Various thoughts on a variety of topics.
Tokio, a perennially late junior-high student, suddenly finds himself as the newest member of the Space-Time Administration Bureau after Calen makes a crash-landing in 2016 and picks him up on a whim. Their mission? To find the wacky ‘true history’ not recorded in history books.
This is the kind of show western morning/afternoon cartoons resemble, being episodic and featuring a light/silly form of comedy with a bit of mecha action.
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It shouldn’t be surprising, yet it is: This sequel is in almost all ways worse than the first Re;Birth.
The localization got worse (install the re-translation project modification to make it merely equally as bad), Nepgear is a far less engaging protagonist compared to Neptune, there’s a bunch of ecchi events straight out of an Agarest game, and the new themes are atrocious.
No, I don’t want to be constantly lectured about how piracy and cheating is bad in this game I bought… especially when said game just so happens to include cheat items in its paid DLC.
The only things this has going for it are giving the characters a couple extra combat abilities, Boss enemies not having any insane HP regeneration abilities, a Super EXP option which effectively eliminates level grinding (added by the DLC), and the somewhat large variety of possible endings.
Huh. I sort of regret putting off playing this for so long just because I knew it had a trash-tier localization and suspected it was extremely grindy.
It certainly has more than its share of issues (the awful localization, it is pretty grindy, the constantly re-used assets, mind-numbing/cringe-inducing plot developments, quite a number of auto-lose battles, a host of painful side-characters, tons of trap items to waste your limited resources on), and yet there’s just so much to collect while bap-bap-bapping away at enemies that I can’t help but enjoy playing it. Some advice:
Picking up the DLC Pack is well worth it for the two extra characters alone, as they make the early-mid game much less punishing due to being notably more powerful than the two you start with, and you should limit your Plan creations to unlocking and adding enemies to the 16mb dungeons (the ones that cost 100+ are DLC content and can be saved for a second playthrough), removing the damage cap, increasing the jump height, and unlocking two of the CPU Candidate characters (who cost 1024mb each).
Then on any potential NG+ playthroughs you can unlock the other character, the Colosseum, the DLC dungeons, and the highest level equipment (completely skipping all the weaker stuff, which is just a waste to unlock).
One final thing that may be worthwhile to be aware of, is that pressing the L1 button will skip attack/transformation animations.
Lilith’s grimoire turns into a young girl after Arata touches it and awakens the White Demon Lord, an artificial demon lord who desires to become a real one by defeating Arata.
An adaptation of one of the light novels, this movie takes place an indeterminable amount of time after the TV series (which there’s a brief recap of) and features a similar mix of ecchi comedy and action. Perhaps weighted a bit more toward action.
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A game I tried on a whim that ended up reminding me of a previous game I tried out on a whim.
This is more of an arcade-like beat-’em-up/hack&slash though. Basically you run around killing hoards of monsters on your way to one objective or another while collecting the equipment or instant power-ups they drop. There isn’t anything to craft here and upgrades occur automatically as you and your summons level up. Combat on the face of things is pretty simple:
You have a weak attack, a strong attack, a special attack, and a dodge. Combos can be made from weak->strong, weak x2->strong, and weak x3->strong, each ending in a different type of maneuver. Where the complexity comes in is that these combos change depending on which weapon type you have equipped (there are ultimately four) and eventually you gain the ability to switch weapons during combos. There’s also the transformation ability which lets you assume a powerful half-demon form with its own attack set, and of course the summoning system.
The summoning system is also pretty simple at first glance. You have four servants you can ‘equip’ at a time, each with their own attacks and experience/stat values. You can summon any/all of these during battle and they’ll stay summoned until they either get knocked out or the battle ends. So why not just summon them all immediately? Because each performs a different type of ability when it gets summoned, meaning it’s often a good idea to wait until that ability will help you out. These servants will move/attack on their own, but you can give them general orders (attack any, attack my target, heal yourself) as well as make them use a specific ‘Burst’ special ability when necessary.
So there’s a lot going on during battle, which is a good thing since the game revolves around combat. The bad part about the combat system is that it’s timed. You get 15 minutes to clear an area after you leave the safe zone; if you don’t you’re automatically teleported out. Boss fights at least aren’t timed, but still… timed anything is bullshit.
That timer, combined with lack of things to collect, combined with the hack&slash nature of the game all adds up to an experience that just doesn’t grab me or make me want to keep playing.
When your game world has 4 methods of increasing travel speed (faster walking upgrades, teleport bottles, ship travel, & geoboard riding) and still ends up a chore to navigate… well, that’s a serious problem. Especially considering that right before the final battle a ton of sidequests become available, and finding/completing them requires backtracking across and re-visiting everywhere you’ve been before. The Xillia cameo is also pretty painful.
Ultimately I would have to say that this game is not worth bothering with unless either:
A) You have not played Zestiria (and want to)
B) You have not watched the Zestiria Anime adaptation (and want to)
As the background here will help enhance the story and events there.
This game is indeed the second coming of Planescape: Torment.
Which raises the question: If the above statement is true, why exactly have I spent 40+ hours backtracking and grinding random things in Tales of Berseria (a game which by all appearances I’m not very fond of)? Several reasons.
The first and largest is resource management. Resource management in an RPG, especially a story-driven RPG, is a terrible idea pretty much 100% of the time. Each of the three attributes in this game consists of a separate resource pool which you can spend to increase your chance to complete various related challenges/checks. These pools do not automatically refill; rather there are three separate item types that can restore them. That’s atrocious. The one-time-use unique items system is a lesser issue, but also pretty bad. Having unique consumable items is an awful enough idea on its own, but to take it a step further and restrict how many you can carry? Shameful.
A more subjective reason for not playing it much right now is the lack of guides/walkthroughs. I can play RPGs without them (I did so for Pillars, Tyranny, and most recently Staglands after all), but would prefer not to. Generally speaking I only play most games once, so I’d like to make sure I’ve seen/done everything in the first playthrough and not missed anything. And this seems like the kind of game where it’s incredibly easy to miss things.
The final reason being that (comparatively) Berseria is a known factor, where you can just sit back and grind/collect whatever without having to really think about anything or worry much about missing a chunk of the story/characterizations. This game however requires more of an active investment.
I do indeed eventually plan on making that effort, as from what little I’ve seen so far it looks like it rewards such many times over, but it will have to wait until after Berseria‘s finished… and may end up getting sidelined again in favor of the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda.
In Act IV now, having returned to Loegres post-Temple.
The game does indeed open up a little once you get through the sea gate and unlock ship expeditions. This doesn’t really last though and the enemy-infested areas get ridiculously long at times: There’s that insanely oversized mass of tunnels after you first escape the Earth Pulse for instance, and the seemingly never-ending stretch of Reef before you reach Palamides Temples.
Making these areas worse is that they tend to be (over)populated by only 3-4 varieties of enemy groups. Presumably this is a result of the new equipment mastering system, to give players a decent chance of finding the unique equipment drops each enemy has. Which is dumb. They should have went with an increased drop chance and reduced the number of enemies and repetitious pseudo-corridors instead.
The railroading has also been pretty bad so far. Areas are often blocked off and returning to previous locations is heavily restricted, sort of forcing you to grind each area to get all the monster-drop equipment the very first opportunity you get… since there may not be a second chance anytime soon. The Katz chests can be skipped though since all they reward you with are either fashion items or an invitation to the Katz Corner location (which can only be visited just before the final dungeon).
Worst of all I think, is that at this point the storyline takes a dive and starts heavily mimicking Zestiria. Suddenly Malevolence is the focus and starts visibly showing up out of nowhere.
The actual combat is okay I suppose, though I’m not really feeling the Soul System. Against most random trash mobs it’s fine, but against bosses and boss-like enemies it’s pretty easy to get stuck with a low Soul count and be unable to combo or Soul Burst. I’ve been using Velvet exclusively, now with the following Arte setup:
Avalanche Fang -> Soaring Dragon -> Grounding Strike -> Scale Crusher
Mega Sonic Thrust -> Slag Assault -> Defiant Conviction -> Moonlight Cyclone
Cerberus Wave -> Binding Frost -> Heaven’s Wrath -> Infernal Torment
Swallow Dance -> Gouging Spin -> Searing Edge -> Shadow Form
With the 4 guard Artes being set to whatever weakness the current boss(like) enemy has. I’m not all that fond of Heaven’s Wrath though; while cool, it takes rather long to finish (which is an issue when Therionized). So I might try to switch it out eventually for something else. Maybe another Stunning attack.
From a gameplay perspective Berseria is essentially identical to Zestiria. The differences, such as now being able to learn item skills (which partly addresses the earlier issue of items not being straight upgrades of one another), are fairly minor.
The differences are more pronounced when it comes to storyline and environments.
Here you play as an anti-hero who’s often fairly ruthless as opposed to a more altruistic savior-type, which goes a long way toward making the events feel fresh. Hampering this are exterior locations that feel especially claustrophobic/cramped compared to Zesteria. It’s as though they took the design strategy from that game’s (boring, grindy) dungeons and applied it to the whole game, resulting in an extraordinarily unpleasant experience. It feels like a series of corridors.
Maybe it will open up later (I’ve only just unlocked a full 4-person party). If it doesn’t, then theme and minor technical improvements aside, there won’t be any reason to play it over Zesteria.
Having finally managed to form a vast continental alliance, Yuuri and his comrades storm the Black King’s castle to end things once and for all… and fail. With the alliance broken, Chronicle sundered, and Yuuri wounded, the diminished volunteer army returns home to regroup. On the way they come across a young boy named Aram who just might end up becoming the key to their victory.
A sequel to the earlier short OVA series, this does not require having seen that. These three movies (also adapted into a TV series) are mostly focused on action with a secondary focus on corruption-centric drama.
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