One Hour Review: Atelier Lulua – Rather boring start

As we all know, I was scheduled to play Atelier Lydie & Scumbag after finishing Atelier Firis, in order to round off the Mysterious series of games. But for various reasons I am shelving it for the meantime and will return after I’ve finished Atelier Lulua and maybe Ryza and maybe replayed one or two other games.

So I tried Atelier Lulua ~The Scion of Arland~ for an hour last night and… nothing really happened. Yeah, it’s only the first hour and nothing much is supposed to happen, but still it was extremely bland. Long introductions of Lulua, Arklys and Fellsgalaxen, as is common for the Arland series – that took around 10 minutes of the total time. Then gathering, walking around, fighting once or twice, synthesized one Craft, got to meet Lulua’s mentor Piana, then just like that the hour was over.

I suppose it’s a good thing. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy that first hour, when it was over I felt like it wasn’t nearly enough and I wanted to play for another hour. None of the characters turned me off, the battle system is nothing new, and for some reason I really like the font they used for everything. Why the font? I dunno, but I liked it. The alchemy system was a bit confusing, but I may get used to it as I keep playing. Or I might be confused all the way and still muddle through somehow, you never know. It’s too early to tell.

Alchemy in Atelier Lulua

I don’t understand a single thing I just read

Because of the early experience with Lydie & Scumbag, I was little apprehensive when there was a scene about giving Father Benon a piece of their minds. I thought it would end up with them giving him a piece of their feet instead, but luckily Lulua is seems to have a normal brain and to be fairly well brought up. Guess I’ve got nothing to worry about.

Is the Atelier series misandrist?! Nah.

Another scruffy, ineffectual father figure? Someone at Gust has daddy issues!

Since Atelier Lulua is the game I feel the most like continuing, once I’m done with Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (which is going swimmingly), I’ll jump back into it and then decide where to go from there. See ya.

One Hour Review: Atelier Lydie & Suelle – What the hell

Aight, so I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to try Atelier Lydie & Suelle ~The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings~ because I pulled Suelle in Atelier Online and she looked cute. BIG MISTAKE. Don’t judge a character by her cutesy design. What the hell is wrong with this girl’s head, and what is wrong with the Gust writers who put this insanity on my screen and expected me to like it?

I only played one hour, as previously agreed upon. An hour doesn’t seem like very long, but it was more than enough time to meet some major characters, see the town, get an idea of the story, go through tutorials about gathering and synthesis and even fight my first battle.

Up till right before I quit, I thought it was an okay-ish game. It still runs sluggishly on my desktop so I’ll have to Google some fixes, but I’ll get round to that sometime. The tiny town reminds me uncomfortably of Atelier Sophie, that garbage game, and I’ve already heard that the scale of the game is much smaller than Atelier Firis. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as it’s not too small. And really, as long as there’s enough alchemy and the story isn’t too annoying I don’t mind the size of the world map much.

The problem came right before the hour expired. All along I’d been bothered by how rude Suelle was towards her father, even calling him “dummy-daddy” like it’s funny or something. But I figured the writers were just trying to create a “livelier” and “spunkier” heroine in contrast to the bland Sophie and cutesy Firis. And some people do have this casual, faux-adversarial relationship with their parents, I don’t get it myself but whatever.

Someone wash her mouth out with soap

So far so bad, but then right after Lydie and Suelle got back from the world of the painting, the game went crazy. There was a scene where their father Roger spent all their money – a measly 300 cole – on paint and then Suelle… I couldn’t believe it… that crazy cow KICKED HER OWN FATHER!

Don’t go “Guwah!” Thrash some sense into the little brat!

No “poked,” not “picked,” not “tricked.” K I C K E D! Kicked her own father. When did fathers turn into footballs for any brat to kick them around left right and center anyhow?

What kind of no-good, low-level low-life do you have to be to kick another human being?

What kind of ill-bred, disrespectful, putrid piece of garbage do you have to be to raise your foot against your own father?

And not for any good reason but over 300 cole?!! I thought I was hallucinating or something, maybe I sniffed too many paint fumes from the game. I mean, HOW????? I can’t stop shaking my head. Haa…🤦

So that soured me on the game in a major way. You can’t just kick people like that. I wouldn’t even kick my neighbor’s dog, and he’s a bad dog. Bark bark bark from morning to evening, bark bark bark even at 2am. But the night a burglar stole my laptop, it slept like a baby, zzzz. Even then, I wouldn’t kick that hellhound. How much more my own family member, the father who raised me from birth. This is nuts…

From now on, this game is no longer called Atelier Lydie & Suelle; it’s called Lydie & Scumbag. As for whether I’ll continue to play it or not… ugh, I don’t wanna. I’m probably going to, eventually, but I’ve moved it to the back of the queue automatically. I’ll play the more sensible ones with heroines with an actual moral compass first, then I’ll circle back to Lydie & Scumbag in the future. See ya!

One Hour Retry: Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (minor spoilers)

tokyo xanadu ex+ banner headerHiiiii guys~ Remember two days ago when I said I would be playing various games for an hour each? Yeahhh, that plan is kinda on hold now~ Just for a little while so I can finish or definitively give up on Tokyo Xanadu eX+. Don’t blame me, blame Atelier Lydie & Suelle. I was trying to install and run it on my laptop and it was giving me all kinds of troubles. Slow framerate, controls not working, flat out not responding to anything.

I blame the laptop mostly, but either way it was a frustrating experience. Eventually I put the game aside and concentrated on getting the controller working. And after that, naturally I had to test the controller. And Tokyo Xanadu eX+ was right there on the desktop. So I set the alarm for an hour and dived back in and now I’m hooked again.

After all, it’s not like I dropped the game because I disliked it. My save file reads 25 hours for a good reason. When the game actually lets you play, combat is a lot of fun. Enemy density is a bit low, but the dungeon lengths are getting nice and long and the puzzles aren’t too annoying yet, so I look forward to every dive into the Eclipse. When they let me dive, that is. I timed today’s session and approximately 20 minutes of it was spend in the dungeon while the other 40 was spent watching cutscenes before and after the dungeon run. That’s rough.

IIRC the reason I stopped playing was because I took a long break, and when I came back I couldn’t remember any of the controls, or any of the story. I still barely remember the story except we’re trying to save an idol singer from ‘angel’ possession. And we’ve formed some kind of monster-busting team. Now I think of it, I was very annoyed back then because Falcom made me play for 20 hours THEN began to introduce the main story. But that’s just Falcom’s way, so I dunno why I bothered being upset.

So anyway, if not for the one hour alarm, I would have felt too lazy to jump back into Tokyo Xanadu eX+. This is like the third or fourth time I’ve walked away and every time I have to memorize all the controls again. This means jump, this plus this means jump attack, this is a power attack, this is a strike, and on and on and on and on. I’m terrible at keeping those kinds of things in mind. I prefer the Rune Factory kind of “mash X to slash” attack. But, as with most good ARPGs, once you do master the controls, it feels amazing running and dashing and hitting, racking up the combos and finally, finally shaving that last point of HP off a boss. There’s nothing like a good ARPG boss battle.

All this is to explain why I have to put the One Hour Review plan on hold so I can finish/drop Tokyo Xanadu eX+. I will play and comment on Atelier Lydie & Suelle ASAP if I can get it to run on my desktop. However if I wait too long, I’ll forget the controls in TX for the umpteenth time. Sure I could still go ahead and try other games for an hour like I said I would, but I don’t see the point. After all, the ultimate goal of the exercise was to find something I wanted to play, and I found something I want to play. Better to clear this out of the way first and then continue.

Also to be perfectly honest, I really don’t want to play FFXIII again. And The Alliance Alive, eh, if it weren’t from Furyu I wouldn’t touch it. That chibi graphical style reminds me too much of games like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy 3 DS, Bravely Default and Legend of Legacy. All of those memories churn up unpleasant feelings in me, so I’m not so hot on reliving them again by playing AA. I’m better off using the 3DS to play Picross e8 and e9 instead. Ooh, Picross💕

In summary: Tokyo Xanadu eX+ time! See you later!

One Hour Review: Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment

Kirito fights Philia because she doesn't instantly cave to his charms

Join my harem or die!

I’ve realized now that if I don’t force myself to sit down and try some actual video games, I’ll be playing Candy Crush Soda Saga till the end of the year. At the same time, however, the thought of committing to another 40-hour slogfest doesn’t appeal to me at all. I mean yeah, in practice I’ve spent waaaaay longer than that on casual games, but it’s the thought, you see?

So I thought about applying a productivity hack to video game playing. Instead of saying I would “start a new game,” I set an alarm clock for an hour and told myself I would “try something new for only one hour.” My plan is to do this for a couple of games and then see which ones I want to pursue and which ones to drop.

First up, Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. I watched the Sword Art Online anime and it really wasn’t that bad despite the many negative reviews online. I even watched season two, and I’ve been meaning to watch the rest someday. While I didn’t have much success with the first SAO game I tried (Infinity Moment), the idea of a colorful RPG with a different take on the usual turn-based system was appealing-ish. In theory-ish.

sword art online hollow fragment screenshot

How? Tell me how!

Results

I started playing around 3pm, and stopped around 4:30. A little longer than I had planned, but I also spent a bit of that time eating lunch and playing with my phone, so it all evened out. And I must say, the “one hour” limit of focused play is a really good thing. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have made it past the 10 minute mark.

There was no tutorial for what different attacks did until the end of the first dungeon, so I was going through this dungeon, fighting weak mobs which nevertheless have a lot of HP, and mashing buttons without any idea what they did. My party member Philia would be begging me to stun the enemy and I’d be like WUH? Stun? Huh? Even worse, my main character Kirito is already level 100 with 32000 HP, so the puny EXP dropped by the enemies didn’t do jack for me. All in this really really boring featureless dungeon with no items or treasures to discover.

Luckily at the end of the dungeon, they finally provided some clarity about skills and how and why to use them. Also I realized too late that enemies in the first dungeon won’t attack you if you don’t aggro them, so just ignore them and run towards your target.

TBH I still don’t think I fully understand the system yet, and the game has been talking non-stop since then so I haven’t had a chance to fight again. The endless talking is a little more bearable than usual because I’m familiar with the characters. Just that IMO they’ve made Kirito too much of a typical harem protagonist. You know, the type who is always bullied and pushed aorund by girls and can’t ever tell them off or stand up for himself. The Kirito I know had much more of a backbone of that. Furthermore he was clearly a one-woman man and everyone knew it. But whatever, it’s not canon and I don’t care that much.

Oh yeah, story. Well so far Hollow Fragment is a blend of Infinity Moment and a new plot. As in IM, the characters beat the boss on the 75th floor but instead of clearing the game they’re still stuck inside. Now they’re aiming for the 100th floor. Oh, and for some completely improbably reason, Leafa and Best Girl Shinon were also warped into the game. How possible? Leafa almost makes sense because she’s related to Kirito, but Shinon literally dropped from the sky with no explanation. How does this even work when they’re not wearing the gimmicked NervGears Kayaba sold? Improbable fanservice is improbable and fanservicey!

Also in the midst of all that, Kirito got warped into a special area called the Hollow Area which only he and one other party member can enter. And now he has to deal with two girls, Philia and Strea, who will of course fall in love with him because he’s a harem protagonist. The goals of the game seem to be two fold: get up to the 100th floor and explore the Hollow Area.

Will I keep playing? I’ll give it another hour before making up my mind. The first hour was frustrating at first, then promising, then the characters have been talking ever since so I don’t know any more. It will all depend on whether the battle system “clicks” with me or not. So far it seems like a watered down Xenoblade Chronicles where your character auto-attacks until you make them use skills or items. I hear old school MMORPGs played like that in general but I wouldn’t know.

Depending on how the skill trees go, how complex battles get, how annoying the enemies become and how interesting the dungeons turn out to be, the next hour could be the last. Or I could decide to make a proper go of Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. That second hour will have to wait till I’ve One-Hour-reviewed some other games, though.

Other games in the One Hour series:

Atelier Lydie & Suelle
The Lost Child (just discovered that all the versions are incompatible with the PSTV. Cancelled for now)
The Alliance Alive
Final Fantasy XIII

There are about 200,000 other games I want to play (conservative number), but these are the candidates I’m most serious about right now. I’ll play all of them for one hour each, arrange them in order of desirability and play all the non-dropped ones. Then I’ll scrounge up another batch of games and process them that way. Let’s see how things go.

Last note: just in case you’re doubting whether one hour is enough to properly see what a game has to offer… it probably isn’t. However the point isn’t for them to show me everything. It’s enough if they give me a general idea of the story, gameplay and characters and entice me to keep playing. Any game that can’t do that in one whole hour isn’t for me.

Granblue Fantasy: Cha-la, Head Cha-la, Sparking!

When I did my annual Granblue Fantasy “state of the grid” post the other day, I realized I’ve been saying I’ll replace my Dark mainhand for ages but haven’t gotten round to it. Actually my existing Rise of the Beasts dark sword is also plenty useful, but since I have a ton of crystals and tickets to waste, I’m going to spark a Parazonium to use for dagger classes and get Orchid in the mix.

I may also spark again at the end of summer to get Silva’s swimsuit skin as well. She’s my game-long MVP so she deserves some new clothes once in a while.

No need to waste time on long intros, since this is my 4th or 5th spark and I have a ton of SSRs already. IIRC I have all the R characters and almost all the SR characters released to date as well. Thus apart from my spark target, I’m very likely to pull a ton of bronze, silver and gold moons (for non-players: in Granblue Fantasy, if you pull a character that you have already, the game gives you an item called a “moon” that you can trade for items in the shop. It’s not like most other gacha games where you need to pull duplicates to uncap characters).

TBH I was looking forward to racking up some Gold moons because I was going to exchange them for a Siero Pick Ticket and get Shiva, but I checked just now and it turns out I’ve had more than enough gold moons all along. Huh. Btw, for any new Granblue Fantasy players reading this post, DO NOT buy a Siero Pick Ticket with 150 gold moons. By far the best use of your gold moons is for damascus ingots to uncap weapons. If you’re running a Hades grid, you can also trade for a Gisla or two, if that’s still meta.If you must buy a Siero Pick ticket, use it for characters you cannot get through the game, like Visa Zooey or Bluray characters. Wasting a Siero Pick on Shiva is for lazy and jaded players like me who don’t care about the optimum way to play the game. But really, you won’t be a newbie any more by the time you get 150 gold moons, so I don’t know why I bother lecturing you.

On with the spark! I already pulled 14 times, 4 from the daily draws and 10 single-pull tickets. Didn’t get anything good, of course. I have another 94 single pull tickets so I’ll pull them all for now.

Summer Cassius get:Summer Alexiel. Lol, what are those ridiculous glasses?108 sparks get. Used 600 crystals, now I have 110 sparks. I also have 3 10-pull tickets, might as well waste them here. Unlike crystals, draw tickets only have one use, so there’s no need to save them when sparking.

Ooh, Summer Silva. End-of-summer spark is cancelled then, unless something great is released.Naoise. Have I ever had a Naoise in my party? Maybe a free SR or something? Can’t remember.140 sparks get. The rest is crystals.

Summer Teena get.Also pulled a Freyr dupe. I thought he was new, but turns out I have two already. I have sunlight stones to spare so I might fully uncap him later.

SR Aster get.Granblue Fantasy AsterThe rest were all dupes or gold moons. Time to get what I came for.Total tally

SSR: Summer Alexiel, Summer Silva, Naoise, Summer Teena, Orchid (spark target)
SR: Summer Cassius, Aster
Gold moons and SSR dupes: Yggdrasil, Summer Alexiel dupe, Selfira, Levin sisters, Romeo, Selfira (again), Summer Silva dupe, Freyr, Summer Danua, Drang

Okay, I got what I wanted, including Summer Silva. Processing the Parazonium and adding it to my grid will take a little longer due to laziness, but I’ll get round to it in the end. And now I’ll have to find other ways to waste my remaining crystals. 90,000 are reserved for a New Years’ spark. The rest, eh, I’ll figure something out.

Much more importantly, we must solve the question of how Silva looks in her new swimsuit. If it’s too ugly or tacky, I won’t let her wear it. Let’s just use the Earth unit and see. And I’ll throw Summer Alexiel in while I’m at it…

Well it’s nice enough. Kind of ordinary, but nice. I’m not really a fan of bikinis so IMO a yukata look would have been better for Silva. It would also stop her from looking so much like Summer Heles. Still a free skin is a free skin so no complaints. I should have picked a better enemy and not Leviathan, because that dark watery background makes them look cold. Ever been to the pool or the beach on a freezing cold day? Brrr.

Also in the process of sorting out my new stuff, I realized I can use Sunlight Stones to uncap the omega summons to level 200. Grinding for mats? Hell no. This means I won’t have any Sunlight Stones to spare for uncapping Shiva, so I will hold off on getting that Siero Pick Ticket for now.

Okay, that’s enough Granblue Fantasy for one day. Adieu~