I guess since I'm here again, I'll make my own Now Playing topic!

[Maniac]

Finished Birthright.

As with Conquest, I'll start with the... well, not so much good as much as it is just passable, but I guess the story is drastically less stupid than that of Conquest? Can't help but basically just damn it with faint praise -- it's not good, but I guess it made me tear out my hair and erupt in a fit of tourettes less often. It's pretty generic, gets really anime every now and then and has some really stone stupid moments. It's rather incompetently handled for what it is, but it's walking down a road long-since paved by so many hack-n-eyed fantasy novels that it would take some work to... 'innovate' in the same manner as with Conquest. It's at a low enough level of quality that I might have been more acerbic in my evaluation if I hadn't played through Conquest already, but all I can do at this stage is throw up my arms, accept that IntSys commissioned a mongoloid chimpanzee to write their plot for them and lower my expectations accordingly.

On the other hand, the gameplay is just bad. It's bad in that kind of tedious, Fire Emblem Awakening kind of way where there's nothing creative or strategic about how it goes, it's just haphazardly-sorted waves of enemies on maps that largely blend in with one-another charging your position, being replaced by the exact same units spawning from the exact same places as they die for 20 rounds straight. It's basically just a numbers pissing contest: can you kill this many enemies with this many units? Cool! It's about as fun and engaging as it sounds.

I don't own Revelations, and with Dark Souls 3 over the horizon, I'm in no rush to change that. I might revisit Fates eventually, but for the moment, this is where this story ends.

[Maniac]

Until Dark Souls 3 comes out, though, I'll see how far I can get in Devil Survivor. I've slowly becoming obsessed with cracking every skill available in free battles, but now I'm really overleveled lol.

You know, I'm kinda charmed by one of the voice actor choices in this game: Midori is voiced by Erin Fitzgerald, aka new Chie. Erin is one of the worst voice actors in the industry, but that is totally the kind of voice and cadence someone as annoying as Midori would have. Good job, Erin, you actually had one (and probably only one) inspired role.

EDIT: Awesome. I did that rescue mission with Midori, and then Beldr came out at the end and used his attack that hits everyone on the map as he is just allowed to do since he's invincible. Just barely killed one of the townspeople I had to protect and failed the mission. gg Atlus, that is some amazing game design.

[Maniac]

I'd recommend at least some degree of strength since there's are certain point where it's essentially needed to move forward in the game but it doesn't really tell you that.

lol yup that was cute

although there are a few more tricks to pull, like aggravate, blitzkrieg and double up. made that dude my bitch that way, it was harder getting to him than ganking him was

[ganonfloyd]

the game can be a bit of a mess at times but finding those methods of breaking it and ganking everyone was always very satisfying to me

EDIT

i also remember a buddy of mine being like ITS THE HARDEST THING I'VE EVER PLAYED HARDER THAN ANY SMT GAME and that was a huge motivating factor for me to beat it just to rub it in his face

[Maniac]

college internet is being a huge bitch right on the day i'm trying to fucking download dark souls 3. it may or may not have just broken the download at like, 66% too. i dunno. can't wait to see

EDIT: yup, i had to abort it because it did something really fucking weird. good job, MSU, you wasted four fucking hours.

[Maniac]

the dark souls-ening resumes. i'm prolly just gonna take screenshots of this guy rather than say "this place/boss is hard" because omg



look at this sexy little bitch

[Random]

they look 15

[Maniac]

lol

it's mainly the angle and the shading. he mostly looks gaunt, pallid and kinda creepy in-game -- didn't quite succeed at making him look good, although i guess he looks better than most default souls characters do, all of whom are varying degrees of subhuman



not as much of a raging success as my dark souls 2 character, tho

[Maniac]

boss spoilers~

Curse-rotted Greatwood is an interesting boss. Feels like a more realized Demon of Song where it's weird and shambly and kind of interesting to watch move that actually stands up to the scrutiny of a broadsword. Prolly the first good boss of Dark Souls 3 so far.

[ganonfloyd]

boss spoilers~

Curse-rotted Greatwood is an interesting boss. Feels like a more realized Demon of Song where it's weird and shambly and kind of interesting to watch move that actually stands up to the scrutiny of a broadsword. Prolly the first good boss of Dark Souls 3 so far.

I really dug that guy.

[Maniac]

My first two invaders spawned within about 5 minutes of each other, leaving me no time to recover estus. Beat both of them, but not for a lack of trying -- I was never good at PvPing with a straight sword, and I mostly won because I grossly outdamaged them (about six one-handed strikes from my +5 heavy broadsword did the trick) They both used katanas, and surprise surprise, they're still good -- a two-handed swing seems to outspeed a one-handed swing of a broadsword, so that was annoying.

"Fashion" souls update: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=664510075

Not much time in the near future to play. Got a geometry project to research, as well as two quizzes and a very large homework assignment due on Friday. I wish I could afford to be lazy.

[Maniac]

Well, I got in what little time I could allot to the game only to fight two of the shittiest bosses in the game lol

[Maniac]

boss spoilers~

Beat Pontiff Sulyvahn on the first try. It was about as close as a fight could get, though -- zero estus left (granted, I came in a few estus short 'cause I was all "yeah, I got this"), used an ember, a sliver of my health bar remaining, unloaded my stamina gauge on the last barrage as he brought out his shadow again and about a second left before he would have flown off into the air to prepare for an attack. Honestly, Dark Souls 2 left me really cynical about human bosses in these games, albeit mostly because they decided that every human boss should basically be a clone of Artorias. I wasn't to impressed with either of the human bosses to date: the Abyss Watchers were pretty "yeah, whatever" and whatshisface from the beginning was kind of interesting for a first boss, but not much a mechanical standout. Sulyvahn, however, is pretty neat once he gets his shadow out -- it's really friggin' hard to get up close to him, but he keeps his shadow behind him constantly so it's hard to actually get at -- basically had to use throwing daggers and firebombs to take care of it, because there was no way in hell I could get up close. Kind of a cool boss, honestly.

[Maniac]

INVADERS because i guess the part after sulyvahn has a forest covenant thing or something

• First guy sucked, - claymore/shield combo, overreliant of blocking. But years of using DS3 tool has done awful things to my USB ports, so my controller disconnected midfight and I lost. That was cute.
• Second guy was an uchi-wielding mage. they were kind of a pain to deal with since my range is ass with this sword, but they had like, 600 HP and I did 250 per swing. Didn't take long to deplete their estus and kill them.
• Third one used an uchi and a spear. Low damage, but both had poison build-up. It's kind of annoying to deal with because being hit in the middle of dodging i-frames still causes build up. Regardless, easy fight.
• Fourth one invaded in the middle of the fight against the third, but I finished her off before he came in. Prolly the best player out of every invader I've fought -- used a large curved sword that actually hit quite hard/had bleed build up, and he had pretty good HP. Really aggressive, but easy to trick into getting himself locked in a combo so I could heal. Dunno if he ran out of estus (doubt it), but I ended up leaving myself at half health to goad him into attacking instead of healing, and I got the best of him.

So, that's 5/6 invaders killed, and really, I'm not counting that sixth. Pretty good, but I had similar results when Dark Souls 2 had just come out -- nobody has a long-term gameplan, enough experience with a variety of weapons or a sufficient-enough mastery of the mechanics yet, so I just tend to win with a reliable, tough-and-hardy build.

Gotta leave right now. Think I'll finish up this place when I get back, and that'll have to be the end of it for now.

[Maniac]

And there goes Aldrich.

He feels like a more credible variant of Gwyndolin -- keeps as far back as he can by moving all over the place and teleporting, and unleashes a barrage of spells and arrows to keep you back. He's not as defenseless up close, but his close-range attacks are all middling and leave him open since he's so big. He's really good at keeping you back though, so he's still quite an impressive foe. I'm just kinda tickled by the Gwyndolin call-back -- they managed to make one of Dark Soul's lesser bosses pretty interesting and dangerous while preserving the same general set of strengths and weaknesses he had, so I give him quite a few points for that. Think I'd rank him as my second favorite boss up to this point.