Games you've played today

So Sword Art Online: Lost Song is super hype. This is what the previous games should have been. Combat has been streamlined so it feels like a proper action-RPG instead of having to deal with tons of palettes like Final Fantasy XIV or something similar; you can dash, jump and fly whenever you want in the field, and while the flight controls are basic, IT'S GODDAMN UNLIMITED FLIGHT IN A VIDEOGAME, and you can FIGHT seamlessly. Outside of Gravity Rush, you can't get that.

The problem is, and I'm aware this is entirely my own doing, I want to be a huge dork and get my second trophy on the day that Kirito started playing ALO in the Fairy Dance arc (I beat the first boss of Hollow Fragment on the launch day of SAO.) I mean, I've got Tomb Raider Definitive Ed., Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Tales of Zestiria to play to carry me through to that date (it's mid-January) but I'm so hyped I'm not sure if I wanna wait...

I started playing the first episode of resident evil revelations 2. I got it for free and its been a lot of fun. I did find escaping the intial facility to be difficult because of how long it takes to break the door bar. I had to do that part 5 times when I haven't died after of before.

Just kill all the enemies, they will eventually slow down to a trickle of just 2-3. You don't even need the flame trap (you shouldn't use it anyway as that will destroy the gold custom part.) You can also tell Moira to work on the door while Claire fights.

Making episode 1 free was a damn good idea. If Capcom does another episodic game, they should maybe make the first episode free (and maybe make it smaller to compensate, but release an extra full episode total) right off the bat.

Revelations 2 is a damn fine game and while it did well, I think it should've done way better.

Does anything carry over from episode 1 to 2 specfically ammo. Also are all four parts around the same length?

That's kind of the problem with episodic games, isn't it? It's not always apparent.

Revelations 2 is designed exactly like Resident Evil 5 and 6, each chapter is like a sub-chapter from RE5. By which I mean, once the game checkpoints you (or once you complete a chapter, I forget but I think it's the former,) ALL YOUR STUFF IS SAVED and you can exit to the title screen and go to ANY OTHER CHAPTER you can currently access with all your weapons, parts and inventory intact.

This is also important because it means if you're having trouble, you can grind for skill points and supplies in other chapters you do well in, then go back to the one giving you problems.

The chapters are roughly the same length, Claire's final chapter is very short but Barry's final chapter is really goddamn long, it's like a chapter and a half. Claire's third chapter is also quite long, maybe the same as Barry's last one, but it feels normal length because it keeps you busy.

The bonus chapters aren't much to write home about, they just take a concept from the core game and base an entire chapter around it, one based around survival with limited lives that gets surprisingly difficult, and one based around stealth.

So Black Ops 3 had Double XP this weekend. I tried to play it a lot. The biggest problem (besides the netcode, of course, but that's been a problem since BLOPS 1) is the maps. Most of them don't take advantage of the new wall-running and double jump abilities. It almost feels like Treyarch was going for a more traditional COD experience and changed it midway during development.

The 3 lane style map design from BLOPS 2 returns as well. I'm not liking the map design nearly as much, though. All the maps are too symmetrical, there's not enough paths to switch lanes, and there's too many invisible walls. I also don't like all the open areas with little or no cover. Said cover is usually a waist-high box at the end of the lane. Combine is the worst with this. There's waist-high cover everywhere. Annoying teams will just sit in every lane, killing you shortly after you respawn. The only way you can get out is if you somehow kill them, or they're dumb enough to walk into your spawn zone and flip it.

Gun balance is pretty good for the most part, though I don't understand why they are yo-yoing the M8's stats. First it was too good in the beta, then they nerfed it, then it was a little better in the full game, and now its too good again. Virtually everyone who prestiged this weekend carried it over (since it unlocks at Level 55). The Gorgon magazine reduction was kinda pointless as well. So what if it can kill in 2 shots? Its slow as hell. Its not unbalanced.

Some of the more obvious issues from the beta demo still have not been fixed either. Melee attacks still randomly kill in one hit (that's only supposed to happen from the back, not the front), and the flinch (aka viewkick), oh god the flinch. People complained about how BLOPS 2 required you to use the Toughness perk to win gunfights, when the flinching in that game without the perk isn't even half as bad as it is here. I get viewkick headshotted all the time in this game. Its like MW3 all over again, but worse since there's a gun attachment that increases headshot damage.

Been playing Hatoful Boyfriend for a class paper.

And it's very simple and not so much subversive to the VN/Dating Sim genre I (and my prof) initially thought it would be. It's just very, very, very charming due to the unusual concept and initial premise.

It's funny and totally an entertaining game. And it surprisingly has very serious story elements and enjoyable suspense than one would initially think when looking at the game.

But in the end, OKOSAN still wins my heart.

I caved in and played Demon Gaze after approximately 1 year after I bought it.

To be honest, I'm not a fan of first-person dungeon crawler RPG (e.g.; Etrian Odyssey) because it just bugs me so much not seeing my characters' action when attacking. Especially when they have such a cool looking design. I like simple looking sprite that moves more than beautiful but inanimate character.

And first-person dungeon crawling kinda feels claustrophobic somehow, with the limited view and how jarring the movement felt sometimes.

But yeah, I finally picked up Demon Gaze again after playing it for about 5 minutes a year ago. I'm not saying I'm over the issues I nitpicked above, but it's a pretty great time waster. I like the dungeon design so far, with most of them having no ceiling, slightly removing the claustrophobic issues I have with this type of game. The character designs, as always for this kind of game, is great to look at, although the mercenaries could use some unique designs instead of color swaps. I mean, they're not mooks that dies after they're introduced, why not have different design between them?

Gameplay wise, holy shit this game is rather frustrating. I'm currently stuck at Astarte because my healer is way underleveled. f*** Astarte, damn girl dishing out humongous multi-hit damage, keep abusing confusion, changing my formation around, avoiding 75% of my attacks, and healing 500+ HP every 4 turn or so. What the f***, game?

I kinda hate that this game doesn't allow re-classing characters, and the money required to add party members is quite high to have a full-fledged team. 10000G? When I get at most 200+G per battle? And I get extorted 400+G every time I returned home to revive a dead party member that also require money for the revive? And what's that, just use reviving item you say? Well I would if they're not fucking 3000G a piece! Come on!

Hatoful Boyfriend

Bad Boys Love Epilogue: This game is amazing.

Man, you know what's a good goddamned dungeon crawler? Dark Cloud. I still can't believe that it was a first-year title for the PS2. Releasing a game like that right now would be suicide unless you're an indie, in which case a roguelike of some sort is all we'd kind of expect.

While the PS4 exhibits some very typical, minor emulation problems (sometimes in cutscenes there's like, a one-pixel-wide vertical bar of noise on the absolute right side of the screen, torches in dungeons cause horizontal line artifacts to appear with their lens flares...) it also looks really goddamn good in this state, not unlike what people do with the Wii and Dolphin.

It manages to it all the right buttons in terms of mechanical difficulty, though maybe having health, thirst and weapon durability plus status ailments and rule-restricting dungeon floors is a bit much sometimes. The original game also has a nasty issue where there isn't really much reason to use other characters besides the protagonist if you keep your antidotes and repair powder stocked, but sometimes those Limited Floors will force you to use a specific character which is challenging if they're underleveled because you can only progress once you've killed the right enemy on that floor. Also, one of the final boss' forms requires ranged attacks that the protagonist cannot do (then again, I never tried buying a shitload of bombs, I don't think,) so fighting that form with an underleveled party member takes a while.

Either way, I was worried that I wouldn't dig it as much now, but it still holds up, and Toan still looks really fucking cool with his poncho and cap, and the awesome duel QTEs. Dark Cloud really was like the PS2's Zelda series in my opinion...It's a damn shame that we never got a third one. Dark Cloud 2 had an obnoxious difficulty spike in the second dungeon where if you hadn't leveled up your weapons right, your damage just drops to like 10%, but I'm eager to give that game another shot once it makes it to the PS4.

I've gotta be careful, at $15 a pop and with trophy lists, I might end up going nuts with these PS2 Classics. There are still a few games I need to buy physically, like Xenosaga Episode III, Ar Tonelico and Mana Khemia even if they get a digital release, but this is really nice.


As an aside, I streamed some footage of Dark Cloud from my PS4 using my new internet, and it worked flawlessly. Now, the game is 4:3 so normal PS4 games might still turn into an artifacted mess like when I attempted Watch_Dogs with my old internet service, but if it works we might be able to get somethin' fun going.

^Dark Cloud is one of my favorite PS2 games. It felt like the spiritual successor to the Soul Blazer trilogy (Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma) with the whole town building aspect and liberating people/animals/other stuff trapped in the dungeons.

Dear Level-5: Ni no Kuni II is awesome and all and I'm not trying to downplay how excited I am for that one, but seriously where's my Dark Cloud 3? THAT announcement would make me shriek like an excited little school girl. (Rogue Galaxy 2 would do likewise, actually.)

Now I wanna replay Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2. Time to put them on my ToDo list.

Yeah. Level5's a weird, very Nintendo-like company, they make fantastic AAA games but it feels like they never want to continue them for very long, they instead focus on the Layton games and various super-addictive games for Japanese children. I mean, I'm sure those sell better than Dark Cloud, Rogue Galaxy and White Knight Chronicles...But still.

I didn't really like WKC after WKC2, though that was mostly caused by the fact that WKC2's end boss will DESTROY you if you don't use the online quests (which in WKC2 they allowed you to also play offline IIRC) to level up and get better equipment. If you just use the main campaign's areas to grind it will take ages to be strong enough to beat the game.

It's partly my own damn fault, honestly, but it's caused my to hate the game since.

Well, that's not just a WKC problem to be honest. Like I said in my post about Dark Cloud, most of Level5's action-RPGs have some weird difficulty curve at some point. Dark Cloud 1 is surprisingly challenging in general due to its various mechanisms (enemies can kill you in 2-3 hits for quite a while,) and you will most likely end up neglecting your party members if you don't want to grind up their weapons, so when you get to the final boss and realize that you need one of the ranged characters, it really sucks. There was also that really bad curve in world 2 of Dark Cloud 2, I can't even tell you what it was specifically, I just remember lots of turtle or rock-like enemies and just not having enough damage output or weapon health to fight through them all.

I'd like to say that I just didn't understand the mechanics, but Dark Cloud was my favourite RPG franchise for a while so I don't think I would miss something that the game's tutorial would have covered.

Hahaha the only thing about the first Dark Cloud I remember being difficult is the damned QTEs. Thirst is pretty limiting too at first, partly because I love to explore every nook and cranny. The floors that restricted you to a specific character were annoying but I could deal with by grinding that character if I hadn't.

I don't recall having much trouble with Dark Cloud 2, but it's been many years at this point and the last time was a replay where I would have known ahead of time what to do to avoid any trouble I encountered the first time around. (I suppose the same applies to DC1 actually)

Really? The QTEs are super forgiving, they're only frustrating if you insist on getting perfect scores because the icons are large and make it hard to guess when they'll be centered, which I don't think is even necessary for exclusive loot, or even a trophy in the PS4 emulation. From the first two that I've completed so far, the rewards have both been emeralds which you can acquire normally from chests, especially on Back Floors.

Thirst isn't too bad since you can find the pools of water pretty easily, but weapon health is super frustrating if you're like me and insist upon monster genocide.

Taiyz wrote:

...weapon health is super frustrating if you're like me and insist upon monster genocide.

This is me, as long as my weapon still could be leveled. I'd always clear out every floor. Unless I'm misremembering and monsters respawn, in which case I probably avoided some. In thinking about it though, I probably sometimes rushed it to get to the next checkpoint if my durability was low so I could leave the dungeon and return directly to where I was. But other than that, kill everything that moves.

Different enemy types degrade your weapon at different rates, stone enemies obviously deal more weapon damage. If you ever go to a Back Floor, when you return the original dungeon floor will have respawned all enemies. I quickly gave up on trying to kill everything, but on the main floor you do have to kill as many enemies as possible because only one specific enemy holds the key to the next floor.

The game's dungeons are randomly generated apart from scripted encounters though, so it's not a big deal to skip tougher enemies.

Started Xenoblade Chronicles X today. I'm not too far (I got 3 party member so far). The game is good but THAT MUSIC! What happened to the epic music?

This style of music is not my cup of tea.

I still have yet to finish Demon Shaft in Dark Cloud 1. >.>

Taiyz wrote:

Different enemy types degrade your weapon at different rates, stone enemies obviously deal more weapon damage. If you ever go to a Back Floor, when you return the original dungeon floor will have respawned all enemies. I quickly gave up on trying to kill everything, but on the main floor you do have to kill as many enemies as possible because only one specific enemy holds the key to the next floor.

The game's dungeons are randomly generated apart from scripted encounters though, so it's not a big deal to skip tougher enemies.

Wow. I have forgotten WAY MORE about the game than I thought. I forgot you had to not only find the exit, but the key.

Which actually kind of upsets me because I friggin LOVE the series and other games like it and HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN!?

Man, I really have a strong desire right now to do new playthroughs if Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma, Dark Cloud, and Dark Cloud 2. Maybe sometime next year. Here's a thought: I could stream it. I'm not sure how fun to watch that would be though. RPGs can get pretty boring for streams.

Suikoden wrote:

I still have yet to finish Demon Shaft in Dark Cloud 1. >.>

I want to say I finished it in my second playthrough, but I'm not sure.

Tenshigami wrote:

Wow. I have forgotten WAY MORE about the game than I thought. I forgot you had to not only find the exit, but the key.

Don't worry, this is a mechanic that I forgot about AS I WAS PLAYING THE GAME. I forget the exact circumstances but I think I was super low on supplies/repair powder, poisoned and just wanted to get all the treasure/Alta and leave without using any more items, so I took a quick dip in a pool, headed for the exit and remembered that I didn't get the key yet. Sigh.

Reality wise I am as stoic as they come but MC5(equates to Modern Combat 5) and can see why those whose own consoles such as Elpredsador and XChaseMoneyX swear in their videos given in MC5 you either get knifed from a distance,stop shooting,stop moving,look wrong way,etc which is stupid.Regardless it's getting deleted off my tablet for now and putting JSR back on(also giving anyone wants to play MC4 for free instead of paying for it let me know pm wise and will direct you to my 4shared login

Final Fantasy X-2

After 29 hours, I finally completed Chapter 1!

I'm glad you're enjoying X-2!! Such an underrated game and one of my favourites! Unfortunately, my Vita playthrough is stuck at the point you're at. That time commitment is very real, and I got 98% completion on the PS2 edition, so I know the kind of time commitment I would WANT to put in. I am just not down for that, and if I play I'd want to do it that way, so there it sits, waiting.