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Comments
Music: Beatmania IIDX 23: Copula, Dance Dance Revolution A
Life is too good.
Someone described it as "bullet heaven", in contrast to "bullet hell". I think the point is to play it for score? It's kinda nastily chaotic but that seems to fit right into that playstyle notion.
As far as shmups go...
* I'm still playing eXceed 3rd for survival...though now without autobomb.
* And I sometimes revisit RefleX for survival, or for challenge. The "don't kill anything" challenge is really difficult because it involves learning a new set of strategies to dodge the blue shots rather than run into them.
* Gotta get around to playing Astebreed sometime.
* Haven't picked up Gun Wings and Strania yet. For some reason, I mentally group Gun Wings, Strania, and Varstray.
Bit of a disappointment. Still though there are some interesting areas in the Keen games that I've always wondered how to get to. I wonder what secrets there are in them.
Kinda like how I noticed early on in Secret Agent episode 3 that there's one level where you can't get the letters S, P, and Y in order without taking damage -- which means you have to choose between the bonus for no damage and the SPY letters bonus.
also lol it turns out you actually can't get these without cheating
I actually dug it up and installed Stepmania 5 and added some new stepfile packs and I've been messing around with it a bit lately.
I tried Audiosurf first, actually, and it just...doesn't quite give that same feel.
That and sometimes their timing is off or their they just chart stuff the wrong way (e.g. offbeats placed on downbeats).
But part of the challenge, to some extent, is figuring out the chartmaker's logic. Sometimes it's based on the melody, but sometimes it's based on some part of the accompaniment that's less obvious, making it more challenging to get through it.
Also Stepmania 5 has a setting that causes you to lose more health bar when you make a mistake while perfect, which makes stuff harder to survive. Like there's this particularly insane stepfile of Marisa Stole The Precious Thing that I used to be able to survive (in Stepmania 4) but now I have to do better at it to get through it.
Audiosurf isn't really a rhythm game at all, but you kind of expect it to be, which is maybe the problem. I think it's sort of fun but autogenerated levels in a music game is just not great.
I liked Stepmania. I should play more of it. Really the only reason I don't is because I never remembered to reinstall it after I got a new computer. I used to think I don't like 4-key that genre game as much as 6/7-key so I preferred playing osu!mania but now whenever I play osu!mania it's usually 4-key so might as well just actually play Stepmania.
On the other hand, if you want to step your game up (probably level 10+ AAA scores) you could invest in something hardcore: http://www.precisiondancepads.com/index.php?id_category=12&controller=category&id_lang=1
Actually I just beat one. And I'll come back and update the following list when I beat more.
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Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled (JRPG, DS, 2009, Studio Archcraft, Graffiti Entertainment, Canada)
Current position: some mountainside, I forgot the name
Completion condition: main story condition
Note: might take a while since this game's battles are rather slow
La-Mulana (2D exploration platformer, PC, 2005/2011, GR3/Nigoro, Playism, Japan)
Current
position: hard to describe or even remember what with the complex mesh
of dependencies this game has but I've beaten four bosses.
Completion
condition: defeating the final boss, and possibly also getting 100% of
something? depends on whether I need to deal with Hell Temple, which I
refuse to deal with.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC (JRPG, PC, 2004, Nihon Falcom, Nihon Falcom, Japan)
Current position: about halfway through the first chapter, of five
Completion condition: any% completion, followed by a possible Max Bracer Points completion
Lufia II (JRPG, SNES, 1995, Neverland, Taito, Japan)
Current position: triangle island
Completion condition: main story completion
Metroid Prime (3D exploration platformer, GameCube, 2002, Retro Studios, Nintendo, USA/Japan)
Current position: Phazon mine?
Completion condition: 100% scans
Note: I might restart this
[FINISHED] Nostalgia (JRPG, DS, 2008, Matrix Software/Red Entertainment, Ignition Entertainment, Japan)
Current position: Just reached completion condition! I might go for full 100% later
Completion condition: main story completion + 100% World Treasures
Pokémon Crystal Emu Edition (adventure/strategy, GameBoy Color, 2001, Game Freak, The Pokémon Company, Japan)
Current position: 4 badges in Johto, just cleared Team Rocket base in Mahogany town, Pokédex 90/251 (including all Unown forms)
Completion condition: full Pokédex completion (all 251)
Recettear: an Item Shop's Tale (sim/action RPG, PC, 2007, EasyGameStation, Carpe Fulgur, Japan)
Current position: halfway through second attempt in main game (likely to be easily successful this time)
Completion
condition: first-loop the main game, then use New Game + repeatedly to
accumulate all adventurers' True Cards, and complete the Item
Encyclopedia (this is likely to take a while since some items appear
only as random rare item drops from dungeon monsters and others appear
only as random sellback items from customers, including crazy scam girl)
Tales of Symphonia (JRPG/action, GameCube/PC, 2004, Namco Tales Studio, Namco, Japan)
Current position: escaped from high-tech base, entering fire dungeon
Completion condition: main story completion?
Terranigma (action RPG, SNES, 1995, Quintet, Nintendo, Japan)
Current position: the beginning of Spain?
Completion condition: main story completion with extras?
Note: I think I'll restart this just to make sure I got a couple secrets
[UNFUN TO FINISH] Unepic (2D exploration platformer/action RPG, PC, Francisco Téllez de Menenses et al., EnjoyUp/Ninagamers, 2011)
Current position: about to fight Medeox
Completion condition: main story completion
Ys II (action RPG, PC, 988/2009, Nihon Falcom, Nihon Falcom, Japan)
Current position: second dungeon or first? also lighting towns people on fire and then giving them gifts to make up for it
Completion condition: main story completion
Note: might just restart since I stopped really early into the game
----
I'm probably going to tackle Unepic and Terranigma next.
We beat Xavius (i.e. the current biggest boss) in Normal (i.e. the easiest difficulty using pre-made groups), thus cleansing the Nightmare and restoring the Emerald Dream to its former splendor. Good times.
Besides that, I made a Death Knight alt. And I kinda want to learn more about finances to figure out how to make the best out of the Auction House. Also, I finally figured out how to set the client to French, it's something I wanted to do for years and will greatly help me practice.
Nah, rather it's just that the two physical attackers just get far too nice toys to play with. And then there's all the airship battles where Fiona is useless because everything has magic defense through the roof.
Anyway, just...not-quite-finished Unepic. I've gotten to the endgame, but the endgame is just...rather unfun to play because I built my character up as a jack-of-all-trades sort rather than optimizing anything well and thus I have crap damage output. This matters because I need to get through the forest while other character is playing tower defence back at the castle, and getting through the forest means lots of killing things at range and now I find out I need an excellent bow and an absolute crapton of arrows. I also need to not fall down and have to start back over, and the movement is sometimes rather awkward.
Incidentally, I picked the fate of "eternal agony", as opposed to "horrible death" and "perpetual slavery", for the ending. The ending specifies what that "eternal agony" is, but I think it came a lot sooner for my player-character.
So I now declare this game "unfun to finish" so it will be put down and no longer considered for finishing.
The list is now down to ten items.
I can't seem to find my old Lufia II save file. It's gonna be restart-or-bust on that one. Same with Terranigma, but I was planning on restarting that one anyway.
On the bright side, I can start with the EU version to ensure that the graphics are set right.
The saves on my SNES games are way old but this is pretty recent. My flash drive also contains a bunch of important documents so I would really like to find it.
Finally was able to clear that section of the Amber Garden. I think it's levels 16-20, because it ends in the Volcanicrab boss. I'm playing as Caillou, who is a glass cannon and who is also a slow walker, so yeah. Good thing is, now that I know how to play him, I think I know how to deal with the next two sections of Amber Garden. (And after beating levels 26-30 that should unlock a new adventurer as well.)
I'm three days away from a payment deadline and I can generate about 100,000 pix per day. My payment required is 200,000 pix, so that probably means one more adventure and then shopping/selling. This time around I'm far less desperate to get the money, which is a good thing.
I still haven't cleared the game even one time so I am really excited to be making progress toward it.
Meanwhile, come to think of it, my very first Pokémon Blue save file got lost when the cartridge sorta fell while I was playing it on the SNES SGB so I had to start over after getting to Lavender Town, too...so starting over is a bit of a rite of passage I guess.
Okay I might stop at getting all characters' true cards and revealing all of the story.
I've been active in the western fanbase for Japanese indie games, but this is an interesting article about the flipside of that -- the effort to build a Japanese fanbase for western indie games.