Fire when ready!

Got through the fire temple today, and the hardest monster in it wasn't the boss but a mimic chest that killed the party 4 times before I could beat it.

Next we sailed over to another continent were the next temple should be, more on that tomorrow.

Odd coincidence

Today in the game the main character and is friend finally got caught up with the main party going off to resurrect the world. Oddly he did so by getting captured by the bad guys and having the party rescue him.

So tomorrow it's off with a full party, thankfully with a healer, for the main quest to save the world!


Something odd game related happened today. For the past several months I have been trying to find a copy of the Wii sequel to Tales of Symphonia, and I hadn't seen it any where. Then today, the day after I started playing the first game, I find 3 places selling the Wii game, so I picked up a used copy! Also I picked up a copy of Record of Agarest War since I'm sure such a strange and obscure title will be impossible to find within a month.

And techinally I'm sticking to my "1 game a month" plan since those games are for October and November. The down side is that there are 10 other game I'm interested in getting and there is only 4 months left this year that I can buy games for.

Kinda disconcerting that when I started the 2nd blog I had 28 games to finish, now I'm on my 20th game but there is still 36 left!

Focus!

Started on ToS today, and in many ways it's a huge jump from ME2 and all the previous games I've played for this blog.

Before any thing else the most noticeable difference is that that the game is straight 480i, even the Game Cube games I've played previously were 480P so even though they were low-rez it was at least clear. This game gets very blurry on my LCD TV, and took some time before I got use to it. The odd part is that only the 3D models are blurry, the sprites and textures are smooth, maybe because they don't have as clear edges.

Next is the fact that this is the first real JRPG on the list, Paper Mario and Zelda were much more stylized adventure games, while this has all the tropes...
-Big pointy hair
-Over sized weapons
-Outrageous story
-Level grinding
-Teens having to save the world
-Bright colorful amine style characters

This is quite the style change from all the WRPGs that focus more on serious character issues in a dark environment.

The plot so far is... odd. Some group is in control, the world is dying, the main character's friend is half angel and has to resurrect the planet, there are magic things that give you super powers or just turn you into monsters, the main character wants revenge for the death of his mother, and there is a weird green dog thing.

Well more tomorrow.

Well that's nineteen down...

Finished Mass Effect 2 today.

The final battle was a massive gauntlet of fights where my whole group was split over 3 locations at a time and any one of them could die. Fortunately it worked out that the members needed for each part of the mission were my favorites, so I gave me extra incentive to succeed. Hearing Tali call out that she needs help motivated me to haul ass much more than if it was Jack.

In the end there was a huge boss battle with a giant humanoid Reaper, which I killed with by re-aiming my laser riffle with the weapon select menu, allowing me to change targets instantly in game time (practically making it turn based).

And due to all that last minute upgrading all of my squad made it though, I rescued my crew, and told the Elusive Man to bugger off when he suggested that we keep the humanoid Reaper.

Now I have a level 27 Sheppard that I can continue to play, import into a 2nd play through, and move into Mass Effect 3 when it comes out!

Tomorrow it's on to Tales of Symphonia.

Joker's wild!

Yikes, A lot happened today.

Did the mission to pick up the Geth teammate, well all 12,000+ Geth teammates actually (collectively Legion), and learned a lot about them in a short time. Turns out the Geth are not the flashlight-head robots but actually hundreds of sentient programs that run it. Sort of like how tapes and records are the the media in a physical format but an MP3 player is just a outlet for the media. Also that the Geth we have been killing for the past 2 games are just a crazy cult of Reaper worshipers and not representative of all Geth, who for the most part hate the reapers as much as any one.

This of course puts Tali on edge, and really complicated the inevitable Quaran/Geth war. Now that I know Geth aren't all "death to organics!" but are actually rather reasonable and even a little naive, the whole war seems a horrible mistake.

On the side quest for Legion we took down the home base for the Reaper worshiping Geth cult before they brain wash all Geth to follow Reapers, and was faced with another really tricky moral choice. I had to decide to either kill off all Geth in the cult or digitally brain wash them to not follow the Reapers. Despite the hypocrisy of brainwashing as punishment for brainwashing, I figured they were influenced by Sovereign and not following by choice, that and payback.

Then things got really crazy.

Since the ship had to set up a new engine, all the attack squad took off in a shuttle for a mission, and then the Collectors visited. I had to play through the mission as Joker, trying to activate the AI before the whole ship was taken over.

Now the ship is empty except for the attack squad, joke, and the AI, so tomorrow it's a last ditch suicide run to stop the Collectors and get the crew back.

R&D/R&R

Didn't progress much today, just went to a bunch of planets for minerals to do a bunch of upgrades, then went around the crew to find out if I was missing any conversation prompts.

Tomorw it's off to an old reaper ship where I read a spoiler that I get a Geth teammate (weird).

I'm here to help.

Busy day.

-Saved Miranda's clone sister.
-Saved Thane's wannabe assassin son.
-Helped kill Samara's crazy brain exploding daughter.
-Blew up the base that Jack was experimented on.
-Arrested Jacob's crazy jerk father.
-Stopped Garrus from killing the guy who betrayed him.
-Listened to Mordin sing Gilbert and Sullivan.

Time to sleep.

Enkindle this!

Did a lot today, picked up 2 new party members, did Miranda's side quest, and met Liara from the first game again.

The first new teammate was a Drell assassin called Thane who we picked up after a long battle to get to the person he was trying to kill. After all the hassle his target put us through it was not much of a problem when he killed her.

Next we picked up Samara (not the Ring girl unfortunately) the asari who is trying to track down some one who just escaped on a ship. After killing lots of droids and mercenaries we got the name of the ship and she joined the party.

Liara has changed a lot since the last game, now she's a tough information broker who has no time to run off and save the universe. So she just had us run around stealing bits of information for her.

Tomorrow I finish off the crew's side quests.

Quads to spare

Went to the Krogan home world to find out what was wrong with Grunt, and Mordin's side quest is in the same location so I finished that one too.

Mordin's quest was that one of his old teammates was reported to be with a bad of krogan mercenaries, turns out though that he was there by choice and was trying to cure the genophage. After convincing Mordin not to kill the guy, and telling him to hang on to the research (which involved killing test subjects), I went off to see what was up with Grunt.

After talking to the local krogan leader, who just happens to be Wrex from the first game, it turns out that Grunt just needs to kill a whole whack of things and belong to a clan. so in what most likely be the closest thing this game has to an arena, we had to kill waves of dog things, insect things, and even a thresher maw (good thing I had my super sniper riffle), followed by a brief battled with some jerk krogan.

Tomorrow it's off to pick up the last two teammates.

The Tali so far...

went off to do Tali's side quest, were we get to visit the migrant fleet, it wasn't quite what I expected.

From the description the fleet is suppose to be thousands of ships of all types all grouped together, but all I saw was 4 or 5 large bubble shape ships. Also, even though their ships are suppose to have a completely controlled atmosphere, everyone still always ware their suits.

The quest was that Tali was charged with treason since some of the Geth parts she sent home some how came alive and took over a ship. After shooting through a rather small army of Geth, it turns out that Tali's father had reactivated and was breeding the Geth (and they killed him in return). So after ranting to the jury about how awsome Tali was in saving the galaxy last game, the topic of where the Geth came from was forgotten (to save face so to speak).

Tomorow it's off to help my Krogan team mate, since he's going a bit nuts.

The plot didn't wait up

Today I started just buzzing around unexplored planets to see if there was any unmarked mission. I found one planet that had a crashed ship with crazy robots, so I then tracked down where the ship came from and dealt with the crazy computer, and then went to where the robots were made and blew it up. Then I received a call, I thought it would be about the robots but it was the plot going "go check out this ship".

before I knew it I was back on a main plot mission, a rather tricky one with lots of enemies, and at the end I was told to go to the home base of the evil Collectors. Fortunately I had the option to say no and get back to finishing off side quests.

Tomorrow it's off to help some of my crew solve their personal problems.

Hey Vegeta, what's the scanner say about his GamerScore?

Played a few more mission and added an interesting krogan party member and also got back Tali from the first game. I also am now on the 2nd disc, which I wasn't expecting for while. Hopefully it just means that only the first bit of the game is on disc 1 and the majority is on the other. If I'm already half done then this is a really short game and has no reason to be on 2 discs.

I also managed to get my gamer score over 9000, so that's a little personal achievement for me.

Jack jacking.

Didn't get a chance to play much but I did finish a mission where I got a rather unstable crew member who has more tattoos than clothes.

Collectors edition

Started playing MAss Effect 2 today, and it's interesting to play again with the same custom character as the first game (underneath the Dragon Age armor). A lot of RPG sequels either use the uncustomizable character of the first game (like Final fantasy games) or make all new customizable character, so having a lot of my actions and decisions from the last game carry over is neat.

The plot so far seems to be that an mysterious race called the collectors have been kidnapping whole human colonies. So the pro-human extremest group Cerberus has resurrected and conscripted my character to help stop them since the galactic government won't.

I haven't gotten far in the plot yet since, like the first game, I am exploring as much as I can before getting too deep into the main story line. So far my party consists of a genetically advanced human who looks kinda like Zatanna, a friendly military guy, a hyper active Salarians scientist, a Turians guard from the first game, and a DLC mercenary who game free wit the game.

Tomorrow I'll be continuing a bit more on the story line since I'm about done the available side quests currently.

Well that's eighteen down...

Finished Fire Emblem today, and the last couple of chapters were a lot easier than most.

The second to last chapter featured a tower that I had to capture, which was guarded with brainwashed beast/bird/dragon people. After a couple bad tries where a Pegasus knight got too close to a dragon I manged to finish it in just 6 turns, while recent chapters too 20-30 turns. Since the map was a U shape with a forest across the middle I just sent my strongest and fastest flying unit over the top part to clear out around the goal. Then after carefully clearing out the dragons and level Boss with my tough units I just sent the main character to capture the tower while most of the enemy forces were still around.

The last level was a huge map with lots of groups of all kinds of enemy units, but using all the tricks I learned so far I beat it in my first attempt! Basically I would draw each of the units to just out of attacking range and charge them, then fall back and repeat. There was only one tense point where my sage was left within enemy range when her spell didn't kill it's target, so I sent Boyd out as a distraction, and sure enough his skill for attracting units that use to get him killed saved the sage when he was targeted and not her.

At the end all the units I collected up over the course of the game thanked me and went there separate ways. All that was left was that the evil god was never released from the fire emblem, but maybe that will be in the sequel.

So Tomorrow it's on to Mass Effect 2!

Mist it by that much...

Well today I took another shot at the last mission to see if I could do it quickly with by charging up the center and not have any causalities. It prepare I used every bonus point I had to level Mist up as much as possible, and somethign surprising happened after she got past level 20...

She grew a horse!

Since all other characters I had leveled up to 20 before had set class changes I though 20 was the max, turns out units automatically class change when they get to 20. So Mist went from a cleric to a Valkyrie, getting a big boost in all stats, the ability to use a sword, and a horse.

But unfortunately The mad charge didn't work, too many units surrounded us near the end, so I never found out if the boost mist got would even help against the Black Knight at the end.

tomorrow it's back to the current mission and Mist will just remain out of commission.

RIP. You will be Mist...

Well one of my units finally died and I did not reset the level. After a long and tedious battle there is a extra boss battle that only the main character can fight in, well him and his level 2 kid sister...

The first time I got to the boss battle (after redoing the level a few times already) I was totally caught by surprise when Mist, the little sister of the main character, ran out saying she wanted to help fight the 9 foot tall knight in magic black armor. To make it worse was that she was completely unarmed since I haven't used her in the past 20 mission. So I get her to escape and then the giant black knight kills me in 1 turn.

So I take another attempt at it but first i used the bonus points I have saved up to max the main character out to level 20, then give him a bunch of potions and even give Mist a healing wand. Things are going good and I'm now taking enough damage that I can survive between rounds and have mist heal a little, but then a bunch of guys come out and try to kill Mist. Mist gets 1 space away from the exit when some guy shots her in the back and takes her out in 1 shot. Then the next round I kill the Black Knight and finish the level.

Fortunately since she is so vital to the plot Mist isn't really dead, she's just not fit for combat any more (not that she was all that fit to start with). It's just annoying that on the 3rd from last mission I break my streak of finishing every mission with no casualties, but not annoying enough to spend another hour doing that mission all over again in hopes of keeping her safe next time.

Massively effective

The mission to day was a long one but rather easy. The map for the mission was huge with many enemy units, but they were spread out in clumps so I used the waiting strategy from the last mission. After about 25 rounds of picking off units as they came close to me the map was finally clear and I just nuked the boss with a long range magic attack.

I think it was one of the first missions in a while that I finished on the first attempt.

Also today I picked up Mass Effect 2 for just 31$ as my new game for April, I'll be playing it after I finished Fire Emblem (also breaks up having 3 games on the Wii in a row).

Let the mountain come to you.

A frustrating mission today where the evil army was entrenched at the top of a hill throwing rocks at us. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the ballista in the middle of the map and the mage cover the top quarter killing off any flying units I try to send up the mountain.

Before the battle started all the characters basically said rushing up the mountain would be the best way to deal with it, and aver about a dozen restarts I was beginning to think other wise. I noticed that some of the enemies would leave there post to chase after my units lower down, so on my last attempt I tried just waiting at the bottom of the mountain for them to come to me. Surprisingly enough it actually worked, nearly all the forces got tired of waiting and made there way down the mountain, where I killed them one by one, finishing off by flanking the mage and ballista archer. It only took nearly 20 rounds...

Tomorow it's anther battle as I get closer to the final confrontation.

It's the balck knight! RUN!

Finished 2 missions today. The first one was pretty straight forward, literally, it was a narrow bridge that my group had to cross. So I just sent my strongest units first to clear out the long range ballistas and then my other units cleared out what was left. The only tricky part was that there were hidden traps that stop the progress of the unit for the rest of the turn, but that didn't affect the airborne units at all. The boos of the level was a bit tricky and took a couple turns to kill, but in the end the whole mission only took a couple of tries.

The other mission was much harder though. It was a large open area with 3 ballistas cover almost half the map, 2 rivers that only had 1 narrow bridge each, tons of flying units, a super tough boss that regenerated his health, and 2 houses to visit before they are destroyed. After many, many, attempts I finally succeeded in inching my way forwards in the direction of the ballistas with tough ground units (they kill air units almost instantly) while my weaker units fight off the enemy ground and air forces. As i was making my way to the goal of the level the invincible black knight shows up, so i make the main priority of every unit to get as far away from him as possible.

"Death is for sissies"

Ugh, just when things start going smoothly the bad guys start fighting cheap.

The chapter I did today took way longer than it should have due to the thugs we were fighting surrounding themselves with priests who we were not suppose to kill. To make things more complicated, there were a bunch of treasure chests around, so I needed to include in my limited party my thieves, and less than half of my group are able to shove the priests out of the way. Also the bad guy has a mage that can cast lighting across the whole map. Some priests also attack my units, and if the unit is within range they will automatically attack back and kill the priests.

So after many failed attempts I finally just charged the center line, having both my archers take out the mage, then I had the main character work his way up to the boss while the rest try and get as much treasure they cane before the boss dies. In the end I lost half the treasure but won with no priests dying and all my units intact.

Tomorrow it's back to the home country of the main character.

Sorry, but our Evil King is in another castle...

So our small army stormed the open castle gates and then the bad guys shut them behind us to trap us there. Not a smart move since only time my group has any trouble is when they are in a large open space where I can't cover all sides, as it was we just waked down the narrow halls and killed anything we saw.

At this point in the game I have a lot of really powerful units, either from them joining powerful or me leveling them from the start, so almost any foe is killed in 1 or 2 strikes. So aside from a few mishaps where Boyd (the guy gets killed more than Kenny) had a sleep spell on him then hacked to pieces, I finished the level rather easily. I also got a rather strong knight out of it too.

Of course though, as said at the end of the previous chapter, the evil king has been gone for some time making the past 3 battles completely pointless plot wise. So now I have to get the group back to where they started from and find a way to stop the evil king before he uses the Fire Emblem.

wars

Tricky mission today, having to contend with a huge number of enemies and also get to houses before anything happens to them took quite a few tired to figure out. plot wise things are degrading into chaos.

The group, now an army, has entered the country of the evil army, but the evil king has already abandoned it and is more concerned in taking over the world. So groups where neither side wanted the war are fighting for reason that are pointless no mater who wins, and the evil king responsible doesn't care either way.

Hopefully tomorrow my team can knock some sense in the remaining group and have a united front against the mad king.

On an unrelated note, I bought Sakura Wars V for the Wii today. Now this is not technically the game I'm buying for April, it's the game I'm buying for some future month where I want to buy it but unable to find the game anywhere (like "tales of symphonia dawn of the new world").

Fire Emblem: Do not touch!

The chapter I finished today was a bit tricky since it had ballistas in it that could shoot 7 spaces in any direction in front of it and took off huge health of any flying unit. To makes things worse is that they only fire forwards, so even when my archers commandeer them they are still facing towards my troops and not the enemy, making them useless to me.

After the battle though is when things get really interesting, it turns out that the thief that joined the party near the start was actually an assassin for the main character's father. He explains to the main character how the medallion that his sister wears actually a powerful evil god, and that if any one with any evil at all in them touches it they would go insane. He then explains how the father once touched it and killed everyone around him, including his wife who finally took the medallion away.

The evil army is actually mainly after the medallion, for it's power or to release the evil god or something, and the main character's sister is the only one good enough to safely touch it.

Of course she loses it the next day after all this is revealed! So tomorow it's another battle and hopefully find the misplaced jewelry of ultimate evil.

Now with less team killing.

Finished the same level that I did yesterday but this time got back the archer. also joining the party is 3 bird people (one who can allow characters to move twice a turn) and another Pegasus knight.

Tomorrow it's off to continue the plot.

lets try that again.

Had a relatively easy chapter to finish, except it had a character that use to be an archer on my team now working for the bad guys. I tried every combination I could to talk him into coming back but each time he insisted we fight to the death.

It was only after I finished the level that I read on-line that i need to defeat him with the main character to get him back, so it looks like i'll re do it tomorrow.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

We finally got to the other country after a short mission where we had to stop some of the evil army, who were disguised as pirates, from taking over the ship the empress of said country was on (and picking up a mounted archer along the way). Guessing that I'll be going against a lot of bird-people coming, I upgraded my weak little archer into a powerful sniper and my cleric into a bishop who can cast Light magic. While waiting for the empress to make her decision of if she would help fight off the evil army, there were a few missions we had to run for her.

On the first mission we had to kick the butt of some slavers who were trying to ship some captured beast and bird people. They were pretty simple to beat now that I'm carefully watching their movement range, and along the way we picked up the deadbeat swordsman brother of our Pegasus knight.

Next mission was to investigate a group of thieves hiding out in the desert. After killing most of them off they agreed to talk and we discovered that they were part of a resistance movement to free the beast/bird people still being kept as slaves by higher ups in government. The leader of the group, a mage handy in fire magic, and his second in command, a powerful beast-man, joined our group.

At this point even the main character noticed the pattern and talked to the empresses about what's up with the slaves. It turns out that she's trying to stop the secret slavery, which is illegal in the country, without drawing too much attention to herself by having the mercenaries haled it.

While all this is going on one of the nobles manages to get the last of the royal white winged bird-people as his slave, so the empress has the group investigate him on their next mission. What followed was a super easy battle where my strongest party members just annihilated the guards while my 4 mages cleaned up the rest, the longest part was waiting for my thief to steal everything not nailed down.

Unfortunately the corrupt politician got away and so did the bird-man we came to rescue, which started us on a mammoth 4 part mission tracking him through the forest. The first part was a simple clearing the map of the politician's guards, but made more tricky by only having 11 party members. The next part was a mad dash to the exit past many powerful guards and kept the same party plus 2 more, but only the 2 new members could change their inventory and weapons were starting to break down. After that 2 more members are added for a grueling stand off with the guards for 10 rounds, I backed the group into a corner and tried to block all incoming paths as more and more of the stronger weapons broke down. The final part was a boss battle, made more difficult due to a mage that could cast a powerful fire spell to nearly anywhere in the map, 2 more members became available and towards the end the bird-men friends of the one who was a slave showed up to lend a wing.

After all that, the slavery was stopped, the white winged bird-man and his sister (who the group found along the way) restored the forest, and the empress agreed to help against the evil army. For all his troubles the main character was promoted to a bombad general, with a big stat boost and a neat new outfit.

So tomorow it's off to lead an army to take back our country!

They're after the crow's nest!

Well the trip to the new country didn't go smoothly, half way there the ship was attacked by bird-people pirates.

The fight was frustrating at first since the bird-people had a huge range and were very strong. To make things worse I had my mages and archer in the party since they do extra damage to aerial targets (and less likely to miss), but they are all naturally weak and kept being killed off. Finally I started fighting smart and paid careful attention to the grid spaces that each bird-person could reach, making sure that the range fighters stayed just out of reach and even using the tougher fighters as obstacles.

Part way through the fight a wyvern riding soldier from the evil army (who was chasing us since port) joined our side of the battle because she was annoyed at how poorly we were fighting the bird-people. So I guess she's in our party now, even though she wants to kill all of us...

In the end all the bird-people were killed (leveling my range fighters a lot) and some dragon-people came by to help get our ship unstuck.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get to the new country...

break out and ship off

I fished 2 chapters today, one was a sort of stealth mission and the other was a mad dash to a boat.

Since the beast-people nation couldn't help, the party went off to talk to the large country to the east, but first they stopped off to release some prisoners. The two beast-people who helped earlier are now full party members and we're joined by a thief who agrees to open the cell doors for a fee.

The tricky thing was that as soon as any one entered into the guards field of movement, the alarm would sound and we would be swamped by all sides. After MANY failed attempts I managed to avoid the guards long enough to free 3 of the 4 prisoners before the main character got stuck in their view. So everyone retreated into a jail cell and killed each guard as they funneled through the door, then we got the last prisoner and just walked out with all the loot.

The next chapter was in a small port town and the group needed to get a ship to travel to the next country, unfortunately the locals discovered the beast-people in the group and threw a fit and then notified the evil army. To complicate things again, there were several houses to visit for items that had to be reached before some thief burns them down. Again, after many attempts I got to all the houses, killed the soldier, picked up another party member, kill the chapter boss, and get to the boat.

So tomorrow it's off to the next country!

Wonder if these guys know Zack and Wiki...

Finished a small but tricky chapter today, filled with soldier, pirates, and noobs.

On the way to the beast-men's castle we come across a fort being occupied by the evil army, and some houses near by with items, and I have some beast-people helping as non-party members. Before I can get going though the younger sister of the main character and the little brother of a couple other party members show up and insist on helping us. Since they are both at level 1 and almost totally useless the objective now also becomes keeping them alive.

To make matters more complicated I found that if I don't get to the houses quick enough some pirates comes by and blow the up, making it so I can't get the items. on the plus side after several turns a Pegasus knight who I helped in a earlier chapter joins the party and although she is not too strong she can travel large distances.

After many attempts I finally manage to get to the houses, kill the pirates, clear out the fort, and keep everyone alive. Then I went on to the castle where all the help I got was 20,000$ and a "Thanks, but we can't get involved."

Maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow.