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Grim Fandango: Remastered
Entered this game with uncertainty. Enjoyed Monkey Island as a child. Acquired a distaste for puzzles since then. Handled Day of the Tentacle's puzzle without much issue, though. Remembers Monkey Island fondly due to humor, also, not gameplay.

Praises it for the unique setting. Occurs in the land of the dead. Acts as a travel agent to the newly-dead. Sends people to their final destination on a train...if they were good. Handed a cane with a compass to one bad skeleton.

Contains various complexities as well, including a criminal element. Kills skeletons by "sprouting" them with a flower bullet. Highlighted exploited laborers and prisoners throughout the game. Never felt too dark. Would have preferred something a little more lighthearted, though.

Fared okay on the humor front. Liked most lines where the other characters cut in outside of conversation. Example: Looked at Eva. "It's my boss's secretary, Eva." Responded, "It's my boss's whipping boy, Manny." Informs you of your place in the story right out of the gate. Cannot recall any amusing uses of items, unfortunately. Wanted to hold onto the Robert Frost balloon animal far longer, though.

Felt a little mixed on characters. Warmed up to Glottis, your driver, as a constant, faithful companion. Viewed Manny, the main character, with a bit of sideeye. Seemed unnaturally fixated on Mercedes Colomar. Understands wanting to help, especially with few other options. Felt forced before long. Spoke together for not even five minutes. Waited for a year at Rubacava. Smacked Manny with a bottle and left after that year. Seemed undeterred by this.

Dropped the ball hard on gameplay, unfortunately. Names the Petrified Forest as an awful place. Committed missteps there seen throughout the game.
1. Tasks you with toppling a petrified tree. Hooked machinery up to it. Tricked Glottis into climbing up it. Threw the switch to send them spinning. Was insufficient, however. Needed to pinch the lines to the equipment with a wheelbarrow. Visably changed the timing of the device's four pumps. Caused no other indications of progress, however. Knew what to do solely thanks to a walkthrough.
2. Presents you with a forest clearing. Shows many paths. Goes nowhere. Needed a signpost from a screen earlier. Noticed it due to knocking it over. Could not interact with it at all while driving, however. Never changed the cursor. Assumed it to be background. Had to exit the vehicle.

Grabbed the signpost. Dragged it to the clearing. Set it down. Spun around. Pointed towards one path. Ran down it. Reappeared from one of the other paths. Tried again. Pointed the same way. Carried the signpost along. Same result.

Moved the signpost around. Pointed to different caves. Sprinted down them. Produced no clear results. Wondered if it was correct, but not giving any indications. Does that with mazes sometimes.

Tries to hint at the correct solution. Says, "Well, it's pointing somewhere." Set up the paths as a huge red herring. Actually pointed to a spot already visible in the clearing. Dips downward when you hit the very small magic spot. Opens a huge trapdoor. Must have planted the signpost very close before. Never registered.

Solved some puzzles without understanding the reason behind your actions. Traps you in a ship during one section. Stacked explosives at the door to blow you up. Figured out how to twist the anchor lines together. Reeled one anchor in. Thought it would cause the ship to do a barrel roll and dislodge the explosives. Tore a huge line across the ship instead. Sailed out with that half of the ship.

Brings up one more bit: bugs. Crashed twice. Locked up the computer completely...six times? Lacks an autosave feature too. (Arguably wasted more time hard resetting than from lost progress.) Cannot recall any other game causing issues like that.

Overall thoughts: Considers this game okay with a walkthrough or as a spectator. Would not describe the story and characters as particularly memorable, however. Stands out more for its awful puzzles, poor interaction points (to the point of completely missing several locations and items, despite clicking over there), and rough crashes.

Besides that one paralogue map, it sounds like your Maddening run hasn't been too bad so far, which is good. I also played Awakening on Lunatic and while I did finish it+Apotheosis, it was kind of a rough ride. tbh I don't think that I want to try Maddening, that's probably beyond me.

Understands being uninterested in Maddening. Becomes a bit tiring optimizing every little detail or finding precise unit configurations to not lose someone. Struggled so much on Chapter 2 of Awakening, where you first get Stahl, Vaike, and Miriel. Did not want rely solely on Chrom and Robin for the playthrough. Cleared the map eventually. Describes winning as more relief than fun. Encountered nothing as bad as that so far, fortunately.

Considered Hard difficulty with anti-grinding restrictions instead of Maddening. Undoubtedly progresses much faster without skill grinding, fishing, tea parties, lost item hunting, and so on. Makes Seminars worth considering.

I take it since Hanneman and Manuela teach a different house depending on the route, they didn't want to bother having varying post timeskip scenarios depending on which house they were with if not recruited. There's plausible reasons as to why both of them would side with Edelgard/the Empire if not recruited I think.

....it also took me a moment to get what you were saying about the mech names lol

But anyway congrats on making it through a Maddening playthrough

Pokemon Moon Challenge Run
Recorded a custom challenge run of Moon here. Short explanation of the challenge: Begins with heavy restrictions. Buys (semi-random) Pokemon and lighter restrictions with in-game money.

Enjoyed the playthrough. Made some tough calls between getting more Pokemon, lighter restrictions, and saving for better odds/deals. Outpaced the prices in the last third of the game, unfortunately. Fixes that easily enough for future runs, at least. Succeeded at forcing different Pokemon than usual too.

Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars (Demo)
Was drawn in by the aesthetic. Suggested decent combat mechanics. Deserved a shot.

Controls a party from the Ivory Order. Tasks you with retrieving an important vial. Chases the thief to a cave. Recovers the vial. Ends the demo with the titular Isle Dragon...roaring.

Fizzled badly from a story standpoint (for a demo, anyways). Introduced three completely different people in the Direct. Presumably plays as them for the entire game. Ought to draw in your audience with them. Never appeared once. Understands nothing about the looming conflict either.

Gives the combat some sideeye. Seems simple. Lists your hero's attack and the enemy's defense. Assumes "Attack + Modifiers - Defense = Damage". Cannot trust that, however. Found an example from a video:
Hero: 11 Attack
White Light: "Deals ATK + 10 Light damage"
Enemy: 2 Defense
Result: Strikes for 9 damage, then for 10 damage. Worded that attack a little poorly. Expected only one hit. Makes sense still.

A little later, versus some mushroom monsters...
Hero: 12 Attack
White Light: "Deals ATK + 10 Light damage"
Enemy: 4 Defense
Result: Strikes for 10 damage, then again for 10. ...What? Should be 18 total damage, not 20. Signaled no kind of weakness, resistance, or critical on that attack. Is there a hidden damage variance? If so, then why present the information? Undermines it.

Hoped for more complexity via different equipment or skills. Holds little hope on that front.

Refrains from complaining about difficulty. Expects none from a demo. (Blazed through. Probably never fell below 75% health on anyone.)

Passes on this. Commends it for style. Utters little praise beyond that.

Earthbound Challenge Run
Returned for another playthrough. Probably broke into double digits for playthroughs of this game. Describes it as a comforting experience. Wishes to add a bit of new life into it with restrictions. Tried to disincentivize strong abilities or tie them to unused strategies. With that in mind:

1. Ness's restriction: Must eat a Bag of Fries (with Ketchup upon reaching Twoson) before every use of PSI Rockin'. Slows down the move on top of clogging up inventory space. Made "Fries" Ness's favorite food, of course.

2. Paula's restriction: Must Pray before every use of PSI Freeze or PSI Thunder. Allowed free use of PSI Fire, as the least used offensive move.

3. Jeff's restriction: Cannot use any kind of Bottle Rocket, Bomb, or Bazooka. (Applies to other characters too.) Sees Bottle Rockets banned commonly. Joined the bandwagon.

4. Poo's restriction: Must use Mirror before every use of PSI Starstorm, PSI Freeze, and PSI Thunder. Permits free use of PSI Thunder two ranks below their maximum (minimum Alpha). Never uses Mirror. Slows down more powerful PSI too, much like the other restrictions.

5. An unofficial restriction: Cannot despawn enemies to clear a path. Avoids more dangerous enemies with this trick. Turns longer dungeons back into tests of endurance with this rule. Decided to add this shortly after starting up the game.

Notable bits:
- Died to the first or second enemy. Landed maybe one hit on a Spiteful Crow in four turns between Ness and King. Tried to run for a few turns. Nope. (Tip: Do not attempt to run. Increases your odds for each passing turn. Depends on your speed too. Gave Spiteful Crows 77 Speed for some reason. Beat the game with 56 Speed on Ness, for comparison.)

- First kill for the "no despawn" rule: two Ramblin' Evil Mushrooms outside Onett. Stuck a mushroom on Ness's head. Beaned himself for over half his health.

- Curses these Spiteful Crows. Stole some of Ness's fries and ketchup. So much for PSI Rockin'.

- Remembers why Pray is so bad again. Made everyone feel strange on the first one. Tried PSI Freeze anyways. Resulted in a self one-shot (easily).

- A great case of all the rules in tandem: the Gold Mine. Ran far lower on PP than usual. Left the dungeon twice to replenish, rather than one attempt. Discovered how vicious the Guardian Diggers are as well. Usually drops them with PSI Freeze on turn 1 (or nearly). Dealt with multiple Smaaaash hits that take out Paula or Jeff in one blow.

- Hates Pray so bad. Confused everyone on the Kraken fight en route to Scaraba. Could not land Lifeups on the right people. Wound up with Paula alone at 9 hitpoints at one point. Clutched a comeback with more prayers. Eventually got the one that resurrects everyone. (1 in 16 chance for the Resurrect Pray. Equals the Confusion Pray's odds, supposedly. Got the latter a lot more often.)

- Tossed a PSI Flash Beta at the Plague Rat of Doom (Sanctuary 5 boss). Turn 1 insta-kill. Nice. Compensates for some of the bad Flash luck from enemies doing the same.

- Remembers why Mirror is garbage. Knew about the bad odds of success beforehand. Did not know about it removing current shields or breaking from Neutralizer-type moves. Finished several fights before accomplishing anything.

- Picked up a Sword of Kings. Only took 15-20 Starman Supers. Not bad for a 1 in 128 drop. Helps Poo considerably, given how much Bash will be used.

- Soured on PSI Freeze with the Starman Deluxe fight (Stonehenge base boss). Confused everyone with Pray again. Healed Starmen multiple turns in a row. (Dealt with Homesickness too.) Lost after the party killed themselves without breaking confusion. Never even saw PSI Starstorm from the boss (on that attempt). Calls it a restriction success, on the plus side.

- Lost a Packet of Ketchup on the road to Giygas. So much for PSI Rockin' again.

Gives the challenge a thumbs-up. Slowed down battles. Allowed mean monsters to do their thing. Tried uncommon tactics more, such as PSI Brainshock, Defense Shower, and PSI Defense Down. Met some success with Brainshock. Noticed no difference from defense changes.

Chose this game for this month's Game-Along. Played it as a child, along with several others in the series. (Probably fiddled more with the fifth game. Guesses this to be second-most played in the series.) Revisited it a few years ago as well. Released it in late 1990. Shares a release year with the original Monkey Island, King's Quest V, and Super Mario World.

Describes this as a very basic platformer. Jumps and enters stages with Ctrl. Whips out the pogo stick with Alt. Fires a ray gun (with limited shots) with Ctrl + Alt. Pauses with Spacebar. Nothing else. Contains enemies simple enough to walk into death pits.

Commander Keen 1 Monster.png

Seeks four ship parts to repair your "Beans with Bacon Megarocket": Everclear, a Joystick, a Vacuum Cleaner, and a Car Battery. Scattered the pieces across Mars. Appears next to the exit in certain levels. May opt to skip multiple locations, as a result. Probably only requires you to beat about half the levels.

Discovered one big hazard with the pogo stick. Bounces higher by holding Ctrl while on the pogo stick. Held Alt and an arrow key at first. Flips your screen by holding Ctrl + Alt + Arrow Key, however.

Blazed through the game without too much issue. Beat it in maybe an hour. Hits you with a few tight, dangerous jumps from time to time, but not many. Died once or twice to a monster (surprisingly) lunging or getting locked down by a robot's push before getting fired upon. Booked it for the last level after running low on lives, also.

Highlights one part of the last level. Grabbed a level map from a wiki for better visibility. Cropped it to the relevant part.

Commander Keen Last Level.png

Provided a hint about this earlier. Told you your raygun was needed at the end, but not for the commander. Looks identical to the guards in earlier levels, however. Bet on some way to make the cement block fall. Could not see much of the ceiling. Missed the solution.

Lacked the shots to defeat a normal guard. (Good thing, too. Takes four shots for normal guards, but 105 for this commander.) Risked jumping over the boss (who randomly jumps also) instead. Escaped death. Snagged the Everclear before automatically exiting too.

Preserved one amusing bit in the Steam collection: the advertisement for the other two games in the trilogy. Lists instructions for how to order them. Sounds strange to mail a game company nowadays.

Played Celeste for this month's Game-Along. Heard positive things about it. Lost interest upon learning its genre: precision platformer. Caught glimpses of games like Super Meat Boy. Never looked particularly fun. Received Celeste as a gift, however. Prompted a try.

Controls Madeline. Decided to climb Celeste Mountain partly to overcome mental health issues and partly as a self-challenge. Encounters strange occurrences on the mountain, such as a reflection of Madeline becoming real. Quickly realized how everything is a metaphor for Madeline's struggles. Finds feather power-ups after learning a calming trick involving a feather, for example. Enjoyed watching the story unfold. Always awaited more dialogue.

Cared less for the gameplay. Lays no blame on the controls. Worked as expected. Planted checkpoints everywhere too. Retried portions with minor time loss. Simply never felt any pleasure from grabbing a tough strawberry (a collectible), ferreting out secrets, or moving forward. Would not call it unpleasant either (generally). Describes it in duller terms: jump, dash left, hold neutral, fall into stamina gem, dash up-left to wall, climb, and then jump to safety.

Nearly forgot one bit, fittingly: the music. Supposedly features a great soundtrack. Remembers none of it. Definitely had sound. Likely tuned it out from concentration. Happens fairly often in games. Experienced little downtime during levels to hear anything. Focused on figuring out how to move forward, actually moving forward (with a plan or not), or searching for breakable walls/secrets.

Seems like a good precision platformer game. Recommends it to people who like that genre or wish to try it. May not change your opinions if you do not, however.

Final stats
Strawberries: 104/175
Deaths: 812
Time: 5:46:54.477

Acquired three B-Side tapes and a yellow, circular gem. Missed all the crystal hearts. Saw two crystal hearts (one at the hotel and one behind six gems).

I'm super-late but seeing this has a ridiculous nostalgic value for me... even if I did play the game once I already was a PC member, so like, a decade and a half after it was released. Still, I did not expect to hear about it anywhere in the internet I visit nowadays!

FTL

Themed this month's game along on ships. Followed it with this roguelike spaceship game. Helms a spaceship with information vital to the rebellion's defeat. Travels through eight sectors in space. Culminates in a final battle versus the Rebel Flagship.

Played this game before. Always gravitated towards one of two strategies: stacking lasers/flak or boarding crews. Offers so many weapons and ship systems, however. Sought a different experience. Banned laser and flak weapons (until able to defeat a ship otherwise) and boarding crews.

Attempt 1: Drone Focus
Tetragon Ship.png
Set off on Tetragon (Engi Ship Layout C). Begins with a Beam Drone and a laser weapon. Selected this ship for its augment: Defense Scrambler. Prevents enemy drones from disabling your offensive drones or shooting down missiles. Counters the drone counter, essentially. Viewed this as essential, given drones as the primary damage source.

Could not escape using the laser weapon, due to the Beam Drone being unable to pierce shields. (Bought an Ion weapon at the first chance. Excels at disabling systems, such as shields.) Tore out across the vast expanse of space in search of more scrap (currency) and drones.

Notes one shortcoming of drones: limited resources. Expends one drone part per deployment. Costs 8 scrap each at the store. (Comparison: Sells laser weapons for 50-95 scrap, depending on power.) Lasts the whole battle, barring getting shot down. Loots drone parts from defeated ships, however. Winds up with tons on non-drone playthroughs.

Quickly discovered another flaw in the drone tactic. Controls what the ship's weapons target. Cannot command drones beyond attacking the ship. Buzzed around without any sense of priority, such as damaging weapons or shields. Suffered a lot of damage as a result. Reached Sector 7 before exploding from a severe lack of good drones and weapons.

Hates the Clone Bay, as well. Rarely played with it. Was caught offguard by the Clone Bay getting hit. Purges your clone banks very quickly until repaired. Preserves them with a specific augment. Did not have that. Lost three crew between two battles.

Attempt 2: Missile Focus
Bulwark Ship.png
Captained the Bulwark (Rock Ship Layout A) next. Begins with two missile weapons and a massive stockpile of 28 missiles. Beats all other ships on the starting number of missiles.

Never used missile weapons for a reason. Ignores enemy shields, which is great. Expends a missile for every shot, however. Occasionally misses too. May have come out negative in scrap from missile costs for the first sector dogfights. Risks running out as well. (Spent maybe four missiles per ship. Receives some back from the enemy ship's remains, though.)

Bought a very important upgrade in the shop: Explosive Replicator. Saves a missile 50% of the time. Cuts down on both consumption and ammunition costs.

Aced the middle sectors. Realized a burgeoning problem too late: increasing enemy ship health, but not a corresponding damage increase. Cost more and more missiles to win each fight. Earned more than enough scrap to pay for missiles. Became a problem of ammunition scarcity now.

Reached the final sector. Engaged the Rebel Flagship. Blasted off a chunk in Phase 1 (of 3). Pursued for Phase 2. Ran dry on missiles. Never bought any non-missile weapons. (Considers other weapons useless without planning around them.) Broke off in hopes of resupplying. Found none. Lost as the flagship captured the Federation Base.

Attempt 3: Beam Focus
Nisos Ship.png
Soured on missiles. How about beam weapons? Sat in the command chair of the Nisos (Federation Cruiser Layout B). Features an Artillery Beam. Rips across ships every 40 seconds (upgradeable down to 20 seconds). Ignores shields, unlike other beam weapons.

Avoided beam weapons in general. Requires the enemy shields to be down to work, usually. Packs on a lot of shield charges late-game. Works okay in tandem with ion weapons. Winds up with poor damage because of filling most weapon slots with ion weapons, though. Could improve with drone support. Costs a lot of scrap to set up a mediocre payout.

Begins with a laser weapon, a weak missile weapon, and the Artillery Beam. Banned the laser weapon. Costs maybe 7 missiles to take down an early-game ship with just the missile launcher. Pays scrap to down a ship, essentially. Waited on the Artillery Beam instead. Literally got up and walked around while waiting for it to charge. Went further south as weapon upgrades failed to show up. Nope nope nope.

Attempt 4: Back to Drones
Torus Ship.png
Dropped the difficulty from Normal to Easy by this point. Returned to drones. Seemed the more reliable (and less infuriating) method of success. Switched to The Torus (Engi Ship Layout A). Sacrifices the Defense Scrambler. Begins with a solid ion weapon and a Combat I drone. (Fires lasers with the Combat I and II drone. Allows that.) Launches with a much more solid start.

Was starved so hard. Absolutely refused to sell any offensive drones or ion weapons until over halfway through the game. Finally bought another Combat I drone and two more ion weapons. Rejoiced as hope dawned.

Ran into disaster shortly after: a stream of enemies with Anti-Drone defensive drones. Shot down the combat drones immediately. Fled from one fight to the next. Exploded from the tsunami of hard counters.

Attempt 5: More Drones

Stuck by The Torus. Hoped to translate better luck into lower operational costs. Received some in the form of a second Combat I drone.

Foresaw a potential problem: the ship's drone part reserve. Threatened long-term success by deploying all drones every fight. Held back to prevent a catastrophe like the missile run.

Flitted from store to store. Desperately sought the Defense Scrambler augment. Bought a second ion weapon and the final Combat I drone. Happily forked over 50 scrap for the Drone Recovery Arm. Recovers your drones (and thus, the drone part) at the end of battles. Unleashed the ship's full potential with that. Never found the vaunted Defense Scrambler or even the Cloaking system (a short-term damage dodge).

Reached the final sector. Stumbled across no Anti-Drone drones thus far. Remembered the Rebel Flagship popping out drones for Phase 2. Might include Anti-Drone drones. Upgraded Weapons to allow bringing the Fire Bomb online. Teleports a fire bomb onto the enemy ship. Serves as a possible way to disable any Anti-Drone drones.

Cannot recall ever fighting the Rebel Flagship without Cloaking. Prioritizes it on this battle in particular. Fires tons of weapons in Phase 1, a temporary swarm of drones in Phase 2, and a 7-laser burst in Phase 3. Dodges most of that with a well-timed Cloak.

Disabled the Rebel Flagship's major weapons in Phase 1. Suffered maybe 15% damage only. Caught up for Phase 2. Never sent any Anti-Drone drones out. Perfect. Took a bit more damage--perhaps 20%--mostly from the drone swarm ability. Pursued the fleeing ship for Phase 3.

Struggled versus Phase 3. Forgot to repair some systems damage between phases. Still went well...until the laser burst. Carpeted the Torus's systems with laser fire. Damaged the shields, weapons, and drones. Became a standstill as both ships raced to repair weapons, drones, and shields. Won that on the back of four Engies (faster repair speed crew). Endured another laser blast at the cost of more hull and systems damage. Finally brought the Rebel Flagship down.
FTL Torus Victory.png
Scored 3224 points. Wound up being a good challenge. Really emphasizes how weak this build is to others, though. Supplements a traditional build, sure. Works poorly by itself.

Dug up this old Gameboy Advance game a few years ago. Never played it back in the day. Probably belonged to a sibling. Paid less attention to tactics-style games then.

Opens with a Fortune Teller. Asks questions to develop your character. Answered the following:
1. Bear which burden? Truth.
2. Walk which path? Longevity.
3. Design which plan? Wisdom.
4. Swear which oath? Fruition.
5. Share which vision? Bliss.
6. Shape which future? Peace.

Resulted in a Water-elemented, Chaotic main character with balanced stats and a starting Ninja and Cleric. Uh...okay. Tried to pick good-oriented decisions. Evidently chose all Chaotic answers. Should have walked the path of Wealth, swore an oath of Purity, and shared a vision of Peace or...Terror...for a Lawful alignment. Whatever, game.

Set off on the first few missions. Expected something like Fire Emblem between recruiting most enemies and permadeath. Turned to X-Com vibes after discovering friendly fire and 60% hit rates. Influences hit rate heavily by angle of attack. Suffers hit rates like 60% (and worse) for head-on attacks. Fares better on side attacks. Jumps up to 99% for most rear attacks. Will not counterattack on rear attacks either.

Hunted for basic information quickly. Felt starved on knowledge. Presented things like this:
Tactics Ogre Terrain.png
Indicates the element adjustments for the tile. (Gave you some information in the tutorial and in a Tips section. Did not realize Select brought up a tooltip either. Cycled through item information like Physical/Magical Attack without tooltips. Figured that was it.)

Proceeded further. Noticed two worrying trends:
1. Underleveled. Bumped up enemy levels by 2 every map. Earned that much experience on maybe one character per map. Recruited higher level enemies on the battlefield to try to alleviate it. Simply reset the problem.
2. Low funds. Costs 540 Goth for Hard Leather Armor, the most basic. Charges 400 for basic damage and healing spells. Forked over ~1500 Goth for a low level Hawkman already. Gives you 3600 Goth before the 9th map. Struggled just to outfit units.

Solved the above two problems in curious ways.

- Training Battle: Accesses this at any time on the overworld. Pits your own units against each other. Grants experience like a normal battle. Cannot die here. Might as well call it "Grind Mode".

- Quest Mode: Picks this before choosing "Story Mode" on the main menu. Unlocks this after Battle #4. (Good luck fighting level 15 units with your level 5s when unlocking this, though.) Fights a 5 on 5 battle. Earns rewards based on the objective (Defeat All / Defeat Leader) and a self-imposed turn limit. Turned off perma-death here too. Replays this as many times as desired.

Rewards stupidly good items in Quest Mode. Beats some equipment sold in endgame shops. Awards even stronger items with later Quest Mode maps also.

Praises this game for containing some meaningful story choices. Missed it so much. Features one very outsized decision at the end of Battle #6. Discusses trying to find the home of the mermaids. Suggests capturing one, then following it home. Your choices:
A: "I've no better ideas..."
B: "It doesn't seem right."

Amounts to Fire Emblem: Fates's decision between Hoshido and Nohr. Sends you down one of two routes from here. Sides with entirely different people.

Progressed onward. Noticed more flaws with more familiarity.

1. Map and encounter design
Designed most of these maps with the highest elevation in the top-left or top-right. Understands this decision. Eliminates blind spots in the map. Created most maps with a few levels of elevation.

Becomes problematic when you almost always start at the bottom of the map. Increases attack range for ranged units (or maybe just bows) by 1 for every elevation level. Hurts your back row while significantly boosting theirs. Effectively turns archers into an enemy-only class. Stitched together some screenshots to convey this.
Tactics Ogre Bow Range Complete.png
Sniped the bottom-left fairy from the top edge of the castle ramparts. (Probably could have hit the fairy a few more tiles away too. Plinked the healers ~4 tiles further back from a center rampart position.) Shows the fairy's attack range in brown. Comes nowhere close. Often lacks the defense to approach the battle. Compares their defense to spellcasters.

Adds one more point on encounter design: repetitive objectives. Recalls two "Protect X" maps. Defeated the leader or all enemies for the remainder. Supplements this one bit of praise: decent AI on protect maps. Ran away from enemies. Screws this up in so many games somehow.

2. Underused and hidden mechanics

Favored weapons: Will simply quote the in-game tip.
Tells you a class's favored weapon in the class's tooltip. Simply chooses not to display the damage boost on your character's stats page. Acts similarly obstinent with weapons matching your character's element.

Elemental mechanics: Devoted time to these. Showed the terrain elemental advantages earlier. Developed spells to affect weather. Burns away snow with fire spells. Amounts to little difference in damage. Noticed a possible difference in receiving damage from, say, Fire on Fire versus Fire on Water. Swings from maybe 110 damage on a weakness to 90 on a resistance? (Knows no damage calculations.)

Mental Gauge: Ranges from -2 to 2. Affects hit rates and damage slightly. Influences this via emblems. (Emblems: Sort of like character achievements. Allows you to access other classes too.) Never even noticed it. Typically affects units within three spaces. Displays no lens for this.

Biorhythm: Goes through ups and downs in Luck. Discovers your character's spot in your biorhythm through fortunes.

Luck: Finds no good information on this. Never tells you your Luck directly. Affects a lot of things, supposedly, from stat gains to finding better items. Includes hit rates without telling you. May say 99% accuracy for an attack. Could be actually less than that with bad luck.

Leads to a serious question: what is the point of giving information if it is wrong?


3. War Trophies

Places a bag at the feet of most defeated enemies. Contains unique weapons, armor, and spells sometimes. Cannot discern its contents before picking it up. Must stand on that space to do so. Automatically receives any war trophies remaining on the battlefield after the fight.

Loses these war trophies if picked up by an enemy. (Sounds familiar to Triangle Strategy players, at this point.) Will not drop it if defeated either. Effectively deletes it. Missed out on a best-in-slot(?) spear and Petrifying Cloud because of it. Could have missed out on Resurrection and some set piece armor too. Hates this mechanic a lot for including unique items.

_______________


Rambled enough about the finer details. Deviated from the usual map-by-map description of a game. Remarks on little else regarding that, though. Ran out of steam for interesting bits after the first third of the game. Threw a curveball twice by forcing you to split your army. Turned into a slog between tanky enemies (with healing spells), fewer strong units, and extra caution against high-range archers.

Ended the game on a sour note as well. Barely called in reinforcements all game. Reared its ugly head against the final boss. Combined two awful problems: randomly-placed reinforcement units which act immediately and an instant-death chance weapon. (Never saw any other enemies with such a weapon. Could have gotten this weapon in Quest Mode, however.)

Sees no "good" ending in this game either. Winds up with a major character sacrificing themselves to save the evil angel in every ending. Wound up an exile in the A route ending. Missed the A+ ending by not beating the game in under 25 hours. (Only adds an extra scene. Calls back to an earlier Tactics Ogre game.)

Final verdict: Calls this an okay game, despite the complaints above. Appreciated the different class options and emblem system. Added great replayability with two separate routes. Flubbed too many mechanics to seriously consider a second playthrough, however.

Final stats:
Tactics Ogre End Stats.png
(Savescummed deaths away, for the record. Happened very rarely outside the final boss and trying for Angel Knight. Credits running two healers.)

I remember playing Tactics Ogre back in high school. I don't recall the level curve being that steep (but then again, I played it like a decade ago), but I do indeed remember how repetitive the game was, to the point that I got bored and dropped the game entirely. A shame, really.

I loved reading your in-depth thoughts btw!!

Ugh, I hate it when games do this. What even is the point of showing stats and numbers if nobody ever explains what any of it means???

Rune Factory 5

(Mentions a few spoilers. Deals mostly with completion times and unlocking stuff.)

Entered this game with tempered enthusiasm. Loved Rune Factory 4 Special (as evidenced by multiple posts here). Heard about various framerate issues. Dreaded the jump to 3D too. Favors the graphics and control of 2D games. Tends to be rough on the initial transition too (see: Sonic's camera, Golden Sun's worse graphics, less colorful Pokemon models).

Found a lot of familiarity. Functions under many of the same systems at 4: crop leveling, soil stats, tons of little skills, crafting (including most inheritance rules), taming monsters, and request progression. Introduced a few new things, like the Catching Skill, Farm Dragons, and three large, open areas not unlike the Wild Area in Pokemon. Retained what made 4 great...kind of. Might be easier to go through positives and negatives.

Positives
1. Combat. Easily tops the list. Provided far more movement space in boss arenas than in 4. Added two more crucial bits: attack warning areas and invincibility frames to dashes. Gives the players the ability to react and react meaningfully.

2. Camera. More of a relief than a positive. Never really fought with the camera. Mentions one good use of the camera: hidden items. Stuck fruits in trees and farm dragon crystals in non-obvious spots (sometimes). Rewards you for looking around. Would have been plainly obvious in 2D.

3. Better Town Events. Hated resetting to obtain a specific town event for marrying someone. Made it far easier to pick and choose.

4. Taking multiple requests at once. Why was this not a thing before?

5. Giving human companions more of an edge. Dominated with monsters throughout most of 4. Probably holds true here too. (Stuck with humans whenever possible.)
Added special Link Attacks for humans in 5. Deals good damage while also interrupting a boss's attack.

6. Some other little nice things: easy weapon skill farming with punching bags, extra drops from wood/stone, and auto-pick-up.

Negatives
1. Pacing. Highlights this as the top issue. Beat the main story in Summer 9 of Year 1. Vanquished the postgame boss on the morning of Summer 19. Played this on Normal difficulty, admittedly. May turn out differently in Hard.

Contains plenty of content. Breezed through the majority of it. Enforced a wait time or a jump in enemy difficulty in 4. Allowed you to jump from dungeon to dungeon in 5. Wore some equipment for a long time. Focused on weapon and body armor when crafting. Sufficed.

What is the problem, then? Gated farming progression behind time. Waits for crops to grow. Unlocks new crops with that. Stockpiles useful cooking materials from tamed monsters. Beat the game before those came to fruition (as with fruit trees, ironically).

What does this mean? A loss of one of 4's strengths: the usefulness of many skills. Always felt like a balancing act of what to focus on in 4. Why bother with Medicine in 5? Provided nearly zero benefit. Why bother with Cooking? Never got enough materials to really make money with it. As a result...how useful is the actual farming part? Not entirely useless, but not that important. Only started dating someone until postgame too.

Missed some mechanics entirely, as a result. Never experienced a typhoon or meteor shower.

2. The late flower shop. Unlocks it maybe a third of the way into the game. Gates you from building up flowers for Medicine's benefits: faster, better, and larger crops. Pushes you into buying from the vendor instead. Lengthens your time to obtain 4-Leaf Clovers for a Happy Ring (increased drop chances) as well. Missed this particular item very badly.

3. Monster items. Lodges two complaints here: drop chances and high skill difficulty. Struggled to get many of some items (like Poison resist Insect Carapaces) for upgrading. Outpaced Forging and Armor Crafting skills very quickly. Turned to crops for cheap upgrades. Stockpiled plenty of them.

4. Item Sizes. Why are dropped items so small? Does not apply to every item. Really squinted to find some, like the aforementioned Insect Carapaces. Relied on the drop noise and running around blindly for auto pickup most of the time. (Does not feel like grabbing a screenshot. Apologies.)

5. Framerate issues. Was not bothered by this as much as others, most likely. Chugged quite noticeably with all villagers at a festival spot, however.

_____

Verdict: A good game, but not as good as 4. Enjoyed the longer-term thinking and more balanced skills of 4. Wants to play 5 again on a higher difficulty, however. Featured enough differences from 4 (notably combat) to feel like a different game instead of Rune Factory 4.5.

________

Rodent's Revenge

Filed through the list of games for this month's theme of animals. Passed on Spore. Could not find ChuChu Rocket for the Gameboy Advance. Brought another, far older game to mind: Rodent's Revenge. Played this a loooooong time ago. Did not care for it much then. Held some nostalgia, though.

Rodent Revenge 1.png
Plays as a mouse. Moves in all 8 directions. Pushes blocks by running into them. Aims to completely trap cats. Turns cats into cheese (for points) when all cats cannot move. Adds more cats after a certain amount of time of not clearing all of them.

Seems easy. Turns grim quite fast. Screenshotted level 4 above. Shows level 5 below. (Added more cats or so from the original set.)

Rodent Revenge 2.png
Hinges on creating repeatable cat traps, most likely. Did not feel like figuring out an efficient method of doing that. (Cannot pull blocks, for the record.) Continues on for 50 levels, also. Declined to pursue this game further. Got a dose of nostalgia, at least.

Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation

Played Birthright and Conquest a few years ago. Liked them mechanically-speaking. Improved on some of Awakening's features, like pair-up and children. Dropped the ball on story and sometimes map design.

Heard about Revelation not being great. Wanted the complete experience, though. Held off for a sale...for several years. Never happened. Pulled the trigger with the 3DS E-shop going down soon.

Played on Hard/Casual. Chose a +Skill / -Magic Corrin with a Samurai talent. Worked fairly well in one run. Yields a much stronger growth rate in Skill (+25%) for triggering skills and a solid hit rate, plus a small amount of Strength. Dropped Magic for being the most useless. Selected Samurai mainly for Swordfaire.

Thoroughly enjoyed the first few chapters. Beat them in the other routes before. Simply felt refreshing to jump from chapter to chapter without fiddling with base stuff. Promptly ruined that by beating every "challenge" map available. Whoops. Fuels the desire for a minimal grind run of Three Houses later, if nothing else.

Realized two problems with this route quickly:
1. Sticks you with Corrin, Felicia, Azura and Gunter for a while. Planned to keep Corrin and maybe Felicia. (Spoiler: Dropped Felicia. Sorry, Tomebreaker.) Finished Chapters 6, 7, and 8 with largely just them. Kept an eye out for planned team members. Added Kaze and Sakura at the end of Chapter 8. Waited until the end of 12 for Beruka. Flooded in after that: Elise + Effie at the start of 14, Silas at the end of 14, three in 16, and Leo in Chapter 17.

2. Heavily varying recruitment levels. Gives you Effie at level 8 in Chapter 14. Picks up Silas at level 18 at the end of that same chapter (a few levels under Corrin the level leader...probably). Gifts you with Shura at level 10 in a promoted class in Chapter 15. Why is there, essentially, a 22 recruit level difference in a game with a normal level cap of 40? (Increases that with seals, but shh. Costs a fortune.)

Planned the team out beforehand for children and skill inheiritance. Mixed Hoshido and Nohr characters for interesting combinations of skills (such as combining both healer classes on Forrest). Forgot about one problem: not being able to marry everyone with anyone. Grew too accustomed to Three Houses. Flipped around pairings to make it work. Resulted in more Hoshido/Hoshido and Nohr/Nohr pairings. Oh well. Accepts fault on that one.

Encountered one nice surprise: new maps in Revelation. Rehashed the same maps between Conquest and Birthright. Figured the same. (Still recycled several maps.)

Reports no particularly interesting new maps. Prepared to hate a certain snow map. Blanketed a town in snow. Digs out a small section by attacking it. Uncovers enemy units with droppable items. Becomes tedious, certainly, but not as annoying as the Wind Tribe map (also in Revelation) or the kitsune level in Conquest.

Neither loved nor hated the story. Stumbled across spoilers about the betrayal and identities of the shadowy Vallites from playing Fire Emblem Heroes. Likely lost some of their impact. Criticizes more pointless plot deaths. Seriously chooses male Corrin to not deal with female Corrin's screeches after deaths.

Completed the game without too many issues. Trashed Anankos pretty hard. Demolished every part except the final piece (2 hitpoints left) in one combat each. Likens the game to Birthright far more than Conquest in terms of gameplay. Dealt with relatively few map gimmicks. Leans very hard on Corrin throughout the whole game. Recorded stats.



Credits all the challenge maps for the battles and victories. (Spent a load of cash on Heart Seals for skills.) Notes a commanding number of both battles and victories for Corrin. Tends to happen, though. Won the top spot in every other Fates playthrough except the very first (Birthright, 4th place behind Hinoka, Silas, and Setsuna).

Verdict: An okay version of Fates. Holds a similar niche as Birthright on low impact map design (for better or worse). Allows more options of skill combinations, weapons, and character choice than Birthright. Comes at the cost of later recruitment and levels all over the place. Views it like a sidegrade, or perhaps a slight upgrade, of Birthright.

Knights of the Old Republic

Elected to play Knights of the Old Republic (KoToR 1) for the month's theme of Choices. Cleared this game once before. Invested more time into the second game by a considerable margin. Seemed time to revisit the original.

Was greeted by technical issues. Displayed a black screen upon loading. Heard game sounds while moving the mouse. Assumed a graphical error. Snapped into a correct state by alt-tabbing in and out.

Brought another graphics issue to mind. Crashed reliably in the Undercity the first time. Discovered the cause to be the computer's "graphics card". Places that in quotes due to being an integrated graphics chipset. Fixed it by doing...something. (Probably changed two lines in a text document.) Transferred everything over to a new laptop since then. Should be good, right?

Back to the actual game. Chose a melee-focused, Light Side character last time. Wanted a Force-oriented, Dark Side character this time. Named the character Hei. (Originates from Darker than Black. Wields electrical powers.)

Next up: choose a class. Breaks down into three options. Quick versions of all three:
- Soldier: Heavy armor. 10 Vitality (see: hitpoints) per level. Lots of feats. Weak on skill points.
- Scout: Medium armor. 8 Vitality per level. Middle of the road for feats and skill points.
- Scoundrel: Light armor. 6 Vitality per level. Low on feats. Earns lots of skill points. Picks up Sneak Attack (extra damage under certain conditions).

Settled on Scout. Likes decent skill points. Also gives you Implant (another equipment slot) feats for free. Did not matter too much, honestly. Will go into why later.

Prompts you to select a portrait next. Offered nothing close to Hei. Settled on the one with the most hair and kind of dark hair. Compared the two side-by-side below.
Hei Side by Side.jpg
...Yeah. (Sidenote: Tried taking several screenshots. Captured a black screen most of the time. Fixed it much later. Loaded saves for some screenshots.)

Assigned stat points next. Ought to feel more familiar to Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition players, as well as other systems, from here on.
- 8 Strength. The minimum amount. Shuns melee combat.
- 12 Dexterity. Helps blaster attacks and defense.
- 12 Constitution. Never neglect your Vitality too much.
- 12 Intelligence. Deviated from a build here. Suggested 8. Wanted more skill points. Turned out to be a bad move for reasons explained much later.
- 14 Wisdom. Boosts force points and save DC (see: difficulty class). Becomes harder to resist your force powers.
- 16 Charisma. Also boosts force points and save DC. Affects different skills than wisdom, but otherwise similar.

Filled in skill points and feats next. Invested in Awareness (for traps), Persuasion (for dialogue choices), and Repair (for a party member later). Chose the Toughness feat for more Vitality.

Ends the character creation phase. Note the lack of force powers. Learns none for a while.

Endar Spire
Acts as the game's tutorial. Finds little to say about it. Felt ineffective in combat, though. Missed a lot. Piloted an escape pod to the next planet.

Minimized the game automatically upon playing a movie. Describes the struggle against the game itself to be more tense than any of the tutorial ones. Stopped the movie by hitting Escape. Removed the black screen with a few alt-tabs and blindly picking dialogue. (Disabled movies entirely later, due to an unavoidable crash.)

Taris
Hei Taris.jpg
The first real section. Plops you into a city's apartment building with Carth, a soldier from the Endar Spire. Tasks you with finding Bastila (a Jedi on the Endar Spire) and escaping the planet overrun by Sith. Kinda wanted to join them, but whatever.

Looted the apartment building. Hit the streets. Ran into debt collectors for the Exchange harassing a merchant. Barreled down the path of the murder hobo. Killed the debt collectors and extorted the merchant for credits. Resulted in some more valuable Dark Side points. Reduces the force point cost of Dark Side powers (and raises the cost of Light Side powers).

Terrorized the local population some more. Become buddies with some Sith at the cantina. Attended a really dull-looking Sith party. Seemingly agreed as they drunk themselves into unconsciousness. Stole some of their armor to look official.

Praises the game for changing the dialogue when equipped with the Sith Armor. Reacts to you like a Sith member. Sadly traded it away for identification papers to progress the plot.

Sidenote: Also thanks this game for the "Return to Base" button. Teleports you back to the apartment. Fully restores your health for free. Returns to your previous spot instantly by hitting "Transit Back". Leaked Vitality like a sieve with such poor combat capabilities. Saved a lot of medpacs.

Dove into the Lower City. Died to Calo Nord a few times. Read about them having good armor somewhere. Referred to a later time. Instakills you with blaster pistols currently.

Crept into the Undercity next. Did not crash, thankfully. Met up with Mission, a Twi'lek companion. Used Mission frequently in the first playthrough. Brought good skills with acceptable damage. Desires darker companions this run, though. Kept them in the party for now, due to having no one else. (Party composition at this point: all ranged.)

Reached level 4 somewhere around now. Explains an earlier point about the class not mattering too much. Opted to not level up for a while. Saves those levels for after becoming a Jedi. Earns neither Force Points nor Powers as a Scout. Accepts weakness now to become much stronger later. Will be stuck at 40 Vitality for a while, however.

Rescued Mission's friend, Zaalbar, in the sewers leading to the Black Vulkar's base. Gladly accepted a melee companion. Shoved Carth out.

Interjects two combat annoyances here.
1. Initiates combat with a blaster attack. Seems to struggle with line of sight every so often, more so in the twisty sewers. Ran right up to some enemies to shoot them. Really hurts on a weakling like Hei.
2. Apathetic party members. Started the fight! Do something! Usually waits a combat round before engaging. Sometimes decided to twiddle their thumbs the whole fight (unless prompted).

Infiltrated the Black Vulkar's base (see: slaughtered everything moving) to grab a Swoop bike part to eventually save Bastila. Met some slimeball offering a deal to betray the person you were getting the Swoop bike part for. Naturally agreed to clean out a second gang's base. Yay for murder.

Participated in the Swoop bike race on the Black Vulkar's side. Won with no problems. Turned to violence when Brejik refused to hand over Bastila. Looted Brejik's Belt. Grants 5 damage resistance to bludgeoning damage. Amaz...wait. Bludgeoning? Only lists "physical" on melee weapons. Consists primarily of swords. Is this a troll? Looked into weapons. Sees stun batons (a very low damage weapon) and quarterstaves. Who even uses those? Might affect some monsters, perhaps?

Worked on the next task at hand: escaping Taris. Meant "infiltrating" a Sith base. Really started to feel power deficit against the Sith Governor. How is a 40 Vitality Scout with a 1-8 damage blaster rifle supposed to compare to a 7-21 damage melee swing and 148 Vitality? (Technically only missed out on roughly +2 Attack, 30 hitpoints, and a feat or two from not leveling.) Packed a secret weapon, however: grenades. Hits for a flat 20 damage (10 on a save) with a Frag Grenade. Backs those up with a stun chance from Concussion Grenades. Defeated the Sith Governor after a few reloads.

Saw the end of the chapter coming. Strolled over to the arena. Used the power of money grenades to emerge victorious. Gladly accepted a new blaster pistol (and cash and experience).

Closed out the chapter by hijacking the Ebon Hawk. Invited Candorus, a Mandelorian skilled in melee, along the way. Definitely wanted them. Suits a Dark Side character's lust for battle.

Dantooine
Left Taris and the fleet demolishing it far behind. Landed at a Jedi place. Finally reached the promised land. Selects a second class here. Cannot gain any more levels in your old class (and good riddance). The options:

- Jedi Guardian: Melee. Initiates a Force Leap on targets within 10 meters. 10 Vitality and 4 Force Points per level. Weak on skills. High on feats. One Force Power per level.
- Jedi Sentinel: Hybrid? Gains Fear immunity. 8 Vitality and 6 Force Points per level. Medium on skills and weak on feats. One Force Power per level.
- Jedi Consular: Caster. Raises the DC for force powers. 6 Vitality and 8 Force Points per level. Weak on skills and feats. Learns one Force Power per level, plus one extra every four levels (1, 5, 9, ...).

Dumps on Consulars hard this game. Trades a rough early game with little relevance to your primary stats for...poor skill gain, poor feat gain, low hitpoints, slightly better (and more) Force Powers, and good Force Points? Gross.

Became a level 4 Scout / level 5 Jedi Consular. Doubled from 40 Vitality to 80. Discovered the error on Intelligence here. Gains 1 + (INT mod / 2) skill points per level. Equals 1.5. Rounds down. Gains almost nothing from 12 Intelligence.

Forgets all the Force Powers selected. Took Dominate Mind and Force Lightning, at minimum. Whines a bit about Force Lightning. States "enemies up to 16 feet in front". Expected something conical. Passes right by enemies between Hei and the target far too often. Illustrates this with a screenshot from later in the game.

Force Lightning Hitbox.jpg

What is the hitbox on this thing? Literally went through someone's head. (Oh, one more thing. Cannot wear armor while using Force Lightning. Permits Jedi robes and clothing. Nothing else.)

Sends you into a grove twisted by the Dark Side as your first Jedi task. Battled Juhani there. Begins a conversation upon getting them low on Vitality. Provides an opportunity to bring them back to the Light Side and become a (handy tank) companion.

...Successfully lied to the Jedi Council about killing Juhani being the only solution.

Describes the conversation with Juhani as odd. Hoped to convince them to remain on the Dark Side, but fool the Jedi elders. Will copy/paste some choices and answers (from various parts in the dialogue tree).

Hei: "I just want to talk."
Juhani: "Talk?! You who have beaten me so easily just want to talk? I do not believe it. Kill me now, while you still have the power."

Hei: "I suppose there is no hope. I must kill you then."
Juhani: "What? No! I will not let you take me now!" (Resumes combat to kill Juhani.)

Juhani: "I do not know what to do. Now that I have caused such suffering to my Master and those around me..."
Hei: "Life is suffering."
Juhani: "Life is suffering, yes... but it was by my conscious choice!"

Would have liked better Dark Side responses. Wants to be a Sith Lord luring others down the path of the Dark Side for fame, power, and/or glory. Usually just results in a pile of corpses, such as with the family feud sidequest on this planet. Cannot exploit the dead.

Entered a mysterious ruin. Learned about the also mysterious Star Forge. Needs four additional mythical Star Maps to find it. Creates some welcome freedom in the game.

Tatooine
Debated between this and Kashyyyk. Sought the other likely companion first: HK-47 the assassin droid. Also wanted to stop putting points into Repair. Forked over a hefty sum of 4000 credits. Immediately repaired them fully for the extra Dexterity and regeneration.

Describes HK-47 as kind of bad, power-wise. Invested quite a bit into Strength, a useless stat for a character unable to equip melee weapons. Begins with an underwhelming 14 Dexterity (+2). Boosts up to a respectable 18 (+4) after full repairs. Only affects to-hits, though, and not damage. Gains none of the sneak attack damage that Mission does. Learns some useful skills (unlike Candorus and Zaalbar) along with the Dark Side lean, though.

Hunted down the Sand People (see: Tusken Raiders) for Czerka Corporation. Grew a bit irritated about wearing a Sand People Disguise. Turns all Sand People to neutral. Broke the disguise by getting too close (or talking to?) a Sand Person, switching some of them hostile. Fair. Warned about that. Activated the defense turrets on the next map, however, which instantly kill you. Recovered the chance to eradicate them by loading a save.

Found the Star Map next. Dealt with Calo Nord's ambush. Marveled at their amazing armor for Candorus (after upgrades): 12 Defense, damage resistance 10 for Cold, Fire, and Sonic, immunity to critical hits, and immunity to mind-affecting. Wore this armor for the rest of the game.

Kashyyyk
Pushes Zaalbar into the spotlight here. Details their backstory about being exiled. Becomes unavailable here for the majority of the planet, sadly.

Hid the Star Map in the Shadowlands. Erected several forcefields on the path to it. Laughed at how pathetic it is.
Kotor Shadowlands Forcefield.jpg
References this impenetrable defense in Jolee's dialog. "There are others, each blocking similar points on certain paths. It is all very calculated. Very precise. It would have been effective if it hadn't relied on the creatures to be walking. Climbers don't have much trouble getting around it."

Slaughtered the old Wookie ruler of Kashyyyk. Grabbed the Star Map. Agreed to the current leader's way of enslaving Wookies. Hightailed it to the next stop.

Yavin Station
Supposedly acquired this as downloadable content on the Xbox. Comes as a part of the game on every other platform. Shrugs. Sells expensive, high-powered wares here. Bought three main things:

1. The best armor for HK-47 in the game (a straight 13 defense).
2. The Baragwin Assault Blade for Candorus. Replaced the 1d10 + 1 damage blade with this monster's 2d6 physical + 2d6 energy + 2d6 sonic damage. Expanded the critical range from 19-20 to 17-20. Tops that off with a +5 to-hit modifier, versus the old blade's +1.
3. Tossed aside some wimpy 1d6 + 2 damage pistol (probably) for the Baragwin Ion-X Weapon. Doles out 3d6 ion + 1d10 physical damage, as well as +2d6 versus droids. Serves as a backup in case of running out of Force Points. (Sorry, HK-47. Will give you it later.)

Manaan
Really likes this planet's schtick. Produces kolto, a vital resource for healing. Sells to both Republic and Sith. Enforces a strict neutrality policy. Threatens to cut off one side for violating that.

Stole a transporter into the Sith Base. Blasted every living thing there (except for the Selkaths trying to become Sith. Gave them a thumbs-up). Prevents you from leaving the way you came in, for some silly reason. Walked out the front door like a dunce. Met a lot of angry Selkath guards there.

Cue the first trial. Note: Will kill you if they find you guilty. Handed the reins to the assigned defense lawyer, for fear of Dominate Mind not working. Did a poor job of it. Stepped in with the Sith's plans to overthrow the Selkath government. Got off scot-free.

Dealt with Jolee's character quest next. Investigated Jolee's friend, Sunry. Discovered video footage of Sunry killing the Sith.

Cue trial number two. Acted as Sunry's lawyer. The first move: show the judges the video footage. Guilty. Easy.

Back to the main quest: the Star Map. Went on a non-yellow submarine to a secret Republic kolto harvesting facility. Involves a sloooow-moving section wearing diving equipment and big sharks. Gives you a handy sonic emitter to one-shot the sharks.

The problem? A very short range. Matches the shark's aggro range. Used it one-tenth of a second too early. Closes the entire gap between you before you are able to act again. Will one-shot you back if it hits. Was sweating bullets while spamming that sonic emitter. Fired it off before the shark hit. Only died once in that section.

Discovered the Star Map behind a gigantic shark. Vented poison into the waters to kill it. Contaminated the kolto, but who cares? Jotted down the Star Map.

Turns out the Selkath care. Cue trial number three. (Got a lot of use out of the courtroom.) Cared even more about their mythical shark god dying. Suffered a planetwide ban from taking too much credit about killing the giant shark. Eh. Finished all the sidequests here anyway.

Oh, right. Also encountered Darth Bandon while completing said sidequests. Realized the importance of Force Breach. Cancels the enemy's Force buffs, which includes "Force Immunity". Did not learn that yet. Struggled pretty hard in that fight. Picked up Force Breach at the next opportunity.

The Leviathan
Captures your ship after completing three of the four planets. Chose T3-M4 as the one to free everyone. Expected a skill-based challenge for them. Was proven correct.

Reveals you to be *gasp* Darth Revan at the end of the section. Loses Bastila at this point too. No real loss there.

Korriban
Strutted around this Sith planet. Yeah, hey, Darth Revan here. Did not impress anyone.

Entered their academy to join up with the Sith. Competed against a few other chumps. Scared one away. Killed the rest. Won by default.

Brings up an extremely annoying bug here. Breaks something about companions on this planet. Suspects a cutscene setting up the usual flag for companions to halt, but failing to remove it. Resulted in companions doing nothing and typically not following you. Became a slog from having to "gather your party before venturing forth" from map to map. Essentially doubled the walking time on the planet. Fixed it with a later cutscene, thankfully.

Wandered into the tomb with the Star Maps. Had an epic battle versus two Terentateks. Resists Force powers very well. Survived by using Plague on both, then alternating Force Choke to lock them down.

Wrote down the final Star Map. Killed the Sith teachers. Told everyone at the Sith Temple about it. Failed to convince them to bow down before their new head teacher, Darth Revan. Wiped all the Sith out. Sighs. Such a waste of talent.

Yavin Station
Returned here for more stuff. Bought another blaster rifle. Deals better damage to all creatures, but less to droids than the Ion-X. Passed off the old weapon to HK-47.

Star Forge System
Jumped to the Star Forge, only to get downed by a disruptor field. Spoke with the locals. Agreed to eradicate some hoity-toity lizards in exchange for entrance to a temple to turn the disruptor field off.

Demands for you to enter the temple alone. Backs off over Jolee's insistence on tagging along. (Would have been Juhani as well, if not for dying.) Sure. Swept the temple easily.

Met evil Bastila at the top. Raved about how amazing the Dark Side is and how the Jedi Council was a bunch of elites using you. (Actually sounded a lot like some people talking about politics today.) Smacked Bastila down. Convinced them to come along, defeat Malak and the Republic, and rule the galaxy.

Unnerved Jolee. Refused to swear loyalty to the glory of Darth Revan. Cut them down there. Welcomed back Bastila.

Was actually blindsided by this. Usually knew what was coming between memory and some Wiki browsing. Thought Bastila would only ever rejoin you through a Light Side romance thing at the end. Did not know about Jolee dying period.

Kept the surprises coming. Told the rest of the companions what was up. Upset Carth and Mission. Could not kill Carth. Gave Zaalbar the honors of killing Mission with a little Dominate Mind. Niiiiice.

Star Forge
Forces Bastila in the party. Was not too sad about that. Performs better than HK-47 in combat. Brought Candorus, as a nice non-energy damage source. Regretted not buying fancy Lightsaber crystals from Yavin Station.

Harasses you the whole way to Malak. Sends groups of 3-4 Dark Jedi and Sith Troopers in constant waves. Reached level 20 (the maximum) on the companions. (Hit 20 on Hei somewhere in the Star Forge System.) No longer needed experience. Sliced through all resistance.

Ends the game with a one-on-one duel versus Malak. Hits quite hard, on top of strong saves and Force powers (including Force Immunity). Heals by draining captured Jedi throughout the room.

Prevailed with the use of Breach, Plague, Wave, and Storm. Sucked the Jedi dry before Malak could, also. Caused a bug, unfortunately, which rendered Malak unkillable. Darth Malak Bug.jpg
Mwah. Saved just beforehand, thankfully.


Displayed the credits in a very fitting way: bugged.

Kotor Ending Credits Bug.jpg
Enjoyed playing through once again. Was not without flaws, however. Suffered from bugs and two separate hard crashes (one from a movie, one randomly in Manaan). Feels a bit weak on build variety also. Technically increases when separating Light Side Consular and Dark Side Consular.

Felt a bit let down by the Dark Side choices most of the game. Redeemed itself a little at the end. Describes the final results as fairly evil, upon reflection. A rundown:
- Endar Spire: Destroyed
- Taris: Leveled by Sith bombardment
- Dantooine: Destroyed by Sith
- Tatooine: Committed genocide against an indigenous people
- Kashyyyk: Furthered the enslavement of Wookies. Gained some in-roads to its governing body.
- Manaan: Killed a god, ruined the planet's reason for existence, and got banned
- Yavin Station: Perfectly fine.
- Korriban: Killed most people there.
- Star Forge System: Killed half of the indigenous people. (Could not kill the other half. Needed the experience less then anyways.)

Defeated the Republic and became the overlord too, of course. Sounds like a proper Dark Side ending.

[Kirby Rant]
(Provides some background into personal history with Kirby games within the rant. Talks about the actual game at the close of this tag.)

Played a lot of Kirby games over the years. Stormed through most of the mainline games, dating from the Super Nintendo to the 3DS. Loved Kirby Super Star, back in the day.

Waned in interest over time, however. Identifies one possible reason: shifting the focus away from completing the stage. Challenges the player to find all the hidden doodads nowadays. Cannot really call hidden objects a new development. Appeared in the Super Nintendo era Kirby games too. (Never liked The Great Cave Offensive either.)

Turned up this trend over the years. Tasks players to sniff out about three secrets per stage now. Applies to games besides Kirby too. Uses a similar template for newer 2D Mario games. Hated some newer Donkey Kong games for stuffing their numerous secrets behind solid-looking walls.

Why is this bad? Loses the "action" part of the game outside of boss battles. Rolls over enemies like the level 3 Rattatas on Route 22 on the way to Indigo Plateau. Might as well not exist. Spends the entire stage poking at suspicious-looking corners and watching the edge of the screen for a hint of a platform.

Arguably lost what made secrets great in the first place, also: rarity and purpose. Becomes far less special when regularly expected. Accessed things like a room of copy abilities or, to use a Mario example, Star Road and alternate paths for the older games. Doles out a piddly Secret Bit #104 nowadays.

Might hate Kirby games now, if not for one redeeming factor: The Arena. Brings the "action" part front-and-center with a boss rush. Remixed some bosses and even adds new ones solely for this mode sometimes. Describes Planet Robobot's True Arena as the best gaming rush in years.

Often comes with one unfortunate catch: 100%ing the game. Are those amazing 2-3 hours worth 20-30 hours of slog? Becomes harder and harder to answer "Yes" to that.
[/Kirby Rant]

Was not hyped for this one, consequently. Tried the demo. Threatened the usual problem. Borrowed this from a sibling, though. Lowered the bar of entry.

Begins with some praise.

• Stepped up their game on scenery. Snapped two screenshots.
  Kirby Forgotten Land Opening 1.jpg
  Kirby Forgotten Land Opening 2.jpg
  Typically appears at the start of a level. Provides a good introduction.
  
  
• Made the secret hunting less irritating. Usually gave you an idea of its location based on the position of the missing piece. (As in, look before Piece #2 to find Piece #1.) Retained that (mostly), on top of also telling the player what to do. Reduces some frustration. Also permitted you to retry some parts to try to grab a secret again.
  
  
• Enjoyed the upgraded powers. Buffed Fire and Ice to their best performance possibly ever with the damage over time and massive full freeze damamge, respectively. Highlights Chain Bomb as the real doozy, though. Could be the best designed power in the franchise. Links nearby bombs. Explodes for more damage with more bombs linked together. Becomes an interesting challenge of stacking up bombs for a massive explosion.
  
  
• Hands out one more bit of positivity: the guard dodge. Allows you to dive while guarding. Grants invulnerability frames on top of slowing time on a close dodge. Feels great to swipe at an enemy in this timeframe.
  
  Captured a movie of it using the Switch feature. (An actual use for the Switch video? Yes, really.) Tried converting it into a GIF. Dropped the quality and made it larger in file size. Hopefully lags the thread less than a GIF.
  
  Kirby Forgotten Land Guard Dodge.mp4 (Warning: Contains a spoiler for the final boss.)

And now for the bad.

• Undermined the great scenery with secrets everywhere. Immediately enters Secret Hunting Mode at the start of a stage. Bamboozles you like that sometimes otherwise. Never spent much time taking in the scenery. (Admits possibly not doing so without the secrets, though.)
  
  
• Multiple pointless secrets. Scare off a few seagulls for a Waddle Dee. Do not touch the mud in some stage. Touch the glowing spot hidden between three cacti.
  
  
• A bit too easy, including in the Colosseum. Died a total of seven times: once legitimately to Silly Armadillo, three times intentionally for a secret in a postgame area, and three times to the final boss in the hardest mode of Colosseum.
  
  Made the guard dodge a little too strong. Discovered it right after the Silly Armadillo death, coincidentally. Avoided guarding until then so as to not miss the Waddle Dee for taking no damage.

End verdict: Rates it negatively overall. Did not pay out enough at the end to compensate for the long, dull run-up. Met expectations, more or less.

Finished the game at 98%, also. (Could have avoided some of those Waddle Dees, apparently. Whoops. Never moved onto the next stage without grabbing all the Waddle Dees.) Fell short on full completion because of the gotcha capsules. Would be a long star coin grind for zero reward.

Ultimate Cup Z times:

• 21:20.78 with Homing Bomb (fully upgraded). No deaths. Left two normal tomatoes uneaten before the final fight. Ate the stocked Maxim Tomato on Leongar or Primal Dedede unnecessarily.
• 50:36.88 with Morpho Knight Sword (base power). Extended that time a lot because of deaths. Recalls being around 24 minutes on the first attempt of the final boss.

Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn (Enhanced Edition)

Begins with some background of this series. Played both Dungeons and Dragons (2nd Edition) and Baldur's Gate 1 as a child. Was dazzled by the starting town of Candlekeep. Provided very little fluff in games like Castle of the Winds, Moria, and Diablo('s demo). Would have called it the first RPG with voice acting, if not for Diablo. Never completed Baldur's Gate 1 for years. (Waned in interest after the kobold mines.) Enjoyed the first few towns, though.

Fast-forward to Baldur's Gate 2. Opens with you in a mage's prison. Tortures you and your other companions. Watched someone explode too. Was turned off by this much grimmer first impression. Probably never exited the dungeon. Never liked dark games. Holds fairly true today too.

Created an Evocation-specialized Wizard as the main character. (Consists of mainly elemental damage spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt, but also useful spells like Web.) Considered going Enchantment for stronger Hold Persons and Charms. Killed Dynaheir (Evocation Wizard) in this game, though. Planned to just take some other wizard. (Did not look too deeply into companions on purpose.)

Cleared the first major hurdle of the game: weathering the dungeon atmosphere. Also contained a bunch of creatures in tanks. Powered up their tanks to resurrect them and listen to their mad babbling. Never went far in this game for a reason.

Stepped out into the big city. Looked around for new companions. Met Aerie in a twisted circus of deadly illusions. Bumped into Nalia next. Asks for your help on an urgent quest to save a stronghold under attack. Worried about quest timers rendering someone inaccessible. Took her along.

Glanced at the party makeup at this point.

• Minsc (Ranger)
• Jaheira (Fighter/Druid)
• Yoshimo (Thief)
• Sebitza (Evocation Mage)
• Aerie (Mage/Cleric)
• Nalia (Mage/Thief)

Exceeded the tolerance for squishiness. Bid farewell to Nalia, as well as Aerie. Looked up good-aligned companions. Settled on this as the final party:

• Minsc (Ranger. Melee damage.)
• Jaheira (Fighter/Druid. Tank.)
• Keldorn (Paladin. Melee damage.)
• Sebitza (Evocation Mage)
• Neera (Wild Mage)
• Imoen (Mage/Thief, when available much later.)

Will not defend this as a balanced party. Likely led to some extra difficulty. Liked no one else as the tank, barring maybe a Fighter/Cleric. Runs into the same problem as Jaheira of making in-combat casting difficult, though. Ultimately chose Jaheira for one reason: the voice line "Nature take the life she gave!" (~19:25). Sounded nice. Always had good lines.

Declines to give a blow-by-blow of each quest. (Tries not to ramble too much on the little details.) Will give a few highlights and more general thoughts.

• Seems like a better game than Baldur's Gate 1 in some respects. Tromped through tons of forests and mines in the first game. Spent most of this game in buildings or caves. Preferred this game's variety. Led to lots of pathfinding hugs in those narrow corridors, though.
  
  
• Allowed multiple paths to the same goal. Example: Chapter 4. Enters Spellhold (a wizard asylym) by convincing someone you are dangerous, taking a wardstone, or casting Protection from Petrification on your party at the screen transition. Gives you a choice later that chapter to chase someone by boat or go to the Underdark. Winds up in the Underdark either way. Completes a whole extra area by picking the boat. (Chose Underdark straight off.)
  
  
• Accomplished some things by not fighting (or could have). Guarded some treasure in a stronghold with golems. Activates upon taking the treasure. Could have yoinked it and bolted. More or less did that for the Hammer of Thunderbolts. Could not defeat multiple Mind Flayers. Sent in Minsc hasted and invisible instead. Aggroed the Mind Flayers upon grabbing the treasure. Sprinted far enough away from the Mind Flayers to separate them. Handled one Mind Flayer + one Umber Hulk, resurrected Minsc, and left with the prize.
  
  
• Brings up the next point: ridiculously nasty monsters. Fought groups of Level Draining monsters constantly. Dies very, very quickly to Mind Flayers stunning you, draining your Intelligence, and devouring your brain (upon hitting 0 Intelligence). Hated all golems, particularly the first Stone Golem. Who thought 100% Magic Resistance, 100% element resistance, 20% physical resistance, and immunity to weapons with less than a +3 enchantment to be a good idea? (Made Clay(?) Golems immune to all but bludgeoning damage. Ratcheted Adamantine Golems' physical resistance to 90%.) Counted on all enemy wizards having Contingency Globe of Invulnerability + Stoneskin ready.
  
  
• Whines about Magic Resistance and layers of immunity. Exists for a reason, though: 2nd Edition's broken spell effects. Incapacitates someone with Web, Hold Person/Monster, and Polymorph Other. Usually amounts to "Save or Die". Killed an overwhelmingly powerful dragon thanks to Polymorph Other connecting. Had no business winning that fight. Lowered its Magic Resistance a few times. Tossed in a Greater Malison to lower its saves. Eventually hit the winning number after a few reloads. (Took a while without Resist Fear. Found that spell very late.)
  
  
• Another bad part about 2nd Edition: really boring levels. Screenshotted one of Jaheira's Fighter levels. Lowered THACO by 1. Gained 1 hitpoint (even with 17 Constitution). Nothing else. Sort of looked forward to weapon proficiency levels, though. Granted better THACO, damage, and extra attacks on a weapon type.
  
  
• Obtained some fancy weapons. First weapon of note: Carsomyr. Dispels magic on hit. Tore through magical defenses so well. Second weapon: Crom Faeyr. +5 enchantment. Bumps up the user's Strength to 25. Effectively gave Minsc +10 to hit over an unenchanted war hammer (...or something like that. Forgot how THACO works). Also deals some electric damage and insta-kills some lesser golems on hit.
  
  
• Completed the game in 46 real-time hours. Defeated the final boss at 69 days, 0 hours in-game. Kids you not. Does not even like the obsession over 69. Still screenshotted it.
  
  
• Checked the Steam global achievement stats. Shows only 31.7% clearing the first dungeon. Sounds very low, even by first achievement standards. Must not have been alone in that first impression. Reports a relatively impressive 9.6% game completion, however. Apparently really struggles to get going. Retains players quite well after that.

Feels very torn on whether the game was good or not. Bases this on the desire to replay it. Probably would have been a great game using a more recent edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Hated all the immunities. Still enjoyed some of the quests and dungeon crawls. Left enough unexplored to justify an evil playthrough easily. Would it be fun? Shrugs.

Always smiles at seeing a game by Square. Hammers home how old a game is. Caught the other side this time. Produced this one under Enix's watch.

Starts out with your sister getting kidnapped. Chased them into a drawer. Wound up in a giant tree, fighting to win a tournament for some king. Moves this plot fast.

Slowly remembered bits and pieces of playing this. Recognized some of the town and the different meats for taming. Screenshotted one of the locations, the Bazaar, below.
Dragon Warrior Monsters Bazaar.png

Laid out the battle menu in both familiar and odd ways to Pokemon. Gives four options: Fight, Item, Plan, and Run.
- Fight: Continues fighting as they were last told. Cannot choose targets or skills.
- Item: Uses an item. Does not consume your monsters' turns. Leaves you unable to Plan, though.
- Plan: Splits into Charge, Mixed, Cautious, and Command. Selects a general idea with the first three. Chooses specific skills and targets with Command. May disobey any of these four options, in ways similar to Pokemon.
- Run: Run.

Read the instruction booklet. Only learns so much from talking to NPCs. Hoped to find more information on stats, type matchups, and so on. Describes each family of monsters (Slime, Plant, Dragon, Bug, and so on) briefly. Ran into a mechanics clash with Pokemon.
What is this upside-down world?

Met someone who needed to light a grill. Asked for a monster. Worded the request like a gift. Saved the game. Called on Axew the Dragon (a boss monster) to light the grill. Stole Axew and opened a new gate. Sorry, what? Helped you out. Repays that by just taking the monster? Reloaded that nonsense.

...Is the king the antagonist? Seemed really pushy about winning this tournament. Hid the queen in a room behind the arena. Spoke with her. Definitely implied her to be your sister.

Progressed through more arena matches. Reached the breeding part. Read some short reviews. Praised this part of the game. Planned to stumble through it and talk to helpful NPCs. (Pushed it in-game pretty hard. Said to go breed a few times.) Ran into issues with that:

1. Loses both parents by breeding them. "Returns to the wild".
2. Saves as part of the breeding process. Cannot see the resulting monster beforehand when breeding with NPCs.
3. Could result in creating a monster with better starting stats for its species, but be a terrible species worse than both parents.
4. Starts off the newly hatched monster at level 1 (unsurprisingly)

Punishes experimentation while demanding it, essentially. Could get around some of the issues with save states. Cannot differentiate good monsters from bad, though.

Expected to have more fun from making deliberate decisions. Dug around for some kind of stat list. Found growth rates (and maximum levels) instead. Sufficed. Added it all up like Pokemon Base Stat Totals. Looked to benefit from the existing monster team (Dragon, Golem, SpotSlime) as well. Decided on:

• Divinegon. Led the table in growths among "normal" monsters with 146. Also chose it for the highest possible level cap (80, versus an average level cap of 43.6 among dragons, for reference).
• WhipBird. Strong growths (124) and a good level cap (60). Was less of a pain than RainHawk (133 growth, 80 level cap).
• Unicorn. Seemed like a support kind of monster. (Looks very angry in its sprite, however.) Picks up Vivify (revives dead monsters). Still had good growths at 104, the second highest among the Beast family.

Messed up two things early, unfortunately.
1. Bred Healer with an NPC beast before looking up information. (Yielded Spotslime.) Did not learn HealUs (group heal). Only passes on skills that it learned, forgot, or declined to learn. Bred Spotslime with a Pillowrat to get another Healer. Releveled it for HealUs. Transitioned to Unicorn from there.

2. Misread the breeding table. Created a SkyDragon instead of Divinegon. Already had one of those. Was not wasted time, though. Needed a SkyDragon for Divinegon. Merged the WhipBird into this behemoth, along with some other monsters.

Spent a loooooong time breeding Divinegon (partially because of mistakes). Illustrated it in text below. (Hopefully formatted it okay. Looks fine in the preview.)

                        Dragon
            SkyDragon <          (Some Bird)
           /            Phoenix <          (Some Beast)
Divinegon <                       Grizzly <
	   \         MedusaEye             (Some Devil)
            Orochi <           BattleRex
		     Andreal <            Golem
                               Whipbird <           Bullbird
                                          LandOwl <
                                                   (Some Beast)

Totaled sixteen creatures. Used monsters on-hand or easily available whenever possible. Wound up being a +9 Divinegon. (Adds pluses after breeding, depending on the previous high and the parents' levels. Increases stats slightly at later levels.)

Decided to breed a RainHawk after all. Pulled it together relatively quickly with some wild monsters.
Dragon Warrior Monsters Team.png
Created an amazing party of top-tier monsters. Great. Should be ready to stomp everything after a little leveling, right? Well...no. Overlooked something crucial: experience curve.

Uses different experience curves in Pokemon. Points to them as references. Will look at Slow and Fast, rather than the more unusual Erratic and Fluctuating. Reaches level 2 with 6 experience and level 100 with 800,000 experience on Fast's curve. Hits level 2 with 10 experience and level 100 at 1,250,000 experience on Slow's track.

Could not find an experience table for Dragon Warrior Monsters. Supposedly contains 32 different curves. Seemed to break down into four different amounts to reach level 2. Fast: 2 experience. Normal: 5 experience. Slow: 10 experience. Very Slow: 100 experience. Jumps way up from Slow to Very Slow.

May have spotted the problem. Placed both Rainhawk and Divinegon in the Very Slow category. Levels at an agonizing pace. Effectively makes them weaker on offense than Unicorn (Normal speed), the "healer", until well past Unicorn's level cap. Definitely beats the game before that. Likely would have been better off not breeding them.

Notes some upsides to Divinegon and RainHawk. Accumulated a lot of skills. Combines them into stronger skills like GigaSlash eventually. Supposedly hits really hard. Learns additional strong skills for being these good species. Gifted these monsters with a ton of resistances and some immunities too.

Pushed onwards. Shoveled all the +stat seeds into the teams' hungry mouths. Alleviated some problems, like low hitpoints. Farmed a few Bards for random +20 stat gains too. Still suffered from low levels. Discovered a level requirement on top of a (previously known) stat requirement for the good skills. Sighs.

Entered more tournaments. Pulled out some mean tricks, like K.O. Dance (instant death chance). Had a similar move, albeit single-target, on RainHawk. Was not too big of a problem, however, thanks to some resistance (and straight immunity on Divinegon).

Remembered struggling with Metal Slimes in a tournament. Kept an eye out for MetalCut (+50% damage to Metal monsters) while breeding. Found its place versus a Metally spamming Explodet. Squashed the 10 hitpoint Metally with a critical MetalCut for over 100 damage (if not over 200). Managed the rest of that fight with no trouble...after losing the first time.

Appreciated resistances as time continued. Hit Unicorn hard with skills, in terms of percentage health. Generally viewed Divinegon as the sturdiest on the team. Should have considered tanking moves like Guardian. Oh well.

Reached the final tournament. Battles your sister (who is not the queen) in the last match of three. Does not play nice. Ripped Unicorn and Rainhawk to shreds with Megamagic and other multitarget damage. Lost really badly the first time.

Tried a second time with the same stats, not expecting much. Hung on with enough health to deliver a sorely needed HealUsAll (full party heal). Landed Beat on the enemy Rainhawk (twins!) and Coatol before going down. Left Divinegon and Unicorn to take down the remaining MetalKing two hitpoints at a time (with MetalCut).

Ended the game with:

          Lvl Atk Def Agil Int  HP  MP
Divinegon  21 278 268  220 200 284 267
Rainhawk   22 286 265  205 215 271 322
Unicorn    38 345 350  302 233 351 349

Looked back up at the earlier screenshot. Gained 8 levels on Divinegon, 13 on Rainhawk, and 9 on Unicorn between then and the end. Illustrates the leveling curve quite well.

Ends the game conflicted. Likes the idea of passing on stats, skills, and resistances to create a really good monster. Involves a lot of effort with monsters going back down to level 1 and no Undo button, however. Penalizes you for doing it blindly or badly. Seems far too easy to do either. Added to the grind.

Was not overly taken by the combat system, also. Wandered through a lot of semi-randomized maps. Describes every map but the last of an area as a slog. Spammed "Fight" a lot. Micromanaged attacks on boss fights like a normal Pokemon game. Took away that option during arena fights, strangely.

May be expecting too much from a Game Boy Color game. Dealt with many limitations back then. Bears some of the same ugly sides as early Pokemon games. May have improved in the later games.

Continues with old games. Dusted off Metal Gear Solid for this month's theme of Stealth.

Remembered fists being effective. Resolved not to use firearms as little as possible. Feels more stealthy.

Recognized bits of the first stage. Forgot about the Five-Seven...somewhere in the level. Placed none later in the game. Permanently missed a weapon in the first five minutes. (Found plenty of ammunition for it, though.) Never planned to use it much, but still.

Cleared the stage without killing anyone or being spotted. Received a rank of "Poor". ...Okay, game. Sorry for being stealthy and a pacifist? (Learned afterward about time being a big factor. Moved too slow. Deducts points for killing.)

Enjoyed some of the dialogue. Wanted that "E for Everyone" rating. Clearly frowned upon swear words. Used a French one and also a "damm".

Pressed on. Found other weapons. Saw something boomerang-like in the skies. Connected it to Boomer Kuwanger Slasher Hawk from the image of all the major baddies.

Called Weasel on the Codec. Mentioned being knowledge about enemies and especially mercenaries. Talked about the virtues of using only your fists, with no mention of Slasher Hawk. Sure, okay. Grabbed the cache of weapons and entered the boss area.

Placed Slasher Hawk up on a cliff. Cannot reach them to use your fists. ...Thanks, Weasel. Happens to be immune to guns too. Lobbed grenades as the only option. (Worried about running out. Resupplies you with weapons for other bosses, at minimum.)

Entered a barracks next. Consisted of three floors: B1F, 1F, and 2F. Scoured B1F and 1F for anything. Contained nothing of use. Existed to waste your time, mostly. Took the elevator to 2F. Encountered the cardboard box maze.

Basic premise: Sneak along the conveyor belts as a box. Sends you different directions, based on your box's color. Swap between colors to influence where you go. Search for more colors to go where you want. Created a "low-effort" (close to accurate?) map in Paint.

Metal Gear Box Maze.png

What is this monstrosity? Spanned...eight screens for the conveyor belts alone? Considered the minimap useless. Meant tracking where you had been mentally. Often trekked back through the pointless floors after acquiring a new item. Spent wayyyy too long here. Colored the rest of the game, no pun intended. Made the backtracking in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door look decent by comparison.

Rates Marionette Owl as okay. Forces you into keeping Thermal Goggles on. Swapped places with the puppets to trick you into attacking the wrong one.

Metal Gear Owl Boss.png
Complains about an action section slightly later as well. Opens up on you with artillery rounds. Sprints back to the start to escape. Indicates the shell's trajectory with a single yellow pixel on your minimap going towards a second, stationary yellow pixel. Means "pixel" literally.

Metal Gear Artillery.png
(Also featured: mines. Same yellow pixels.) Effectively hit you at random for half your health. Plus side: Set a continue point at the start of this section. Tried again with minimal delay.

Fought Flame Stag Pyro Bison a few stages later. Talks about Snake trying to be a legend.

Metal Gear Fire Bison Kill.png
Blames backtracking for those deaths. Stuns on the first punch combo. Kills on the second.

Did not like Pyro Bison's fight, either. Seemed just as immune to guns as Slasher Hawk. Absorbed a Nikita Missile with no damage. Grenades again, then.

Another irritation: Flooded a base with water. Left electrified puddles around. Warns you about this...and then forces you to cross a non-electrified puddle, identical in appearance to the electrified ones. Checked for thermal changes. Nada. (Also on the same level: instant death pit traps.)

Beat Black-Arts Viper in a strange battle of running around an electric maze. Took damage from guns, at least.

Finally reached Metal Gear. Took out the legs. Switched phases to the main body. Identifies three pairs of weak spots: gun turrets, circular fireball turrets, and the missile launchers in the back. Started on the gun turrets, as the closest target. Dumped tons of grenades and missiles into it. Took out maybe half of Metal Gear's health, with both gun turrets still up. Tried angling the guided missiles into Metal Gear's missile launcher. Zero damage. Game? Hello?

Had the wrong idea, apparently. Intended you to poke the gun turret. Provokes the circular turrets into popping up. Deals the most damage to them. Cannot harm the back. Screenshotted the game pointing out the missile launcher. Used the same indicators for the other targets.

Metal Gear Boss Target.png
Finished off Viper and the game from there. Snapped a picture of the stats.

Metal Gear Final Stats.png
Notes 4 kills here. Said 6 at Pyro Bison. Counted Slasher Hawk and Marionette Owl for the latter, evidently.

Final verdict: Terrible. Awards its own ranking right back at it. Misleads or poorly conveys what the player is intended to do. Handed out weapon immunities willy-nilly. Wastes your time in the box maze.

Acknowledges the game's nice graphics and sound (for its time). Gave you generous Continue points. Does not redeem this game in the slightest, however.




Wanted to complete the fourth route. Already recorded this game here, though. Why do it again? Created challenge restrictions for it this time.

Grinded multiple things in every run thus far: fishing, skills for class qualifications, tea parties, lost item hunting, and random battles. Decided to skip all that this time. Stuck in a few extra bits here and there too, but for ease and for difficulty.

Route: Silver Snow
Difficulty: Hard Casual
Downloadable Content: Yes
New Game Plus: Allowed
Character Restrictions: Cannot recruit Golden Deer, Blue Lions, Yuri, or Hapi

Class restrictions:
1. May only qualify each character for one class per tier (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced + DLC, and Master).
2. Forbids more than one person per Advanced + DLC class and Master class at a time. (Example: Allows two people to become Assassins. Cannot both be Assassins at the same time.)
3. Cannot qualify Petra for Pegasus Knight, Falcon Knight, Wyvern Rider, Wyvern Lord, Assassin, or Swordsmaster. Threatens to steal the spotlight again otherwise. Used Petra in all three prior playthroughs to good effect.
4. Cannot qualify Ferdinand for Dancer, Fortress Knight, Paladin, or Great Knight. Used Ferdinand twice before. Mostly wanted to lock out Dancer. Avoids the others like the plague.

Explore restrictions:
1. Cannot do anything requiring Activity Points. Exception: White Heron Cup dance lessons and for any quest below. (May or may not cost an activity point.)
2. No Fishing, Gardening, Advice Box, or returning Lost Items. Allows feeding animals, because why not?
3. Allows only mandatory quests and unlocking quests (such as for shops, battalions, and so on).

Battle restrictions: Paralogues, mandatory Battles, and unlocking quest fights only.

Other restrictions:
1. Finish battles in a reasonable timeframe. Means not fighting for 90 turns for skill points. May still dawdle to grab all the chests and/or defeat all enemies.
2. Cannot use the C-rank Lord battalions or any B/A-rank battalions until after the time skip.
3. Cannot purchase stat levels, support ranks, or mastered skills from past playthroughs.

Notable permitted things:
- The Chalice of Beginnings, Crests, and instant A+ Professor rank
- The altar in the Abyss
- A full battalion barracks. Includes several Paralogue rewards involving restricted characters.
- Save-scumming exams

_____________

Mapped out everyone future at the start. Added Anna and Flayn midway through to fill deployment slots. Wound up with the leftovers for class picks.

Byleth: Enlightened One / Assassin
Dorothea: Warlock > Gremory
Ferdinand: Wyvern Rider > Wyvern Lord
Bernadetta: Sniper > Bow Knight
Caspar: Grappler
Petra: Bishop (for the stats) > Dancer
Linhardt: Bishop
Balthus: War Cleric > War Master
Constance: Dark Flier
Anna: Trickster > Mortal Savant
Flayn: Valkyrie > Dark Knight

Noticed the lower levels on occasion. Met the Death Knight in Chapter 4 with no Thief in the party. Was not high enough level to qualify. Still struck down the Death Knight with the help of Blessing (survive lethal damage at 1 hitpoint).

Favored Seminars over Resting. Usually bumped up two skills for five units, plus some motivation for more skills.

Fell way behind in supports compared to other playthroughs. Did not marry anyone. Was not aware that was possible. Probably missed grabbing the ring on an Explore phase.

Was not impressed by this route, narratively-speaking. Followed a lot of Verdant Wind's path, but with Seteth leading instead of Claude. Felt divorced from the war, possibly from having beaten the game three times already. Basically chased Rhea the whole time. Ended unsatisfactorily, at that. Appreciated a different endgame map, though.

Felt like a good challenge. Fought real battles much more regularly. Relied on gambits far less for monsters (due to weaker Charm). May have been too restrictive on classes. Placed some, like Anna and Flayn, in undesirable classes. Became irrelevant. Could allow Byleth to receive skill tutoring in Explore too.

Asks an important question: how much time did this save? Calculated the time for each playthrough, based on Save Clear files. Played on Hard for all of them, except for Azure Moon.

Crimson Flower (First run): 65:13
Verdant Wind: 81:18
Azure Moon (Maddening + first DLC): 91:03
Silver Snow (Low-grind): 27:04

Completed this playthrough in one-third the time as the second playthrough.

Quick individual unit thoughts:

• Byleth: Same Byleth as always. Dropped off towards the end, but never bad.
• Ferdinand: Ridiculous this time. 41 Strength and 33 Speed at level 42. Beat everyone by like 8 Strength before stat boosters. Would have been a stupid good gauntlet user.
• Caspar: The late game hero. Packed the Speed Balthus lacked. Delivered a lot of vicious blows to monsters.
• Bernadetta: Possibly the best showing for an archer yet (more than Claude?). Treasured that Deadeye range with great Dexterity.
• Dorothea: High power, but too slow.
• Linhardt: A fine healer, as always. Only serves as that role, though.
• Petra: The early game monster. Took a backseat with dancer abilities. Propelled Bernadetta and Caspar forward. Still a great dodge tank.
• Flayn: Worse Dorothea. (-2 Magic, -7 Speed.) Smiled at making Flayn a Dark Knight, though.
• Anna: Least valuable unit. Did not cut it with 21 Strength and 27 Magic at level 38. Decent Speed, but nothing else.
• Balthus: The biggest disappointment. Barely had more Strength than Caspar. Cost a ton of Speed and Dexterity.
• Constance: Nothing special, close to Dorothea. (+2 Speed, -2 Magic.)

Managed to squeeze in a Rune Factory 5 playthrough before Scarlet/Violet. Never took advantage of some things the first time, such as spell sealing mosnters for drops or receiving gifts from villagers.

Rules

• Hard difficulty. Beat it really fast last time (Summer 19, Year 1) on Normal.
• Cannot use villagers in combat. Stressed villagers the first time. Wanted to go heavy on monsters this time.
• Cannot enter Rigbarth Maze (postgame area), except to use as a teleport point. Could potentially subvert a lot of progression with early Orichalcum.
• Cannot wield Hammers/Axe late-game or Dual Blades at all. Crafts an amazing hammer with basically just Orichalcum.

Came into this with a gameplan:

1. Capture all the 3-star Wanted Monsters for the crest to see invisible chests.
2. Stay below level 20 to take advantage of free baths.
3. Gift items to Terry to get a Heart Pendant (bonus skill experience)
4. Use the high-level recipes from invisible chests to powerlevel crafting skills by failing recipes.
5. Create some amazing equipment with high difficult boss materials...or something like that.

Caught all the Wanted Monsters without too much trouble, thanks to Failed Dishes and Object X. Died a few times from one-shots, but nothing too bad.

Went less than great on Heart Pendant. Apparently gifts items based on your relationship with the person. Started at 1 LP. Received mostly Charms and Cheap Bracelets. Took the Star Pendant (bonus experience), though.

Bumped up the relationship to 2 LP. Saw reports of getting one then at low odds. Probably gifted over 500 items through reloading. Saved a Field Pendant (stronger monsters) and a Fluffy Scarf before finally grabbing the Heart Pendant. Estimates this to be around Spring 13.

Wants to talk about the Fluffy Scarf for a moment. Requires about level 96 Crafting to create (max Crafting level: 99). Found the recipe for it in the final main story dungeon, coincidentally. Completely negates the rune power cost for offensive spells, weapon attacks, and some non-combat farming/mining stuff (uncharged). Usually considers magic-based builds bad because of the drain on rune power. Sidesteps that problem. Also combines great with the high level magic spells from invisible chests.

Ran into a snag on the high-level recipe. Misremembered where it was. Thought it was in town or somewhere similarly easy. Picked it up in the fifth dungeon (Atohl's End). Approached level 20 during the second dungeon. Turned off experience gain to keep free baths. Became a bit scarier towards the end, particularly with enemy casters hitting for 80%+ health. Grabbed the recipe in the end (and also the Cooking one in the next dungeon, just because).

Next up: powerleveling. Cleared out inventory space. Failed the recipe in batches of 30 (dependent on inventory space). Managed maybe 150 "attempts" before needing a bath. Rinse and repeat, no pun intended. Yielded 3 levels per 30 craft attempts at the start. Dropped to 1 level per bath at the end. Made it to 95 in Forging, 95 in Crafting, 90+ in Cooking, and 60+ in Medicine (for fun).

And finally, make something amazing. Knew exactly where to go for this: Sirens at Lake Yumina. Finds low-level Sirens at one specific spot. Accesses this from the start of the game. Farmed Sirens for Melody Bottles, a 94 difficulty material with a high drop rate. Yields the second highest straight Magic Attack increase in the game. (Technically. Lands around #9 after factoring in Intelligence from other materials.) Forged a simple Ice Staff (level 31 recipe) with 80 base Magic Attack. Crammed four Melody Bottles into it, bringing it up to 760 Magic Attack. Literally doubled the base Magic Attack of the best staff craftable before postgame (Crimson Staff with 380).

Also combined the accessories from Terry together. Decided on 0 rune power spells, bonus experience, bonus skill experience, and stronger monsters. Upgraded it with a Melody Bottle for good measure.

Followed the plan to fruition. Came time to drown the world in Delta Lasers. Turned experience gain back on. Transformed into an unstoppable force of nature. Doubled in health from levels just from cleaning up the most recent dungeon. Ripped everything apart with a glance.

Did not even bother with creating other pieces of superpowered armor. Beat the game with:

• Unupgraded Sneaking Boots (6 Defense)
• Really good unupgraded body armor from a chest (385 Def + 320 MDef)
• Unupgraded White Ribbon (28 Defense)
• Turtle Shield (20 Def + 16 MDef) upgraded with a Big Bird's Comb + Double Steel (100% Faint Resistance).

Added a Double Steel onto the accessory for another 340 Magic Attack also. Sufficed (barely) until halfway through postgame.

Replaced the weapon and shield for the final push, as well as upgrading the current accessory further. Catapulted from ~2200 damage per Impact Laser hit to ~16000 damage. Hit the phase change (50% health) on some bosses in a single Gatling Comet. Turned the final postgame boss to ash in seconds.

Cleared the main story on the morning of Summer 1 and postgame on the morning of Summer 4. Beat the final postgame boss on Summer 19 in the first playthrough on Normal difficulty, for reference.

Wrote about some shortcomings in the last entry (such as being done way too quickly). Realized one of the game's flaws with this playthrough: monster scaling. Wore trash gear, defensively. Took hits, but barely any damage...most of the time. Identifies a few outliers. One example: Rigbarth Maze dragons. Spawns as a normal monster. Hits harder than the final boss.

Found some stats. Chose a dragon and another normal enemy only in Rigbarth Maze.

Yellow Dragon
Basic level: 130
HP: 24905
Atk: 5464
Def: 3802
MAtk: 4824
MDef: 2602

Lorelei
Basic level: 150
HP: 7500
Atk: 1194
Def: 810
MAtk: 1373
MDef: 780

Look at the difference in stats. Quadruple the offenses. Triple the hitpoints and defenses. 20 levels lower. Might as well compare Hoppip to Mega Mewtwo X. (May actually be a little less lopsided, in terms of stats.)

Actually proved more dangerous than the final postgame boss. Rematched that boss with the old staff and shield (although boosted considerably with the upgraded accessory). Won with those.

One more shortcoming: kind of trash offensive spells.

1. Huge delays between casting for some spells. Locks you into a 5+ second spell in some bad cases.
2. Bad range. Designed quite a few melee range spells.
3. Terrible damage. Why use Light on something weak to Light when neutral Water hits harder?

Wonders if a no-armor run is possible. Removes some of the fun of making your own gear. Maybe weapon + accessory? Seems more than doable with (fully geared) villagers. Perhaps another playthrough.

(Vague spoilers ahead)

Watched playthroughs of Persona 3 and 4. Stayed away from watching 5 in the event of getting a port one day. Actually happened. Received high praise too.

Breaks this down into three major sections: main story, combat, and everything else.

1. Main story. Centers around the injustices of society. Presents people in power abusing that power. Falls to you to "steal their heart" to make them realize the magnitude of their transgressions.

Hammers this home in the first chapter. Witnesses threats against you, your friends, and the other students at every turn in a scummy way. Compounds this with everybody else refusing to speak up. Really wanted to beat that boss.

Lost some of that motivation in later chapters. Never felt as personal. Rarely made direct contact with them in real-life. Learned about them as much in their Palace (see: their distorted view of the world) as in the real world. Credits that first chapter for being a good hook into the rest of the game, however.

Fused the story with the setting very well. Points to the Casino as a great Palace. Stressed the drive to win at all costs in an unfair system. Manifests as cheating at rigged gambling games.


2. Combat. The game's weakest point. Defeated most overworld encounters without getting attacked. Ambushes monsters very easily. Rewards you heavily for that. Enables you to hit the monster's weakness, giving you another turn. Grants you a turn on top of that for hitting a different monster's weakness. Spirals out of control quickly.

Cuts both ways, however. Prepare for pain if anyone in your team is weak to their attacks. Means two big spread attacks (sometimes) on top of hefty damage to the weak party member. May also take that weak party member hostage. Give them what they ask, or they kill your party member outright. Comes in addition to some insta-death spells. Oh, and also the Despair status. Robs the afflicted character of their next three turns (unless removed). Dies on turn 4.

Gives your main character the ability to hold multiple Personas. Also contains mechanics to fuse Personas into stronger ones. Was not impressed by it. Generally wanted the same things: a -50% SP cost for an [element] ability, a single target [element] attack, and a multi-target [element] attack. Ideally adds status moves, buffs/debuffs, +[element] damage, and anti-weakness passives. Passes these abilities and skills through fusion. Made all of the Personas feel the same.

Explains how bad that is with Pokemon. Imagine starting out with a team of unevolved Pokemon of every type: Pidgey, Pikachu, Weedle, Horsea, and so on. Rarely levels up. Fuse Pidgey and Pikachu together to obtain Pidgeotto. Knows all of Pidgey's moves (and maybe one better move). Now repeat this for the seventeen other Pokemon. (Allows you to resummon Pikachu, Pidgey, and any others.) ...Now go through this process five more times. Becomes tedious. Benefits so much from doing it, though.

Struggled to create specific Personas (for Advanced Fusions requiring multiple Personas). Could not help but think of Dragon Warrior Monsters from an earlier journal entry. How do you get the monster you want? Try "Fuse by Results". Not there? Look it up. Seriously. Only does so much good too. Searched for a fusion calculator. Throws it out of whack if one of the Personas leveled a little too much. Wasted a lot of time that way.

Did a lot of what Dragon Warrior Monsters did wrong, right. Did you lose something good by fusing? Just resummon it. Never needs to worry about leveling from level 1. Begins strong and raring to go. Swaps between Personas at the drop of a hat.

Shouts out one last bad thing: the Space boss. Put it on a 30 minute time limit. Throws four enemies at you. Requires you to defeat them all at once. Runs away and repeats the phase if you mess it up. Adds to this disaster by buffing the defense of only one of the enemies.

Failed the time limit twice. (Bailed on the second attempt after seeing how poorly it was going.) Went on a fusing spree and a bit of reequipping. Beat it with 8 minutes to spare. Still felt bad.


3. Everything Else.

• Confidants: A huge boon to the game. Enjoyed these small stories. Held interest when the main story went into a lull. Appreciated the beneficial effects too.
• Social stats: Enjoyed trying to balance leveling confidants and increasing social stats.
• Transitions: An odd highlight to the game. Identifies this as one of the little things done so well. Steps on a subway. Shows silhouettes of people walking by instead of a black loading screen with tips. Awards you experience at the end of battle. Runs off to the side as you return to the overworld. Feels so smooth.
• Music: Never grew tired of it, despite all of the time in the game. Really liked "Life Will Change" too.
• The city: Bombards you with small, weekly events. Get special bread on Friday. Watch the shopping channel on Sunday. Get extra Maid Cafe points on Saturday. Visit the Jazz Club on this date for a bigger boost. Cannot visit the Fortune Teller on rainy days. Rewards you extra for working at the 777 on days with a 7 in them. Loves these little things.
• Classroom questions: "Which famous ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period is said to have moved residence over 100 times? Utamaro Kitagawa, Hokusai Katsushika, or Ichiryusai Madarame?" ...What? Realizes the villain to be one of the names (and incorrect). Localization doko?

Rates the game at 8 out of 10. Recommends it. Might have been a 9 out of 10 if the Palaces had been cut in half. Fought so many battles without a scratch that did nothing to advance the story.

Game stats
Play time: 116 hours, 19 minutes. (Yes, for just the main story.)
Persona Compendium: 88%
Achievements: 62% (approximately)
Confidants: Maxed all. Chose friendship for every romantic interest. (Sweated on maxing everyone. Only had ~3 days to spare out of a year's worth of days.)
Social stats: Maxed all.

Looked forward to this game. Enjoys the franchise more than Pokemon. Wound up a little delayed in beating it because of the prior game being a 100+ hour behemoth. (Generally prefers to stick to one game at a time.) Chose Hard/Classic difficulty. Trusted in the time rewind to allow Classic. Finished it today.

Made some interesting changes between games. Created two new mechanics (besides the Engage gimmick):

1. Armor Breaks. Disarms a unit when hit by a weapon advantageous against their own. Cannot counter on the next attack. Does not affect "Armored" unit types.
2. Chain Attacks. Triggers if a unit attacks with a second, "Backup" unit within attack range of the target. Adds an attack that hits for 10% of the target's health with an 80% hit chance, regardless of Defense/Resistance/Avoidance.

Worried about this pushing the game in a Player Phase direction. Generally prefers a slow, Enemy Phase approach. Assuaged that fear pretty quickly. Might be the strongest Armor units have ever been. Gave them ridiculous levels of Defense. Ended the game with Louis at 48 Defense before modifiers. Compare that to next closest 35 (Alfred) and 28 (Alear). Sent Louis off to solo things regularly, moreso early with fewer mages lurking then. Still proved valuable at the end.

Also buffed daggers to a really good point. Deals solid damage after some forging.

Enjoyed the gameplay. Did a good job of making enemies threatening. Panicked a few times, especially on Chapter 17. Needed to pop Engages to survive sometimes, rather than the usual "hold onto this nuclear device, but never use it until the last turn" tactic. (Pulled that plenty of times too.)

Turned gold into a tight resource (without DLC, anyways). Dumped most cash into forging. Also allows you to engrave weapons with emblems. Impacts the weapon (and unit's performance) drastically. Creates a new layer of planning of who to give what.

Missed a few notes, however. Points to skills being a sticking point. Messed up on almost all of them.

• Personal Skills: Tended to be insignificant. Example: +50% HP for recovery items for units within 2 spaces. Alternatively, +2 damage with a male and female ally within two spaces. Another: +2 damage if getting Chain Attack support. Appreciated a few, like Yunaka's +15 Critical on terrain with an Avoid bonus.
• Class Skills: Dull. Swap, Pivot, Reposition. +1 Attack for each adjacent ally with a tome equipped when initating combat. +40 hit if you did not move. Reserved all the good class skills for royals (Sol, Luna, Ignis...). Only allows you to have one class skill active too.
• Inherited Skills: The good stuff: stats, immunities, move after acting, Vantage, and so on. Costs SP to learn. Acquires it by defeating enemies. Earns the full SP amount with an Engage ring, but only half with a Bond Ring. Made lots of good skills too expensive to buy (or very late to get). What good is Speedtaker (3000 SP?) if you get it on the last map? Failed to even get 2000 SP on Louis (the cost of Chain Attack immunity) before the last map. Costs 1000 just for Magic +2. Leads to picking the same skills because of price (Canter, +Speed, sometimes +Avoid, sometimes +Hit).

Cannot say many positive things about the story. Divine Dragon versus Fell Dragon. Ventures very little beyond that. Defeated the Four Hounds like, three times? Four? Come on. Stab them harder.

Found the supports kind of flat. Typically became a question of which person's quirk dominated the support, more so than usual. Pushed tea even harder than in Three Houses, somehow. Sprinkled a few decent supports in there too, like Alfred + Celine.

Rates the voices as "eh". Heard too many squeaky voices. Liked Yunaka's and Fogado's voices. Added Fogado to the team purely on voice. Read the lines with actual tone and emotion. Cannot say the same for Alear and multiple others.

Throws another castle at you to waste time in. Ignored the time-consuming bits easier than Three Houses. Fishing? Just a few Bond Fragments and fish. The minigames with a huge input delay? Basically just a free tonic for Alear. On-rails shooter? Decently interesting, but a weak reward. Sped through Arenas, recreations, cooking, and a few ground items pretty quickly. Describes it as a little slower than Fates's base, but not by tons (unless you want to).

Who decided to name the stats "Avoid" and "Dodge"? Labeled them so poorly. Uses the former for lowering enemy hit chances and the latter for lowering enemy critical chance, for the record.

Views the game as overall positive. Allowed plenty of planning and thinking of how to allocate your resources. Plans to replay it sometime in the future.

And last, but not least: stats!

Chained Echoes

Received this as a gift. Never heard of it before then. Entered into this with few expectations.

Starts off with Glenn (the main protagonist) assaulting an enemy base on a suicide mission. Reaches the objective: a fist-sized crystal. Smashes it to pieces. Triggers, to Glenn's surprise, what amounts to a nuclear explosion (with the people immediately nearby safe). Effectively ends a decades-long war. Leaves Glenn to grapple with the guilt of killing so many.

Cannot drop such long-held aggression so easily, however. Picks back up one year later as leaders desire war again. Follows Glenn's quest to stop the nuclear explosion crystal from being used again.

Was not very impressed by the story. Painted Tarwyn's leader as unquestionably evil. Plays the victim card to be extra annoying too. Whines about having to do all the evil work. Also never actually resolves something kind of important. Talked about the "Harbinger" threatening to destroy the world. Met some people trying to resurrect that. Never dealt with those people or the Harbinger.

Clearly put effort into worldbuilding. Felt a bit much here and there. Talked about the other six(?) continents briefly in one book. Mentioned seven massively powerful beasts that are somehow not more of a threat. Appreciated some of the talk about ether (see: life + magic) and the differences in plants, monsters, and humans. Generally finds the magic system the most interesting in a given setting.

Drew some very nice pixel art. Compares it to Golden Sun. Might be better than that, actually. Remembered to grab one screenshot with the Sky Armors in a cutscene.
Chained Echoes Worm King.png

Nitpicks on one point: major character sprites. Completely lacks any kind of emotional expression. Displays the same portrait and the same sprite. Gave Golden Sun characters small expression boxes (like sad, angry, and happy), at least. Depicted one character crying once. Waited until the credits to see any more emotion than that (and several different character, at that). Where were these sprites earlier?

Sort of on the subject: tons of cats and dogs to pet. Might all have unique sprites. Petted all the cats (and dogs), as per the journal signature gif. Took half the game to find a cat that does not hiss at you.

Moves on to the next important part of the game: combat. Was not a fan. Would not call it bad, for the record. Needs to break this down into several parts.

1. The Overdrive Bar. Looks like this:
   Overdrive Bar.png
   Affects the battle, based on where you are at on it.
   
   Yellow: Normal
   Green: Deals 125% damage. Receives 85% damage. Halves TP costs for skills.
   Red: Receives 125% damage.
   
   Pushes your marker to the right for every enemy action and for most of your attacks. Moves from the middle of yellow to green in about four actions. Indicates precisely how far you move very clearly for any given action, also.
   
   Moves slightly to the left if you defend. Also selects a random skill type (Debuff, Buff, Physical Attack, Magical Attack, or Utility). Highlights the skill text. Sends your marker significantly left (a hair more than the length of the red bar) for using one of those skills. Changes the action after you do it or after 4 turns.
   
   Makes battles against large groups much more difficult than lone enemies. Describes it as a "lose more" mechanic, in a sense. Takes more damage by being in red. Stands a higher chance of someone going unconscious. Leaves you with even less control over the bar. May force you to choose between resurrecting your ally (and staying in the red) or constantly choose less optimal moves to return to the green.
2. Questionable skills. Had several moments of "Is that worth it?". One such skill: make all enemies "Dry" (see: weak to Water). Synergizes great with the character who has a Water skill that hits all enemies, right? Well...is it? Doubles the damage dealt. Loses the Dry status after being hit by Water. Used two moves to hit once for double damage. Likens it to Oranguru's Instruct. Was that attacker's turn significantly stronger than the debuffer's? Shrugs. And, if so, why not just use another attacker and pick a different move on the debuffer?
   
   Another skill: a party-wide +12% Attack buff for 5 turns. (Improves mildly at higher skill levels.) Is that small overall damage increase worth more than additional damage (and potentially removing an enemy) sooner?
3. A terrible difficulty curve. Feared a random group of 4 enemies early more than the final story boss. No joke or exaggeration. Took more damage, percentage-wise, from one of their attacks than the final story boss's. Hit for about the same numbers, actually.
   
   Also got gear checked by an optional boss about four hours in. Lost three times. Returned after gaining a level and forging weapons/armor. Crushed it. Feels bad that early.
   
   One more nasty enemy early: Saliva (a plant creature). Always appears alone. Occasionally counters your attacks by setting your whole party's health to 1. Hopes your healer is next up. Will knock someone out otherwise. Places you in a precarious situation.
   
   Blames some of the later difficulty drop on the sheer power of stacking Agility buffs. (Well, that and all status effects working against all enemies.) Regularly took 2-4 turns for the enemy's 1. Becomes even stronger alongside a heal over time. Heals the character when their turn comes up. Popped back to full much faster than a straight heal would have.
4. Fully healing after every fight. Sounds good on paper. Allows you to go all-out in every fight. Designs around that, however. Likens all encounters to minibosses, in terms of length. Gets annoying if you need to refight that encounter. (Sees them on the overworld, generally. Cannot skirt around most. Flew over old ones after getting Sky Armors, as a plus.)

Gripes about some poorly explained mechanics. Stuck a tutorial in your menu. Explains things like Dry and the Overdrive Bar. Great. Overlooked explaining what your basic stats do, namely Agility and Mind. Found out about Mind from an NPC (better magical defense and healing). Never stated what Agility does. (Gives you more turns. Does not seem to affect dodge chance or critical chance.)

Similarly, what does "healing potency 0.4" mean? Never figured that out. (Probably something like Mind * 0.4?) Also never discovered what makes Toxic and Poison different. Doubts a Toxic mechanic like Pokemon's.

Ends on one good and bad point: customization. Chooses between an active skill, a passive skill, and permanent stat gains for every level-up. Unlocks a new set of choices after about 7-9 picks. Liked choosing what to get next, to a degree. Eventually stopped caring about the current set. Limits how many active and passive skills you can run at once. Like, do you really want +35% damage against Dragons when you can just get +30% Magic?

Implemented a really wonky gem system too. Takes too long to describe in detail. Became really tedious at the end, though. Forces you to unslot and reslot every gem when you get a new weapon or armor piece. Did that for all 12 characters. (Fields 8 in a fight, with 4 in active combat and 4 able to tag in. Ought to at least do 8 of them.)

Final opinion: Not recommended. An okay game, but not more than that. Bothered to beat the superboss, if that tells you anything. (Only took 1-2 hours more for postgame stuff. Wanted to "finish" the game fully.)