Castlevania Aria of Sorrow + Real Rode Portable

Actually I have all but ditched Aria of Sorrow entirely to focus on Real Rode Portable. I started Castlevania, ran around a bit, killed the first boss, but then I felt like I was missing something. The game lacked a certain feminine touch. The last three or four games I’ve played have all featured female protagonists, but none of them were the least bit ‘girly’. I wanted that ‘girly’ factor for a change, which is why I had to put Aria of Sorrow away for a bit. I’ll be back later.

That said, Real Rode Portable isn’t that girly either. It’s an otome game all right, with more bishies than I can shake a stick at, but it’s also a full-fledged RPG. Enemies, dungeons, equipment, levels, the works. As with other otome RPGs (Arabians Lost, Harukanaru series, Neo Angelique) the enemies are complete pushovers and the game is super newbie-friendly (except equipment costs a head and a torso). I took some screenshots meaning to explain the system today, but now I’m feeling too lazy to do so… not tomorrow. Maybe the day after.

It’s just occurred to me that I keep saying I’ll play game X and then I end up playing game Y instead. Here’s the latest-latest schedule of affairs. Real Rode –> Castlevania –> Princess Maker 3 –> very likely Summon Night 4 because I haven’t played an SRPG in a while, unless I can get my PS2 to work again, in which case I’ll play Dragon Shadow Spell. After that we’ll see.

Quick thoughts about Atelier Lise

atelier lise_frontI replayed Atelier Annie a while back, I replayed Atelier M, E & Anis recently and just the other day I finished replaying Atelier Lise. As with the Anis game, Lise is one of the earliest Atelier games I played, back when my Japanese was still slightly shaky and I didn’t have the patience to read each and every line the characters said. As a result I plunged headlong into disaster time and time again and walked away from the game utterly frustrated and defeated.

Now older and wiser and bolstered by the experiences of other  Atelier games I decided to do things right this time and 1. Actually pay attention to the events and 2. Work on my alchemy no matter how boring it seemed.

And it paid off quite handsomely. I easily got the best ending where Lise makes the Arcanas gem and buys her kingdom back. Thus I got to see the ending sequence, where they discover it was one of their ministers who had embezzled the kingdom’s money, after which they bring him to justice. And they all live happily ever after. I was also one battle away from the Defeat All Bosses ending, and I have a save that I could use to get that ending any time I please. What amazed me was how simple it all was. As long as you visit the town square from time to time, keep raising your alchemy level and follow up immediately on all rumors it’s quite easy to get the best ending on the first playthrough. What was I doing all this time? Truly it is said that a bad workman blames his tools. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Thoughts on Valkyrie Profile Lenneth after ragequitting because I couldn’t stand the platforming any more

valkyrie profile yumei freiThe title says it all, doesn’t it? So that’s the end of this post, good bye, see you all next time. ^_^

Though I suppose if you really want to know what happened I could humor you a bit. I was 27 hours in, deep inside the Jotunheim dungeon. There’s this room with these vanishing ice platforms and some torches with fire in them. You’re supposed to jump up on those platforms, make your way to the torches, grab the fire in them, bring them back to a torch at the bottom etc etc. I struggled and struggled and got one or two of the fires and then something in me just snapped. ENOUGH WITH THE STUPID PLATFORMS ALREADY! Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Thoughts on Valkyrie Profile Lenneth after 18 hours

Mothra?! What did Mothra do to you?!

Mothra?! What did Mothra do to you?!

Just reached chapter 6 in Valkyrie Profile Lenneth, just recruited characters from Flenceburg and Gerabellum, heading to Hai-Lan to pick up whoever’s ready to come with me now. Nothing much has changed in my opinion of the game, except I’m ready for it to end now.

I’m enjoying the dungeon crawling and the battling as much as ever, but no one’s posed a challenge to my party in a long, long time. I even swapped stalwarts like Arngrim, Kashell and Aelia out and put in the latest weaklings I’d gotten just to liven things up, but to no real avail. Valkyrie herself is too strong. I was enjoying leveling up for a while but now there’s nothing to put my CP into. New characters already come with enough CP to max out most of the most important skills anyway. Maybe I should have played on Hard mode after all.

As for the story… wait, what story? Oh there have been vague mutterings about Valkyrie’s origins, and Lezard spent like 5 minutes blathering on about the origins of the gods, but since I’m not getting the best ending anyway I don’t see why they’re wasting my time trying tease me with story elements. I’m not interested in that kind of story. I find the exploits of my heroes in Asgard much more interesting. I wish I could get missions like that instead, stopping fort constructions and negotiating with elves and stuff like that. Mindless dungeon crawling for the sake of leveling up troops is all good and nice, but it’s gotten a bit old now.

Anyway I hear the game isn’t very long unless you’re going for the ‘A’ ending, so I should be done soon. I don’t know if I want to replay it for the best end, not when I can just google it. But I do want to play VP2: Silmeria (come back to life my darling PS2!!!) and the DS game though. Maybe next year.

Thoughts on Valkyrie Profile Lenneth after 6 hours

valkyrie profile lenneth_frontI said I was going to play Princess Maker 3 last time, but then I thought I’d try Valkyrie Profile just a little bit to see what it was like. Then I played a little bit more. And a little bit more. And here we are, 6 hours later. It’s very early days, just chapter 2. About 172 periods left till the end of the world IIRC.

Early thoughts? It’s not bad so far. The mood isn’t as grim as I thought a game about gathering dead souls would be. It’s like a less bleak Zill O’ll Infinite, the way you go from city to city meeting all kinds of people and there’s all this politics and people dropping dead left and right and stuff. Not much has happened by way of story so far though, plus there’s the sense that nothing that happens on Midgard matters because the world is going to end anyway.

The game doesn’t encourage you to focus on story too much either. For example there’s this character called Arngrim and he dies and joins my party. Then his buddy Lawfer is like “Nooooo, Arngrim! What happened?!” Then Lawfer dies too, we aren’t even told how. I didn’t even know he’d died and joined my party until I checked the Party menu. So, like, you’d expect Lawfer and Arngrim to have a conversation and talk about all kinds of stuff, right? Wrong. They haven’t even acknowledged each others’ existence yet, not even in a “Hey, buddy” kind of way. It’s bizarre but as I said Valkyrie Profile doesn’t seem like a very story-heavy game so far. Do please go on, this is most interesting →