Messages

1

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2015?

« on: August 07, 2015, 12:50:43 PM »

Magicians & Looters: Beat it. It's a short game, but fun enough for that amount of time. Boss battles are challenging, but not frustratingly so.

The game is a metroidvania with three characters. It's implementation was probably it's weakest point. You can only switch characters at save points and sometimes a specific one was needed to get a certain roadblock. This meant you could play as someone, find out you need someone else and now you have to trek back to a save point. This encourage you to play as the fastest character. The fastest character also happens to have three "get past this roadblock" skills whereas the others only have one each. Finally, it's almost always much easier to just run past enemies than fighting them and you get no exp from killing them, so you have the recipe for a game where one character gets used more than the rest together. This is all done so that the game can have some fairly uninspired puzzles that rarely amounts to more than "here you have to play as Vienna/Brent/Nyn".

It's a pity because the characters all have the same core mechanic and switching from one to another doesn't feel awkward, but they still differentiates enough from each other so that they offer meaningfully different play-styles. It's just that the other game mechanics don't support that core idea.

Finding Teddy 2: Beat it shortly after. This game is also a metroidvania.

You play as a girl of maybe 10 years and the environments, while fairly low tech, are beautiful. This game is very cute, but doesn't restrict itself to be cute at all the time. There is one town where some inhabitants discusses who wants to kill who with a musical language. Then there's a dungeon where you receive a death threat via the same musical language. Finding Teddy 2 does so sparingly however and doesn't turn "hey, we toss brutality into a cute game" into a gimmick.

Controls and collision detection is fairly bad. This is to an extent mitigated by the fact that you very rarely need precision. If you have a hard time dodging enemy attacks, the problem is never that you need to become better at controlling your character, rather you need to approach the fight differently so that being good at dodging enemy attacks isn't needed in the first place. However, the poor controls is a problem when you're going on a collect-a-thon. In Super Metroid, if you go back to Brinstar late game in order to clean it out from powerups, you will have an easy time since your mobility and combat prowess is much greater than during the initial run trough of it. In Finding Teddy 2, while earlier aren't won't pose and threat to you later on, running trough them will never be relaxing. If you get reckless, you will get hit-stunned a lot and also get knocked down ledges so you have to redo jumps a lot as well.

A greater problem is that it's easy to get stuck int his game. For example, theres one dungeon where you encounter what looks like a bottomless pit, but it turns out you not only can jump down there and land on a floor, you have to do so. If you're someone who despises using a guide on your first playgroup, skip this game. BTW, also skip this game is you're deaf, have poor hearing or just a very bad sense of music. This game requires you to recognize musical sounds. Finally, the map layout isn't logical. There's one instance where you can enter two different doors, one positioned above the other. Both doors lead to the same outdoor area at roughly the same vertical height, but the topmost door leads to somewhere far to the left of the bottommost door.

In the end, I'd say that the ideas were there, but the game design skill wasn't.

2

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2015?

« on: July 15, 2015, 08:58:44 PM »

Finding Teddy 2: Beat the first book. The environments are really pretty and the game has a rather cute feel, other than when you're fighting a boss whereupon things look rather brutal. For example, the first boss is a mermaid who once defeated will slump down wounded instead of dying immediately. As far as I know, there is no other way to proceed than to make the girl execute her.

Due to the controls and collision detection not being that great, fighting generally is more a contest of simple knowing which moves you should use than being a test of reflexes and maneuverability. Usually it's not complicated. Sometimes you're best of running at the enemy and attack with the girl's double damage dash attack, sometimes you're best of walking up to the enemy and block one attack before you stab it, sometimes you're best of jumping and down-stabbing it and so on. It does happen though that the easiest way gets rather weird. For example, one enemy is easiest to beat by first ducking and stabbing at it barely out of range. The enemy will crouch down to block the attack even though it doesn't hit. Then you walk slightly forward and stab it while it crouching and has its shield down. However, you need to be quick about it else the enemy will stab you in the legs. This usually means you stab before it look like the sword actually reaches the enemy, but it still does, the air seemingly being between the sword and the monster be damned. Either the sword has a longer reach than the visuals let on or the enemies has a bigger hit box than they seem to.

One another note, the game is now making good of it's title. Once you beat the first book, the big bad evil magician spirits away the girl's teddy bear including the giant spider soul it hosts. Last time someone took her teddy bear, she got it back by mostly being nice. This time though:



She's probably going to try a different approach.

I also almost got enough money for a sword upgrade. I can buy an armor (cloth) upgrade right now, but killing faster seems more fun than surviving more blows so I'll hold off.

3

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2015?

« on: July 13, 2015, 07:35:03 PM »

Finding Teddy 2: Finding Teddy 2 is a matroidvania which stars a nameless little girl and has great environments. She has similar move-sets as Zelda 2 link, but the controls and collision detection are clunkier. The game is still perfectly playable as long as you're using a controller, if you use a keyboard you will learn to hate your life.

Anyway, it's intro time. Well, it would have been intro time if the intro had loaded, but it only did so partially. The music and most importantly, the "press any key to skip" prompt, was successfully loaded, but the scrolling text which is supposed to appear was not. So, let's Youtube the intro.

Exidus, a monster world, is ruled by a tyrannical king called Tarant. Tarant was also a giant spider in Finding Teddy, but Finding Teddy 2 doesn't bother with that detail. Anyway, the king was as mentioned, a tyrant and consequently, nobody wanted to be his friend. The other monsters were unsurprisingly unhappy as well.

Tarant decided to open a magical gate to the human world and look for a friend there. The gate opened right into the bedroom of a little girl sleeping with her teddy bear. Tarant had the genius idea of claiming the teddy bear as his friend with the logic that an inert and lifeless object cannot reject him. Yeah, we have a real winner here. However, he forgot to close the gate, so the girl followed into the monster world.

After a thousand and one travels, she finally found her teddy bear. Well, it wasn't really a thousand and one travels since Finding Teddy is rather a short game, but maybe it felt so since she got impaled, crushed and eaten alive a dozen or so times. See, while Finding Teddy 2 is a metroidvania, Finding Teddy is an adventure game. The girl had no means of defending herself, so whenever she encountered one of the sad monsters, she had  two options; either she figures out how to make it happy or she meets a brutal death.

Anyway, she eventually finds her teddy bear and also manages to befriend Tarant who at that point had realized that while an object doesn't judge him, it also isn't much of a friend. He returns the girl and her teddy bear to her world. Tarant then figures out that being a douche bag isn't the way to go and start being nice which both makes his subjects happier and removes the need to look for friends in other worlds.

Well, most subjects are happier. It seems that while Tarant didn't know better than to be a douche bag, some monsters are more of a "evil for the sake of evil" type. One such monster is a magician named Anguis. He manages to kill Tarant in combat and takes over Exidus. To prevent the monsters from getting the idea to flee into the human world (presumable Tarant told them about it and assumed everyone there is as friendly as the little girl) Anguis seals the gate to the monster world inside the library of worlds. However, Tarant had created four eggs of great power that can break the seal. Anguis solves that problem by sealing them as well, each one in a separate world with it's own monster to guard it, hoping that nobody will slaughter her way trough the monsters and recover them.

After that, the game claims that the reign of Anguis can begin, but that can't be true. As we will see shortly, the nameless girl can make it from her world to the library of worlds and the world of monsters is sealed from the human world. This means the world of monsters has to be sealed from the library of worlds. Also, Anguis is in the library of the worlds which means he just sealed himself out of the monster world.

Anyway, Tarant's soul had apparently in time escaped to the library of worlds and makes its way into the human world. There he finds himself in a dark room with the teddy bear. He possesses the corpse. Now, the game calling it a corpse can mean two things, either the teddy bear is a flayed koala or whoever translated the game isn't very good at English. You see plenty of signs to the latter explanation during the intro, but the first alternative can not be fully discredited once we learn more about the nameless girl.

The girl is this time not sleeping with her teddy bear, she is sitting in front of a TV and playing video games. The power is suddenly cut, the room gets dark and the girl seems to know something is going on. She nervously makes her way towards a chest and from there produces a sword and a shield. So, while Tarant learned that being a douche bag isn't the way to go, the girl learned that that being defenseless and getting brutally killed over and over isn't the way to go either. She holds up the sword with the right hand and then... holds it with her left hand. Turns out she's facing her left handed direction.

With a sword in hand, whichever hand it may be, the girl is no longer nervous and makes her way down the cellar. There she finds her teddy bear, floating in the air. The teddy bear being in the cellar is a clear sign that she outgrew it, but I guess you're never to old for a floating teddy bear possessed by the soul of a giant spider. She follows Tarant into the library of worlds and the gameplay begins.

4

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2015?

« on: April 09, 2015, 08:01:03 PM »

Pillars of Eternity: The story quickly got a lot more interesting. The events in the asylum for people with trouble souls were interesting and cool. I have so for no idea what the villain really is trying to do, but the game has given me enough material to imagine all kinds of really bad stuff they could do.

The main character's special ability is also great. It gives you a good reason for why she/he can figure things out other people cannot without felling like it grants godlike powers. It also means that instead of talking to NPCs and have them say boring on liners or reveal things you'd normally not reveal to strangers, you can just check their souls.

Mechanically, there's problems with the game. In Baldur's Gate, I would re-roll my character until she got really high rolls. I ended up with a fighter who after using tomes, had 19/19/19 in the stats that matters and her stat total was considerable higher than even Imoen's. In this game I don't have a stat total that blows everyone else's away, all I can do is to distribute it more efficiently. Nevertheless, I feeling for more that my character is carrying the party than I did in Baldur's Gate. Minsc and Keldorn weren't as strong as my character was, but they still contributed well to combat. In this game, all companions are ridiculously far behind the main character. I'm not heavily min/maxing either, I just got 16 in both Might and Dexterity and I left Intelligence at 10 despite that being the third most important stat for fighters.

5

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2015?

« on: April 06, 2015, 07:35:21 PM »

Pillars of Eternity: Went to the big city in Defiance Bay. I decided to explore and do some sidequests before progressing the story. I soon hit a catacomb and went in to loot it and fight some skeletons since catacombs have a 100% chance of the dead taking a stroll. Suddenly my main quest journal entry updated. Turns out that was the next main story location. Also experienced what happens if you accidentally pull three different monster groups. I should let enemies come to me, even if they are below my level.

6

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2015?

« on: April 06, 2015, 12:22:00 PM »

Pillars of Eternity: Got my own fortress. So far it's not doing anything, but I've build 2-3 buildings so far. I've picked peasant type of weapons to focus on. They give you Spears which has increased accuracy and look dumb when you dual wield them. I also get hatchets as a more defensive option, but I suspect that won't be very useful. Deflection seems like an all or nothing option, the more you have, the more additional points help. Since my character is more DPS focused, she doesn't gain much from extra deflection.

So far the game is fun, but not really that great. I'll see how things turns out when I get more options.

7

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2015?

« on: April 03, 2015, 11:37:10 PM »

PoE: Started a fighter. I'm going for dual wield, but I haven't decided on a weapon yet. While I'm not trying to make a power build, I feel that I should at least consider that option carefully. So far the game is fun although I am noticing that Obsidian haven't done their math too well.

8

General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: August 01, 2014, 09:23:32 PM »

FTL: Beat the game on normal with Mantis B. Not a big accomplishment since Mantis B is overpowered.



The first fight against the flagship ended up being annoying. It hacked my weapons and between the cloak and the hacking, I could never even fire my weapons. The flagship couldn't hurt me though. I also made the mistake of hacking the shields since I'm used to having less fire power and therefore the shields often are a bigger problem than the cloak. Eventually I could kill off most of the crew by trapping them in the shield room and with most of them dead, I could injure the hacking system enough so that I could get my shoots off.

Hacking is overpowered. Often if an enemy poses a threat, they have one single component that can be removed to get rid of the threat. Hacking does exactly that. Heck, even when I screwed up and hacked the wrong system, the mere fact that hacking locks the doors could easily be exploited. Mind control, the other advance system, is extremely weak in comparison. Never mind the fact that hacking counters mind control while mind control doesn't counter hacking.

Has anyone ever been lucky enough to outfit a ship with four Burst Laser II?

9

General Chat / Re: Wheel of morality, turn turn turn! Nosy super questions on morality.

« on: August 01, 2014, 09:03:23 PM »

1. Your child is bullied quite frequently at school and the school/teachers are unwilling or unable to address the problem. Eventually, your child beats one of the bullies quite badly, resulting in the bully being hospitalized and the school threatening a long suspension. How would you react?

Fight the suspension, which is easy since I live in Sweden. In fact, I don't think a long suspension is even possible here. If we pretend I'm living in the US, the answer is still the same. In any case, the reasons I fight the suspension is that I want to be in charge of the punishment and I think the school administering the punishment sends the wrong message. If the school doesn't stop the bullies, but is dead set on stopping my child's behavior, they are not sending the message that the punishment is a consequence of his behavior. They are sending the message that the punishment is the consequence of him being who he is.

As for the punishment, it depends on how hard he was pushed by the bullies. How reasonable is it to expect him to behave better considering what he went trough? I will not send the message that using force is never right, but I will send the message that using force is a last resort and should not be done lightly. I'd try to choose, or abstain from, a punishment that sends the correct message.

2. You are on a federal jury, overseeing a white collar crime case. The defendant stole billions of dollars from pensions and siphoned off to his private accounts. You know people who were affected by this, though no one in your immediate family. The evidence presented by itself is however shaky, as the defendant's high priced lawyers got several key pieces of evidence tossed out.  Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?

Not guilty.

3. You get your first job. One of your coworkers is extremely unpleasant and rude and indirectly lead to your termination from that job. Years later, you run into this same coworker doing a menial customer service job. They do not seem to remember you, and provide okay service to you. The business provides a website for a customer survey after the fact. If you take the survey and give the cashier a bad review, they could get in serious trouble. Do you take the survey? If so, what do you put down?

I do not take the survey.

4. You cut off a delivery truck at a gas station. You go and get something from the gas station and head back to your car. The delivery person is still there and is upset. Do you say anything?

I apologize.

5. You accidently find out that one of your coworkers is using illegal drugs while at work. The person doesn't know that you know about the drug use. Management will require the person to take a drug test (Penalty of termination for failing it) if you tip them off about the drug use. Do you say anything to management? Your coworker?

I may warn my coworker first and give him a chance to stop. This is provided the coworker isn't already notable misbehaving in some way. However, I will not delay telling management very long.

6. You accidently bump into another car while in a parking lot. There's no one around to witness the event, and there's no real visible damage to either car and you are in a hurry. How do you handle it? Do you wait for the person? Leave a note? Just leave?

If there isn't a visible damage, I leave.

7. You are unemployed and applying for a dream job, and get the interview. You are qualified for the job. The only issue is that you are short six months experience for the minimum requirement. Because you left the previous employer on good terms, they tell you that they'll lie and say you worked another year at the company than you did to help assure that you get the job. Do you accept this help?

I will not accept that help. If not for my sense of morality, I'm very nervous about this sort of deception.

8.You place a modestly large order at a fast food place which happens to be very busy. They screw up your order and give you far more food than you paid for. You don't find this out till you're pulling out of the parking lot. Do you return it?

Almost certainly not to be honest.

9.  An experiment is ran by doctors. They take 1000 victims in the late stages of Alzheimer's and perform medical experiments on them, including brain surgery. This is done of victims with no close living family, so there is no one to give consent. The entire experiment is hidden away so there are no legal or ethical challenges to the experiment. This ends up leading to a cure that halts the progress of the disease, and opens up other treatment options for brain diseases. What should happen to those doctors?

Blacklist them from performing scientific experiments and toss them to the court. The fact that they made a break-trough should have no impact on the punishment. If anything, that almost makes it worse since it may encourage others to pull a similar trick.

10

General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: June 25, 2014, 06:55:49 PM »

FTL: Had a few failure runs on normal with the Zoltan Cruiser. I'm going to switch back to easy and basically try to unlock all ships that seem interesting. Then I'll try the most powerful ones on normal.

11

General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: June 22, 2014, 04:58:26 PM »

FTL: Beat the game both with Engi Cruiser B and Federation Whatever A. It was on easy though, but the perma-death makes me hesitate to play a harder difficulty.

The Engi ship relied on massive firepower to destroy the flagship. I had 13 potential hits I could unleash at once, two defense drones to stop the triple rocket launcher and mind control to defend myself during form 3. I had no effective defense against the power surges, but the flagship was destroyed before my ship was.

The Federation ship relied on hacking to disable enemy shield so I could gradually punch out the threats one after another. I had enough energy to power both fully upgraded engines and shields, so nothing besides the rockets did pose a credible threat. That is, unless the enemy mind controls the pilot or the engineer. It didn't happen too often though. The artillery was a cool idea, but in practice, it occupies a slot that I could have used for say mind control.

I now got the Zoltan ship and Zoltans are great since they allow you to have more power during the final battle. I may try normal difficulty now.

12

General Chat / Re: Idiot of the Day

« on: January 19, 2014, 05:37:15 PM »

As far as I know, there is no requirement that the defendant must have intended for the sex to be non-consentual in Swedish law. No sources I've checked says anything about it. It looks to me like the judge just made something up. This is also not the worst case I've read about in Sweden. There was one case where a girl was raped by six guys. The judge concluded that the guys did have sex with her and that she didn't consent. However, he still didn't consider it rape and cited a bogus claim about "girl sex" as reason.

13

General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: September 12, 2013, 07:24:01 PM »

Rogue Legacy: Beaten it for the first time. It toke me 65 generations.

The game was rather fun, but the new game+ hasn't been so far. I think I just start over and avoid unlocking the Lich and the Dragon. They kind of clutter the gene pool. Skipping the Spelunker would be good too, but I want the gold upgrade, so I have to think about it. In any case, the new game+ should be more fun with less crappy draw.

I found one aspect of the story funny. We have this family where at an age of approximately 30, a member enters the castle and then never returns. Then one member of the next generation does the same thing. This repeats for what in my playtrough was 65 generation and never did they consider that, hey, maybe they can just use the money to buy a load of farms or something and ditch the meat-grinder of a castle. Then you reach the last boss and it turns out that, yes, they are nuts. They don't really have a good reason to enter.

14

General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: August 11, 2013, 04:46:55 PM »

Titan Quest: Started an Earth/Spirit character. My strategy was to pump Earth Enchantment, then pump Flame Surge and once I got to Delphi, spec out of Flame Surge and instead put the points into Ternion Attack. Earth Enchantment Doubles my fire damage and Ternion let's me shoot three projectiles for 80% damage each with my staff. This makes the damage 480% which so far has been just about as balanced as it sounds like. There's also an improvement down the road that gives Ternion Attack area of effect.

I'm not sure what I'll get other than that. Maybe summons.

15

General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: October 14, 2012, 06:47:56 PM »

Terraria: Started a new game and named my character Charlotta. My current plan is to mostly stick to melee and magic. Also, I'm going to build a semi nice house. The reason for that is because I need to collect fallen stars and I need something to do while waiting for the night. The first goal is to get gold weapons and tools and silver armor. Silver armor is enough until I can get demonite armor. Currently I have copper armor and an iron sword though.

16

General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: August 21, 2012, 08:35:53 PM »

YS Origin: Beat Yunica's story. The gameplay was like Ark of Napishtim, but better. Generally, enemies and bosses are better designed. The controls makes it easier to attack ground bound enemies, but it's far harder to hit aerial ones.

Unfortunately, YS Origins stick to the formula of making levels matter way to much. I've encountered a late game boss, toke about 18 points of damage from an attack and eventually lost. Then I realized I'm only about 200 exp from a level up, re-fought the boss with one more level and now I'm only taking 13 or so points of damage. Also, as I progressed trough the game, bosses didn't seem to do more damage than before, instead they became harder to avoid. In other words, the game counters the player getting more and more HP by making bosses hit you more often instead of making them deal more damage. This meant that getting from level 45 to 46 late game had as much impact as getting from level 13 to level 14 did early game.

To be fair, I expect levels to have a huge impact in YS games. However, I'm not so found of the game relying on me getting hit a lot. I prefer systems where you can survive less hits, but in return it's easier to avoid damage. I found the first two bosses the most fun to fight for that reason.

That said, bosses are surprisingly well designed when it came to concept. Most of them did a good job to give me a lot to think off and there was plenty of strategy involved, not just reflexes. Most cannon fodder enemies leaves you with plenty to learn and that without breaking from a fast and furious hack and slash style.

I ended up using wind magic the most. Lightning seemed to situational and fire broke away from Yunica's style. Also, I found the greatsword inferior to the axe. The Phoenix is invaluable against some bosses though.

I also loved the blessings. It's like the game saying "here's all the cool stuff you will get!"

The story is bad. I don't expect a good story from an YS game, but this game toke a lot of potential and completely wasted them. It takes place during the fall of YS, but you don't get to even see YS. There are some good mysteries going on in the tower though, but they usually turn into disappointment as well.

Yunica looked promising at first, but the poor writing eventually got her. Her final confrontation with twin bandanna man ended up being a low point of the game despite the game setting it up as the opposite.

Fortunately, you can ignore the story for 95% of the game and just go with the fun gameplay.

I started playing as Hugo a bit, but I've decided to take a break from YS Origin and resume later.

17

General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: August 13, 2012, 08:38:00 PM »

YS Origins: I start the game and pick Yunica as a character. She's basically a girl who goes berserk with an axe and has a lot of muscles, but precious few brain cells. So far, everything's great, but then the story kicks in.

The game takes place during the YS era. The narrative explains how YS was a paradice, but then got ravaged by demons. You know, the stuff that would have been interesting to see. The goddesses decided to lift a part of the land into the sky. The demons however gave pursuit. The winged demons just flew up and the rest built a tower that would reach the island. Now, while it's hard to shake of the flying demons, the problem with the tower could have been solved by moving the island a few miles sideways. The goddesses had another plan thopugh, they disappeared. The people from YS decided to send a search party down and Yunica is part of it.

Yunica mentions that she cannot use magic, but she still want to become a knight. She also wants to protect the goddesses with her life, just like her father did. Maybe becoming a bloody corpse was the common desire of young girls during the YS era. That or she didn't think trough what she actually said.

Anyway, the game proceeds with the search party being sent down, thereby refraining from showing anything about how life was during the YS era. They float down in some sort of shiny comet looking thing. The comet is struck by something and the search party is flung to random directions.

A mysterious girl with braids, who looks exactly like Yunica lands in a green field which turns out to be near a talking tree. Most of what's being said is useless, but the girls with braids does find out that the goddesses are in the big tower and that they went the voluntarily. Oh, and it turns out that the girl with braids who looks like Yunica actually is Yunica, who would have thought? She heads to the tower and I get the impression that this is where the game will take place. Not bad, in only 10-15 minutes of intro, the game managed to void about 90% of the point of taking place during the YS era.

In the entrance, there's tree people being harassed by six monsters. Yunica arrives to save the situation and the three guys decides that they will take care of half the monsters and Yunica the other half. Yunica does so, but then six more monsters arrive which she also takes care of.

The three guys she saved hatches some plan about gathering the rest of the search party. Yunica's plan however is to enter the tower and go rampage. She spouts out sometime about scouting and needing combat experience to be useful since she cannot use magic, never mind the fact that she singlehanded toke on six monsters simultaneously, something the three guys she's talking to, all of them which can use magic, considered themselves unable to. The leader among them for some reason gives in.

Anyway, the into is over, the gameplay begins and the game becomes great again.

18

General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: March 05, 2012, 03:16:43 AM »

Fortune Summoners: Beat it. It was rather fun for the first half, but less so the second half.

At first you may think the game is a metroidvania where you control a little girl as the main character. However, the progression is entirely story based and all skills save one are from level ups and are solely for combat. You also get three characters and the AI controls two of them.

The controls are rather bad. If you keep attacking and then hold backwards, you will never turn around because the game keeps queuing up attacks and they take priority over turning around. Also, Arche (main character) has an upward slash, but to use it you can't just hold up and attack, you have to tap up right before attacking. The same goes for other moves. If you want to downstab, don't press down until right before you press attack, else Arche will do a normal attack instead. The characters also has a large momentum and thus needs quite a lot of time to stop.

It's not so bad at the first half of the game, you can compensate for the bad controls by figuring out how the enemies moves and fight smart. However, the game then gets harder and due to the controls, it cannot pull that off without bullshit. Enemies will fling spells from afar and are often airborne when they do so. You can cancel their spellcasting by hitting them, but the bad controls makes hitting enemies in the air harder than it should be. The melee enemies also becomes very good at blocking attacks and hitting them multiple times in succession is impossible, which is rather bad since it takes over five hits to kill them. The game also likes to place spikes or other terrain hazards in combat zones, something that doesn't feel fair in a game with such floaty controls.

The AI is very good though. Your companions will navigate platforms just fine and can find you even if you're at the other side of the map and there's a lot of platforming needed to reach you. Unfortunately, the enemies also have very strong AI. They know how to dodge spells, even though you have multiple spells and each covers a different area. Also, if your casters start charging up a spell, they will try to interrupt it if they are close enough. The effect is that if you cast a spell to far from the enemies for them to reach you in time, they will dodge the spell and if you cast it close to them, they will interrupt it. In the end, spells only work because when the AI has three targets and you use your fighter to repeatedly hit them, half the time it will be to much for the AI to handle. Actually, at the first half of the game the spell casting will work just fine since the enemies aren't bullshit yet and you can reasonable keep them away from your spell caster.

The game does have a lot of charm. The main character is a tomboy who's rather dim in an adorable way (says butter instead of butler, need to use her fingers to do addition and so on,) and is generally all brawn over brain. The dialogs aren't particular well-written (some are actually rather bad,) but are still cute. The charm kind of breaks once the third character joins, I found her rather annoying and I don't think her personality really fits a child character. Oh, and it's at the halfway point that she joins.

It's a game that could have been way more fun that it was.

19

General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: January 20, 2012, 11:36:35 AM »

Dragon Quest VIII: Finished the events on Maella abbey and is now going to visit the emo king. Soon enough I'll have access to both the monster arena and the bigger alchemy pot.

20

General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: January 18, 2012, 03:54:46 PM »

Dragon Quest VIII: Started a new game. I'm not going to do the casino this time. It's not meant as a challenge as much as the casino simple being boring. I'll still allow myself to use the initial coins though. I just beat the octopus boss.

I intend to go for Boomerang 52 and then Courage 82 for hero. After that I'll start pumping Spear. He will not be a good boss killer that way, but I tried that build before and it worked just fine.

Yangus will get Fisticuff 42 and Axe 66. This should make him good as both randoms and bosses. I haven't decided what to take after that.

Jessica will get Whip 23 and Staff 100. I don't know how effective Whip will be without the Gringham Whip, but there isn't much else I want to put points into.

I'm a bit unsure about Angelo. I'm considering Sword first since the hero now lack a good boss killer option, but I won't get a Falcon Blade though.

I could also stay at 18 for Boomerangs, and then give the hero enough Spear for Multi-Thrust. Then I get Bow for Angelo instead. I know Bow has some useful skills, but the mp draining animation is a pain though. I must decide before the next level up.

21

General Chat / Re: Idiot of the Day

« on: June 11, 2011, 08:18:15 PM »

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110609/ap_on_hi_te/us_computer_peeper

Well, at least he was creative in his desperation to spy on naked women.

22

Discussion / Re: Rank Characters based on In Game Use: Reboot!

« on: May 12, 2011, 03:53:47 PM »

Grandia 1:
Justin: 9/10 - Great fighter and mage. His weapon selection is among the best of all characters. You also have him around for the whole game.
Sue: 6/10 - She's frail and has an insane long recovery time. Fortunately, this is Grandia, so it doesn't matter that much. She has access to all four elements, which is what counts the most. She also has a move that allows her to level up Earth and Fire really fast, but she leaves to soon for it to matter.
Feena: 7.5/10 - Good mage, but the lack of strength boosting weapons limits her fighting abilities. She's still a decent fighter by virtue of having great moves, but she won't deal that much damage with them. Finally, while she has a good spell selection, she sometimes have holes in her arsenal where she's forced to use spells that are either to weak or to expensive.
Gadwin: 5/10 -  Tanky in a game where it doesn't matter. Decent fighter, but a poor mage due only having two elements.
Rapp: 6.5/10 - Speedy and has access to all elements. Have a hard time building them up fast enough though and isn't that great of a fighter.
Milda: 3/10 - No elements, poor skills and low speed. Her high HP matters little since it's Gradia.
Guido: 1/10 - Well, he can cancel single enemies that manages to slip past Justin's and Rapp's AoE nukes, but that's it.
Liete: 6/10 - Generally great spells, but her elemental level is lower than that of the rest and she has limited time to catch up. She'd also want more weapons to help boosting her stats.

23

General Chat / Re: Idiot of the Day

« on: April 25, 2011, 01:18:55 PM »

http://www.clickorlando.com/family/27381829/detail.html

All in the name of protecting the children.

24

General Chat / Re: Idiot of the Day

« on: March 30, 2011, 12:44:37 PM »

http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html

tl;dr version: Someone posted a negative review of a book and the author goes apeshit.

25

General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: February 11, 2011, 12:50:53 PM »

Paper Mario: Beat it.

The last chapter was kind of boring. For some reason I almost always find the final dungeon of an RPG boring. It wasn't to long though.

The Bowser fight consisted mainly of me using Ultra Hammer and Electro Dash and healing when needed. This is probably the most typical RPG boss fight of all bosses I've encountered. Granted, many bosses broke from the mold solely by not requiring me to heal at all, but still, couldn't they have given Bowser a gimmick that actually matter?

I went for BP most of the time. It turned out I went a bit to far on the BP love, but I didn't notice it until I maxed it out. Once I maxed out BP and replaced all HP+ and FP+ badges with actual HP and FP upgrades, I couldn't get any more BP. However, badges kept getting more expensive. Eventually, I had to look at what badges were actually effective against the current enemies and switch off those that weren't needed for the moment to free up BP. At this point I realized that I could have done that earlier and that way would have needed less BP. For some chapters I had badges equipped that were never used simple because I had a superfluous amount of BP. That's a level up or two that could have gone into FP instead.

I still think BP is the best upgrade though. BP and FP both let you do more stuff, but BP is more flexible. HP loses since that stat doesn't really let you do stuff and is therefore only increased on an as needed basis.

Both exploring and combat was fun. The battles were easy, but I still felt that the game rewarded me for using better strategy and optimizing HP and FP management. The environments are good looking and the various dungeons are simple, but with fun quirks.