• Tag Archives Fantasy
  • Akazukin ChaCha

    Putting aside his misgivings regarding her erratic magic results, the great magician Seravy sends his apprentice ChaCha off to magic school with a mystic accessory set for protection. Joining her are a young werewolf and the apprentice of Seravy’s rival, both vying for her affection. Their help will be necessary in the days to come as she meets new friends and rivals while fending off attacks from a shadowy dark lord.

    A random-style comedy with a love polygon subfocus and minor magical girl aspects in the first third. Those elements become the central focus in the middle part of the series, injecting a bit of drama, before eventually disappearing completely in the last third when it becomes a pure gag comedy. While originally based on a manga, it very quickly goes in its own direction.

    More Information:
    aniDB
    Wikipedia

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  • Two Worlds – Midpoint

    As with Gothic 3, calling this a midpoint isn’t quite accurate since the game’s only as long/short as you want it to be. Half the map is cleared though so it’s close enough.

    At level 66 now and I experimented with both magic and ranged combat to see what ended up being the most powerful. Basically, it comes down to this:

    Melee: 20x Exotic Hachet/Armor Opener (no element) at 200 Str = ~5500 Damage
    Melee Boost: Strong Hand (Rank 10) + Berserk (Rank 10) = +500% Damage

    Ranged: 20x Whistling Death (no element) and 20x Ornamented Quiver at 200 Dex = ~11100 Damage
    Ranged Boost: Overdraw (Rank 10) & Multi Arrow (Rank 10) = +100% Damage and +4 attacks

    Magic: 20x Eruption (Earth Rank 15) with 5x +Damage/+Level/-Cost = 9390 Damage for 1174 Mana
    Magic Boost: 20x Concentration (Air Rank 15) with 5x +Damage/+Level/-Cost = +2370% Damage on 1 attack for 305 Mana

    So melee is most efficient at low skill levels (you only ‘need’ Strong Hand and Berserk), ranged at high skill levels (you need all four passives), and magic is best for doing insane amounts of one-time damage (but requires a ton of vendor farming). I have not run across all the spell cards yet but the ones I have point toward magic being best as a support ability; Strength of God, Adamantium Shield/Reflection Shield, and Grapple Ivy/Freezing Wave are great at eliminating melee/ranged weaknesses. Summoning seems to be near-useless since the best summons max out at level 30.

    Some other worthwhile things to know, in no particular order:

    • Force Triple Buffering and Vsync in your graphic card’s settings to reduce the stuttering.
    • Equipment can’t be stacked beyond 50.
    • Spell Booster bonuses max out at 5.
    • The best equipment starts appearing around level 40.
    • One-handed axes stop appearing around level 50.
    • Pure-piercing damage spears stop appearing at around level 50.
    • Items can have a maximum of 5 enchantments.
    • I’ve never seen the magic schools, Sneak, or Steal appear as +Skill equipment enchantments.
    • I’ve never seen an enchanted dagger or swordbreaker.
    • Only certain herbs are worth collecting.
      • Blue Eye/Screama Badilla/Ostrich Plumes if you want to make +50% magic stones.
      • Dotted Toadstool/Adder Brother to make poison immunity potions.
      • Saffron/Lavender/Centaurium/Nothern Frostroot for the permanent stat boosts.
    • When making stat-boosting potions, use either 4 minerals and 6 mana/health potions or 10 herbs.
    • When making stat-boosting potions try to make sure all the ingredients boost the same stat.
    • Poison prevents mana regeneration.
    • Berserk and Critical Hit don’t stack.
    • Sneak does not affect Steal success or Lockpick crime reporting.
    • Stealing often has to be done from the front/side of a target.
    • If NPCs attack after Lockpicking something, running far enough away will usually reset them.
    • Strength increases melee damage, Dexterity ranged damage, and raising the magic skills increases magic damage.
    • Carry Weight maxes out at 500.
    • Different enemies resist different types of damage; make sure to have both a bludgeoning and slashing weapon.
    • There’s not much off the beaten path besides more enemies to kill.
    • The only use for swimming so far was to reach 4 small islands, each with a stat-boosting potion.

  • Two Worlds: Epic Edition

    Ever played Gothic? Well this game is just like it:

    Clunky melee that lets you dominate with hit and run tactics, a large map to explore with enemies that don’t respawn, a difficult beginning until you pick up a level or two, a forced male MC with slightly jokey voice acting, the ability to attack/kill NPCs, a wide variety of skills to customize your character with, and tons of stat-boosting herbs scattered around the map to collect.

    Been playing for a while now, reached level 33 and just got around to entering the first town to max out Alchemy in order to use all the permanent stat boosters I’ve been collecting from the ground and NPCs’ pockets (the Steal skill is actually good since it lets you find stat/damage boosters instead of just gold). Other good all-around early skills would be Lockpick (get it up to level 8 and keep it there) and Set Trap (traps do tons of damage). I haven’t used much magic (mainly just Heal) or any archery yet, but for melee you don’t really need anything more than Strong Hand and Critical Hit; I have Parry up pretty high but it never seems to do anything… and you shouldn’t be getting hit in the first place.

    So yeah, if you’ve played Gothic II or III before you should feel right at home. If you haven’t, then it might be better to start with this since it’s more forgiving of character building mistakes (there’s a repeatable respec option available in towns that can reset your stat/skill points).


  • Sword Oratoria: Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darouka Gaiden

    At only level 3 and easily frightened by high level monsters, Lefiya feels she’s only dragging her level 5-6 teammates down when they take her along on expeditions. After falling into a depression after fumbling yet another spell in the heat of the moment it’s suggested that she find a way to help out Ais, a powerful fighter she admires who’s having troubles of her own.

    An alternate look at the events of DanMachi. Whereas that centers on Bell and Hestia, here the perspective follows Lefiya and Ais across the same time period. Both shows have the same themes along with a similar genre composition and you do not have to have seen that to watch this.

    More Information:
    Amazon
    aniDB
    Wikipedia

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  • Roku de Nashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records

    Roped into becoming a substitute teacher at the prestigious Alzano Imperial Magic Academy, to all appearances Glenn Radars is a lazy, incompetent slacker. In truth he’s a highly specialized mage with a very specific skill set… skills which make him the perfect instructor once properly motivated.

    A multi-genre school life series with a moderate focus on ecchi and a much greater fondness for comedic misunderstandings.

    More Information:
    aniDB
    Crunchyroll
    Wikipedia

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  • Quanzhi Gaoshou

    Known as the “God of Fighting” in the hugely popular MMO Glory, Xiu Ye ends up screwed over by the manager of the pro-player club he leads and forced into early retirement. Contractually barred from re-joining the professional scene for the next year, he decides to work his way up from nothing on a new game server with the intent of eventually taking back the top spot.

    Half set in a fantasy gameworld where all the action takes place, and half set in the real-world where the tone is more serious/reflective. Both parts are peppered with comic relief.

    More Information:
    aniDB
    Wikipedia

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  • REZROG – First Impressions

    While the game has several extremely annoying bugs, for the most part it’s a fun (if repetitive) dungeon crawler.

    There’s all the multi-character persistence and loot of a Diablo-like game, with the turn-based and environmental traits of a Dungeons of Dredmor-like game. There are two unique aspects here. The first is that instead of doing one run/character at a time, you have immediate access to 7 characters (one of each class) which share loot and can be used at will. The second is death; if a character dies they get captured and have to be rescued by a different character.

    At the moment I have all 7 at levels 10-12 and have just reached the 11th dungeon. So far there’s decent enemy variety (each odd dungeon number introduces new ones) and skill variety (though I’ve only found 2 non-starter ones at the moment), but having to repeatedly grind the same area (even with the randomized layout) to overcome sudden difficulty spikes is annoying. Particularly since any time you fail to clear a level for any reason (death/capture, bug, menu exit) any items found/used or changes made since entering it are completely reset.

      I mentioned bugs earlier, and here are some of the ones I’ve run into:
      – Doorways becoming impassible after attacking through them.
      – Traps killing an enemy and making that square impassable.
      – Frozen movement when attacking crystals with a ranged skill.
      – The first page of the shared stash wiping itself on game exit.
      – Losing items transferred to a character with a full inventory.
      – The ‘consumables are 25% stronger’ roulette effect doing the opposite.
      – The ‘+1 move’ roulette effect actually doubling movement range.
      – XP skill books behaving oddly.
      – Entering a Boss level drains all of your money.
      Aside from avoiding those issues above there are a few other things to be aware of:
      – Do the first dungeon at least once with each character to get all the starter skills.
      – Run through it a few more times to hit level 3 and stock up on potions
      – Ice Slab is insanely good.
      – Skills can be added/removed to/from any non-captured character.
      – Weapon skills won’t work with 0 Durability weapons.
      – The random ‘destroy all crystals’ objective is extremely difficult.
      – There tends to be difficulty jumps every 2 levels.
      – Exit via the Esc Menu immediately if it looks like you won’t be able to finish a level.

  • Torment: Tides of Numenera – Endgame

    Finally got around to seriously playing the game and just finished it.

    Turned out my earlier annoyance regarding the multiple resource pools was mostly an over-reaction; once you get a point or two of Edge it becomes practically impossible to deplete them. I only ended up resting 3-4 times over the course of the entire game, and could’ve probably got by doing it just once if I had used those full-heal cyphers. That said the game isn’t very large by RPG standards… maybe about the size of Tyranny (perhaps a bit smaller).

    It certainly is Planescape: Torment revisited though. Much like its predecessor, this game rewards high Intelligence values on the PC, heavily promotes exploring every branch of every dialog tree, and allows most confrontations to be solved/avoided without engaging in combat. That last one is particularly good since (also like PS:T) combat is kind of a pain.

    However it’s the gameplay as a whole that’s holding it back rather than just the combat: The character building system is lacking, with many skill/ability choices being either useless or redundant, and you never really feel particularly powerful or godlike even at max level (which is Tier 4). Attack abilities don’t do all that much damage and companions who aren’t in the party not gaining experience certainly doesn’t help either. Equipment ends up being the main source of combat effectiveness, and the variety in that department is notably lacking (while there are tons of cyphers/oddities, there are only a few interesting weapons and a highly limited armor selection). There’s not really anything to collect either aside from merecasters.

    Which all adds up to this being the perfect game for people who love replaying the exact same scenario while making slightly different choices (since those choices do actually tend to affect things here). Anyone looking for a more physically engaging or mechanic-based experience however will most likely be disappointed.


  • Da Yu Hai Tang

    On an alternate plane there exists beings neither human nor god who control the forces of nature on Earth. As a right of passage, on their 16th birthday they travel there to spend a week experiencing the elements firsthand while avoiding the attention of humans. During this period a girl by the name of Chun accidentally causes the death of a human boy, setting in motion a chain of events that threaten to destroy the heavens.

    A high-fantasy fairytale drama with a small number of action scenes mostly concentrated in the third quarter and a bit of romantic development.

    More Information:
    aniDB
    Wikipedia

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  • Tales of Zestiria the X

    Alisha is a princess desperately trying to avoid war while searching for a ‘Shepard’ to save the land from an encroaching darkness. Sorey is the lone human in a village of seraphim, beings invisible to most humans, who loves exploring ancient ruins. A chance meeting between the two sets in motion events that just may change the world.

    An action drama with comedic ‘next episode preview’ segments. While almost entirely an adaptation of the Zestiria video game, a couple episodes (5-6) adapt the beginning of Beseria. Note that the Doushi no Yoake special is included here in a slightly altered form.

    More Information:
    aniDB (1), (2)
    Daisuki
    Fansub.co
    Funimation
    Wikipedia

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