dungeon areas, the overworld map it’s still the same and it’s a smaller world overall, Origin on the other hand takes place in a tower - the layout of the floor changes when you reach a new area, but the game is even more contained than Felghana in this sense).

The next things that I want to talk about are the boss fights. They are a joy to play: every boss has some kind of pattern (which is simple to understand) and you have to strike them down in this contest (also all the boss are unique). Keep in mind that in this game, the combat is really fast: boss fight reflects this as well. It’s really satisfying to take down the boss in this contest: the high speed makes them so much fun.

I have nothing to complain about the boss battle, the games in this engine have some of the best boss in the entire series overall and they are just fun to play really.

That said, the combat in this game isn’t perfect. Unlike the following games in the engine, in this game you have to grind. This is one of the only games in the series where grinding is really needed in my opinion: sometimes you are capable to kill the enemies in your areas and then in the following section you won’t be able to damage them so much if not doing any damage at all. This game is kinda brutal in this sense: you really have to stop in some areas to do this. That said you can also do side content while doing this so you can give a purpose to the grind but yeah, this isn’t great overall. But the combat is really fun like I said earlier, so this won’t be much of a hassle but it’s something to keep in mind.

The second biggest issue (and probably the biggest one) is the dash jumping. This is one of the worst things in the game (in fact, this didn’t return in Felghana and Origin): dash jumping is extremely unforgiving and requires a very specific timing to pull off. And frankly, when you manage to do them, most of the item on the other side it’s not really worth the hassle (that said, if you look on steam you will find a way to make a script to make the input for the dash jumping automatic when you press 4 buttons on the keyboard).

The last thing here that I want to mention are the upgrade that the publisher brought to the game: besides the essential widescreen and improved gamepad support, XSEED changed the way the wing of Alma function. It now works in the same way as the other Ark games, so you can teleport to any save spot that you've already used. Considering that you will do a lot of backtracking in this game, this is perfect to have: for example, in this way you can easily go to the town and upgrade your sword before a boss battle and after this you can return to the last save point.

The second changes that I wanted to talk about is Catastrophe mode, especially considering that I did finish my recent run of the game with this (I played on Hard with Catastrophe). Thanks to this mode, healing item can be no longer equipped and used against boss fight, also when these items are dropped by the enemies you will use them immediately instead of collecting them in the inventory. This brings the game closer to the other 2 games in the engine, games in which you only have a single health bar against the boss.

If you don’t want to use this, you can still play the game normally and actually bring healing item against the boss. The game was originally designed like that (so the intention from the developer here was to use these during boss fights), but if you like some kind of challenge than Catastrophe mode is easily doable.

Playing the game in this way was more fun than I thought honestly, in my experience the game is harder in the early game and becomes easier the more you progress through it. It was challenging but not unfair, which is something that I didn’t fully know before trying it.

Even though this game originally came out in 2003, it still looks really good and pleasant on the eyes overall (it probably helps that the game blend the 3D world perfectly with the 2D sprites of the character).

The last thing that I want to mention is the ost. The music is really nice, I didn’t remember it to being this good actually. This is the type of music that, when you hear, you’ll recognize immediately that comes from this game.

Some tracks that I really like:

The Pirate Ship

Quatera Woods

Windslash Steps

Mountain Zone

The Zemeth Sanctum

Overwater Drive

The Ruined City 'Kishgal'

Ernst

Ys VI, while it’s not my favourite game in the series, it’s really fun to go through and it was fun to revisit the game. It’s not perfect, but this game is still a classic. Ys VI is also really short; I beat it in 16 hours which is the right length for a game like this. While Ys VI is definitely the less refined out of 3 games in its engine, the game holds up pretty well even today and I really did have a blast while going through it. Definitely recommended (just like the rest of Ark engine game, they are just fun games).

[fishylife]

Thoughts on FFTA2

I'm not going to do an official write up post on this game. I've never been a big gamer so I don't feel I have much to add. I'm just going to dump thoughts.

As of right now, my team is about level 50. I've beaten the game (all three parts of the last battle), but came back to do the postgame content.

From browsing FFT reddit, I think FFTA2 is the least popular because of its lighter tone. Personally I prefer the lighter tone because I honestly don't pay that much attention to story when playing video games. Gameplay tends to be more important to me.

Thoughts on Gameplay

I thought that I wouldn't enjoy the generic characters but I love them a lot. The few special characters are enough to keep the story going.

It took me a little bit of time to figure out the ability point system, the bazaar system, the auction house system. Thankfully I won't be so lost in next playthroughs.

I was playing on normal the first time around. I guess like any tactical RPG player I should try hard next time.

I thought that there wasn't grinding in this game since everything is quest based, but there are repeatable quests which are essentially grinding, even if they don't give so much exp and ability points. The random encounters are hard to find because you can't see them on the map.

Like with other tactical RPGs, the beginning of the game was harder, I regularly finished battles with one or more dead characters lol. That changed as I was able to level up my characters.

I've found loot management to be challenging at times. I tend to save up loot so I won't be using my sole piece for an item, but I recognize that sometimes you might as well just use it so you have a weapon/piece of equipment now to use.

On the topic of the bazaar it's annoying that the bazaar list can't be rearranged in alphabetical order. It's also annoying that I have to consult a guide to craft my items and that there's no in-game mechanic to keep track of it for me.

I always accidentally break the laws during battles. I wish there was a pop up to remind me when I was going to break a law v.v

Thoughts on Jobs

For Humes, I much preferred the magic and archer/hunter classes. Love my seer/illusionist and my hunter/archer. For much of the game, I cycled Luso and Adelle between the parivir, paladin, and ninja classes and never really got anything good out of them. Paladin is fine as a secondary class because of its holy attacks and healing (nurse being able to heal stone is really helpful). I have heard that ninja is largely a poor class and that it's only good for building speed and getting dual wield. As for parivir, it's been disappointing for me. Maybe it's because I need to get the geomancy support ability but parivir hasn't been fun for me. Or maybe it's just that Luso and Adelle's stats up until then had been disappointing and therefore not able to show off the abilities of those classes :/

For a period of time I was trying to get a blue mage, but it was too much work. I think the general strategy is to bring a beastmaster into battle with the blue mage to learn skills. When I decided to try for blue mage, I was past level 30 so I recruited an underleveled Nu Mou and trained them up to be a beastmaster but it was still just...not fun for me? It's not worth the effort.

As expected, Nu Mou were great magic classes. Death and drain on arcanist were awesome. I tried alchemist for a while but I wasn't clicking with it. I knew I wasn't going to go for scholar because I didn't like that it hit everyone. I only started checking out sage later but I see why it's a good class. Some helpful attacks, including an ultima attack! Black mage, white mage, and illusionist were all solid on nu mou, as they are generally solid classes.

Viera! (I love the girls, viera and gria are my favourites <3) Viera classes are all terrific. The only one I didn't really care for was green mage, but it was just that I found it boring; it was still a pretty decent job. Elementalist was one of the most easily accessibly magic classes at the beginning of the game and it continued to be such a versatile and useful job later in the game. I thought I would never need summoner but admittedly summoners regen and healing spells are incredibly helpful. As for physical classes, sniper has such awesome and diverse abilities. Assassin is decent too (and it has the viera's ultima attack). Admittedly I did not start using the fencer line of jobs until much later in the game and fencer was surprisingly really useful?? I should have started with this class lol. Spellblade...listen I didn't realize blood price was this useful. But I get it now, I have seen the light. And like with elementalist, the fact that spellblade does damage and debuffs is just super helpful. Love vieras <3

Bangaas are generally decent but I think they're most useful in the straightforward physical damage dealing jobs, mainly white monk, master monk, and gladiator. I think templar and defender are meant to be the defensive classes. They're alright, but their skills aren't as interesting. For support Bangaa, we have bishop, cannoneer, and trickster. I call bishop support because I mostly use them as an emergency heal, but frankly their magic isn't very good (which makes sense). Cannoneer and trickster on the other hand are good for debuffs and cannoneer specifically has long-range healing. I think in my next playthrough I might try a cannoneer/trickster.

Moogles took me a long time to figure out because I just couldn't figure out how best to use them. I still don't really, but I've figured out which of the moogle jobs I prefer. Black mage and time mage are pretty solid but these are jobs that are shared among different races. Otherwise, the only other jobs that I felt were useful were juggler, fusilier, and moogle knight. At the beginning of the game, I was going for juggler/tinker because I heard it was a good combination. Juggler has some really good buffs and debuffs but in my opinion tinker is only good for its red spring ability. Fusilier felt like a good class because of its massive range. On the other hand, the other moogle long range physical class, flintlock, was hard to use because it required two turns to use any of the abilities (the hand-cannon has to be primed first). I discovered moogle knight way too late. For some reason I just never paid attention to it, but it's the sturdiest of the moogle's physical classes, and also has its ultimate attack. I had seen some recommendations for juggler/animist so I had checked out animist for a while. It's fine as a debuff class but I wouldn't say it was a favourite. Chocobo knight is unfortunately a gimmick class that is occasionally needed if only for the rancher's request quests. I'm so far into the game and I've still only completed two of the rancher's requests because it's difficult finding specific chocobos.

I only had one seeq during my playthrough so it took me a while to check out the various jobs. Berserker is a general damage job, ranger is for traps, viking is for stealing, and lanista is for draining HP. In general I've kept the berserker as a secondary class for my seeq while I cycled through the other jobs, but only because I got berserker first. I'd say that lanista is my favourite of the four because I like draining abilities. I like ranger too mostly because it can equip bows.

Grias <3 <3 My bat girls <3 <3 Grias being able to ignore terrain makes them so versatile. Both my grias were recruited as raptors so I kind of started backwards in that they started in a secondary job. In any case, I think raptor, hunter, and ravager are all very decent job. I'm starting to see a pattern that jobs that are shared between races tend to be very solid, and the same goes for hunter. Hunter is so useful particularly for the sidewinder and ultima abilities. Raptor is a pretty decent class with its crush abilities and its two wind abilities. Ravager is a bit more hard hitting; its sneak attack ability can be so powerful. As for geomancer, it just isn't meant to be for grias. I also am not the biggest fan of abilities that are environment-based, so a lot is out of the user's control when it comes to geomancer spells. Geomancers have great reaction and support abilities though. I had both my grias spend time as geomancers to get at least magick counter and avoid traps.

Bard is a pretty solid buff class! It takes a bit of work to get all of the abilities because of the whole thing with brilliant theorbo and shining lute only being available in quests. But overall a solid job including the ability to heal, cast regenerate, to deal holy damage, and to exorcise spirits.

Dancer is meant to be the opposite of bard in that it focuses mostly on debuffs. To be honest I mostly just use forbidden dance and mincing minuet for Penelo and not much else. Maybe I will get around to using blade dance but for me Penelo is mostly a debuffer and support character rather than a damage dealer, as opposed to Hurdy who can still deal decent damage while as a debuffer class.

I'm not too big on the sky pirate class. It's a stealing class, but I've never really focused too much on stealing in the game. Other than life of crime and some buff abilities I don't find sky pirate to be terribly useful. Plus, my Vaan doesn't have great stats and I had trouble figuring out what to do with him. Right now I'm seeing how he would fare as an archer/hunter.

I'm still only in the process of getting the heritor abilities so I don't have any deep thoughts on it. I think it might be a pretty awesome class based on the few abilities I have so far though.

I haven't gotten Al-Cid yet so I don't know what agent is like.

Thoughts on Abilities

I have to admit, ultima attacks are SO MUCH FUN. It's so satisfying when a character finally builds up enough MP to launch an ultima attack.

I'm really basic in that I generally focus on abilities that deal damage lol. Well, I do sometimes use buff skills when a character is not in range of an enemy they can attack. And I do use debuff skills too, particularly ones like disable or charm.

As I mentioned, I don't really care much for stealing items so thief and sky pirate abilities don't do anything for me.

It's really satisfying when you have a character who is a long-range damage dealer who has a short-range secondary job. Eg I'm working towards getting a fusilier/moogle knight so that my moogle can use an ultima attack from long ranges. But yeah it's the reason why I like gladiator as a secondary job for bangaas, so that they can use the ultima attack.

I often got confused over how to heal certain debuffs. It took me so long to figure out that confuse, charm, and sleep could only be cured by hitting the character and "waking them up." I also still have no idea how to cure doom or stone, other than hitting with a white staff and nurse respectively. I'm only in the process of getting esunaga for my sage so maybe that might help. But I couldn't even find too much information online :/ It also took me a long time to figure out the difference between disable and addle. In general this game has a lot of information that just isn't available within the game :/

I don't like the abilities that hit everybody regardless of friend or foe. Which is why I don't use the scholar class at all. With tinker, at least there's a chance factor, but I still only use tinker for red spring.

Quicken is an ability that's surprisingly useful. So time mage and jugglers are very helpful in that regard, particularly when I want my heavy damage dealers to get more turns in.

For reaction and support abilities, I tend to pick up as many as possible so that I can choose between them based on the battle. Eg against a lot of magic using enemies I would equip evade magick or magick counter etc.

Pretty much all my magic users have halve mp as their support ability. I wonder if I should start using geomancy for some of them though (the ones who can get it).

Thoughts on Races

Races are as good as their jobs are to me lol. So this section is just kind of a summary of the jobs section.

For me, humes are only good for magic and archer/hunter classes. My seer/illusionist is so sturdy.

Nu mou were generally great as magic damage classes. I think it's almost a bit of a waste to assign nu mous as white mages if they have other damage dealing options. But I do sometimes set my nu mous with white mage as secondary jobs when the team I'm sending in doesn't have any other good healers.

Vieras are 10/10! While they may not be the hardest hitting when it comes to physical damage, the fact that most viera jobs have debuffing abilities makes them really helpful. There's such good range in their job set and ability set. Plus bunnies <3

Bangaa are generally good physical damage dealers. Because they are sturdy, I think they'll still fare well in their defensive and support classes. It might be a bit of a waste to have a defense-oriented bangaa just because I think offense-oriented bangaas are still pretty sturdy.

Moogles are a mixed bag. I think there are really only a few jobs that are pretty useful and the others are just a bit too gimmicky. Moogles are cute though, kupo!

Seeq is alright. I didn't care for them enough to get two seeqs, I just had one seeq cycling through all the different jobs. In terms of physical damage, my bangaas already would have been doing that, and as I mentioned, I don't really care much for stealing in the game. I'm also not much of an item user in the game, so the ranger job with mirror items isn't really something I use a lot.

Grias are 9/10! As I mentioned, I loved their mobility. I think it's cool that we have a female class that is offense-oriented. All of the gria physical damage classes are solid.

Thoughts on Characters

Luso and Adelle join in the game early enough that they're basically blank slates.

That being said, Luso wasn't really impressive to me. He wasn't even the biggest damage dealer for me, it was just that he tended to be a little higher level than the rest of my team because he had to be in important battles.

Actually, Adelle is a little advanced for the team when she joined me, but she was soon beat out by the others because of her poor damage dealing. So next time I'm probably going to try to put her in a sturdier class. Right before she was about to get heritor, I had Adelle master seer because I heard that magick frenzy would work great with heritor abilities. I will see if that's true.

Cid was a typical bangaa unit, pretty solid.

Hurdy was good! It took me a long time to figure out how to use him but once I did I thought he was so useful. I was going with a black mage/bard combo which was pretty solid. But now I'm trying a juggler/bard combo to see if it's helpful. The smile toss is pretty helpful.

I kept seeing Frimelda being hyped but I haven't been impressed with her. She's generally too slow for me to be able to do anything with her :/ She does come with dual wield, but a lot of her weapons are two-handed so I can't always take advantage of dual wield. Maybe I should forget paladin as a secondary job for her and instead just focus on speed classes like parivir or ninja. Then she can take advantage of dual wield and get her speed up. For now I'm trying out fighter/paladin.

Penelo is fine. I'm working on making her a white mage/dancer mostly because I don't know what to do with her tbh.

As mentioned, I'm also very confused about what to do with Vaan. I was thinking of making him a fighter/sky pirate, but I currently already have Frimelda training as a fighter. I don't foresee Vaan being a major damage dealer so that was why I'm trying archer/hunter for Vaan. I saw some people suggest parivir with geomancy which I guess is always an option but eh. I'm not crazy on Vaan. I think maybe he's more fanservice for people who like FFXII.

I haven't gotten Montblanc or Al-cid yet. I'm a little curious about Montblanc, but I heard he doesn't have good magic stats so he isn't useful as a black mage. I'll see how he is. Hurdy was solid as a black mage so maybe I could make Montblanc the juggler. As for Al-cid if he gets the human job set then honestly I'm not too interested.

I know Cid was given the bangaa job set and Penelo was given the viera job set to spread things out a bit, but we still have way too many hume characters >( Luso, Adelle, Frimelda, Vaan, and potentially Al-cid.

Other

I don't know if I'll consider playing the other FFT games because they're not on NDS. But they seem to be more popular. We shall see. But playing FFTA2 has reignited my interest in the older tactical RPG games. Before, I only ever played Fire Emblem (the new 3DS ones and a bit of Shadow Dragon) and very occasionally Pokemon Conquest.

FFTA2 has also finally gotten me into final fantasy's job system. I never really connected with it but getting into FFTA2 has finally gotten me interested in its jobs that we see across different games, like white mage (healing), black mage (damage), red mage (hybrid), blue mage (wild card), dragoon (jump and spear), monk (fists), etc.

[notajinn]

Top Games Played in 2022 - Number 1: Dragalia Lost

1. Dragalia Lost (Mobile)

I admit, this one is not fair. I've been playing Dragalia Lost for about four years. However I "finished" Dragalia Lost this year given the campaign concluded and the game ended service. So if it was going to be on my list any year, this is the year.

What I Like

It's hard to explain how much this little phone game meant to me. Some of it is due to the hundreds of hours spent playing.

But a big part of it is actually the community. Fanbases can be so toxic, but the Dragalia Lost fanbase was almost universally great. I think it's because this was a small but well-done game that always felt like an underdog, so we were more united in trying to make people see how great it was rather than fighting over what we disagreed on. Some of it is hard to put into words and is just the feelings I get with the DL community. Even many of the voice actors would interact with us in a similar way. And I'm just as sad that the community will decline as I am about the game ending service.

Okay, so let's talk about the game's strengths. My favourite part is the characters. Every single character gets a 5-part adventurer story that goes into their background and motivations. Even the random 3-star units. No one feels like "filler" after reading their story, and pretty much everyone is somebody's favourite. Every alt gives you a separate adventurer story and helps you see how even non-story-focus characters develop over time.

The main story characters also get development within the campaign, but for the most part I think the adventurer stories do a better job thanks to their focus instead of also having to move the plot forward.

The main plot is nothing special, but many of the event stories are really strong. Particularly the ones based around Nyarlathotep, Hinomoto (the equivalent Japan area), and the Apostles. Also some events are character-focused, and I was lucky enough to get some events around my favourite character Nefaria the undead Egyptian queen.

The gameplay was another element that set DL apart. I enjoyed it because it's an active hack-and-slash system where your skill in battle is just as important as your characters and equipment. Where other gacha games have a weaker emphasis on gameplay apart from having better units, DL is famous for letting you use a large variety of characters in difficult battles and succeeding with gameplay skill. Though it's much easier with the right setup.

For a touch-screen only game, there's a decent amount of gameplay actions. You have your normal multi-hit combo, a dodge roll, a charge attack, and your skills. Certain characters also have separate gimmicks such as Hunter Sarisse having a multi-level charge or Ilia being able to fire bullets as she dodges so you can keep the combo counter up.

You also get Dragons as a gameplay mechanic. They basically act as a super; once you fill up the meter you temporarily transform into the dragon who has huge stats and their own abilities. They also don’t have any HP, but any damage they take reduces how long your transformation acts. This means they can be used both for offense in dealing big damage, or for defense by tanking a hit that would otherwise deal big damage to the character.

A lot of the gameplay is based around co-op in a similar method to MMOs, and I think this is part of what helped the community.

Wyrmprint equipment is easy to obtain (after the first year) so it's usually a question of deciding on your equipment rather than trying to obtain the right equipment.

Even the gacha system for characters is fairly generous. Mostly this is because the game throws a huge amount of free currency at you. But you also only need to pull a character once to get everything they offer. You'll need to use resources to level them up, sure, but you won't have to summon a second copy of them for these resources like Genshin Impact or Fire Emblem Heroes.  Once or twice a year, they also offered the Dream Summon; this let you pay them a fixed amount of money to choose a unit to obtain. I only did this once, but for $15 CAD I was able to just choose Summer Chelle from a list. It's not increased odds to get them; you literally are just given the character you want! Often the game seemed too generous to the detriment of it’s finances.

They game occasionally added Mana Spirals, which were additional skill trees for certain characters. These were often used to turn a bad or okay character into a great one, so you could often just unexpectedly end up with a very meta character overnight thanks to updates. So even if you got bad pulls, you might have really good units out of nowhere. Nefaria one of the characters who went from bad to meta thanks to a Mana Spiral.

Compared to many other gacha games, I really like the artstyle of DL. Being more cute prevented it from leaning too hard into sexy designs that many gacha games push. Even the swimsuit alts are pretty cute. The character designs are also overall strong, and with the exception of some early characters everyone looks unique. Even the clashing art designs like modern clothes characters versus those in kimono still feel fitting thanks to the consistent art style. It seems to be one team of artists, or a very strict rule set that made sure everyone fits together moreso than games like Fire Emblem Heroes.

The music is also pretty decent and occasionally incredible. After the first year, they started having a good variety of tracks so everyone can find something they like. I especially love We Are the Lights, and Because of You.

I love that there is a full English dub. In fact some of the characters sound way better in English, like the mascot fairy Notte. You could also easily switch language at any time.

They also late in the game added a dungeon-exploring type mode called Kaleidoscope that was genuinely fun. You could get unique equipment from it too, and it had an entirely different meta.

What I Don't Like

The biggest problem I have with this game is that it shut down. It's literally unplayable now.

This is not "I beat the game so I don't want to play it anymore but I can if I want to".  This is "no shut up you aren't allowed to play anymore". And that's incredibly frustrating. The way Nintendo treated this game and did not capitalize on making a console game from this franchise has soured me on the company as a whole.

Outside of that, the first year had a lot of problems that were eventually addressed. These include getting equipment in your pulls (which can ruin your 5-star chance) and the main plot being very unremarkable. The director was changed after that year however, and that's when things turned around in my opinion with a better story and equipment removed from the gacha system.

However many main plot chapters even down to the end felt like a noticeably lower level of quality compared to adventurer and event stories. There were absolutely great moments regularly, but a lot of it was just fine. A big issue is that the main character Euden isn't particularly interesting most of the time. Rarely he is, and I think the conclusion to the campaign is one of those times, but not often enough.

Certain characters were limited to collabs and thus you missed out on them for the length of the game if you didn't get them during the collab. This includes the Persona 5 characters and the Fire Emblem Heroes one. Collab characters also often had more unique playstyles, so it was frustrating to miss them. Down to the end, I hated that the only Monster Hunter character I got was Hunter Sarisse given they all had cool playstyles.

I didn't care for the musician they used for nearly every track the first year. Afterwards the artist didn't record any new songs, so the few they had in the game were much more listenable as part of the larger variety of songs.

The gameplay also got to a strange point late in the game where some battles were so easy that you could easily do them solo (even though they were designed for co-op) while other battles were extremely difficult even in co-op. I felt like I was in this weird space where I could do some battles easily and others not at all by the end, and that hurt my enjoyment of actually playing the combat.

The events being tuned in a way so new players could complete them also meant that nearly every event was a complete cakewalk if you had been playing for over a year. I still enjoyed the story aspects, but most of the gameplay didn't measure up. Even the super-hard battles they added would end up being too easy for late-game teams.

The main campaign was clearly rushed in the last few months, and this really hurts the pacing. I understand this was to finish the campaign before end-of-service, but it's still disappointing.

 Final Thoughts

I don't think they'll be another game quite like Dragalia Lost for me.

And maybe that's for the best. This game is special to me, and I hope it remains that way even if the franchise ends here.

[walking-fnaf-encyclopedia]

+sylveons can only evolve with high affection (gameplay mechanic), friendship level does not matter as far as im aware

+sylveons like to use their ribbons (feelers) to hold hands with their trainers while walking. this also allows them to sense their trainers emotions. (most stuff is applied to trainers, i like to carry it over to other mons as well)

+side note to the above, it can wrap its feelers around aggressive pokemon to calm them! it can also do this to its prey tho, lol

+they can also use these feelers to bring even extremely intense battles to a halt by exuding a feeling of tranquility and causing those around them to lose their fighting spirit. they can use this to launch a devastating surprise attack if they wish, or simply bring battles to a halt.

+theyre very graceful

+despite appearing gentle and kind, they can be extremely dangerous. there are tales of a beautiful sylveon taking down a vicious dragon.

+sylveon is a solid special attacker (spatk stat of 110) and can tank special hits (spdef 130). its main drawback is below average physical defense. (checks out, a stab would count as a physical attack, right? /lh). they also have really low speed (60).

+sylveons main ability is cute charm, causing pokemon who hit them to possibly become infatuated. their hidden ability is pixilate, whic turns normal type moves into fairy type moves when used by the pokemon with pixilate. (aka, any normal type moves get stab (same type attack bonus) when used!).

+might be relevant, eevees two main abilities are run away (allowing easy escape from battles) and adaptability (boosts stab from 1.5x to 2x). their hidden ability (the one they would need to evolve into sylveon and get pixilate) is anticipation! anticipation will cause the pokemon to shudder if it enters battle against a pokemon that has either a one-hit ko move or a super-effective move!

some espeon stuff since i was cross-checking my sylveon knowledge:

+espeon is a friendship evolution that can only happen in the day. which means very little, because the affection mechanic didnt exist yet.

+extremely loyal if they consider their trainer worthy. quote from the dex entry related to this: “It is said that this Pokémon developed its precognitive powers to protect its trainer from harm.” there is a later energy that claims their powers awoke from a need to protect themself, however.

+uses its fine furs to sense air currents and predict enemys moves (and the weather)

+their forehead gem glows when using psychic power. it dulls when all of their stored psychic energy is exhausted.

+they recover their psychic energy through sunbathing. (solar powered lol) they do not do well in night battles/battles in the dark.

+espeon has a higher special attack than sylveon (130) and a lower special defense (95). however, it has a much higher speed stat (110).

+espeons split tail is likely based on the nekomata yokai (which essentially means monster). there is a tail of a nekomata causing poltergeist-like activities in a household (in the book yamato kaiiki/“mysterious stories from japan” by an unknown author).

ok thats enough from me thank for coming to my ted talk

dont ask me why i made em pokemon. or why i picked these ones specifically. just know they run my world