Entaku no Seito – Haha! Take that, last boss!

entaku no seito cast49 hours, yiiiiikes! I didn’t think I’d been playing that long! The last boss wasn’t too hard – unlike many other mid-bosses I managed to beat him in one try. I kind of had to, because if I’d retreated and come back another day I would have had to fight the last-but-one boss again, only this time without getting EXP. DO NOT WANT. So desperation added +1 to all my mental stats and with a combination of luck and just stubbornly hanging in there I managed to take him down with minimal loss of life. If anyone finished the fight without spamming Holy Shield with Lolon I want to hear from you, you liar.

Now then, there’s some tempting-looking bonus content that just opened up and that I’m itching to dive right into, but first I said I would write a few impressions of Entaku no Seito after ‘finishing’ it, so let’s get that out of the way. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Tales of Hearts after 8 hours

tales of hearts ds coverI mentioned after I finished HanaIchi that I was playing 3 games at the same time. One of them is Fire Emblem Awakening, one of them is Entaku no Seito and one of them, which I hadn’t mentioned so far for fear of jinxing it, is Tales of Hearts. I haven’t had very good luck with Tales games so far, but ToH started out quite positively so I wanted to give it at least 10 hours to develop before making my first comments on it.

8 hours is close enough. Especially since I’m putting the game on hiatus for a while (Yuraio, tournament, not feeling it). It’s not exactly bad, but it’s just pissing me off and I don’t need the aggravation right now.

Good stuff: Both the world map and the dungeon maps are easy to navigate. This was part of the reason why I quit Tales of the… the one that came after Tempest. I thought the Spiria dungeons would suck, but they’re kind of fun. Some of the skits are amusing. Bright happy colors! Avoidable encounters! Frequent level ups! I quite like the item-based Soma Build system. Battles are on Easy so all I have to do is mash A and they’re over in a few seconds. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Quick overview of Entaku no Seito

entaku no seito psp coverI’m so busy playing three games at the same time + real life that I haven’t posted in a few days, but I’m alive and well. And hungry, so let’s make this quick.

Entaku no Seito (lit. Students of the Round Table) is a Japanese first-person dungeon crawler developed and published by Experience Inc. Experience has made a number of Wizardry-inspired crawlers, mainly on the PC, but none of them had been localized until Demon Gaze came out in 2011. It doesn’t seem like Entaku no Seito will ever make it West, but NISA is publishing Operation Abyss in April and we might get the PSVITA port of Stranger of Sword City if we’re lucky. I really should start saving for a VITA.

Story

“We have to stop the Last Boss or the whole world is doomed!” cries the hero of every RPG ever. But would happen if the heroes failed? What happens after the Game Over screen? Entaku no Seito is set 100 years after the good guys got wiped out by super evil demon Ol=Ohma. The world has indeed gone to hell, except for a few tiny pockets of resistance. But there’s hope. The hero has been resurrected in a new body and now he’s busy gathering a new crew to take Ol=Ohma down once and for all. Will he have better luck the second time round? Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Replayed Fire Emblem Awakening on Hard. Meh.

fire emblem chrom

Hey! Since when does Chrom have feet?!

When I played Fire Emblem Awakening two years ago, I thought playing the game on Normal instead of Hard was a big part of why it seemed so dull and uninspired to me. After all, without any worthwhile challenge 90% of the game system just went out of the window, making it just like any other SRPG I’d ever played, only easier and with a messier story.

After finishing Tokyo Majin I felt like an SRPG (I always feel like an SRPG) and borrowed FEA again to test my theory, but! It was too late for this experiment. Between the time of my first playthrough and this game, I had already discovered the joys of playing Fire Emblem in Casual Mode. I can’t go back. I won’t go back!

The problem is that Fire Emblem is designed around users playing Classic permadeath mode. Once you take away that fear of death, the enemies are revealed for the wimps that they are and each battle just becomes a matter of bulldozing and steamrolling everything in your path.

If Intelligent Systems had wanted to keep things the same, they would have removed world map Risen battles from Casual mode, thus making it important to keep your characters alive as long as possible so they can gain EXP. As it is I don’t even blink when any character bites the dust and I don’t make any effort to keep healers and squishy mages out of harm’s way. I think Sumia has died on virtually every map I have fielded her on, but it’s all good because Casual Mode. This rocks!

So, several easy deaths and easy resurrections later, I’ve made it up to the Endgame. For most of the game I still didn’t pair anyone up and I only reclassed Lon’qu and Sully because they were terrible. I used more Silver and other powerful weapons because to their credit the enemies have more HP and DEF now but that’s about it for all the difference Hard makes. Oh yeah, and either Support rates grow more slowly on Hard or I’m doing it wrong, because apart from Chrom’s forced marriage, no one else has reached S support with anyone else. Which is kinda good because I like keeping my options open and don’t particularly need any kids. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku – Final roundup

hanayaka nari waga ichizoku coverHmm, I wasn’t going to do this, but for the sake of closure… Besides, I’ve talked about the gameplay and the various routes I did, but I haven’t said much about my thoughts on Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku quality-wise, so here goes. In point form. Which always ends up longer than if I’d just written a proper review ^^;

Pluses

– Short routes, snappy dialogue, frequent scene changes and a small cast means you can 100% the game easily without trying.
– It’s fun (and funny) to watch the happier interactions between the brothers, especially on Susumu’s route and on Tadashi’s route. I’m a level 98 Sibling Teaser in RL so I can totally relate.
– I like the non-anime-ish character designs. Realistic eye sizes, realistic hair and skin colors, realistic clothing choices for the era. They don’t go so far as to look like real human beings or anything, but the non-cartoony designs are a nice change from the usual.
– I also liked the fashions and cultural attitudes of the Taisho era – family means everything, you marry when you’re 18, women have no real say in who they marry, foreign foods like cake are an exciting novelty, everyone who wants to seem cultured is reading English or German books, celebrating your birthday on your birthdate is weird, men and women dancing together is like AAAH THE WORLD IS ENDING!! etc. There’s a glossary of Taisho keywords that explains many of these customs and concepts if you’re really interested (I wasn’t that interested). Do please go on, this is most interesting →