Well that's twenty-three down...

After about 45 hours of game play (which seemd a lot longer) I finally finished Skies of Arcadia: Legends.

After the party fails to stop the super weapon from launching, all the prates and side characters that I met along the way come together to help in a last ditch stand against the evil general. Leading up to a ship battle against a huge ship, a normal battle against the general, a normal battle against the final boss, a ship battle against the weapon, and a normal battle against the boss final form. In the end we save the day and everyone live happily ever after.

All in all it was a pretty fun JRPG, but with one heck of a weird difficulty curve.

Tomorrow it's on to Super Paper Mario!

When we do it it's justice!

The quest for moon crystals continues to break the pattern with the yellow one. This time there was no setup, no dungeon, no guardian, it just went straight to a ship fight against the weapon and when it was over we got the crystal.

At this point the plot goes into overdrive. The head general of the empire has stuck out ahead with his own plans of world domination, the prince left the party to warn the queen, home base gets attacked and burned to the ground, and the 5 crystals are stolen. On top of all that, it's revealed that the silver civilization were responsible for the meteor shower that nearly killed all life, hypocritically because humans were using were using the weapons to kill each other, and the general is trying to get that weapon.

And to make things worse, the prince has been captured by his crazy queen mum and locked up. So tomorrow I have to get the prince back, stop the super weapon, defeat the general, and some how save the world...

My name is Mud

First order of business today was to find the impersonators, and when I tracked them down it turns out they were just performers that figured out impersonating the heroes was an easy way to make a buck. Then they decided that it would be even easier to do once they killed off the originals.

At first I figured this would be an easy battle, since I beat all other bosses with not too much trouble, then I quickly learned that they has super powered versions of all the heroes' base moves. They managed to kill off all the characters four times before I lucked out (the healer was down to 10 HP and all others were dead, but she had enough points to revive them all at once) and manged to pick them off one at a time. It's kinda weird that the fakes were 4 times stronger than the real heroes, I think they were in the wrong business...

Once the copies were defeated the gang's reputation returned to normal, yet the fight took so long that it was all that I got done today. Tomorrow it's time to go under the vault holding the yellow moon crystal and try to get in from the bottom.

Unidentified FlyingMonsters!

The ice temple was... odd.

Up to now the way that getting moon crystals went was:
-Talk with the locals to establish the subplot
-Go through a big dungeon
-Fight a guardian monster
-Get the crystal
-Lose the crystal
-Fight the empire
-Fight the giant weapon
-Resolve the subplot

But this time it was completely different. First off the whole area was abandoned, so there were no locals to talk to. The "dungeon" was just a big open area with a guardian at the end, and after that there was a series of rooms that quizzed me about the history of the place. When I got past the quiz it lead to a room that had the old robot arm captain and the giant air whale. Turns out that since the ship was hooked on to the whale both of them managed to escape the empire, but the whale was mortally wounded. Also the whale was actually the weapon for the area due to the past civilization embedding the moon crystal into a living air whale. So the whale dies from its wounds, we get the crystal, the captain sails off again, and the empire is nowhere in sight.

It's weird going from a pattern of 3 or4 boss battles in a row to just 1, but exploring around made up for it. I found randomly in the sky over the ice region a giant spider/wasp thing and fought it in a large ship battle. Then else where I came across a gigantic version of the annoying elemental monsters I have been fighting everywhere, fortunately this one was relatively easy to kill in a ship battle.

On the way back to home base I notice everyone we talk to treats Vyse like a jerk, then I find out that some impersonators have been robbing people claiming to be the main characters. So tomorrow I have to sort that out.

Home sweet home

It turns out that the banished prince is now the head of the local pirates, so as soon as he found out what was happening we had our own fleet to take on the empire. Now was the string of boss battles I was expecting when I got the moon crystal.

First was a regular battle where we beat the adviser's son to regain control of our ship, then was a ship to ship battle aginst an arrogant general with a giant gun, then finally was a ship battle aginst the blue weapon (a giant bird). Through it all the fights were fun and well balanced, it definitely looks like the game is leveling out and all the earlier problems I mentioned are going away. The plot is more interesting since it's focusing on character development, the random battles are less frequent and dealt with quickly, and the boss battles are more even. Even the graphics are not as much of an issue since the personality of the characters make up for how primitive they look.

After all that the group sails around the world to get back to their base, which is now a full service pirate port, even with the option to expand on things as it develops.

Tomorrow it's off to the south to pick up the purple moon crystal!

Treading water

Finished the water temple today, and surprisingly there wasn't a series of boss battles at the end. the temple itself though was a slow slog solving puzzles while spending most of the time walking under water very slowly. The end boss was an annoying turtle monster that made itself invincible every few turns, so it was a long series of charging up an attack and hopping that the thing didn't become invulnerable just when I attacked.

In an interesting change, the plot related events happened after getting the crystal and not before. The empire showed up and with the help of the evil looking advisers they imprisoned the king, so now we have to go find the banished prince to sort the mess out (it's a lot like the events in Rohan).

Holly ship!

Lots of ship to ship battles today.

After wandering around a while I finally find the town that's the jumping off point to the east, a depressing little collections of broken ships that failed to get past the dark vortex that blocks the east. Soon after I arrive the empire show up to take back the prince, and I have to do a series of 3 ship fights of increasing difficulty.

We then can sail off to the entrance of the vortex, which inside is a weird maze of sections that look like the bottom of the ocean. At the end of the maze is another ship battle, but this time against a giant fish.

After that there is a battle against a local war ship that thinks we are trying to invade. The tricky part is that it keeps flying vertically out of reach and I didn't have any torpedoes equipped to reach it. Finally there was a normal ground level boss battle against two fighters, which were rather easy.

When we get to the east city the king welcomes us while the evil looking adviser wants to kill us on sight out of principal. Were told that the blue moon crystal was lost in a mountain but were welcome to try and retrieve it if we can, so that's were I'm off to tomorrow.

Sovweirtlcahp pseeldection when characters are

Through luck and poor organization I was able to get today a brand new copy of "Phantom Brave: We Meet Again" for just 10$. I went to a game rental store (same one I found SoA:L at) and in their used games section was PB:WMA with two price tags, one said 39.99 and the other 9.77. Taking a chance that the lower price was not in error I took the empty box to the counter and waited for the game... and kept waiting. The guy comes back finally and tells some one else working there that he can't find the discs, so the other guy takes a brand new copy off the shelf and rings it up for the used price, and even knocks a dollar off so it comes to 10$ even with tax!

And while adding PB:WMA to my line up I updated the order of my remaining games to mach their current rankings.

On the game side things are really picking up. The group not only managed to escape from the capital, again, but the prince joined up with them and gave them a super powerful prototype ship and snagged the moon crystals on the way out! I then went around collecting up crew members for my new ship, setting up a base of operation on the deserted island, and even selecting a new flag...

Tomorow it's off to the islands in the east to find the blue Moon Crystal.
(Title from the PB:WMA instruction booklet, where the writer apparently had a stroke)

Didn't we just leave this party?

After going through the caves again, both sides of the party finally reunite just in time for a rather good boss fight. The boss fight was against two large stone head, one with fire powers and the other with ice, and it wound up being challenging while not drawing out too long like previous fights. After that it turns out that the "treasure" just just a single coin and a note that explains how the teamwork needed to get through the caves is the best treasure any one could have.

When the group heads back to the nearby city the empire attacks and they are captured and brought back to the capital again. Fortunately the crew of the guy who picked up Vyse is coming, along with his stalker in the pink ship, and even the prince of the empire is helping by keeping their escape attempt quiet (he's none too happy with his mum acting insane).

So tomorrow it's time once again to escape the capital (after getting the moon crystals back I hope) and go back to saving the world.

Game over man!

Well I got my first game over screen today, surprising considering that I have been playing for 2 weeks, but every time I died before it was in a boss fight where I was able to continue right from the fight. Unfortunately I hadn't saved since I started playing today so all my progress was lost.

So, the reunion didn't go as planed since both parties kept just missing each other, despite staying in the same inn. Aika and Fina have been working hard as waitresses the past week and have saved up enough to buy a small ship. Before leaving the come across half of a treasure map, the other half Vyse happened to find on his island, and decide to find the treasure in order to fund search for Vyse.

At the same time of course Vyse has the same idea and the game switches back and forth between the two of them until they both get to the island with the treasure, on opposite sides of course. Turns out though that the treasure can only be gotten to when two groups simultaneously make their way through the caves at the same time, convenient that...

Aika and Fina are both more magic based fighters, and with the smaller party they can't use powerful spells right off the bat, so after running into a nasty bunch of beasts with sleep spells they both died and I got Game Over. Tomorow I haveto do all that over again and now I know to save more often.

Lost in blue?

Just when I get to a point where the random encounters are almost fun, the plot takes a sudden change that makes them uncommon...

We set off to the north to get the moon crystal from the empire, and after a couple of ship battles we find that it's trapped under a huge door that even the empire can't open. Then we hear that the giant whale is in the area, so we head off to avenge the death of the captain's son and crew. When find the whale the Empire is also there attacking it and duringthe fight our ship gets blown up (the captain going with it).

So now the main character is stranded on a deserted island and the game play follows him as he explores the place, gathers food, builds a signal fire, and repairs his rowboat. Meanwhile, Aika (who should have her hair down more often) and Fina were picked up by a good pirate with a giant pink ship and she drops them off with a bit of money at the nearest city.

Just as Vyse gets his rowboat (which of course flies) fixed, he's rescued by another good pirate who is a laid back womanizer. He lets Vyse sail his ship to the nearest city (which just happens to be where Aika and Fina are) before he goes off to finds some ladies. So now I just need to get the gang back together again!

Attack!!!

Well I may have reached a turning point in this game. One of my party members have leveled up enough that they can use their full area spirit attack in the first turn, and since they normally attack first it means that often all monsters in an encounter are killed within the first few seconds!

This changes the rampant random encounters into quick bursts of getting exp, making leveling faster and exploring much less tedious. Also leveling faster made the boss fights at the end of the section much quicker since I was much higher level than I would have been.

Story wise it turns out that I had to talk to the king again, and he sent me to find 2 markers that pointed out the location of the moon stone (not in the moon stone temple oddly enough). After finding them, I made my way through the hidden temple and fought a giant guradian bird, killing it in 5 rounds (the last guradian took 50 rounds). When I went to get moon crystal it was gone, it turns out that the king had it all along and was planning to use it to summon the giant weapon to fight the empire while I was keeping them busy.

But of course the weapon (a giant green humanoid) gets out of control and I have to take out both it and a empire gunship. Having done that I got the moon crystal and now have to make my way north to the empire capital (again) to get their moon crystal.

Now what?

Well just past the save point I finally found yesterday was a mid-boss battle against the first boss of the game (an armored rhino thing), which went rather quickly (I had 3 characters charge and 1 use heavy attacks). After that, one of the people I rescued from the temple said that he unlocked the door out and we can all leave.

It seems like the end but I have yet to find the moon crystal, there are still slaves trapped in the temple, and I haven't had a real boss battle. After and hour and a half of wandering around every inch I can find of the temple and going back and forth to the village I still can not find what I am supposed to do next.

Tomorrow I'll check a walk through for help...

Explore, fight, repeat...

Spent about an hour and a half playing, and most of that was just trying to get to a save point.

I found the forest temple easy enough, but half way through there was a large puzzle section where you had to pick the right path, guess wrong and you get sent to the start of the puzzle. Since the area has the same ridiculous random encounter rate as the rest of the game, going back to the start means almost a dozen more tedious fights with weak monsters. This makes a 15 minute segment in a reasonable game take 45 minuets!

My view so far:
-The plot is simpler than FF1 (evil empire needs 6 magic crystals to take over the world, just for the sake of being evil).
-The characters are cliche (super optimistic hero, spunky friend, reserved "princess", gruff old timer, and various stock villains).
-The combat has no innovation over 16 bit JRPGs.
-Boss battles come in clusters and just drag on.
-Constant random encounters bog down any exploration.
-The graphics look more like it was made for the Saturn than the Dreamcast.

The game needs to do something interesting soon or else this will be a long play through...

exploring.

Spent most of the time just exploring the village trying to find the chief to sort this mess out of everyone giving my party the cold shoulder. The place was a weirdly constructed area with lots of ladders and polls to climb up and slides and swings to get down, making getting anywhere take a long time. So I found the chief and promised to get rid of the empire fleet that recently showed up for the moon crystal, then instantly everyone in the village was ok with us (word travels fast).

Next I sailed off in the direction of the forest shrine, along the way having another ship to ship boss battle, which I won surprisingly easily. Then I got the extra blessing from the king to go after the bad guys, so now I just have to find the forest temple.

Sailing aginst the wind

Spent the whole time trying to find the blasted southern lands.

First I couldn't remember where i was to go next, so I headed south since it wasn't explored yet. Not long later I came across some giant cyclones and a cut scene saying that it's the entrance to the southern lands. So I keep heading south, all the while strong winds push the ship back as soon as I stop moving forwards, and of course random encounters every minute. Then I reach a wind wall and have to follow it west, slowly going against the wind, until I finally find the southern lands, which are just on the other side of those blasted wind wall around the pirate island. Then I had to search for a village to land in, and when I found one all the natives refuse to talk to my party...

All told it took me nearly an hour. Between the pedantic boss fights, frustrating flying, and insane random encounter rate, I'm not sure how this got such a high rating. Maybe the game really picks up later, I'm only about 20% the way through i think.

lots of boss fights...

I sure hope that this isn't a pattern in this game, again I went through 4 boss battles in a row, long dull ones...

After entering the room with the giant door I was thrown into a battle with a giant lava worm. It took a few tries to figure out it's patterns, luckily the game lets you start back up at the beginning of the fight. Then is was just a long drag of charging, using a powerful attack to chip off 5% health, and healing. The bosses seem to be really strong, but health kits are so cheap your party lasts for ever, so each fight is just whacking each other for up to half an hour.

After that fight we got the red moon crystal, but the randomly helpful belly dancer turns out to be a empire general all along (not much of a surprise) and uses it to summon a giant ancient war monster. Those for unnerving giant heads I saw on the way in turns out the be the 4 heads of the weird crab like thing. The battle against it turns outjust to be an endrance test to survive about 6 rounds before the game admits the fight is an impossible waste of time and resources. Wish I didn't have to try 8 times before being told I'm wasting my time...

The next battle is a ship to ship one against the empire general, and it's mostly a pointless fight too since you can't do any damage really until the main harpoon gun is ready. This is made worse by the fact that every couple of turns you have to chose a course of action, get it wrong and the harpoon is delayed even longer. so it's basically 4 turns of charging and healing and then killing the other ship in one shot when the game feels nice enough to let you use the harpoon. Once defeated the general calls off the giant monster, we get the moon crystal back, and the general has to walk home. This is odd since it's a floating desert with no towns on it, and it's been stated that some one would barley survive a day on foot in it, so this is almost a death sentence that the heroes happily give out.

The last boss fight was optional and my mistake to getting into. When we got back to port I spotted a big NPC that I haven't seen before, so I talk to him and it turns out that it's a evil pirate that has a price on it's head. Figuring that this will be a simple ship to ship battle like last time I agree to fight, then I find out that the guy is just the body guard for the small mage boss and it's a straight battle against the two of them, and I can't just quit since I didn't save yet after the past 3 fights. This was a long and frustrating battle, the guard has attacks that can kill any one not blocking with 1 hit, and the mage has spells that cuts the strength of the party in half, confuses one character, heals the guard, or just does tons of damage. So I first target the mage, but I find out that when his health is low he flings his guard at some one for an instant kill, so I have to chip away at the guard while he keeps trying to lower our strength. I finally get into a pattern of charging, attacking, healing, and removing status ailments to kill the guard. Then when all my healing items are gone and half my team dead I start on the mage, constantly alternating between attacking and healing or charging. After over half an hour of this I beat them and the two remaining characters go up two levels.

If all the boss fights are as long, drawn out, and potentially pointless I'm going to have a very hard time finishing this game...

Fire temple

So the belly-dancer let us borrow her ship to visit the fire temple (more a pyramid), were I noticed 4 giant Serv-bot looking heads ominously surrounding the entrance. Inside was the normal endless swarms of random encounters, and some rather interesting puzzles using rolling cylinders you walk on.

In the last chamber was a puzzle were I had to trigger a room to fill up with lava and then had to trigger water to pour over it so we can walk on it. Kinda funny how the group didn't die instantly as gallons of water instantly boiled into steam around them...

I saved right in front of a giant door which will most likely be a boss battle.

Great, now we have to find the money exchanger

After the group said their goodbyes they set sail to find the first of the moon crystals, and quickly got lost.

The thing about the pirate base is that it's in the middle of 3 huge curved bands of solid wind, so if you go in any direction other than the narrow gap at the top you'll just follow one of the curves until it meets another one. Getting lost in this mess is annoying enough, but having random encounters every couple of minutes makes it even more frustrating, compounded by the fact that there's one monster that keeps coming up that can only be killed with magic, and the party has a very limited amount of magic points to use.

After I worked my way out of that mess, I made my way to the desert lands of the red moon. As soon as I arrived though, our robotic-armed captain ditched us again to go back after his whale. Looking around the desert town reminded me a lot of the Arabian themed setting of Quest for Glory II, there is even a key plot event in a tavern with a belly-dancer (not of the feline persuasion this time though).

For no reason at all, said belly-dancer came uptou my group and volunteredher ship for what ever they need it for. I'm sure there is no alternative motives and this isn't a trap at all...

This rescue smells like poo-gas.

So after staying at the in the team gets word that their pirate friends are going to be executed first thing in the morning, so we sneak into the sewers to get to the coliseum where the executions are goin to take place. This game has a lot of random encounters, about every minute or so while running through the sewers the group was attacked, and that's about the rate everywhere in the game.

After getting through the sewers I had to go through 3 boss battles in a row. First I had to fight a giant blob that lived at the bottom of the coliseum, feeding off the dead fighters i guess, but it didn't attack hard so it was more just a grind to fight. Immediately after that fight I had to fight the executioner and his two mages, this was a much harder fight and I used up all my magic and healing items to finish it. There was then a short run back through the sewers and then along a train, random encounters all the way, before the third boss battle against two train guards. This fight would have been easy but by now my party was low on health, magic, items, and the strongest member was gone, so I just barely made it through.

Finally there was another ship to ship fight, but since we now had the super harpoon cannon, it was just a matter of surviving the fight long enough to charge up and fire it.

After that all the pirates were rescued, the girl from the first part was rescued again, and the main plot is explained. Turns out that there are 6 nations, one for each of the magical moon, and the girl we keep rescuing is from the technologically advanced Silver nation. She explains how thousands of years ago all the nations built super magical monsters with the moon magic and had a huge war with each other until the moons pelted the planet with rocks, killing near everyone. The evil empire now wants to find these 6 magical monsters so they can rule the world (of course!), so it's our job now to find the 6 magic moon crystals that power the monsters before they do.

And the girl has a flying silver animal thing that changes it's shape into her bracelet, just to remind the player that it's a JRPG.

Off the topic of the game, at a video store today I found a copy of the PS2 collectors edition of "Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love" with all the extras for 8$. So now I have both versions for less than the price of the PS2 copy normally. I got it more for the bonus items than to play it since I already have the Wii version on my line up.

Now that's a big door.

Didn't get much done today, too tired.

Basically I just flew to the capital with my new passport and passed through the giant metal doors that guard it. Then I ran around the poor section of the capital until I found an inn to save at.

More tomorrow.

Port/starboard canons in 3d space...

Well after finding out that the empire capital we want to go to also sells super air-whale killing harpoons, the bionic Ahab was all for joining the party again. First though, we had to do an escort mission for a merchant, which was really a tutorial for the odd ship to ship fighting mechanic.

Basically it's turn based and you chose your actions on a grid, deciding who does what actions in what order. The opponent's actions are displayed across the grid's top, so you can see when they will be in a offensive or defensive mode and plan accordingly. Then the fights play out as both air ships fly side by side to each other blasting away before circling around to to it again. I would think that since the ships only have guns on the sides, it would be an obvious advantage to just fly above a ship and just drop bombs stuff on them.

So after blowing up the ship, getting the merchant passport for the capital, and getting the 1000$ reward for blowing up a pirate ship, it's off to save everyone! Unless a shinny side quest shows up and distracts the heroes...

We have to save... Oh look, moon fish!

The game is starting off a little odd.

After the two protagonists sail to a near by island to pick up a huge moon stone, they come back to find that nearly everyone in the pirate village, including the girl they saved, has been taken by the empire. So after a good night sleep they sail off to take on the empire, but their ship is destroyed by a giant flying whale. They then saved by the John Silver of Treasure Planet, who joins their party for 3 minuets before dumping them at the first city he stops at.

And also there is a side quest introduced to catch invisible flying moon fish to feed to a bird to make a little girl happy for a random doctor.

Very JRPG...

Isn't that right zack?

Just started playing SoA:L and so far it seems to be an interesting JRPG, with many of the standard JRPG tropes (ridiculous accessories like clear eye-patches). One odd coincidence was that the shop keeper for the sky pirates is named Zack just like that titular sky pirate of Zack and Wiki.

So far the plot is that a mysterious girl was almost kidnapped by the evil empire and a band of sky pirates saves her. That's about all I know so far.

Well that's twenty-two down...

Finished Super Mario Galaxy today, the game was fun even if it wasn't as challenging as I would have liked. The final level I did before the end level was the hardest, but only because I had to get through a huge level with out getting hit once. The end level was pretty simple and the final fight with Bowser was mostly the same battle as every other fight wit him in the game.

Tomorrow its on to Skies of Arcadia: Legends.

90 stars down

Got a huge amount done, clearing out the remainder of the area I was on and also another section and the trails.

The trails were secrect bonus areas that were an extreme version of the alternate gameplay modes in the game: Ray-surfing, Bubble blowing, and Sling-shoting. While nowhere near as hard as the bonus levels of Sunshine, they were a challenge just because the size and having to do them all in one shot.

Since I have been cleaning out every areas as I go, I was so far ahead in my star count that I could have gone on to the final boos battle before even touching the last two areas, but I wanted to see all the game had. The game is getting kinda harder, but not from more skill being needed, just the worlds are getting bigger and the spaces between checkpoints are wider, so dying becomes more tedious.

The game dosen't save the number of lives you have for some reason, so inorder to keep the stockpile of 40 lives I built up for the final area I had to leave the Wii on over night. This is some old school Nintendo but not in a good way, I just hope that Galaxy 2 has some crazy hard areas like the Sunshine bonus levels.

63 stars down

Cleared out another sub-area, nothing too interesting, just fun platforming.

Lately I have only had time to go through in small sections, making this game take longer than it should, but I should be bale to compensate for that this weekend.

55 stars down

Finished off another sub-area today and saved Luigi twice.

One intresting hidden star was in a section twice as big as the normal level it was in. The first time through the level I just had to hop and skate around some ice-water sction and make my way to the top for a boss fight. The second time through I had to freeze some out of the way pipes and jump with perfect timing to get to a secret part of the level, then I had to avoid thwomps, kill ice bats, dodge boulders, and make huge jumps, all while racing to the next fire flower since they only last 30 seconds.

More stars to get tomorrow, and most likely saving Luigi some more.

48 Stars down

Crappy day today and only had time to do one sub-area, so only 5 more stars than yesterday.

Tomorrow won't be much better I bet.