Fuurai no Shiren 4: Kami no Hitomi to Akuma no Heso – The most playable of the lot

fuurai no shiren4_frontI skipped playing Shiren 3 on the Wii, because somehow I can’t wrap my mind around playing a rogue-like on a console. The earlier games have spoiled me. Besides, it doesn’t matter which one I play or what I play it on, my play style is simple: go out there and die until I’m tired of dying. My Fuurai no Shiren 4 record is 24 adventures (and about as many deaths) in 14 hours and 8 minutes. This is longer than I lasted for games 1 and 2, so I’m slightly proud of myself.

My highest level is 23 and 23 is also the highest floor I’ve made it to so far. Part of me wants to try for 30 while part of me wants to quit while I still have happy memories of this game. I’ll wrestle with myself a little longer, but even if I do go back I don’t think I’ll have anything new to add, which is why I’m writing this now.

Chunsoft made a few changes this time to make things both easier and more interesting. Or maybe they were in the other games all along and I never noticed because I never got far.

– Night and day system. This definitely wasn’t in the earlier games. Daylight enemies are your regular fellows that respond to regular attacks. Night time enemies hit like cement trucks and can only be affected by special attacks. You also need torches or scrolls to even see them.

The special attacks usually OHKO the enemies (otherwise they OHKO you), and any skills you learn from leveling up or NPCs are saved even if you die. I wish there was a way to use more than 8 attacks per floor, but there’s a certain masochistic thrill you get from desperately avoiding enemies while waiting and praying for dawn to break. When an NPC first explained the system to me, it sounded incredibly tough and complicated, but it’s simple enough to switch back and forth between the different modes of play once you get the hang of it.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Dekitate High School – Just because you did something ‘first’ doesn’t mean you did it well

220px-Dekitate-high-school-sfcWhen Dekitate High School came out on the SNES in 1995, it marketed itself as “the first high school simulation game on the SNES.” According to j-wiki, this wasn’t true because a game called Houkago in Beppin Jogakuin (After School in the Beautiful Girl’s Academy)  had come out a few months before. It was also a meaningless achievement, because the vastly superior Tokimeki Memorial was already making waves on the PC at the time and was ported to the SNES shortly afterwards.

Once you realize all that, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Dekitate High School is a half-assed joke of a game. The premise is that you’re the heir to a rich family. As part of your training, your grandfather establishes a school and asks you to manage it for three years while disguised as a regular teacher. That’s right, you’re a teacher, not a student. This puts any dating between you and your students firmly in unethical territory, which is why, to its credit, DHS never lets you date anyone.

So despite the misleading cover, this is not a dating sim but a school development sim, and a poor one at that. The way you develop your school is by raising your student’s educational stats to match or exceed the national average.

The only way to do this is to build classroom after classroom after classroom higgledy-piggledy on your compound. Ignore aesthetics, pay no mind to accessibility, just build facilities on every square inch of ground and your students will automatically perform better. In theory.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Finished Arc Rise Fantasia. It was pretty good! (ending spoilers)

larc-serge-alf-rastan-nikoIt only took about 65 hours, more if you include all the times I got wiped out and had to redo a boss fight. I had a good run, all things considered. Arc Rise Fantasia is the sort of game that makes me want to go back and start afresh with all the knowledge I’ve gained on how to manipulate the battle system in my favor. If I had to play again, I would definitely:

– Reset and reconfigure my magic orbs way earlier. Once you have even one level 3-4 magic orb, it’s time to think about upgrading and ditching lvls 1 and 2 magic. How much easier the Verct Skywalk boss battles would have been if I’d known this.
– Take whatever weapon does the job best into battle and not worry too much about letting WP go to waste.
– Fight to the death for Rufunga on the beach. I had no idea that battle was winnable. “Darn it!” as L’arc would say.
– Fight Eesa before Allul. Eesa was a cakewalk in comparison, which greatly lessened the euphoria I felt after the final battle.
– Abuse the Above and Beyond spell (double-cast of Life Force) to hell and back. Battles get so much better when you’re not stuck in an endless loop of defending and healing.
– Steal more from bosses. I bet they had all kinds of good stuff, but I was too obsessed with staying alive to try.
– Actually use those status-preventing, mag-def boosting accessories much earlier. Focusing on stat-raising accessories for so long was a big mistake.
– Learn about Excel Trinities earlier. Because I’m a psychic and can figure out things the game absolutely does not tell you about unless you pore through the glossary.

And so on and so forth. The game does lend itself to at least one more replay. I would do it if only they’d let me skip all the walking and talking and just warp me from boss battle to boss battle.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Shining Blade – Easily the worst RPG I’ve played this year

Zzzzz...

Zzzzz…

Sol Trigger made me rage and The Last Story had a really weak story (moar liek “The Last Story Left After All The Good Ones Had Been Taken” amirite?), but both games at least had good gameplay going for them. Shining Blade is just crap. Poop. Excrement in game form. It’s the most eloquent way I can put it. I can’t remember the last time I played a game so bright and polished on the outside and so dry and devoid of substance on the inside. Now certainly a game doesn’t need “substance” to be good. It just needs to be fun, and Shining Blade doesn’t even clear that low, low hurdle.

In the interest of fairness, here comes the obligatory “good parts” section. I played for almost 30 hours and I finished it so there must be some in there. So what does Shining Blade have?

1. Good voice acting. It should be “great” given all the famous VAs they used but first, I’ve heard better performances from them and second, it doesn’t matter how nice your voice is if you’ve got nothing worthy to say.

2. Good character designs. A little heavy on the heaving bosoms and breast implants, but apparently this is Tony Taka’s entire raison d’être. His men are covered from top to toe while his women wear negligee in snowstorms because that’s what his audience demands.

3. Nostalgia factor for fans of the older games. Except Shining Hearts fans, who will just be depressed. Each chapter drags out characters from older games like Shining Wind and Shining Tears and Shining [crass comments deleted. My apologies]. Wait, I’m supposed to be talking about the good parts.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Stuck in a rut

Can’t go back, don’t want to move forward. It’s my own fault I’m stuck, so don’t feel sorry for me.

Arc Rise Fantasia – I don’t wanna finish it. You can’t make me! Nooo! I’ve finished Verct Skywalk (darned Dynos battle), the game has dropped its final twist, now I just have to finish the last dungeon. Before that, I want to catch Mashgar and Allul, but I can’t get Mashgar! He keeps running away every time I get close. Oh sure, I’ve been lucky to run into him twice (and he mashed me both times) but it’s so frustrating when I try my best to approach from behind and he still bolts. I could save him for the post-game, but by then he’s bound to be too easy. Even Kudoan was kind of a cakewalk. Okay, final decision: Five last attempts at cornering Mashgar. If it works, good. If it doesn’t, it wasn’t meant to be. The end. And I promise not to post about Arc Rise Fantasia again until it’s finished.

Shining Blade – It’s like Zill O’ll Infinite all over again. I’m spending so much time on sidequests and free battles that the game is taking forever to complete. And if you’re even a level or two over the storyline bosses, they’re way too easy. End result: the game is dragging on and I’m not having any fun. At least Zill O’ll had an interesting story to keep me playing. That, and they made me pay dearly for doing quests halfway round the world when I was supposed to be fighting a war. Step out at the wrong time and you’ll return to find the city annihilated. I doubt Shining Blade has the guts to pull something like that, though. In fact I dare Sega to do it. Go on, make my day.

I should quit while I’m ahead, but I won’t. Instead I’ll keep whining about it because that’s what I have a blog for. Nyaah nyaah! But seriously, all joking aside, I need to cut out the quests and focus on finishing this thing. My time is precious and I can think of ten other games I’d rather be playing right now on the PSP alone.

I’m going to finish one of these games this week by hook or by crook.