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Post by Sarge on Aug 4, 2019 19:17:37 GMT -5
I have definitely heard tales of that game's brutality.
Anyway, still getting my head handed to me, although less so as I've gotten a couple more levels. I'm still sticking next to towns to maximize my level-ups for Lux, although I'm less concerned with Valsu since I will be swapping at some point. He's holding up okay, all things considered. I figure I'm going to need to hit Level 25 to really have a decent shot at the areas I'm gunning for; unlike the other characters, Lux and Esuna basically catapult forward to an area where the enemies are much tougher. Still, there are S.Brains there, which means catching up, while a pain, can be accomplished a bit more quickly.
Also, Mutants suck. Coccoons (yes, that's how they spelled it) suck, too. Instant death spells really suck, and one of the enemies in Bilthem popped me with that. Whee!
I'm in this more for knocking it off my bucket list, but for anyone else, I'd much more recommend playing the game rebalanced. The game feels quite unique, but the grind and extreme difficulty definitely bring it down a few notches.
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Post by Ex on Aug 4, 2019 21:19:36 GMT -5
Geez, yes. I remember those damned things. Ridiculous enemies. I'm pretty sure I was in Doros when I quit. Making it that far with just Lejes was not easy.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 4, 2019 21:54:41 GMT -5
Yeah, I've gotten to there. Enemies around there typically own me.
I will make a contention at this point, and it's that, despite being able to grind, The 7th Saga has enough enemies with very unfair attacks that I would still consider it a hard game. There are a lot of bits that feel quite unfair, and I'm not sure if all of them can be mitigated through pure leveling.
EDIT: Progress! Found Pang, Belaine, and Telaine, and... I stumbled upon Esuna. And she wanted to join! I did the swap and yeah, those boosts are starting to kick in. She had 20 points over Valsu in magic and agility. Of course, I'll swap again before I hit the point of no return.
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Post by Xeogred on Aug 5, 2019 9:58:48 GMT -5
Put in an hour into Gradius V now, so I've unlocked an additional credit. I've knocked it down from Normal to Easy, but still not Very Easy just yet. I'm up to stage 5 now and there's 7 stages. Stage 6 ended me when I last played this years back. There is a stage select as you go, however your cannot cheese this by skipping to the last level you've unlocked and keep progressing, you can only replay what you've "unlocked". Here is the stage 5 boss, a hit a... literal wall.
Since I last played Gradius V ages ago, I've played some Cave shooters (Mushihimesama) and others that fall into the bullet hell category a bit. Well, Gradius V does in a lot of ways too, despite having its old school traditional blueprint. I think my skill is higher thesedays so I'm doing pretty good, but yeah. This is still one of the toughest shmups I've ever played. I've beaten all the others in the series, though I forget if I've done Gradius 3 Arcade. Sure I may have credit fed my way through some of these, but you still have to put in the work and have patience, since one hit and you lose just about everything in these games. With Gradius V, you at least get a brief moment to try and recover your Options. You better hustle, because so many portions of the levels and bosses seem straight up impossible without them.
It cracks me up that stage 2 has a boss rush. STAGE 2.
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Post by Ex on Aug 5, 2019 10:36:41 GMT -5
I had no idea Gradius V was this insane. Good luck with all that man. You still gonna hit up Shattered Soldier?
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Post by Xeogred on Aug 5, 2019 12:07:10 GMT -5
Despite the insanity, it's a lot of fun to play and I've always been a fan. I'm not sure if I can say the same about Shattered Soldier (I've beaten the first level).
I love Gradius V's OST too, I can see how some might not like it as much as Radiant Silvergun's music or Sakimoto's other works, but I like how Gradius V sounds different and is really bassy. A bit more techno/spacey than his norm.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 5, 2019 13:00:44 GMT -5
Didn't Treasure develop Gradius V? Or at least help with it?
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Post by Xeogred on Aug 5, 2019 14:41:42 GMT -5
Yep, they did it. I forgot to mention that earlier, seems to be another thing a lot of people don't realize about this one!
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Post by Sarge on Aug 5, 2019 20:29:18 GMT -5
More progress. I took down the Dragon and resolved the situation in Belaine/Telaine, defeated the Serpent and got the Moon Rune, went to Bilthem and stumbled across the apprentice that stole the Sky Rune and pasted him, and took out Doros, netting me... whatever Rune it was he coughed up.
Speaking of that apprentice fight, boy, was it easy. Lejes' AI was positively broken for that fight. I used the Star Rune to boost defense, and he would try to decrease my defense. We continued this until his didn't work, then I used the Moon Rune to boost offense. I then repeated the Star Rune boosts until it didn't work, did a Defend, and then one-shotted him on the next turn. All that worry for nothing.
Now I think I've got one more Rune to track down, but I really need to beef up levels again. Doros proved quite the challenge, but I slipped through (after undoing a dumb decision on my part in the battle that I knew was a bad idea when I did it, don't judge me; I really didn't want to walk through that stupid castle again). I won't say it was smooth sailing from there, though; I burned through all my Potn3s and one of my Recovery items, which are like Final Fantasy Elixirs. (The dumb thing I did was dithering on whether to use one of the Potn3s or not; I knew I should have.)
Honestly, it might bother me enough that I drop back and do the whole thing from scratch...
...screw it, don't care. Not wasting another half-hour on a battle I know I can win as long as I'm playing defensively.
EDIT: Whew, time to take a break. I'm over 12 hours in at this point. I'm probably going to grind a bit, then try to track down Valsu and swap again. Or I may want to stick with Esuna for now, since she can take down mobs faster. I need to get her Magic stat up a bit, though. And I'm not sure I've even stumbled on any Seeds that boost Magic yet... although I'd use those on Lux instead. I hate that Magic governs both magic attacks and defense; it makes Lux pretty darn vulnerable to spellcasters.
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Post by Xeogred on Aug 6, 2019 19:23:11 GMT -5
My Gradius V run today wasn't even half as good as yesterday.
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