AnimeSuki Forums

Thanks for the reviews! I have no idea if I'll ever play either game, but it's nice to hear them analysed like this (and know I have an outlet if I ever need some yuri in my life. :P )

Also - you've never played Dark Souls I?

Nemo

No, never DS1. I got into the Souls franchise with Bloodborne on PS4, then got Dark Souls III the next year, and Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin after that. But we'd already sold our X360 in 2015, so we owned no platform to play DSI (or Demon's Souls, for that matter). Though honestly, DSI especially seems like the game in the series I would least want to play.

(See, lots of people have praised the level design as "revolutionary," and all that, and while I do agree that the world map layout is a brilliant example of 3D interconnectedness, well, I'm an old fogey. My first electronic RPG (...assuming that you don't count Adventure on the Atari 2600!) was Ultima III on the Commodore 64. I've played Ultima IV, Ultima V, Bard's Tale I, II, and III, Phantasie I, II, and III, Legacy of the Ancients, The Legend of Blacksilver, Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and that's just the ones I remember off of the top of my head. In every one of those games, you had to slog manually from point A to point B (okay, yes, the Ultima games had Moongates between certain fixed travel points if you could find them and figure them out), even if points C, D, and E lay between them. The concept of fast travel between these points was a desperately needed addition (getting a ship in Ultima games was a triumphant moment, not just because it gave you access to otherwise unreachable areas, but because it let you get around the world map MUCH faster and safer than walking). So I look at DSI's complete lack of fast travel until you get the Lordvessel and I don't see "new and exciting way of building the world," I see "throwback to when I played Ultima III in 1984." I've done my time playing games where you spend half an hour trying to get from where you started to where you want to go, thank you! When you add that to the clunky, slow-paced combat, well...yeah.)

Huh. I actually liked the DS1 combat - I guess I'm 'clunky and slow-paced'. :P (And my personal experience was that there were enough major shortcuts to make travel at least decent in the early to midgame. I do prefer the later Souls games systems, though.)

[ Legacy of the Ancients, The Legend of Blacksilver, ]



..it's been forever since I thought of those. Wow.

Nemo

Well, I am finally taking a break from Stellaris (still playing an hour or 2 of it a day), but I've been playing They Are Billions as my main focus. I'm stuck at 22% difficulty, as I keep dying at day 70 cause they keep having me spawn with Doomed towns near my Command Centre, limiting my defense options in those directions, which eventually means if I can't get enough guys with rocket launchers (high AoE damage) by day 60 to make clearing them out viable, I am toast. Still a fun game even though I have failed five times in 3 days.

I've also played a bit of the DLC for NoA2, and have decided to hold off on the Land of Chocolate until the final chapter or if I have spare time in a later chapter. The other DLC can work with me doing Lily or timed Quests in the area, so that will be played.

After having been frozen into a block of ice last week (seriously, -6 Fahrenheit as the high?), we're now getting washed out to sea with steady raid. Please, someone double-check the settings on the weather-control machine.

Damn, Nemo, you played Legacy and Legend? You must have been pretty young at the time!

In other news, thanks to Amazon getting rid of that "Anime Strike!" nonsense and just dumping their anime onto regular Amazon Prime, I am now happy to report that Princess Principal is really, really good. Also that it's opening theme music is available on U.S. iTunes. *pumps fist*

(Since I first came to Animesuki back in 2008 because of that franchise, it's worth noting that Amazon has all three Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha seasons (yes, including StrikerS), as well as the newest season, ViVid Strike (but not regular ViVid).)

Well, no, I was looking over my dad's shoulder as he played. I mean I was about 6 or 7 at the time...

(I just realized that my habit of watching my parents play RPGs is probably responsible for my reading-over-the-shoulder habit, not just my speedreading!)

But I don't think I personally played most of those games, and I don't think we have a computer old enough for any of them anymore. We may also be missing the disks, although with how much of a packrat my family is, we might still have some of them. :P

Nemo

P.S. Did you ever play Wrath of Denethenor? It's about the right vintage, and the ending stuck in my family's head for a *long* time.

Ah, sounds like you got my weather Dezo. don't worry, once the rain passes, you'll be at -15c to -20c weather in no time. Seriously, we had almost a week of -30c, the next day +8c, then the next day -10c, currently -17c.

Well, having got to the point where I am off for 2-3 days a week, with short evening shifts the rest of the week, I decided I needed something to read, and since Baen has a chunk of the first Honor Harrington books free to read, I decided to start reading those, after looking some info up on it. Just got to the chapter where she and her XO shut down an extremely wealthy and influential merchant after he treid to blackmail her into not "harassing" his ships they have found smuggling. I rather enjoyed that scene.

Work stress is killing me, I swear. I'm both exhausted and ready to rip the skull out of somebody's head and beat them to death with it, even if it doesn't seem physically possible!

I nearly finished my playthrough of Nights of Azure again, then quit right before the boss fight with Chris and went back to Bloodborne. The endgame is so grindy! (This is one thing NoA2 got much better. Though you have to revisit areas nearly as often, at least every time you go out you have specific goals, and the quest list doesn't infinitely refresh. (You're also less likely to crash accidentally into a boss and advance the story--particularly since 2 gives you warnings at the doors to the boss rooms!)

So, it's Bloodborne again. I made four new builds, a SKL build (with the White Church Garb, he looks rather like someone escaped from Assassin's Creed; with him I'm using the Rakuyo as a main weapon for the first time), a STR/ARC build (Holy Moonlight Sword), a SKL/BLT build, and my very first pure ARC build (which I did indeed make as Camilla). So I've been having plenty of fun with those. (I also have a build where I made Tarma into a Bloodborne character. She's a STR build and mains the Beast Cutter.)

Tarma ordered Assassin's Creed: Origins. I hope she enjoys it!

I've been watching Scribe's playthrough of Nier: Automata. Mindscrewy! Though, perhaps ironically, I found that knowing in advance that it's going to be mindscrewy with lots of depressing parts is making it seem less that way, since I'm more aware of the ways that I'm being manipulated towards certain expectations and emotions. (Also, the music is extraordinary, and hey, it's also available on U.S. iTunes! "Birth of a Wish/Become a God" is a ridiculously catchy tune, though I'm not sure what it says about me that I prefer the version of "Birth of a Wish" that has a cult of suicidal robots chanting in the background.)

Wonder if he'll get to the final ending where you literally have a top down shooter style battle with the ending credits. I was killed by marketing a few times, and really should finish that as I got to the end, but stopped when my controller ran out of juice and never got back to it.

It is a dark day for Dynasty Warriors fans when even die-hard Warriors fans such as myself have to admit they managed to screw up DW9. While I appreciate the attempt at an open-world style, there are quite a few issues with it. The open-world part is neat, what with being able to hit optional objectives that make the main battles easier (or more of a challenge if you ignore them, especially on later playthroughs), they may have been better served just having large, open area that cover the events of that part of the timeline, as many parts feel empty, and textures not fully rendering, or even obstacles and even mission relevant officers not appearing for a full minute or more of you standing next to them, kinda ruins the flow of a game about beating on thousands of mooks and feeling like a badass. After how well Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors (with it's limited amount of onscreen enemies being visible until others were defeated, at least the officers were always rendered), and how much I enjoyed Warriors All-Stars. Not to mention I've had some horrifing cutscene bugs with lighting and texture errors that would be at home in Garry's Mod custom levels. Still, it hasn't stopped me from playing over 50 hours of the game, in no small part to the fact I can set a waypoint and have my horse manually run there with for the most part limited course corrections when pathing has me stuck on an obstacle.

In other news, so far in the early game of Stellaris, the new 2.0 update and Apocalypse expansions massive changes have been interesting so far, though I have yet to try the massive changes to wars, I am beginning to prepare for one, as a neighbour has laid a claim on my home system, EU4 style.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Hope no one runs over the Easter Bunny this year.

Happy Easter, and may you all know which days businesses are open and closed! Seriously, why is Walmart closed on Friday and Sunday, rather than Friday and Monday?

Also, BattleTech is only 22 days away from release. I need a good mech combat game, and one that is turn-based really appeals to me.

So, anyone else still getting snow? Or is it just me?

I regret making that first snow of spring joke as this is about the 7th one.

Managed not to get any here - although it's been cold - but my brother up in Oklahoma City got some. It's not as if he's that far north, either.

Nemo

It's been a while. Anything happening around here? Snow finally stopped?

Nemo

Yeah, now it alternates between chilly early mornings, and warm afternoons and evenings. Hell, I just finished my 1 week vacation from work (got work tonight), which is only the second vacation I have taken as a vacation in the 4 years I've had this job, the other times being for wisdom teeth removal and for a funeral.

Also, I've been playing Tyranny, and some of the places you can break alliances seem odd, or at least random, and I've heard that some of the quest branches are strange as well, but I've enjoyed it so far.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Sadly no snow this time.

Man, due to work I haven't been here in ages, but thanks to COVID placing my area in the Red zone, I got a lot of free time right now. Of course I see Dezo has written stories in the Nights of Azure game series. Hopefully I can recall my FF.net log-in info and review on the site, now that they aren't down every time I go to look there.