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Post by Xeogred on Dec 23, 2023 21:49:45 GMT -5
Finally got started on SMT Strange Journey tonight. Nice setup for the scenario/story but wow, took like an hour to get into a "dungeon" and start moving around...
The Digital Devil Saga's were cool but I'm very happy to be back to Demon recruiting. Pixie seems like the iconic starter because she's cute and can talk for the player, hah. Got her and some other goofy looking Demon that has Ice.
Doesn't have the SMT3 styled Press Turn System in a way, but as usual exploiting enemy weaknesses is huge. Here I think you just simply hit them with whatever they're weak too, then your other allies all do some kind of hard hitting combo attack. I'm guessing the mechanics get more complex along the way.
I like how initially, Demon's are "Unknown" on your first encounter. This makes Talking/Negotiating with them extremely hard but not impossible, so maybe it's worth a shot at some point. But after you beat a demon you'll figure out their type. Then there's some levels of Analyzing a Demon. For what I'm not sure for so far. But looks like you might be able to make Demons even out on the field. Looks like they cost a ton.
Think your party might max out at four.
It's SMT so I'm not taking chances, been using Medicines a lot after battles already. There's an Infirmary/Lab at your home base and they were giving me 5-10x at a time, so may as well burn through them.
One thing that worries me, you take a personality test to determine your characters main growth path. I ended up getting... Luck. Which can be a crappy stat in a lot of JRPG's. It didn't let me retake the test or anything and I was feeling too lazy to restart, so I'll roll through it. I actually do think Luck was alright in SMT3, seemed to have a decent effect on Demifiend's critical hit rate which was pretty deathly.
Combat wise for the main character, I like how you have a melee weapon and a gun. So kind of a mix of some of the old SMT's and new ones from what I've played. Guns will hit everything but not do a ton of damage. I like that option though.
I'll imagine the story is very frontloaded but it'll be pure hardcore dungeon crawling for hours on out now. Looking forward to more.
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Post by Ex on Dec 23, 2023 21:54:24 GMT -5
The main problem is that is the incoherence. It's a big problem, though. To the point I completely lost interest in the plot. This guy: parasiteeve.fandom.com/wiki/Kunihiko_MaedaAwful voice actor reading horridly cringey dialogue. it'll be pure hardcore dungeon crawling for hours on out now Being non- Persona SMT, bet on it.
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Post by Ex on Dec 25, 2023 23:04:59 GMT -5
Gonna try to knock out one more game this year, and it's for this Club Retro. I'll go ahead and show what it is: Xeogred has lauded this one to me a few times over the years. Being as it takes place on a frozen planet, winter seems an appropriate time to play it. I'll start it tomorrow evening.
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 25, 2023 23:20:03 GMT -5
Hope you like it. Wouldn't surprise me if Vanquish has some shared DNA when some of Capcom left a few years later to form Platinum. Lost Planet set the stage for SHOOT THE ORANGE.
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Post by Ex on Dec 30, 2023 13:53:08 GMT -5
I'll shoot the core, the orange core! Still planning on playing this one in January, I've got to beat at least two games for this theme (already beat one last month).
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Post by spiffsneed on Jan 2, 2024 18:06:29 GMT -5
Squeaked in a couple more completions just before the end of the year —
Space Invaders Extreme (Nintendo DS)
I played this game when it came out but never finished it, and I remember liking it a lot. Somehow even my positive recollections weren’t sufficient to quantify how wonderful this game is. It’s a true classic, and it radiates joy in every aspect; it’s thrilling, joyous and capable of dropping you right into flow with a moment’s notice. This came out in the era of Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s apex, when games like Rez, Lumines, Every Extend Extra and others were combining intense, arcade-like experiences with house/trance music integration with player actions. Everything you do produces sound in sync with the spectacular soundtrack, and it smoothly ratchets up as your combo grows and everything gets more intense. It’s quite the synaesthetic experience.
The game itself keeps Space Invaders’ fundamentals; aliens move side-to-side and down the screen, and you gotta take ‘em out. The invaders are color-coded, so if you shoot 4 of the same color in a row, you’ll receive a power up. This in turn builds into a larger combo system that can see your points racking up and power ups quite literally streaming down the screen as the music and visuals explode. UFOs frequently zoom across the top of the screen, affording opportunities for brief mini-games and more power ups.
The enemy layouts are creative and ever-changing, and the boss fights are just the right amount of creative and difficult. This is a do-not-miss game, and the only negative I can note is that there is no auto-fire, so my hand often got tired and sometimes resulted in pain due to the constant button tapping.
9.5/10
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC (PSP)
I’m an RPG nut, so this is a big one to embark upon. I previously finished Cold Steel 1, and i though it was pretty ok, even though it was frustratingly tropey. This one took me a bit to get into, as the beginning is really slow and doesn’t give you a ton to hold on to for quite a while. Also, I was trying to cruise through the main quest without doing the side content, which bit me in the ass, because I was underleveled and never had any money for equipment, so I started doing the side content in Act 2 or 3.
Overall, I liked this quite a bit more than Cold Steel. The writing is better, and the tropes aren’t as obvious (though it seems like there’s a series trope of your party beating bosses and them constantly getting away regardless, which really irritates me). I dig the style of world building, with lots of named characters and meaningful dialogue, and political intrigue that feels pretty grounded.
The battle system is pretty good, affording some tactical depth through positioning, status effects that actually work, and the ability to change the turn order of your enemies to block them out of making moves. The orbment system is ok, though I didn’t grind to get enough sepith in order to really break it open.
I was a bit frustrated that status effects ceased working on bosses at the end, and some of the bosses throughout the game were a little unfair (the penguin king in particular), but I made it through. Also, there was a lot of backtracking between uninteresting areas that I thought could have been improved upon.
8/10
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Post by Sarge on Jan 2, 2024 18:12:14 GMT -5
Nicely done! I still need to roll around to Trails SC - I think I burned out on the first game feeling like I needed to 100% it, which was not, I repeat not worth it. It is quite slow, and it's even slower when you're trying to not miss content. The game has a loooooot of scenes you can miss just by slightly advancing the plot. When I do SC, I'm going to go for a balanced approach and just do optional stuff as needed and not worry if I'm optimizing my run.
8/10 is a pretty fair score for it. I don't think it does anything spectacular, but it's still solidly made.
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Post by toei on Jan 2, 2024 18:26:00 GMT -5
I beat the first Trails in the Sky many years ago and I barely remember it having bosses. Fights were really rare IIRC, it was 90% talking and most of it was dull to me. The only interesting story element happens at the very end as a cliffhanger, even if it comes out of nowhere. Made me want to play SC at the time, but I'm pretty happy not touching that series again. I would play Legend of Heroes 2 if it got translated though, 1 on Turbo CD was good.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 2, 2024 18:37:21 GMT -5
I beat the first Trails in the Sky many years ago and I barely remember it having bosses. Fights were really rare IIRC, it was 90% talking and most of it was dull to me. The only interesting story element happens at the very end as a cliffhanger, even if it comes out of nowhere. Made me want to play SC at the time, but I'm pretty happy not touching that series again. I would play Legend of Heroes 2 if it got translated though, 1 on Turbo CD was good. Sheesh, is that the Legend of Heroes games in a nutshell? I swear I think I saw some people bragging that the Cold Steel games have more text than the Bible or something.
The "See those mountains over there? You CAN GO THERE!" ie: OUR GAME IS SO BIG shenanigans can come in many forms. Is all that content quality?...
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Post by Sarge on Jan 2, 2024 18:43:26 GMT -5
They are definitely wordy. I enjoyed the wordiness in FC, which is part of why I wanted to 100% it. It added to the character. But it's almost a visual novel in RPG form - I feel the combat is a bit utilitarian and really exists in service to the writing, and not the other way around. And again, not necessarily a bad thing, because I found the writing to be a big step up from something like Golden Sun, which was also verbose but I definitely noticed on a reboot that a lot of things were wordy just for the sake of being wordy. That bothered me less in the past, but I wonder what I'd think of a full replay of the GBA games now.
I'm pretty sure Trails in the Sky is where it got super duper verbose. I don't know that the PSP entries were really quite as stacked with dialogue, and sadly the localization on those is not very good. I'm surprised some enterprising fan of the LoH games hasn't already tried to tackle those yet - seems like prime retranslation material.
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