Bottle episode

chapter 8 was rather different, it actually had 2 missions in it while all the ones previously had one.

In the first mission Welkin and Alicia get separated from the rest of the squad when an explosion sends them down a cliff. They then have to make their way through the forest at night, not only avoiding enemy mortar and soldiers but also dealing with Alicia's sprained ankle limiting her mobility. The trickiest part was when they get to a clearing that a machine gunner is stationed at, he kept killing no mater what I did and if either character goes down it's an instant game over. Finally I was able to use some tall grass to give them enough cover that they got past with about 10% health left.

The second mission was to get Welkin back to the rest of the squad on the other side of the map and take over an enemy strong hold. there were so many enemies on the map that when I first tried to take them all out they killed the whole squad. Eventually I decided to only target the ones directly in my way and just get through as fast as possible, which worked out and finished the mission.

This chapter didn't really advance the story much, but more was to develop the connections between the characters.

Vyse squad

I finished chapter 7, a bonus chapter, and got 2 guest appearances.

Chapter 7 starts off with the main characters exploring the desert ruins in the last chapter and bump into the leader of the whole invading army. After flowing them out (for some reason not shooting them then and there) the battle starts where they have to fight the leader's super tank. Half way through the fight the second in command of the enemy side shows up and she has glowing blue hair and the supernatural powers of the titular Valkyria and makes things even more tricky. I was able to finish the fight on my first try tanks to the blind luck of happening to have all my anti-tank guys in the right lace at the right time.

There is a reporter that you can talk to between chapters and sometimes unlock little side stories about the characters, this time though the side story had a unique battle element. The battle used only 3 characters (2 of them being predetermined), was a stealth mission at night, instant game over if any one falls in combat, and the main character wasn't in his tank! The story of it was about stopping a blockade preventing vegetables from being delivered, and the main anti-tank guy is obsessed with vegetables.

Lastly, I finally got on my squad Vyse and Aika from Skies of Arcadia, who are randomly available. It was neat of Sega to throw in a relatively obscure reference like that.

Tanks for nothing

After a couple tries I finished chapter 6, which takes place in the desert where the bad guys are looking for an ancient super weapon. The first time I played through I was doing ok, got half way across the field and captured one of there bases, but then I started to move the tank...

Every level (except the prologue) had the main character in his tank, and not only is it a slow huge thing that takes 2 action points to move, but it's less effective than a anti-tank trooper. These short comings really came into play when the tank got stuck between 2 trenches and I used up my 6 remaining action points trying to move it, only to wind up with the vulnerable back end exposed to the enemy. The bad guy's turn comes around and they waste no time blowing the thing up in one shot.

So the second attempt I leave the tank alone the whole match and just snipe bad guys while my scouts infiltrate their base and gunner run interference. Once I took over that base I called in a couple anti-tank troopers, then under the cover of a plot related sand storm the anti-tank guys sweep around to the back of the enemy tanks and blow them all up they same way they got me last time. after that it was just a matter of sending a scout in to the objective base and take out the last guy from behind.

No need for the stupid tank!

Moink?

Completed chapter 5 today, which was rather more challenging than the previous ones. The battle takes place in a woodland area where the opponents have a supply depot, so not only is there uneven and cluttered terrain but the enemy is entrenched.

On the story side, the protagonist (who's name I'll eventually remember) uses his uses his skills in natural studies to find an alternative trail that half his squad can flank the enemy with. This is mostly pointless in game since only tactical advantage I got out of is was taking out 1 anti tank artillery. Along the why they find a baby winged pig that they adopt as part of the squad, and I guess to add some oddly placed whimsy.

An interesting thing about the optional squad members (only 4 are mandatory for the story), is that while they are never featured in the story segments they all have their own unique looks, character, and voices. Also as they are used in battled and leveled up (not sure what effects it) more of their bio information is revealed. They also have postive and negetive trais that affects combat, like being unconfrtable in the city, or loving hot environments, so not all of them are cut out for every mission. One aspect of the trait is that some have prejudges, either towards the enemy or the dark haired race the half-sister belongs to, or even just against everyone in general. This can be frustrating when I needed more snipers but half the candidates where racist jerks that I don't want on my team (already have 2 put up with 2 story mandatory ones).

Head shot a tank

Started playing Valkyria Chronicles today, and needless to say it's very different from Demon's Souls. The game plays like a hybrid of 3rd person shooter and turn based strategy, while moving on the field the game runs in real time a your character can be shot at, but selecting the character and taking aim are turn based.

The plot so far is that the east and west of a alternate history Europe are going to war over a magical power source, and the small independent country the protagonist is from is caught in the middle. The protagonist joins up with the local army and is soon a tank commander in charge of his own battalion. His half sister (voiced by Laura Bailey in full Rise mode) first looked like the typical woobie character, but she soon turns out to be a expert mechanic and a skilled tank driver.

So far i'm on chapter 5 and the neatest moment so far is when one of my snipers blew up a tank with just 1 shot. Progression is going slow since I'm trying to win as many fights as I can with out any units dying and avoiding too many being taken out of battle due to injuries, so a lot of restating campaigns.

Well that's fifty down...

Well I did say that I hoped to finish by the end of the month, but I didn't expect it to be the next day!

I started off trying to go against the two manticores in the prison area, this time trying to glitch the AI with stealth like the king, and to a degree it worked. The first manticore lost track of me and the second would often circle around in the air until I shot at it. After a long and careful fight with the second manticore I shot an arrow at the first to get it's attention, and when it charged at me it somehow got stuck on the fireplace in the middle of the bridge, so I just shot it to death with arrows while it was stuck.

After that was the final boss battle, and in a neat twist the final boss actually summons another player from on line to fight you. It was lucky for me that this player wasn't very good (only had close range fighting) and I was able to dispatch him rather easily.

Next I tried my hand again at the fire demon boss, this was a straight up close combat endurance fight and I had a slight advantage with a fire resistance ring I found. After a couple attempts and way too many healing items I managed to defeat it.

Next was the final boss fight against the dragon god, the one from the early promotional images, although it wasn't really a fight. The battle mostly just consisted of avoiding it's attacks and getting to magic spear guns that pin it down, then finishing it off when it's incapacitated.

Finally I had to face the stinking poison swamp level. This took me the most time because I progress VERY slowly and attacked everything from afar while wearing the sneak ring, because I did not want to die from one small mistake and repeat the whole thing over again. About 2 hours and several hundred arrows later I got to the boss demon of the swamp, a giant deformed mass that shoots swarms of flies that pick away at your health. My stragety for the rest of the level held up here too, staying as far back as possible and shooting a few arrows when I had a clear shot, and when I ran out of arrows I used crossbow bolts to finish it off.

The final boss fight of the world was actually rather easy, the target is a priestess but the main challenge is he knight that protects her. So I just found a high up perch and shot her with arrows where the knight couldn't reach me. I noticed that with the excetion of the king, all the final world demons are much easier than any of the mid-boss demons that came before them...

With all 5 world demons gone the path to the demon elder god opens and the woman who controls the leveling up goes with you to send it back to sleep. I had the option to kill her and become the elder god's powerful servant, but I chose the good ending and saved the world.

So I'm finally done with dark and ruthless demon worlds, next it's on to the bright and colorful world of alternate history WWII!

King me

After stocking up on more arrows and upgrading my bow to have greater range, I took another shot at the king boss fight.

Using the stealth ring I was able to enter the fight with out the king noticing and I also had on another ring that boosts my attack power by 50%. I then unloaded every arrow I had into him, bringing him down to about 25% health, and when they were out I had go into close combat. The close combat fight was tough, and he manged to take away 3 of my levels, but I just barely manged to defeat him. Also I was able to retrieve all the souls I lost the last time I fought him, which included the ones from the dragon and the AI glitch knight, so when I returned to the hub I was able to level back to where I was and then some.

That's now 2 of 5 worlds finished, I may actually finish by the end of the month!

1000 Needles

I manged to get to the end of the castle world today, and faced a few challenges along the way...

First off, right after the checkpoint there is a battle against 3 super powerful dark demons, an archer, a fencer, and a knight. Luckily I had a ring that makes me more stealthy to dark demons, so I just hung around the back of the room beyond their range of view and lobbed arrows at them for 10 minuets. That killed the archer and fencer, but the knight was too heavily armored for arrows to hurt, so I had to run in and attack it directly. The knight was literally too tough and after several hits it broke all my armor and weapons, so I had to run away in the middle of the fight back to the hub to get them repaired, fortunately the other 2 didn't re-spawn.

The next challenge was a huge dragon blocking the path, I think I was supposed to just time it's fire blasts and run between the gaps but I found that I could shoot arrows from a safe distance and do a tiny bit of damage (3-9 points out of 6000). I figured "what the heck" and went back to the hub and then to the mountain world to grind enough souls to buy over 1000 arrows. I went back to the dragon and started my relentless assault, and about 300 arrows later it's health was half gone and it moved to a new location. I followed it to where it was clinging on a giant building and continued shooting at it, now doing even less damage. When I had it down to only a sliver of health left I completely ran out of projectile weapons to shoot it with, so I had to run all the way back to the middle of the castle area to find a merchant that only sold crossbow bolts (less damage and harder to aim). All the way running there and back I kept worrying about either dying and having to do that all over again, or that the dragon health would reset if I got too far out of range, fortunately neither of those happened and I was able to kill the dragon.

The next challenge was another dark demon, but this one had buggy AI that made it easy. I equipped the stealth ring and got close enough to get it's attention, the I ran away from it as fast as I could so it would lose track of me, but that didn't go as planed. The demon chased me all the way back to where I killed the dragon, then it's AI must have told it that it was too far from the spawn point and to head back, but instead of turning around and running like most opponets, it startled to slowly walk backwards. While it was walking it would not fight or defend it's self, so I just had to follow along and hack away at it.

Then I finally got to the king, the final boss of the world, and he was tough! I had no more arrows left so I had to use direct attacks, but I barely put a dent in his health and any of his attacks would nearly kill me. One of his attacks even removes one of my levels, so a level 50 layer could be sent back to level 1 if attacked enough! Who makes a boss that can do that!?!

So after being killed I called it quits and I'll try again tomorrow when I'm all stocked up with arrows again.

Castle crasher

Ah, the castle area seems so much nicer after the poison swamps and dark caves of the other worlds. The oponents are easier to handle, short cuts are unlocked as you progress, and it's all in open well lit areas. The only down side is the lack of arrow merchants and the number of souls you get sucks (less than 10% of what I get on the mountain), but everyone drops healing herbs.

I made good progress in the level today, getting all the way to the next boss battle and unlocking a short cut to it also. but after several defeats I decided to call it quits for today, tomorrow I should be able to get a better idea of it's patterns and kill it.

Progress!

Either my grinding is paying off or I just lucked out, but I actually made progress in the game today!

I started off exploring the second area of the pleague clifs, and now it's a giant poisons swamp! the monsters there are not that difficult, but it's more a matter of the lace being so huge that I have to do a huge amount of backtracking every time that I die. So after several frustrating attempts, I decided to have a change of pace and grind some more in the mountain area. Once I gained several more levels there I thought to try my hand at the giant blind boss again, this time equipped with tons of arrows and a ring that improves my stealth. The ring seemd to do the trick since I was able to run around shooting the demon with out it being able to track me down, and after a long fight I finally killed it.

Then, after going back to the hub area and returning to spirit form, I set out into the third area, which was the final boss battle of that world, against a giant flying sting ray. Amazingly I was able to kill it with my remaining arrows and health herbs! With it dead I not only have 1/5th of the worlds finished, but it also opened up the path in the first castle world! I'm finally feeling that things are getting done in the game, and it's not just constantly beating me down.

Nibbles

Grinded several more levels today, putting them all into health and stamina, and then took another stab at the rat infested cliff side shanty town since it was the only world that I haven't gotten to the second stage of.

Since I'm now about 30 levels higher than the last time I tried the stage, I found it quite a bit easier to get through. The many difficulty now is just avoiding falling to my death. I managed to get to the boss of the first area, a giant monster made of leaches that looked like Nullzilla from Reboot. Fortunately I had exactly enough arrows to kill it off before it could even reach me.

CD failure

Bought Zelda:OoT3D (it's rather good), but when I went to register it at Club Nintendo the promotion for the free music CD messed up and I never got a chance to apply for it... The problem seems wider spread, so I hope they fix it.

In Demon's Souls I grinded up a frustrating 12 levels, several of which I put into my strength stat, with out even changing (I think it's caped for my class). Tomorrow I'll go up more levels until it takes too much work to gain a level, I figure it's better to be over powered than have to grind later.

I doubt it's just a thorn in it's paw...

I managed to get to the last of the supports holding up the big tentacle ball thing, and it came crashing down. Surprisingly it did not turn out to be the next boss fight, it was just an obstacle and the fall killed it. The real boss fight turned out the be against a powerful manticore type thing on a bridge.

Aft first I did rather well against it, getting it's health down to about a third my first try, and then a second one showed up... It's just getting cheap having to fight TWO giant flying magic things on a narrow bridge, where more often then not I wind u dying from being pushed off! At least the boss fight is not too far from the spawn point, now that the big ball thing is gone.

I'm going to try and just level the heck up, at least 10 levels, and maybe then this game won't be as punishing.

French cooking

Bought several games today, mostly for the DS. First I got "Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier" new for 14$ and "Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns" for 5$ used since they are Atlus games for super cheap! Then I got "Picross3D" for 20$ new (big fan of Picross games), Sin & Punishment 2 for 20$ also (most places had it for over 40$), and "Personal Trainer: Cooking" for 5$ (in french no less). My alternative motive for getting those three is that they are all published by Nintendo, so they give me Club Nintendo points. Together with the points I'll get when I buy "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D" this Sunday will put me in the platinum range before the deadline at the end of the month, getting me cool exclusive free Nintendo swag.

Although I over estimated the points I needed a little, so it turns out that I didn't need to get the french cooking program (I don't even speak french!) but it was only 5$ and the other games were worth it even without the points.

In Demon's Souls today I took another stab at getting past the laser ghosts in the mountain world, and managed to figure out the timing to get past them. Once past that I was able to progress to the second boss battle, against a gigantic blind warrior, which killed me pretty quickly. I'm going to try again later when I'm better prepared.

Then I went back to the prison world, and explored the second area. the main focal point of the area is a giant tower holding a gigantic demon that's a massive ball of tentacles, and the objective seems to be to break the chains holding it up so it drops. the level is mostly running along narrow bridges, avoiding gargoyles, between the towers and a lower swamp area filled with creatures that make the centaurs of Fallout look cute and cuddly.

A Dark Turn

I started off today grinding at the castle on the mountain, but this time there was a new NPC. He said he wanted the sword I found earlier since it belonged to his father, but since he seemd rather shady I refused and then he challenged me to a duel. I won but apparently that wasn't the right coarse of action since now that word had a dark tendency, making all the monsters stronger...

I struggled to get back to the narrow stair, but that beam shooting ghost still kills me, and then I had to make the trip again to retrive the 56k of souls I dropped. I then decided to try my luck at that giant arrow shooting statue in the prison. Turns out that all you need to do is crisscross between safe points all the way up the hall, then turn the thing off. Then I came across the real boss of the area, a 4 armed female humanoid demon, who wasn't that hard to kill but the real trick is finding and killing the guy who keeps summoning her after she dies. After my mistake in killing that other NPC, I was really hesitant in killing this one, but it was the only way forwards and there was not negative effects from doing it.

So I have one more area open to explore tomorrow.

Get in mah belly!

Well I got Record of Agarest War Zero Today, I went to the Game Buzz that said it would be in today and surprisingly it was. I got the special edition of course (much classier than the first game's), which is fortunate since that's all they had. The clerk said that only that edition is available for sale and the game alone is available for direct download, which is a double lie since not only is the regular edition for sale for 10$ less on line (and I presume in stores) but you can't download it for 360 or PS3. I got the 360 version to match the first game and set it before it in the line up (it is a prequel) since there is no reviews for it anywhere and only one for the PS3 (saying it's much the same as the first). At the rate I'm going through games though Agarest War 2 should be available by the time I get to them...

In Demon's Souls today I started off doing some grinding for souls and figured I would take another shot at the boss monster. Turns out that what I thought was a giant eye was actually an above view of a giant fat humanoid and the pupil was it's crown (with a bird in it), what I thought was a tentacle was it's tongue. At long distance the monster can attack with it's tongue taking off half my health, at mid rang it has a giant blade that takes off 2/3 of my health, but right up close at it's back it can't hit anything. Once I figured out it's weakness it was only a matter of hanging out behind it's back until there was an opening to attack it's front, then after a couple hits it would fall over and I could do serious damage to the bird in it's crown.

After it was dead (and I cashed in the souls) the next area seems to be a long decent down the mountain the castle was on, and it's filled with flyers that shoot ice spear, metal skeletons, and wizards that summon giant ghosts. I only got as far as a narrow stairway that had one verity of ghost that shot a massive energy blast which seems impossible to block or avoid.

Your game is in another castle

I didn't get to play too much of Demon's Souls tonight, I sent too much time running around trying to find a copy of Agarest War Zero. I first went to an EB Games, and they said that it hadn't come in yet but I could still pre-order it, since this is the same place that took a month to get my P4 art book I passed. Figuring that EB games just didn't order any, I then went to Game Zone (where I get most of my JRPGs) but they also said they didn't get any in (saying it was somethign about a delay at customs or something). Then I went to MicroPlay, who often have titles that no one else does, but of course they had none and didn't think they would get any till next week.

Ironically everyone had dozens of copies of Duke Nukem Forever...

When I did play DS I found that all the ore that I collected the other day was no the kind I needed, but I'm sure that it will come in handy later, fortunately the kind I needed was sold by a merchant at the start of the level. I then went to grind some more demon souls and I found that the Long Dragon Sword +1 I picked up in the mines does massive damage to the metal skeletons and sets them on fire automatically. So I collected up a lot of souls and spent them on leveling up a couple more times.

Fire bad!

I figured I would pop over to the mine world and collect up some ore so I could upgrade my equipment more, and since the monsters there were no such a breeze I figured I would try my hand at the spider boss again. Now that I have much better armor and more health the fire attacks didn't kill me instantly, and I was able to consistently do damadge to it with range attacks (thanks to a hint left on the ground by another player). That was until I ran out of arrows, then I had to struggle my way up to it to perform the final blow.

I should have exited out right after that, but my curiosity got the better of me and I made my way down a deep hole, unfortunetly the final drop was a little more than my character could handle and it wound up fatal. Then while trying to retrieve all the souls I got from the boss a mine cart exploded in my face, killing me and losing the souls.

I explored around more, going deeper and deeper through holes made by Hortas, until I made it to the next boss, a large fire demon. Needless to say I didn't even try my fire sword on it. The boss wasn't "1 hit and you're dead" tough, but I was low on healing items and still out of arrows so I eventually gown worn down and died. I'll try it again when I'm more prepared and a few levels higher, but for now I just need to get back and use that ore I got.

Resource management

Continuing where I left off yesterday (the mid-boss didn't re spawn), I gradually made my way to the end of the level, which turns out is right near the start but you have to walk all the way around since you can't climb 2 feet of rubble. I didn't get a good look at ten end boss before it killed me with huge tentacles (losing all the souls I collected so far), all I got was a glimpse of a giant eye down a hole and said tentacles. After a bit of grinding and exploring I decided to see what the remaining area was like.

The last area is like a giant prison, with crazed inmates and the guards are like Final Fantasy's Mind Flayers. The level was good in that as I progressed it unlocked doors so I could skip areas after re-spawning, but I hit a road block with the mid boss. It's not even really a boss, it's just a gigantic statue that constantly shoots hundreds of arrows, and I couldn't figure out any way to get past it.

I think I finally figured out how the game is meant to be played, it's not just a ick your world set up like mega man, it's much more non liniear than that. Each world has an abundance of a certain resource that you need to survive, and I think the player has to grind each of these areas over and over to stock pile them before being able to take on any of the bosses. The castle area has fire bombs and low healing items, the mine level has ores, the rat level has rare items, the mountain level has demon souls, and the prison level has magic potions (not much use since I currently have no magic). So I have to grind demon souls to afford to upgrade my equipment with ores and collect up a suply of explosives and rare items all at once (forget magic).

Easiest mid-boss ever!

I went back to the first level, which was now rather easy, and was able to collect up enough souls to get the rest of a new set of armor, and also level up my character a bit. Then I checked out another world which seems to be a castle on a mountain top filled with living metal skeletons.

This world finally seems to be at the level of difficulty that my character is ready for, since I can take out the skeletons with reasonable challenge and get a decent amount of souls from them. Also in the middle of the court yard was a giant 3 eyed demon, but fortunately there was a sniper post just far enough away to shoot arrows at it with out it reacting. So I socked up on as many arrows I could carry (finding out that there is a weight limit) and upgraded my bow before taking it on, then about 60 arrows later the giant thing was dead before it even attacked once. I just hope it dosen't re spawn when I go back there...

BLOORP!

Tried a different world today and it didn't go so well.

The world was some kind of goblin shanty town build along the sides on a super deep ravine. So there were goblin like things everywhere (most with sticks on fire), most progress was either straight down or up, no check points, giant bags of poison blood, and the only merchant so far charged 20 times the normal rate. The worst thing in the whole level though are the plague rats, they come in backs of a dozen, they are too small to hit with a sword so you waste arrows on them, they do reasonable damage, and they can give you the plague which saps all your stats.

After going through several times and not making much progress, I decided to call it quits. Tomorrow I'll try grinding the first world (which should be easy now) to build up my levels and equipment.

Giant Spider Invasion

Well I got up to the first boss of the next world (there seems to be no order to them, like a mega man select screen), and it was a giant armored fire breathing spider. This level was a lot like the first area in the other world, being huge and having short cuts to unlock along the way, it also had several different monsters. There were tough monsters that could only be hurt with percing weapons, fiery salamanders, and fat guards with fire breathing fists that took forever to kill.

The boss it self is ridiculously hard. Not only is it a giant spider wearing metal armor, but it also shoots webs to slow you down and huge fireballs. Due to it's fire nature, even putting my weapon on fire didn't help much, so I'm thinking that I should tackle other areas first and come back to it when I'm stronger.

Fire good!

Progressed to the second boss of the first world, a gigantic suit of armor, narrowly averting disaster along the way.

The level was much more linear than the previous one, but still chock full of monsters and even a dragon, and between my first attempt at the boss fight and several tries getting back I had used up almost all my healing items. Also my weapon was getting close to breaking, but fortunetly I caught it in time and ungraded it, then I scrounged around for enough souls to have a decent amount of healing items in back up. After a few more tries at the giant armor I tried using an item that lights my sword on fire and that did MUCH more damage, bringing down the boss in a few hits.

With defeating the boss I gained enough souls to buy armor for my head and legs and also upgrade several of my levels. Now that I'm all suited up and even stronger the only remaining problem is a force field blocking off the third stage, so it looks like I'll take on world 2-1 tomorrow.

Brand new day

Demon's Souls is very unforgiving of mistakes, there are no do over and you can't just load an older save, so when you mess up you're stuck with it. This caused a serious problem since early in the game you're given a lot of healing items and a really good sword, but as I was learning the controls I used up a lot of healing items (pressing Square expecting the menu) and found out later that weapons degrade with use. So before long I was stuck with no good weapons and no healing items, preventing me form getting any where.

So today I decided to start all over again with a new character and take better care of the items from the start. Also helpful was that today the alignment of the level was towards the light, making monsters easier to kill and drop more items. With this method I was finally able to make headway in the game, and the more I progressed the strong I got which allowed me to progress more. In the end I was even able to get to and kill the first boss, a giant black blob covered in smaller blobs with shields.

Then at last a bit of the plot was explained. Long ago there was a civilization that thrived using the power of souls, but it became corrupted and unleashed an lovcraftian horror. By scraficing half the plant the civilization was able to seal up the elder god again, and then the ones that remained went to limbo to watch over reality. Now humans are using souls again and the elder god is waking up again. Only one of member of the old civilization remains alive and tells the rotagonist that they have to kill as many demons as possible to get the attention of the elder god, and then when they get an audience they can trap it again.

Now I have the start of the other worlds open and a check mark to the 2nd stage of the first word, also I have all my health back finally (the first stage has to be done with half health).

If at first you don't succeed, you fail.

Making this post from my 3DS, so the formatting may be off...
Died a lot in Demon's Souls today, but it's more just from getting back into the game cold and forgetting how things worked. Maybe tomorrow I'll actually make progress...

Also I bought Two Worlds II for the PS3 for 30$ from a BlockBusters going out of business sale.

Well that's forty-nine down...

Well I more or less finished Little Big Planet, the story mode at least. The main bulk of the game is the content creation aspect, but that's open ended and I don't have any ideas for a level currently so I just stuck to the included story more. Also I didn't get 100% completion in it, but considering how frustrating some of the levels are I didn't want to go through them more than necessary. The problem is that the game is mostly physics based, but the physics are wibbily wobbely to match the art style, making it very easy to mess up a jump just due to bouncing more than the character should.

I might go back later and mess around with the level creator and look at some more user created levels (and it's narrated by Stephen Fry so that's a plus), but for now I'm moving forwards to Demon's Souls...

Well that's forty-eight down...

After a long string of mid-boss battles in a weird abstract space, I finally made it to the final boss fight of the game, and of course it was in 3 stages. In between the fights the big bad kept trying to convince Fang and Vanille to turn into a giant monster and destroy the world, but they wouldn't give up hope and finally the party beat down the bad guy.

Unfortunately the bad guy was also supporting the whole planet, so once he's dead all the lights go out and the world starts free falling to the planet below it. Vanille and Fang get separated from the others and then chose to turn into the giant monster. They then fly off to the bottom of the falling word and merge with it as a giant crystal beaning, forming a giant pillar that slows and supports the planet before it crashes (the shape in the logo). The rest of the art briefly turn to crystal but then return human, along with Serah and Sazh's son, and their brands are gone. Fang and Vanille remain as crystal though, at least until Final Fantasy XIII 2...

There's an option after then end credits to go back to the last checkpoint and level u even further, but after 60 and a half hours I think I'm done with this for now. Tomorrow it's on to Little Big Planet on the PS3!

Charge!

So the party got onto the airship and flew back to their world, and managed to reenter right in the middle of some F-Zero racing event. In a great cut scene the whole party use their summons to escape for the military and save a few lives along the way. Then all over the city portals open up and the giant monsters I have been fighting start poring in. Now the party makes a long run to the main government building, fighting monster and the military along the way.

Finally they reach the building but they are stopped by the guy who runs the military. After a not too dificult boss fight, he finally admits that fighting the people trying to save the world just because he was told to was stupid and lets them pass. So chapter 12 ends with the party ready to face off with the nut-job wanting to kill everyone to get his god back.

I also got 4 new games today, all free thanks to Sony and their dodgy network security. I got Little Big Planet and Infamous for the PS3, and Little Big Planet and Mod Nation Racers for the PSP.

Remember the titans

I manged to struggle my way trough the plant fish, only to get suck on the last boss of the chain. The boss is impervious to physical attack, magic attacks does next to nothing, and he can kill the party in 2 hits. After a lot of trail and error I finally came across a plan that mostly worked, using Snow as a tank to soak up most of the damage while have Vanille and Hope alternate between magic attacks and healing. It was a very slow and grueling strategy but after about an hour of fighting (the fight should have taken a few minutes), the thing was down to about 15% health, but then I attacked when I should have healed and suddenly died...

So I looked up how to beat it and one suggestion was to have 4 accessories (I only had 3 slots) and at least 16000 health (I had max 8000), so I figure that I'll be able to come back her later on. Tomorow it's back on to the main story line!

Clash of the Titans

Ran through the gauntlet of monsters in the Titan challenge, and it was an odd mixed bag of difficulties. Most of the monsters were about the same difficulty of the ones I have been fighting up to now, yet one was a ridiculously tough Flan suported by 2 other gian flans that I barely was able to scrape by, and that wasn't even the end boss. The end boss on the other had was ridiculously easy and I beat it with a perfect the first try.

Since the challenge goes in a branching grid, there are still 10 other monsters to fight to clear it all. I tried to start another go through but got stuck at the 3rd level aginst a giant plant fish that I could barely make a dent in.