Dragon Quest VII – Haven’t dropped it yet

But I came pretty close just now when I got wiped out by a boss named Gracos. I thought I might have to grind to get past him and right now I’m in the frame of mind where I’d rather drop a hundred games than grind for even an hour. Luckily it didn’t come to that because I beat him on my next try. It’s largely a matter of staying on top of healing and praying he doesn’t use that Jolly Rager + All attack too often.

What else can I say by way of update? I’m 33 hours into Dragon Quest VII, average party level of 23. Just got the flying carpet so I can go save the legendary hero, wherever he is. Right now I’m exploring modern-day Wetlock before heading back to the Shrine of Mysteries to raise a few more islands. Just received a monster-clearing quest from Professor Wade. Feels like a single stone fragment is a poor reward for the work I’m about to do, but JRPGs will be JRPGs. Time to head to Highendreigh Tower again.

Wait, before that. It has just occurred to me that I could use a smartphone or a notepad to cheat at that matching game in the casino… But surely I wouldn’t… Oh yes I would. The only thing is I don’t remember where any casinos can be found. Hmm, I think there was one near the inn before Alltrades Abbey? I owe it to science to find out if my little ploy would work. Lessee…

*15 minutes later*

Nah, I’m good.

*Huff, wheeze* I did it! I won! That was harder than I’d expected. I only won one out of three game and it was all because of that darned Shuffle card. No wonder Square-Enix didn’t bother adding a timer or any other anti-cheating device. You just have to hope you’re lucky enough to get the Shuffle card right at the start or really late. Still, winning 1/3 games is better than I’ve done to date. I’ve lost 800 coins and gained… lemme pop out to the conveniently-located item store real quick… Oops, ended up selling a lot of other stuff I didn’t need. But the war hammer alone was worth 6000 coins so I’m definitely ahead.

In retrospect, it’s good I waited so long to play DQVII. Now I’m really hungry for a regular, normal JRPG so I’m having a great time. It’s probably too early to do this, but if I were to add it to my ranking of other Dragon Quest games I’ve played, it would look like this: DQIV > DQVII > DQV >>>>>> DQVI >>>infinity>>DQIX. Though DQIX was my first so maybe if I gave it another chance its standing might improve. Not gonna happen though. It’s a really close toss-up between V and VII but I married this really horrible wom– female creature in DQV and I’ve been kicking myself ever since. As irritating as Maribel is, at least the main character is smart enough not to marry her (please don’t marry her in the ending, please don’t marry her in the ending).

All right then, next plan of action – abuse the heck out of the casino for the next hour. It’s not grinding if you’re cheating. Then Highendreigh Tower. Then the Shrine of Mysteries. Then more of the same stuff I’ve been doing so far. At some point I’ll need to track down the medal king and exchange all those medals, but that can wait till later. I should also try to fight some more so I can unlock job classes faster but I don’t wanna so I’m not gonna. I don’t really like job systems in RPGs, to be honest. It’s cool if everyone has a fixed path with little variation, but too much choice stresses me out.

I’ll be back for another update when I hit 50 hours or finish/drop Dragon Quest VII, whichever comes first.

Finished Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Curry God, a cute-for-nothing game

Next time I drop a game near the end and I’m tempted to back and give it a last try, I’ll tell myself “Remember Sorcery Saga?” and then I’ll shudder and move on with my life. I am way past the point where I’m content just to finish a game. Now I ask myself what I got out of it, and in this case it’s a big fat 15-20 hours of nothing. So why did I finish it? Because it wasn’t quite bad enough to not finish. I’d categorize Sorcery Saga as “Thoroughly mediocre but not actually terrible.” Those are the games I have the hardest time with, because I’m not having any fun but I’m not not having fun so I just keep playing and feel very meh at the end.

Problems with Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Curry God

It sucks.

Yeah. I just said it’s not actually terrible, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. It has just enough polish to lift it above that level but that’s it.

Story? The story is okay-ish. Dungeon crawlers don’t need stories anyway so the simple motivation of gathering ingredients to make the ultimate curry was fine with me. What about the characters? In rogue-likes, it’s enough if you can root for the main character. Seeing as they’ll be dying so often in your care, it’s the least you can do. But Pupuru… I can’t really get a handle on her personality. She seems a bit bratty and obnoxious to me, TBH. And because I don’t really get her, it seems kind of fake how she’s so fond of Kuu or so determined to help Etanya. Like really? Were you that nice and caring? Maybe it’s because we rarely see her interact with people who know her already, like her so-called best friend Lilica who all but disappears after the introduction.

The other characters weren’t any better. Very slightly amusing the first time you meet them, then they repeat the same jokes over and over and over again from start to end until you’re completely sick of them. Actually I was completely sick of them by the second hour. They even got downright creepy at some point, especially the stalker Gigadis and his stalker Cliora. One-note characters with one very boring note.

Gameplay: As far as rogue-likes go, Sorcery Saga is bottom-tier. The enemy density is too low, and it’s too easy to hang on to weapons that make you near-invincible from start to finish. The enemies barely put up a fight, almost none of them use long-range attacks, most traps are easy to spot, Pupuru’s HP heals at a stunningly fast rate so you rarely need healing potions, she moves like a slug even on fast-forward, and so on and so forth. I like easy rogue-likes, really like them, but I don’t want to steam-roll everybody like that. They’re probably saving all the challenge for the bonus dungeons like Shiren the Wanderer likes to do, but once the credits roll, I’m done.

Furthermore, it doesn’t even offer the stress-free experience an easy game should provide. Instead of playing smoothly through the game, you have to waste time looking out for your horrible, annoying, useless, trouble-making, exists-only-to-make-your-life-harder “pet” Kuu. I can count on one hand the number of times that thing actually helped me. Instead he’s mostly there to get between me and monsters so I have to maneuver around him. Or he’s there to stink up the cutscenes with his unfunny gluttonous ways.

On top of that, there are way too many useless items in this game. Should be a minor issue but Pupuru’s backpack is so small that within a few steps of entering a dungeon you’ll be tossing everything in sight at Kuu. Most dungeon crawlers have a limited backpack issue, but usually it’s a case of trying desperately to hang on to (potentially) useful items. What if I need that rice ball later. These arrows will definitely come in handy. Oh good, a new shield. That’s how it should be. In Sorcery Saga it’s just Junk. More Junk. Unidentified Junk. Junk Junk Junk.

BTW, since the game is called “Curse of the Curry God,” there’s a whole gimmick about making and eating curry in the dungeons, but it didn’t make that much of a difference. The full set of ingredients was hard to gather much of the time and the effects wore off pretty quickly. Pointless addition was pointless.

Any positives?

It’s short, I guess. And easy so it’s a good introduction for anyone scared of rogue-likes. Oh, and bright happy colors! And if you’re hungry when you play it, it might make you crave curry just a little bit. The music is okay except for the pseudo-Indian music in the final dungeon. I like the boss stage music, it’s very Persona. Load times were short, I didn’t encounter any bugs and the game only froze on me once. Japanese reviewers complained of bugs, but they seem to have been largely fixed for the English release. So there’s nothing wrong with Sorcery Saga from a technical standpoint. It’s just mediocre and unsatisfying when you actually play it.

Ending Spoilers

BTW, the Legendary Magic Curry you spend the whole game making? Your useless pet Kuu eats it all before anyone can taste it. It’s supposed to be funny. Laugh.

Dragon Quest VII – A JRPGish JRPG for when you just want to play a JRPG

I’d been wanting to play Dragon Quest VII since 2013, but people kept talking me out of it. They said it was slow, they said it was repetitive, they said nothing happened in the game for the first 40 hours. They were right. But they were warning me from the perspective of someone who thinks RPGs should be finished once they are started. Since my gaming resolution for 2018 is “It is enough to play a little bit of a game,” isn’t this the perfect year to experience what DQ7 has to offer?

Well even if you say it’s not, I’ve already started it and played 14 hours and 51 minutes, so it’s too late to offer your opinion. Just sit back and root for me as I play until I can’t play any more and then move on. But to be honest, I’m having a really good time with Dragon Quest 7, so I don’t see myself quitting for the next little while. I mean, why should I?

The nice thing about Dragon Quest is you know exactly what you’re getting into when you start. The battle systems are largely the same, the enemies, the leveling system, the saving system, the maps, the town and castle layouts. It’s not the kind of game you play when you want something new. And I’ve been complaining for a while that I don’t want to deal with complicated game mechanics or reams and reams of story so TBH this is the perfect game for me. I really like it.

Uhh, should I explain the story? It’s been so long since I wrote a post I’ve forgotten how I normally do it. There’s not much of a story any way. Long, long ago 99% of the world was sealed away in darkness. Now the hero and his friends are collecting Fragments of the world map and putting them together to restore the world to its former state. That’s why the 3DS version has the subtitle “Fragments of the Forgotten Past.” The main character and his friends gather fragments and unlock an island, help solve its problems, gather more fragments and unlock another island, and on and on for the past 14 hours I’ve been playing. Very simple stuff, though some of the problems you deal with don’t have very happy resolutions. You won’t be getting your “Happily ever after” fix here, no sirree.

Battle system is Press A to win, with the occasional hard boss battle. Usually JRPGs let you go on in that vein for a while then drop That One Boss on you halfway through, but it’s been smooth sailing so far. Enemies and chests give good amounts of cash so you don’t have to grind to buy equipment either. There only one problem: the encounter rate is HIGH! Not as bad as Dragon Quest 6, but still way up there. And the Holy Waters, they do nothing! If anything gets me to drop this game, it will be the monsters. They’re not impossible to dodge but they’re everywhere, and they spawn immediately you get out of a battle instead of giving you like a 5-second breather or something. Arrgh, so frustrating.

Characters… Maribel needs to die. She’s not cute, she’s not funny and she runs out of MP too quickly to be useful in battle. Ruff is cute. I like the wolf. Kiefer is just kinda there. Kinda ugly for a prince too, but that’s what I get for playing too many otome games. The localization is excellent and my party always has a lot to say about every little thing. The nice thing about the itinerant nature of DQ7 is that you get to meet a lot of different villagers and NPCs as you travel around, so there are a lot of characters. Nobody too interesting yet, but a nice mix of characters and settings. I like it. I’m always low-key excited to see who I’ll be meeting next, which is a good thing.

TL;DR – I’ll be playing Dragon Quest VII for the next couple of days/weeks. I really like it but I’m not expecting too much. I don’t have any games lined up after this (or rather I have way too many so I’m overwhelmed) so I’ll just take each day one game at a time.

Played nothing but Picross for a while, but I’m ready to play other stuff now

I played loads of Picross! Played as much of e through e6 as I could, saving e7 and e8 for a nice long weekend. Instead my focus has turned to Picross 3D Round 2, which is smoother to play than the original in many ways, but also quite frustrating because you have to juggle two colors and end up making silly mistakes because you clicked Blue instead of Yellow, rrrgggh. I’ll post more about it when I finish. The credits already rolled but they gave me even more puzzles, wheee!

For a while there I was only playing Picross because I didn’t feel like dealing with long stories or complicated mechanics. I’m still not ready, and TBH I don’t think I ever will be. It’s possible my days of playing anything with an involving system are over. At least for the next little while I’m content to play stuff with very simple controls. Press A to do everything. B to cancel. Press triangle to bring up the menu. Nothing crazier than that.

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Curry God – Reached the final dungeon. I think I’ve seen enough so I’m ready to drop it, but I’ll give the dungeon a quick run through, go as far as I can and then call it a day.

Atelier Meruru Plus – I felt like doing some more crafting so I started this up, but… Totori is still too fresh in my mind, so this feels like the same thing all over again. It’s especially true since I haven’t played many games this year so I haven’t had a chance to forget the last game. I still played through the intro and made a save file when the game gets under way proper, but I’ll sandwich another game or two in-between before I start this for reals.

That’s it, just a quick update of what I’m up to these days. Next time I’ll have a final report on either Sorcery Saga or Picross 3D Round 2. See ya!

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl – As annoying as I’d always suspected

I dropped Conception II. At some point I didn’t feel like playing it any more, so that was that. It’s in accordance with my motto for 2018: “It’s enough to play just a little bit of a game.” In Conception II‘s case I played a lot and enjoyed it a fair bit, saw most of what it had to offer and I’m not ruling out finishing it someday. For now, it is enough.

The “It is Enough” principle also applies to the next game I played, Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl. I mentioned long ago that I’d always avoided the Etrian Odyssey series because I suspected the presence of F.O.Es would make exploring annoying. Oh, I should explain for the sake of non-fans, F.O.Es are overpowered enemies that you have no chance of beating when you first encounter them. I don’t know why they even exist in this game, but they do. So instead of spending your time happily exploring and hugging the walls to get 100% completion you have to duck and dodge and play peek-a-boo with crazy monsters. Unless you’re super into stealth games, it’s not much fun.

The fun will probably come later once you’re strong enough to come back and take them down, but I don’t want to deal with that right now. That’s why I stayed away from EO so long. But the Etrian Odyssey IV demo was pretty fun, and I’d heard all kinds of improvements (like self-drawing maps) had been made to Millennium Girl so I thought, why not. And then I played for 3 hours. And I realized why not.

The F.O.Es were bad enough, but then you have these rock pig things constantly zooming around the undergrowth. Like seriously, just let me breathe, why are you getting all up in my business, aaarrrgghhh!! Readers will stop and ask me, “But you knew all this before you even started the game!” Yeah, I did. I did but… Huh. I have no excuse.

It’s a colorful and vibrant game with an interesting skill system so maybe I shouldn’t be so hasty to drop it. It’s likely that playing two dungeon crawlers back-to-back is making me less patient with the second one. So Etrian Odyssey Untold is shelved indefinitely while I try something completely different, but I’ll get back to it one day. Maybe.

That “something completely different” was going to be Octopath Traveler but. Eh. I don’t have a Switch any more because my brothers and I dissolved our Switch partnership due to “scheduling conflicts.” The kind of scheduling conflicts you get when you have three homebodies who all love gaming. The good news is I get my money back. The bad news is I don’t want to spend that money on my own Switch, especially since I’ve played what I really wanted to play – Xenoblade Chronicles 2. For the rest of 2018 I’m going to focus on cleaning up any last stragglers on the DS and PSP and exploring a little more on the VITA and PC. That’s enough of an update for one day. See ya!