I've been... yeah, I guess I've just been.
Let's see. Finished another playthrough of
Army of Two: The 40th Day (PS3), this time going for the full 'bad' ending as opposed to the full good the first time. Started another, this time screwing around in the Easy mode to grab some of the remaining trophies.
If things remain consistent, I'll be playing
Lost Planet 2 (PS3) again with friends on Sundays. I've got my Rathalos armor, so I'll be fine with screwing about. I might be improving a little bit, to be honest; I'm not the all-star of our little group by any means, but I seem to be falling into my typical niche in multiplayer games; I'm usually pretty hard to kill (or at least I tend to die the least, so I'm not holding anyone back).
Some
Monster Hunter 3 (Wii) as always. I've got nearly every non Alatreon/Deviljho weapon, though most are missing their final upgrades. Pretty soon, I'll just have to focus on making the armor sets I'm missing and I'll have every piece of equipment collected. And then Monster Hunter 3 PSP will likely be out, and the process will begin anew...
Etrian Odyssey 3: The Drowned City came out this most recent Tuesday, but I haven't finished the second one;
Etrian Odyssey 2: Heroes of Lagaard (DS). Well, I
have, but I'm still trying to finish up the second stratum and final Quests. I just killed Dragon and Drake today. Dragon I aced on my first try, Drake killed me twice when I had him on the ropes but I took him out a few hours ago.
I've realized that the endgame of EO2 involves not letting the bosses do anything important. If I allowed Drake to do
anything, he killed my whole party with one attack (two technically, but having my Protector be the only survivor is a hopeless case).
I'm finally cutting back on
Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS). I'm far enough in that I don't feel so obligated to grind or invest tons of time out of fear of being obsolete in group play. Though now that I think about it, I should take a look at the WiFi shop and see if there's anything worth putting my in-game money into...
Other than that, nothing comes to min...
Wait, right. On Monday my friends and I finished
Tales of Eternia (PS1), at least the Story mode, etc. I'd either forgotten or never fully realized how stupid the Harder difficulties in that game are. Not even Hard, because that would suggest that the player has some control over the course of a battle. At least using Valkyrie and Shizel as examples, it is entirely possible (and probable) to get 40+ hit comboed to death against the wall, with no way whatsoever to prevent it.
Valkyrie's Ougi makes her just about invincible, staggers Reid with ridiculous range, and in Hard mode is immediately followed up by Ray to continue the juggle... and oftentimes prompting Valkyrie to do it
again before you've hit the ground. Add into this the fact that she has a passive counterattack which makes it unsafe to hit her most of the time, and that fight is both boring and frustrating.
As for Shizel, Hard mode was pretty neat and challenging until she dropped to 1/2 HP in the final battle. Then she started doing multiple things at the same time; running around throwing knockback light orbs while simultaneously casting Fear Flare, Wind Blade, Lightning, and/or Holy Lance without skipping a beat. She had no cast time, no cooldown, and could move and cast while attacking. Not accounting for her ability to cast Summon Demon which hits around 1/2 the screen, 3/4s if done in the middle of the arena, dropping Big Bang at random which killed any casters without fail, and of course Eternal Finality, the 'drop everyone to 1 HP' attack that was followed up by homing Fireballs before your characters have gotten to their feet. Entirely unfun, since most of those aforementioned attacks couldn't be dodged at all, and those that could require that you know how to recover from knockdown (which only I knew how to do, no one else even tried).
Having gone through that nightmare, I suddenly grew to appreciate the real
Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2) more than I already did. In that one, pretty much
every spell is dodgeable (including Indignation Judgement, a boss Hi-Ougi if you're good enough). And in case you don't want to try some of the crazier stuff, Destiny 2 is where the Magic Guard first appeared, which I can hardly imagine going without now.
/rant
This post has been edited by TotalWhittle: Sep 25 2010, 00:07
Currently playing..., an imperative thread
Sep 22 2010, 13:24
