• Serpent in the Staglands – Endgame

  Posted on February 23, 2017 7:45 am by Offkorn Comment

  Having now finished the game I’m left somewhat conflicted.

  Ultimately it feels incomplete, with the final parts of the main quest seeming forced and unnaturally sparse. The Wandering Lady shrine is so expansive, while Lev is a burned husk where you can’t even deliver the spices you got in with (the entire interaction with Mya in fact feels like a placeholder), the logging yard is just an empty expanse filled with enemies, and Ista Cale is populated by no-name dock workers. It’s also annoying you can’t seem to do anything with Corem’s Shipping Guild or the Rheamus Farm area.

  At the end I was level 13 (having just leveled-up following the final battle) after clearing what I believe are all the possible areas to clear. Arcane Attack ended up being a fantastic spell for physical attackers, much better than focusing on Strength and particularly amusing when combined with Strafe, while Searing Light was the only direct damage spell worth actually putting points in. I also had over 10k money because there’s little worth buying beyond the custom armor; the equipment variety is sorely lacking.

  Unfortunately I got the bad ending, since warning the “natives” to not trust the Consil apparently means nothing and getting the Lele to leave peacefully somehow makes you responsible for massacring an entire village. This ending seems to be bugged, as during the final battle I couldn’t actually control the PC during it besides casting spells on myself and had to rely on the auto-attack AI to eventually kill everyone (caster MC). Not sure if I want to replay it to get the good ending (there’s a lot of empty space to traverse) or just shrug and go with this one for the upcoming expansion.

  Some other things to take note of:
  – Avoid using any sort of multi-attack ability around neutrals.
  – Most NPC pickpocket inventories appear to be completely randomized.
  – Don’t leave the Logging Camp until you have the Manor Key.
  – Orf’s Bridge Consil contains the best dodge-focused armor.
  – Rumin Consil contains the otherwise best armor.
  – You can copy/paste text in the Incantation Book.
  – Attack Speed 0 makes you unstoppable.
  – Wolf Morph, Wolf Claws 8+ & Amplify 8+ with a Hunter Whip works well.

  Continue reading → Post ID 2449

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  This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged Fantasy RPG Staglands Third Person Perspective

• Long Riders!

  Posted on February 22, 2017 12:53 am by Offkorn Comment

  

  Ami is a slightly clumsy college student without any hobbies, until one day she sees someone riding a folding bike. Despite having long had an interest in biking she never tried it herself due to a fear of falling, and the folding bike looks just compact enough to inspire her to try.

  A slice of life cycling series with a noticeable ecchi streak and comedy based on awkward character behavior.

  More Information:
  aniDB
  Daisuki
  Wikipedia

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  This entry was posted in 2016 - Autumn 2017 - Winter Anime Related and tagged Comedy Comic Adaptation Daisuki Dropped Ecchi Incomplete Source Series Slice of Life Sports Televised

• Serpent in the Staglands – Initial Impressions

  Posted on February 21, 2017 9:14 am by Offkorn Comment

  At this point, being at level 4 after having cleared the first set of areas, this game reminds me most of the first Baldur’s Gate. You start with basically nothing, most things can easily kill you, and the mechanics can be opaque. Visually speaking it looks pretty good (which is amazing considering that the native resolution is 320×240) while the gameplay is a more mixed experience.

  Early on at least, magic is not a viable damage dealer. So encounters come down to either baiting/kiting enemies away from their friends to beat them down 5-on-1, or making use of spells like Fearful Light and Festering Ooze to disable parts of otherwise unavoidable group attacks. You never, ever want to get into a ‘fair’ fight… because you will lose. Offsetting the deadly encounters is the ability to fully heal your party essentially at will outside of combat; there’s no limit to how much magic you can use, so just spam-cast the basic healing spell.

  Character progression is both simple and complicated. On level-up characters get 2 Attribute Points (used to raise attributes) and 2 Skill Points (used to raise skills, spells, and aptitudes). The attributes are relatively straight-forward (though Dexterity not affecting dodge is bizarre), the skills/spells/aptitudes however are far trickier. Many spells do not improve much at all at higher levels, you can only have 3 skills active at a time, and some aptitudes can become incredibly powerful indirectly (if you have the right tools). So it’s quite difficult to choose what to advance in and extremely easy to end up wasting points.

  Then you have weird ‘ease-of-use’ contrasts like being able to create infinite ranged ammo with a Linguistic Incantation, but the ammo has to be dropped on the ground first. Or new incantations being automatically written down as your Linguistics skill increases, but not having anything automatically marked on your world map or journal.

  Some starting things:
  – Create two additional Avatars at the start.
  – One of them should be a Drow Frost Jackal for the item.
  – Avoid fighting more than one enemy at a time.
  – While the game is paused, healing items cannot be used in battle.
  – If you use Woodwise on yourself, you can detect traps.
  – Parasitic Orb is required to unlock Fairy Rings.
  – Read everything, nothing is written down for you.
  – Don’t sell keys, drop them on the ground instead.
  – Merchant inventories are limited and extra items disappear.
  – Set traps will disappear if you save/reload.
  – If you only kill part of an enemy group, saving/reloading will respawn them.
  – Wands are very good, and anyone who can cast spells should have one.
  – Whether it’s day or night affects which encounters you’ll find.
  – Day/night can be changed at will with Linguistics 4.
  – GOG Galaxy installs the patch wrong, you have to move the contents of the 32/64 folder into the main directory.

  ‘Secret’ Linguistic Incantations:
  – “Davi Bone(s)” to turn a bone or bones into healing items.
  – “Shoar [Gem] Chip” to turn gem chips into whole gems.
  – “Grafitus [Ammo]” to refill any stack of ammo to 100.
  – The items above have to be dropped on the ground.
  – “Nufri [Ruin Name]” to reveal some kind of secret.
  – These are provided in the out-of-game Erlein’s Handbook.

  Spells to consider raising:
  – Blood Cocoon (works faster)
  – Festering Ooze (increased radius/duration)
  – Heat Metal (so it does damage)
  – Feverish Haze (works faster)
  – Cat Poly (up to 3dx dodge chance)
  – Wolf Poly (up to 5d6 physical hit chance)
  – Nauseate (works faster)
  – Strangling Vines (up to 5d6 dodge penalty)
  – Shimmering Scales (up to 3d17 AC and spell resistance)
  – Ethereal Weapon (up to 6d8 damage and 3dx hit chance)
  – Siphon Poison (works faster)
  – Searing Light (up to 5d7+15 damage and 12 radius)
  – Zana Morph (increased duration and up to 5d6 magic hit chance)

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• Rebel Galaxy

  Posted on February 17, 2017 6:07 am by Offkorn 1 Comment

  Calling Rebel Galaxy an RPG is stretching things a bit. There aren’t any skills to progress in, and dialog choices amount to some minor plotline options (whether you want to side with the militia or pirates, whether you want to help someone or just blow them up) and the ability to threaten or capitulate to pirates instead of fighting them.

  Let’s get the bad out of the way first:

  • All the systems are identical, with the only differences being what level of equipment you can purchase and which aliens may show up.
  • Progression is hilariously broken. Level 5/6 equipment (6 is max) and the best ships are available essentially as soon as you leave the first system.
  • All enemies fight pretty much the same way.
  • Mission-specific enemies often just pop into existence out of nowhere.
  • There’s not much in the way of ship customization; weapon, armor, and engine options are all pretty limited and there’s no cosmetic customization at all.
  • Faction differences are minor bordering on non-existent.
  • Mining is a complete waste of time (would be better if what the pulse detects could be customized).

  That’s a lot of bad, so what’s good about it? Um… well… it’s kind of fun to just unload rapid fire cannon blasts into the sides of dreadnaughts and watch them explode. And there’s something viscerally satisfying about running blockades and buying low/selling high to make a few million credits with basically no effort (buying salt for 2k-8k and selling it one system over for 30-40k is surprising entertaining).

  Some things to know if you plan to play this:

  • Upgrade your shields before anything else.
  • The Cargo Scanner module that marks which ships are carrying something will save you a ton of time hunting for alien weaponry.
  • The ‘system average’ column on the trading screen is the average price across all systems.
  • The Merchant Guild is the easiest way by far to make money and sells the best cargo modules.
  • The Mercenary Guild missions can send you against any other faction (you never know which until you get to the location).
  • Becoming neutral with the Red Devils gives you access to Aegis Shields, Smuggler’s Holds, and a couple ships including the Mercenary Guild’s Minotaur.

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  This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged Action RPG RPG Science Fiction Third Person Perspective

• Infinite Space

  Posted on February 14, 2017 6:14 am by Offkorn Comment

  Now this is an RPG. Filled with lots of unlockables (you’ll need 3 playthroughs to get them all), branching storylines, and choices that actually affect things.

  The basic combat system is simple, yet a decent amount of complexity is added by the robust ship-building system. We’re talking Master of Orion-like ship customization and crew assignment. It becomes quite fun once you gotten some decent ships/weapons and there are some pretty cool touches like the way the bridge area you see while traveling/talking changes depending on what type of bridge is on your flagship.

  The storyline and characters on the other hand are a complete mess. While the second half is better than the first, the game as a whole plays out like a real badly directed/written Anime (it is internally consistent though, with early scenes that seem like throwaways making far more sense on a second playthrough). And that’s not the only flaw. There’s no quest log or map of any sort and, in the second half especially, it’s sometimes not specified where you have to go next (or the next location is simply named and you’ll have to remember where that is on your own).

  More minor issues would be the inability to simply click on a location to start traveling there (you have to manually click each individual waypoint), the battle camera having to be switched over to close-up mode at the start of every fight (the enemy often ends up covered in normal view if you have a large ship in your fleet), and the way new crew conversations in the Taverns aren’t prioritized (you have to spam-click the ‘Talk with friends’ option and just hope you’ve seen them all). It’s also a bit overwhelming when just starting out with no idea what to build/focus on.

  My first playthrough took ~45 hours (that includes 3 spent grinding to get enough Fame for the Evstafi and various Ranking reward ships). Before going through it again to see the other sides of the branching paths on NG+ though, I’m going to try out Rebel Galaxy. I bought it during a GOG sale a while back on a whim, never really intending to play it… but I’m now inspired to make the attempt.

  Sample Act 1 Fleet:
  Otlichny/Perekop -> Borodino
  Orfey/Derzky
  Askold

  Sample Act 2 Fleet:
  Borodino -> Pelayo/Ciscar -> Evstafi/Freedom
  Askold -> Paradizo/Adrasteia -> Tigro/Eleganta/Janitsch
  Junkyard x2 -> Zanetti/Fellowship x2 -> Picaroon/Belenus x2
  Lykourgos/Tsahih/Erebos

  —————
  Tips
  —————

  General:

  The Help section covers most things well, but not all topics are initially unlocked.

  If you’re not using a walkthrough, stop at every location and talk to every character multiple times.

  • It’s very easy to miss things otherwise.

  Don’t overlook the Ranking option at the CTA.

   
  Character-related:

  Character Special Abilities don’t stack.

  • They increase in rank every 20 character levels (+1 at level 20/40/60/80), with a maximum rank of 5.

  Fill the lead crew section positions last.

  • The Captain’s stats are added to any section lacking a lead position.

   
  Combat:

  Never use Barrage unless the enemy has just either attacked, used a Special, or launched fighters.

  In random battles, you can usually quickly win using melee by just spamming the ‘Shoot’ option.

  • Assuming the enemy is outmatched, they’ll almost always keep trying to retreat (which Shoot prevents).

  Make sure all your ships are outfitted with the best Security Stations; extra crew quarters are unnecessary.

  Try to stagger your melee battle choices so that they occur a little after the opponent’s.

   
  Ship Modules:

  Ship modules of the same type that increase EXP don’t stack; you only get one bonus even if they’re on all 5 ships.

  Don’t bother with Holds until/unless you want to do dedicated farming runs mid-late game.

  Modules only need to have one square placed on the same-colored background area.

  Fill your R&D positions and build a Science Lab and Analysis Room as soon as possible.

  • New weapons are unlocked through science research, which happens automatically.
  • The game does not notify you when they become available.

 
Fleet Construction:

• Build the Borodino Battleship immediately; there’s nothing better until the 2nd half of the game.
• Fighters are expensive; hold off on upgrading them until you’ve purchased your 5 main ships.
• You can buy 60 fighters per ship, but can only use as many as you have Hangers for.
  • The darkened squares indicate fighters that won’t be used.
• The Escondido Lane area in Chapter 12+ is a good place to grind Fame/Money.

 
Progression:

Ship Livability should be around 40-50 early game, up to around 70-80 after you get the Mess Hall module.

Try to have close to 7000 Fame before the end of the first half (Chapter 8).

• That’s how much is required for the Junkyard blueprints to show up for purchase.

Try to have 60k+ credits before the end of the first half.

• The blueprints you get early in the second half are far better than anything you’ve been using in the first half.

Only credits, characters levels, and character stats carry over to NG+. Everything is unlocked in Extra Mode though.