Vidya Gaems General

Zennistrad

I actually stand corrected. Nigoro just did another update on Kickstarter, and it apparently clarifies that Tiamat was not one of the First Children of the Mother, and gives something of a vague hint at the plot of La-Mulana 2.

In LA-MULANA1, what Mulbruk told Lemeza about the children was, 

"The first children were snakes from their belly down. 

Perhaps they were the closest to the Mother's true form. 

They worshiped the Mother as a god, but they didn't understand her wishes.  

They wanted the Mother's powers and imitated her, but they failed miserably. It seems they were then destroyed by the second children."   

You might have seen the carvings of humans with their lower body look like a snake, those are the first children. They were the population who affected the Japanese, Chinese and Sumerian civilization, and their home was considered as an Endless Corridor or Dimensional Corridor. 

Since they were the first children of the Mother, their bodies resemble that of the Mother's the most. However, once the Mother realized being biped is better than a snake for living on Earth, the children then got their feet from the second children. Even though the population was small, the first children survived until around the time when the third children were born. 

After a while, someone taught them technology or magic for how to detach from their snake body and generate feet. The snake-like monsters - like Amphisbaena were created from those discarded snake bodies, then through countless evolution and degeneration, their DNA became the life form what we now call a "snake".

Also there are bosses with their lower bodies having the shape of snake - like Nüwa or Tiamat, to put it bluntly, they are not the first children.

There is a number marked on their body, 1 on Nüwa's arm, 2 on Tiamat's side. You might be able to find the answer to that in LA-MULANA2.

NIGORO 

Takumi Naramura 

glennmagusharvey

^ Ooh.  Mysterious.

glennmagusharvey

Progress in my CvDoS low-level run.  Finally made it past Bat Company...I had to do an elaborate dance, and by the end of my practice I could basically predict what form it would take next.

Then I beat Dario Bossi for the second time.  It only took me 03:37:43, and I'm level 21.

Now I have to start grinding for three specific souls in order to get to the best ending.  So it won't be a true low-level game.  Well I could actually grind for money first to get the Soul Eater Ring so as to minimize the XP I get from grinding for those three souls...

Also finally beat the jungle level (Hyleg's level) in Mega Man Zero 2.

Bee

The hard part isn't beating a level -- it's beating it with a good enough rank to get literally anything out of it.

glennmagusharvey

Do you know how I sometimes remark that Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is a game for completionists?  Well the MMZ games seem to be games for skill-centric perfectionists.  They basically penalize just getting by to see the plot, while they basically expect -- and reward -- treating the game like an obstacle course to optimize one's tackling of and generally perfect.

To be fair, giving people a crappy score is more enjoyable game design than forcing them to play through from the beginning or something like that.

Anyway:
Mission, 100%, 20p
Clear Time, 4'49, 15p
Enemy, 44, 15p
Damage, 48, 6p
Retry, 0, 15p
Elf, 0, 15p
Total 86p
Level C
Code Name: Supreme Gunman

The Retry bit is sorta silly, since if you run out of lives, you can just continue from the beginning of the stage.  Well, you actually get three choices, and both of the others erase any progress you've made.  If you're on an actual GBA, the first one means continuing without turning off the GBA, though, so it's basically continuously keeping at it.  But the thing is, if you really want the Retry score, then all you need to do is to suicide a couple times if you accidentally die in a run so that you restart from a fresh Continue rather than a life stock.

Furthermore, the game penalizes discovery by taking points off if you use a cyber-elf.  That's a prominent collectible feature, but the game basically encourages you to find them but not use them.

glennmagusharvey

Also, Hyleg's stage has two somewhat obnoxious features:

1. The last resistance member to be rescued is in a pit right beneath the boss door.  If you so much as touch that door, you will bypass it even if you knew full well that he's there.  I scrapped a couple runs because of this.  It doesn't help that the game has double-tap to dash as a feature, because twitchily repositioning yourself might cause you to dash into that door (which is what happened to me once).

2. The boss himself is fought on a non-static platform, which splits up and moves around a lot.  It is also above a bottomless pit.  The controls lock up the moment you deal the final hit...but you don't become invincible.  Hyleg himself is rather easy to beat, but the first time I beat him, he got the last laugh since I was using the saber, and I dropped right into the pit.

Also X looks like he's wearing a crown and donned a priest's robe.

Also this game foreshadows Other M in talking about how the Baby Elves are longing for their mother.

glennmagusharvey

Zero series in a nutshell:

Earthlight_Ray

I like the Zero series a lot.

Bee

My problem with the Zero series isn't that they rank you, it's that the abilities you need to become even marginally more powerful or flexible are only awarded via stunt runs with nearly flawless ranks, and are only awarded on the first attempt.  It's compounded by how your sprite is so huge compared to the rest of the screen -- your dash jump is something like twice the entire screen width.

I'd be fine with being given a mediocre rank, but permanently gimping the player for it unless they save scum is horrible design.  At least let it be repeatable after the fact.

It's really sad because the game would be amazing if it gave you an opportunity to practice or something, but as is it seemed hell-bent on obfuscating its own greatness.

Earthlight_Ray

I found it pretty easy to get an A rank on anything. Just move quickly, complete all the objectives, kill everything, don't die, don't use any elf hax, and the A rank is pretty much a free handout. It's also an average so if you do badly on one mission you can still get the A. The S rank takes a little more effort. If the bosses are giving you grief, they get a lot easier once you have all three element chips and can use their weakness. The bosses use their special attack if you're A rank or higher, and (in MMZ2 onward) you learn it after you beat them, so the game gets easier. MMZ2 makes the score loss from taking damage a little more lenient and MMZ4 even more so. MMZ3 also adds the ability to use elves within certain constraints and not lose any points. MMZ4 also adds an easy mode. So... I guess each game is slightly easier than the last. Granted, they all have a reputation for killing weak players, so not everyone can get into it, I guess. But if you're like me and you've been playing platformers for 20 years, Zero is a real treat.

Bee

I mean shit, I liveblog Ys games -- I'm fine with difficulty.  I guess I just have design issues with the fundamental idea of detecting when people play poorly (or given the player-to-screen-size ratio, non-prophetically) and responding by making the game harder and not even letting you reattempt it.

Like, if you're a rookie player already shitlording ranks, it doesn't really matter that the boss isn't using their EX skill against you.  The boss is probably the easiest part of the stage because you can see the whole room and were expecting to use elves freely.  The fact that your abilities never improve throughout a game that basically expects/forces them to is more than enough to offset that.

Also a whole lot of random screw-yous.  Penalizing for elves kind of defeats the point of collecting them, like Glenn said.  4 would penalize you for taking a mission with favorable weather conditions, which the game's dialogue basically encourages you to do.  Later on ZX would penalize you for exploiting bosses' weaknesses, which was seriously WTF.

I just feel like there's a difference between difficulty, self-imposed challenge, and spite.  MMZ ended up being a good series despite mixing the three in the worst possible way.

glennmagusharvey

ZX didn't penalize you for exploiting the weaknesses, actually.  The so-called "weak points" were just parts that you had to avoid hitting to get a top rank, meaning you had to be more skillful with your attacks.  However, the bosses didn't actually take more damage when hit on those "weak points".

Earthlight_Ray wrote: »

The bosses use their special attack if you're A rank or higher

See I'd rather that the boss just throw its special attack at me, period.  Then I can enjoy getting my ass kicked by it and it'll be more fun.

Zennistrad

More Lore from the La-Mulana devs on Kickstarter:

"The second children were Giants. Being so big, they were good at making things. Most of the lands within these ruins were built by the Giants.
They had the knowledge to return the Mother to the skies, and even made a flying tower for her, but the tower was not strong enough to lift the Mother's large body.Eventually the leaders began to fight amongst themselves, and were then chased away by the third children.The Giants fled to the land they created in order to cool down the tower, and perished there."

The second children were the giants who built the "Spring in the Sky", "Inferno Cavern", "Tower of the Goddess", "Tower of Ruin" and the "Graveyard of the Giants", as you can learn from the conversation with Mulbruk in the first game.

 

In the background of the Tower of the Goddess, you may have noticed something like a TV monitor making a noise, with a person-shaped silhouette flickering in it. This is how the giants tried to return the Mother to space. It shows they had succeeded in making contact with aliens.

Incidentally, the Mausoleum of the Giants was something built by people later in history, based on and honouring the traditions of the giant family. So that gigantic statue is not necessarily an accurate representation of them. The true form of the giant family are the remains that lie in the Graveyard of the Giants. The Guardian Sakit is a robot created by the sixth children in their attempt to resurrect the giants. He has a marking of the number 6 on his right leg.

The second children were conceptualized for the tutorial in the Mausoleum of the Giants that teaches the pattern of guessing from the hints. So they ended up getting a lot more detailed story coverage than the other children. Whenever there was any discrepency or inconsistency, it was extremely convenient to say "actually, the giants did it", we took advantage of that a lot. There are no surviving giants in LA-MULANA 2.

NIGORO 
Takumi Naramura

vandro

I bought the Azure Striker Gunvolt Striker Pack a couple months back. Playing ASG 1 was very similar to how MMZ would try to squeeze you in its perfectionist grip. ASG 2 toned down the dificulty of getting high ranks noticeably.

glennmagusharvey

05:22 - Quint the House Gecko: > tired as hell
05:22 - Quint the House Gecko: > past 5 am
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > been up doing various other random shit
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > try paranoia again, why the hell not.
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > no HP healing at all even between little paranoia and big paranoia
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > ran out of MP so i can no longer use bat form to dodge big paranoia's lasers
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > immediately that phase, kill big paranoia (and draw seal correctly)
05:24 - Quint the House Gecko: k then

glennmagusharvey

Just finished Evoland.  Well, 95.6% finished at least.

Short-ish parody JRPG/action RPG.  References a bunch of games.  Apparently started out as a Ludum Dare entry, which won first prize.

Suggestion if/when you play it: don't worry too much about collectables, then consult a guide at the end, after you get fast travel.  But otherwise, I suggest playing it blind for the full experience.

Pretty good game overall I guess.

Bonus thought: I think the last boss may have been inspired by some Ys bosses, especially Galbalan and Gelaldy.

glennmagusharvey

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow low level game: fighting Death at level 25.  This means that you deal about 15 damage per hit with the Fragarach, while he has 2222 HP for each form, a total of 4444 HP.  You can take...three hits without dying; each hit deals over 100 damage to you.  (No items allowed for this challenge.)

First form:
* recommended weapon: Death is obnoxiously large and moves unpredictably, but leaves lots of openings, so you want a fast weapon and some range.  A long-sword-type weapon (e.g. Long Sword, Fragarach) is suggested.  Punch weapons are too short-range and deal too little damage.  Keep a swing weapon, such as the Great Sword, on your alternate set, so when his scythe bursts into a circle of sickles, you can destroy them more easily.  Maces/axes have a nice swing arc but are too slow.
* recommended armor: Olrox's Suit.
* recommended accessory: Satan's Ring.
* recommended red soul: You basically NEED Puppet Master to survive this battle, in order to avoid getting cornered.  Always stay on the side of the room that Death is not -- watch that center pillar carefully.  If you're not careful, he may do a two-swing and force you to dodge to one side, and then if you can't get out of that, he'll almost certainly hit you if he tries a two-swing again.  When he finishes that initial two-swing, you should Puppet Master behind him.  If you're good at switching you might also equip an alternate stronger soul such as Killer Clown (which you have to have) and deal a bit more damage early on in the battle using it, but you need to make sure you have enough MP to throw a puppet.
* recommended blue soul: none.  Bat Company for the second form, probably.
* recommended yellow soul: Golem, as usual.  It's basically your only one and it enhances your defense.

Second form:
I haven't figured this out yet, but you might want Bat Company to fly above the skulls.

Edit: I figured out that he heavily telegraphs his most unpredictable attack.  So that just means I need to get as far away from him as possible so his spinning scythe doesn't hit me and then focus on dodging the sickles while in bat form, when he does this.  His other two attacks are easy to avoid (Bat Company to fly above the giant skulls and double-jumping to avoid the decapitation swipe).

Also, I could say that I'm technically violating least-souls conduct, because I picked up Doppelganger, but the only difference that Doppelganger makes is that I can switch equipment/souls without going into the menu, and going into the menu pauses the action, so it doesn't really make any difference.  All other souls I have (all boss souls, plus the three starters and the three required ones to get to Paranoia) are mandatory.

glennmagusharvey

I decided to start writing up a second guide for this game, for a low-level playthrough specifically.

Anyway, I got to Abaddon, the prettyboy locust conductor, at level 27.

He's extremely predictable, but it still took me a bunch of tries to beat him.  Probably almost as many as Death.

Originally it seemed hopeless but then I realized that one MAJOR tell for his attacks is to see which way he's facing.  He has four patterns and all four of them have a directional component -- which, incidentally, strongly affects how easy it is to dodge them.  Specifically, staying behind him is a wise idea.

Abaddon also wins the prize for "most times a boss has killed me after I failed to draw the seal", at 3.

So, now onto Menace at level 29.

Naas_Human

Planescape: Torment is a lot of fun for something that centers on updating your journal.

lrdgck

I was gonna say something like, "it's a lot of fun for any story-based game", then I realized you said pretty much that.

glennmagusharvey

Well, finally done with the Ancient Cave.

I got lucky to pick up a Dekar Blade, so I decided to go through the rest of it.  Even with savestates it's tedious; with savestates I just don't give enough of a crap to deal with the tedium of having to set everything up only for a frequent and nearly-unavoidable failure chance within the last 25 floors of this darn thing and thus see like ten hours of work at a time being wasted.

This must be what hell looks like:

Note that this is like level 95 of the dungeon, so all those cyclopes are actually genies who can steal MP and all those goons are potentially demons with instant death attacks.  The chariot, ironically, is probably the least threatening thing in the picture.

Meanwhile, I discovered a strange thing.  This one goes beyond just translation errors (e.g. a Lich being translated as a "Leech").


In any case, I made it to the end.  Set everything up.  This was satisfying to do.

That's supposed to deal 1/2 the target's remaining HP in damage, so I'm not sure why it (when hitting a boss that should have max 9980 HP) is dealing over 5000.  Oh well.  Maybe it's affected by attack power modifications.

Anyway, it's over.  Took a whole day's worth of slogging through this dungeon.


Ended up with an impressive haul of treasure, 17 blue chest items (brought in 2 initially) and also recovered 2 of 10 Iris Treasures.
* Gades Blade (brought this in), Fry Sword, Sky Sword, Sizzle Sword, Mirak Plate, Flame Shield, Hairpin, Sea ring, Earring, Water jewel (brought this in), Thundojewel, Earth Jewel, Twist Jewel, Gloom Jewel, Catfisl jwl., Black eye, Silver eye.
* Iris Staff + Ancient Jelly.
I got a bunch of jewels in part because I fought EVERYTHING, which ended with me winning some neat stuff from late-dungeon enemies like the genies.

Naas_Human

I finished Torment.

That was probably the most engaging thing I've gotten into in the past few years besides maybe Broken Sword 1.

lrdgck

Kind of unusual, even, that it slipped your attention so far.

Naas_Human

I have not gotten familiar with D&D-related stuff in general for most of my life, so there's that.

glennmagusharvey

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has reasonably manageable boss fights for every boss, even at low levels...except the final boss.

The final boss's first phase is trivial and boring.  Jump and hit target.

The second phase, however, is a mess.

There are these destroyable kamikaze pods that charge at you.  They are small targets and have 200 HP each.

The boss also has two parts.  A knee and a face.  Both have 3000 HP.  The face retracts after each hit.

Hitting the two parts isn't the issue.  It's dealing with the kamikaze pods.  They're small and durable, and they charge you from outta freaking nowhere sometimes because they're just offscreen, and they have a pretty big charge range.

And when you dodge them, you spend tons of time cleaning them up.  Five hits from a typical weapon to deal with each of them.

And Soma is slow as molasses, as usual.  Except this time you don't have as much luxury to lead your shots.

Oh, did I mention they have a shitton of knockback.  Well, everything has a shitton of knockback in this battle.

Zennistrad

And Soma is slow as molasses, as usual.  Except this time you don't have as much luxury to lead your shots.

That depends on what weapon you're using. I generally find in the handheld Castlevanias that lances are the most consistently useful weapon type. They don't have quite the speed of shortswords and knuckles or the power of axes or broadswords, but they have just enough of both to deal high amounts of damage easily and have a longer reach than most other weapon classes.

The game's Infinity + 1 Spear also has a critical art that launches a massive laser that crosses the entire screen, which is super handy in a pinch.

glennmagusharvey

In a low-level game, I only have access to weapons I can buy and find.  Can't craft any items because I have no souls.

Actually already using the Lance, also.

glennmagusharvey

I've got a few extra Steam Awards trading cards -- the sales event
trading cards from the 2016 end-of-year/holiday/Christmas/etc. sale. 
Does anyone need to complete any sets?

Blueeyedrat

I have some extra cards as well, if anyone needs 'em.

fourteenwings

I've really hit a wall in World of Final Fantasy. Even when the plot was complete nonsense, I could always fall back on how fun the gameplay is. Now I'm stuck collecting insanely powerful boss monsters from the Colosseum and The Girl's Tearoom which is basically standing in one place, picking a mission and then fighting a monster that has way more HP than I have the patience for whose one elemental weakness is nerfed by their extremely high stats in other areas.

I barely had the time to do this once at all with Bahamut so far (you have to do it seven times, four times in the Tearoom and three in the Colosseum, and in the Colosseum you just have to keep fighting until they eventually show up and they haven't yet), and I'm surprised that the "introductory" game to the series has such completely insufferable bosses that take so long and are also seven entire meatwalls.