The Malgorian Blog

I would be surprised if Dreamwidth accepted the full title, so below is what the title should read:

Game Night #17: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Familia Myth Infinite Combate

So trying to get back into playing the insanely long backlog of games I haven't played since I'm on vacation and I randomly chose this one - mostly because it looked like it be simple enough, and I felt like having some "zelda style" combat. Didn't get what I hoped, but that was the logic going into the decision.

This game has a metacritic score of 46 I believe. Didn't know that going in but I'd agree overall with the reviews I saw on gamefaqs. Poor execution. Fairly bland. And little effort. (Particularly for the player I find...)

The game is part visual novel based on the anime/etc, and part dungeon crawling hack and slash. It follows the events of it's source material for the most part with the game being told in a Chapter format.

Essentially at the start of the game you'll do "Chapter 1" as Bell (The main character) then after 2 story quests you'll do a "Chapter 1" as Aiz - the Sword Princess adventurer he admires. After about half way I found I stopped having Aiz chapters and it was Bell Bell Bell. And it followed the anime. I'll have to double check a few things to see if I have to replay the game to get an Aiz series of laterchapters...

In each chapter you'll have to do two story related quests to advance the story. There's no real meaning to level in this game. Your stats will improve automatically as you advance the story quests. There's also two special quests per chapter that aren't story related but can only be done once each. After that there's "practice quests" you can do over and over to grind for materials/skill points/money.

After finishing the story mode for Bell I unlocked a special post-story dungeon. During this extra chapter, it looks like you just grind through the special elemental related dungeons to get "date points" so you can unlock special encounters/story events with the other characters in the game. At this point you can freely switch between the two main characters. They each have their own people to "go on dates" with.

It's hard to say much about this one... if you're a fan of the anime/manga/light novels, it's probably not bad. Could have went so much further though... Make sure you get it on a big sale like I did though.

I was going to mark this beat after I played around with the extra dungeons a bit first but I think it's safe to assume the story mode is what counted here. I'll update it to "completed" after I've unlocked all the events, assuming I bother to stick with it that long. I'll likely just be doing a few dungeon runs here and there going forward while playing other games.

Wow. Haven't had the motivation to do one of these lately have I. To be fair I haven't had much to play that I've really been into that's recent. I may post something about an old Genesis game I'm always playing later this week. That one's more of a "Game Year/Decade" kinda thing, but I'll still just post it as a game night.

( RIGHT! ZAN! Moving on to the actual review which is much longer than anticipated. )

So, finally got up the willpower to play through this game. I bought the ps4 version at launch and was seriously disappointed by the original localization quality.

I haven't played too many of the Ys games. but the few I did play I enjoyed quite a bit. So I had big hopes going into this game. (Given I had the localization patch) it did not disappoint. You start the game on a ship that you're working aboard as a crew member for passage. After you're given a chance to talk to everyone on the ship the story proceeds and you're attacked by a sea monster and everyone is stranded on a deserted island with a bad reputation.

I like how they tend to use these types of things to explain why Adol ends up with nothing all over again every game. :P I'm assuming the sword Dogie tossed him to fight the sea monster with was probably the most powerful sword from the previous game in the series. Which is now lost at sea forever!

Hours were lost playing this game. I'd sit down and work on various quests and gather materials etc for Castaway Village while rescuing others from the ship and it would feel like I didn't get a heck of a lot done but it'd be hours later by the time I shut it off.

Without using a walkthrough, I appear to have gotten the True Ending. All quests completed, all location points found, all fish caught, all meals cooked, 100% of the map revealed, all of Dana's flashback quests completed, etc. The gallery had everything but 1 image unlocked, which I suspect may be due to an alternate ending - likely one where not all of Dana's story was completed. Certainly the last chapter appeared completely optional to me.

So quick pros/cons

Pros:
Battle system. I enjoyed the general feel of fighting in the game. Where it's ultimately an adventure game with rpg elements to it rather than the other way around, the enemies appear on the map and you ahve to fight them in real time. jumping/slashing/etc as you go. Or you can try to run from them and have the entire map of enemies eventually chasing behind you! :D

Night Exploration. Several of the side quests you can complete can unlock night exploration of a few of the areas on the island. Basically same level, but darker with different and stronger enemies. Additionally, and this is usually the reason for going there, some material components are only available during the night.

Dinosaurs. Lots of them on this island. It's part of the main story as you'd find out quickly enough. Pretty powerful buggers at that, although you wouldn't believe how awesome it is to be able to mow down an entire valley full of rapters that were chasing you down at the same time. Good way to level up once you hit that point apparently.

Cons:
Inconsistent invisible walls. Not entirely a bad thing to have invisible walls to prevent you from walking off a cliff in a game like this, but there were places where it wasn't consistent. Some places you could jump down safely, certainly, but nope! Not allowed! Then there was the few places in the last few dungeons where you could walk off of every ledge. Don't go training people to expect the game to save them just so you can let them fall to their deaths repeatedly later where enemies have attacks specially suited for pushing players off them...

Bad Initial translations. Sorry, having the physical copy I paid full price for I can't let this slip. Mainly because this is a game I can easily see myself playing again sometime down the road. And when I do, if that's after the PS4 is no longer supported by Sony, I'll have to contend with the horrible localization that's on the disc. (As I can't afford to keep the game installed permanently I'm sure. My ps4 only has the 500gigs on it. I'll certainly try to keep it installed but eh.)

Clothing/Accessories. Am I disappointed they had these in there? No, not at all! The thing that pissed me off is that just about all of it appears to be paid DLC. Unlocking most everything in the game I only found 2 accessories to wear. One for Adol (A necklace from Ricotta and some glasses for Laxia.) Other than that Adol gets some adventuring clothes at the start of the game + has his sailor uniform. Nobody else has a change of clothes by default. So they obviously added this whole thing in just to sell DLC. Adol's Silver Armor is a free DLC item, which I downloaded. Pretty sure everything else was paid DLC and after the horrible localization that took massive outrage to get fixed many months later, I ain't giving NIS a single penny for DLC.


I found the game a bit too easy by the end. Bosses were falling without too much trouble despite all their HP but that's a case of how over leveled I was due to the exploration plus the liberal use of the str/def/life/etc pots you can find that permanently increase stats a little bit. By the end of the game, if you've actually done the right quests and found the right chests, you'll be able to brew up the str/def potions on your own anyway. The costs to do so are pretty steep and don't become available til the final chapter of course, but at least that means you can trade up your weaker materials into the materials used to get the "aura grass" needed to brew the potions.

Clearing the game unlocked a few post-game activities, including a dungeon. I'll probably go through that at some point but probably not before Christmas.

Ultimately I enjoyed the game. I wouldn't pay full price for it digitally still but that's because I can't get behind the prices being set for digital games. One of those promises devs and publishers use to bat around in the early days about going digital was that it would be cheaper. Sadly that isn't the case, and more often than not I see digital prices stay high far longer than physical copies. (Despite that being the excuse for keeping them launch-price high for years after release at times.)

If you get it digitally, get it on sale. It'd a good game (with the patches).

That being said, because of the quality of the localization on the physical disc, I wouldn't recommend getting that full price either. If you find it used or on sale AND you plan on playing it while sony still has the patches available for it, then by all means pick it up. If you have the "Day One Edition" (which basically means "badly translated edition" in this case) then at least you'll have the artbook and music cd to make up for it. Assuming it's included. If it's used or has been gutted by the store, you never know if you'll get what you're suppose to.


Anyway, next up for game nights will be Shining Resonance Refrain I guess. It promises to have real time action fights as well. Might be a bit unfair to play this coming down from a Ys game though. ;)

Ok, so finally on to Mask of Truth.

Deception ended almost exactly how I expected it to. With Haku's "death". (Come on, anyone could see that coming a mile away.)

Anyway, about 20 hours in at this point. It's basically the same type of game and continuing the game's storyline. I really feel bad for Haku in this to be honest. Anyone playing the game would see why.

The battle system appears to be the same, although auto-chain is off by default here. I'm not sure if auto-chain is really a thing in the first game since it's "on" by default. I left it on for all of Deception simply because I apparently missed it being a feature. The combat tutorials weren't very well explained when you received them in Deception, and I was too lazy to go digging for them.

Having Auto-chain off allows for much more control over criticals and defending though, so while it takes some timing, it's at least more engaging and entertaining this way.

In addition to the story battles, where everyone levels up like before, it has Free Battles again for doing some "extra credit" for bonus BP. However they also include, thus far, a couple extra free modes. First there's the Red Vs White training battles - where teams are randomly made up of your allies. You control your side, the computer controls the other. If you're on the winning side, you and those with you get bonus BP. If you lose, you don't. However both sides will gain XP with attacks during the fight. So it's a good way to level up, win or lose someone's going to get xp.

Additionally there are trials that are unlocked later in the game. These are generally short matches that are meant to teach you how to actually fight and to make use of the different aspects of battles and skills. Some include rewards, but not all of them. There are conditions for unlocking specific trials. Some with level requirements of particular characters, others with unlocking earlier trials, and some by getting to particular chapters of the story.

Otherwise there's just been some alterations to the menu screens which I think I agree with.

Not too much to say otherwise at this point. I'll still never understand what they think is so important about the menu screen to block in-game recording.

I had a short game night this weekend and finally began the mask of deception. This is looking like it will be more visual novel than game, much like Tears to Tiara II appeared to be. (Another game I want to get back to this fall.)

This doesn't mean I hate it, it just means it'll be more sitting and reading the story than anything else. It does seem to be fully voiced thus far. (For spoken dialogue - whatever the main character, Haku, is thinking doesn't have spoken dialogue.)

To give an idea of the breakdown, thus far, of game play to visual novel - I played for 2.5 hours this weekend. I had 2 battles. Everything else was dialogue and being pitied by Kuon for being so weak. Sucks to be a human in that world I guess.

Not really much to say about the game so far. There's still a lot to go so I might start playing this for an hour or so a day in addition to it eating up the next few game nights.

As for why there hasn't been any Game Nights for the last several weeks (Not that anyone cares, but I guess to leave a record of my excuse! ;) it simply boils down to it being the summer. Summer for me tends to be way too hot and humid most days. At home I'm generally stuck in front of a fan or two all the time and that doesn't make for comfortable gaming! Last weekend was probably the first weekend with comfortable temperatures since GN #9. I would have played longer than 2.5 hours but I was also taking the opportunity to work on my 7800 homebrew project. :)

(EDIT)

Also, remember when part of my rant from way back included how the title screen of this game was a "protected scene" - and that I had mused as to whether or not the company simply decided to protect the entire game from people recording/sharing video of?

Well, it turns out most of the game appears to be unprotected (At least as far as 2.5 hours in. That may change after a particular point in the game knowing this company.) What was protected was the title screen itself, and for whatever reason, the save menu. I don't understand what's so freaking special about those two screens that make it so important to block the PS4's built in record and publish feature.

I'm sure it'll be a rant for later.

Still playing SAO:Hollow Fragment, but took a break for Touhou Double Focus which I bought with the last flash sale on PSN.

The game is one of those many fan/doujin games based on Touhou that are starting to get released on the PS4. This one here has the player controlling Aya and Momiji as they try to navigate and escape a magical book world. Ultimately it's a relatively short Metroidvania type game.

There are a total of 5 bosses - 6 if you include the final form of the last boss as separate, but back down to 5 when you realize the third boss is actually more of a race with a fairy instead of something to beat up.

If you don't know all the controls, this game can have some seriously messed up difficulty. I only played on Normal and there were some places that at first felt like a death trap. One thing you really have to do is observe the enemies you see and get familiar with their AI. Some of the later fairies you'll have to fight are pretty tough to beat due to their ranged attacks, but in most cases it seems if they're not looking at you, you can just walk up behind them and club them with Momiji's sword. Otherwise you'll want to stand back and use Aya's ranged attacks.


I almost rage quit the entire thing on the first boss given the amount of damage it was doing and how little life you start off with. Then I realized, accidentally, that Momiji can block projectiles with a shield.

During the 3rd boss (that race) I found out that Aya's back-dash actually made her invincible for about a second afterwards. (So just turn around and backdash... forward... through a few enemies that were trying to block your way. Much faster than trying to fight them!)

Took a while before I figured out exactly how the Portal system worked - for a while it seemed bugged and kept transporting me to a particular portal. Apparently you have to select the portal you want to go to from the map. But when you place a new portal prior to doing that, it would auto-select that last placed portal. Which worked fine for me for a good long time.

It took a bit over 6 hours to complete on Normal. I'm not sure if that was counting all the retries at the bosses or not. Now that I know where everything is, I could probably go for a full run with much better time. On the plus side with the exception of finding one hidden photo shot (Aya is a reporter with a camera after all!) I can say I found all the items without help from a faq. Some of them quite accidentally - and I won't kid you when I say some of the secrets are damned cheap. Fake walls, fake floors, and for ONE place in the game (At the start of the game no less) there's just one place where there are invisible platforms to reach one of the powerup items that increase your max life.

I'm kind of afraid to try the harder difficulties. I might later on, but for now I think I can call it good. I'm glad I picked this up on on the last flash sale on PSN though all the same. Like Shantae, it was fairly short.

I'd recommend people that play it to save often however. I did have one game crash while playing as I was heading back up to Patchouli. Luckily for me I had saved it only a minute before.

I suppose I'll give a few tips for the bosses. :p

( Boss Strategies! )

Yeah, I should stop mulling over what game I might play on gamenight. It'll save how many times I change it. Still not started on Utawarerumono - seems like I'll probably be waiting until I have both halves of the game before I start at this rate.

So this weekend I started on SAO: Hollow Fragment. From what I know of the manga continuity, this game breaks from it. It takes place in the upper levels of Aincrad that the players never actually go to in the manga. It also adds in a "Hollow Fragment" world that you can travel to. To completely burst continuity they basically teleport in a couple characters that are in later storylines after the life-or-death game in Aincrad. I'm assuming I'm typing that name correctly. Basically a 100 floor world and the players had to go to the top and beat the last boss to be able to log out. Dying in the game resulted in death in RL. (By the VR headgear players were using nuking their brain with intense microwaves.)

Anyway, yeah, it takes place in the upper layers. I'm only about to reach the second floor boss (floor 77) myself so I can't say too much about the storyline for the game.

The battle system seems a bit similar to the earlier .hack game series, although you're rarely locked into a room/bubble until you defeat an enemy. It also doesn't have 1st person view like the first .hack series did. Unfortunately. I use to enjoy running around in first person mode in the first series...

It took a while to grasp the battle system, and even now I know I'm not using it all that great. Only died once though. (Luckily no microwaving going on here. :P)

In addition to the main combat and relatively limited exploration (Areas have been pretty linear so far but again I'm at the beginning of the game.) there's a quest system where completing some quests unlock tips for fighting the floor boss and a relationship system with the other party members. You can help train them during combat to adjust their AI and apparently to learn new skills and carry on conversations while running around the hub town.

While I'm liking the game so far (I tend to like Sword Art Online overall anyhow) I'm glad I got this game on sale back in the golden week sale.

I'm likely going to keep playing this for a few weeks so I'll type up more later after I get a bit more use to the system and see more of the story. I've yet to go back to the hollow fragment realm for instance.

I went ahead and picked this up with the PSN sale this week. For some reason I was expecting 4 games so I was calculating in my head "18 odd dollars divided by 4.. hm. about 4.50 per game."

Ended up being 6 games total, as there were two Rescue Ranger games and two Ducktales games.

The alternative to playing these games for me would have been tracking down the original NES carts. Which would have cost these days anywhere from 50 to 300 dollars each I'm sure. 9_9

So at about 3 bucks each, I think it was worth it.

However this now brings me to the question of if I'm going to march forward with Utawarerumono tomorrow, or instead try to go through the Afternoon Collection. Right now I think I'm likely to switch it up to the collection, if only because Utawarerumono is a half-game that will end in a cliffhanger that won't be resolvable until later this summer when the Mask of Truth is released.

So putting off starting the game makes a bit of sense if I want to avoid an extensive wait between games. It's the same kinda deal that I faced with the old .hack games. I wasn't affected too much by the original .hack games since I think all 4 parts were out by the time I started collecting them - but had to get Kane to track me down a copy of mutation (vol 3) before I could completely finish it. In .hack//gu though, was annoying having to wait for each segment of the game to be released and obtained.

On a separate note though, by July the heat is going to be unbearable here like it is every year. I may end up putting the PS3 and PS4 to the side for a couple months and focus on older consoles (ps2 and down) simply because those are less likely to melt on me in the 30-40C heat.

On an barely related note, I saw some copies of the original .hack series at a pawnshop here in town. Each going for 50-80 bucks. x.x Given the games were like 30-40 when they were new... glad I picked them up when I did! (Kinda like Xenoblades on the Wii. Got it for 30 bucks, but you can check amazon for current prices!)

I've already completed the main game. I spent last night mostly just trying to do sidequests and trying to figure everything out. Still a lot of quests to unlock apparently, although I made a lot of progress.

But later today I'm going to do just one more jab at the A2/9S battle, or maybe two, to get endings D and E unlocked. Apparently there's 26 endings. Most are likely just quick bad ones like G. I unlocked the K ending last night by eating the mackerel fish thingy Jackass gives your character to see how the oily fish reacts when eaten by an android.

In short, it kills you. But oh does it taste good, are apparently 2B's last thoughts. ^_^

So anyway, I'm just about done with the game. I -was- going to keep at it and unlock everything, but I did some searching online and verified that those locked elevator doors with the self-destructing guards are in fact ties to the recently released DLC. IE: In-game advertisements, eternally reminding you of what your $79.99+tax didn't buy you.

I won't be buying any more Square Enix games for a while as a result of this, so it's probably a lucky thing for them that I already have Final Fantasy XV purchased.

I did the same to NIS America when they released the original Hyperdimension Neptunia game and had some of the DLC characters join the game and be in the party - but refuse to participate in battle until the couple dollars were paid. If it's DLC, fucking leave it out of the game completely. It probably wouldn't have been nearly as annoying if NIS didn't try spinning it as "Creative advertising." like it was a GOOD thing.

So yeah I'll be done with this game after doing a little more exploration to satisfy any curiosity I still have. I'll probably go quickly level to 99 with a trick in the FAQ I read (some monster that can net lots of xp via quickly hacking it with 9S - which infinitely respawns) then attempt to unlock the secret boss Emil.

If/when I do a review for the game, it'll probably still get a decent score overall, but the "creative advertising" will be earning it a deduction.

Starting in on something to hopefully clear out the insane backlog on my video game collection. :P Game Night~

That translates to me just sitting down and actually focusing on a game in my collection even if I had been ignoring it all week.

This week I'm starting in on Nier:Automata on the PS4. I've already returned from the desert mission as of now so we'll see how things go. I'm probably going to stick with this game til I complete it. Not sure if the game warrants all the praise it's been receiving from the internet but it's still early and it's been enjoyable so far. Especially now that I'm starting to remember the controls. I will not be bothering with the DLC however. Low content for the high price tag imo.

Also, yes this is Game Night #2. First one was last weekend when I started and got through Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity. I finished going through the game with Remillia on Sunday, but completed Sakuya's path during the week. Both paths are identical - it's mostly just the conversations that change a bit depending on which character you decide to play and of course the moves/skills that each character has. I was actually expecting it to be harder to play the game with Sakuya but except for one thing it was about the same.

At some point this weekend I may sit down and try to write up a pitiful quality review of the games I focus on with my Game Night sessions. Trying to decide how best to grade a game based on my personal tastes. This would undoubtedly cause negative points deducted for DLC or buggy releases. Either way if I DO get a review written up, I'll be sure to post it here.