[Maark Abbott]

I'm up to the second-to-last God Beast on Seiken Densetsu 3 now. My kill order has been Dolan, Dangaard, Land Umber, Fiegmund, Mispolm, Xan Bie, with Lightgazer left to go. I'm level 37 across the board so I'll be ready for the class change seeds soon.

[Aptorian]

I looked at your post and wondered what kind of anime garbage is Maark playing now, turns out Seiken Densetsu 3 is actually a sequel to Secret of Mana it seems. It looks pretty cool. Never heard of it before now.

How does it hold up in comparison to games like Final Fantasy 6, Chrono trigger or Secret of Mana, if you've played those?

This post has been edited by Apt: 14 December 2016 - 08:53 AM

[Maark Abbott]

Apt, on 14 December 2016 - 08:51 AM, said:

I looked at your post and wondered what kind of anime garbage is Maark playing now, turns out Seiken Densetsu 3 looks pretty cool. Never heard of it before now.

How does it hold up in comparison to games like Final Fantasy 6, Chrono trigger or Secret of Mana, if you've played those?

It's a direct sequel to Secret of Mana (it's basically SOM2, never released outside of Japan unfortunately), so if you like SOM you'll gel quite well with it. I rate it as Square's top game - it stands very firmly alongside Chrono Trigger in terms of quality. The combat is an expanded version of the first Secret of Mana. Hell, it's in my all-time top-5 for games.

The one downside is that you have character and class selection and you can lock yourself out of a path where you have a healer (which is essentially nightmare mode). There are lots of guides online for party composition, though, so it's easy to avoid the pitfalls. Who you pick as your main hero affects the main story and final boss as well (Duran/Angela get the Dark Lich / Thanatos, Kevin/Carlie get the Masked Mage and Lise/Hawk get the Archdemon).

[Aptorian]

But it does appear to have english text, despite not being exported?

Is this something you could find on the nintendo store or somewhere? Or is it one of those things where an emulator is your only option?

[Maark Abbott]

Apt, on 14 December 2016 - 09:20 AM, said:

But it does appear to have english text, despite not being exported?

Is this something you could find on the nintendo store or somewhere? Or is it one of those things where an emulator is your only option?

Unfortunately yes. It never got an official release outside of Japan, so the emulated fan translation is your only bet unless you speak Japanese. It's actually been very well done (there's no instance of shitty translation). I'm running it via Snes9x and the game ROM - if you're not keen on going to emulator sites for the .zip files I can always drop them on an email or something.

The only thing that's changed in the fan translation are some of the names (Riesz became Lise, Hawkeye was shortened to Hawk, and Charlotte shortened to Carlie), but beyond that... sublime. The music is top tier, as well. Just go and bloody play it. If you enjoy old SNES Square action RPGs you'll not possibly be disappointed by it.

[Aptorian]

Don't know when I'll get around to it but I'll definitively give it a try at some point. Might get around to actually beating Secret of Mana while I am at it.

[Mentalist]

Apt, on 04 December 2016 - 06:26 PM, said:

I'd say some of the riddles are just straight up impossibly infuriating. Especially some of the driving puzzles. Just not fun. I'll give you a tip. There is a story related reward for doing all 300 or so riddler puzzles. But doing so, if you watch the youtube footage of it is sooo not worth it.

There's only 243 riddles, actually (except that like 18 of them are "smash 5, 10, and 15 of these breakables", which would make it... just over 300, if you wanna count it like that.

And I liked the final Riddler fight. Plus, like I said, tapes with background lore + 30-odd "Arkham stories" for solving the "find the object" riddles, which are pretty fun.

Only real annoyance was the checkpoint missions (towers mostly ok). I'm almost at the end, but now I want to finish the last towers + mines, because i'm hoping to

Spoiler

Face Deathstroke

I am also definitely gonna do a replay making the not-nice choices with Ras and Azrael.

I'm slightly annoyed about DLC description spoiling the game a bit:

Spoiler

one of the stories is about Red Hood. And he looks just like AK in the back-up helmet. So we know he'll live and he might be smth heroic in the end.

Then again, given how much the 3 background tapes try to redeem him, I kinda expected that AK won't get to die.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 14 December 2016 - 06:20 PM

[Aptorian]

No comment.

[MTS]

Mentalist, on 14 December 2016 - 05:52 PM, said:

Apt, on 04 December 2016 - 06:26 PM, said:

I'd say some of the riddles are just straight up impossibly infuriating. Especially some of the driving puzzles. Just not fun. I'll give you a tip. There is a story related reward for doing all 300 or so riddler puzzles. But doing so, if you watch the youtube footage of it is sooo not worth it.

There's only 243 riddles, actually

...

[Mentalist]

well, 62 hours total, and I'm done the story. Together with the bonus villains DLC that's 120% story completion, lol

The ending was... kinda what I expected. Minus all the psychedelic stuff, of course.

beyond that,only one thought:

Spoiler

poor Alfred. He had to put up with a lot

Really liked teh credits doing the recap of the whole series (except Origins).

I'll tackle the 4-post AK DLC stories on the weekend. I'll save the 2 prequels for when I decide to do a big Arkham replay.

[Maark Abbott]

Apt, on 14 December 2016 - 11:43 AM, said:

Don't know when I'll get around to it but I'll definitively give it a try at some point. Might get around to actually beating Secret of Mana while I am at it.

Secret 1 is pretty easy compared to Secret 2. One thing I realised is that I've beaten this path before, but it's preferable because a) Lise is my favourite character in the game and it's the hardest end-boss. Maybe after I'll do a run with Kevin as my main character and do the Mirage Palace at last.

Currently I'm at the stage where I'm farming ??? seeds, which become items you need for the last class change. After that... Zable Fahr. Not even the final boss, but one of the least pleasant parts of Secret 2.

[Maark Abbott]

Got my class changes done. So I'm now running Lise as Star Lancer for multi-target stat boost magic, Carlie will shortly learn her Necromancer debuffs, and Kevin is a Dervish and is there solely to smash out damage. I've just run Zable Fahr as well - I forgot that there's no save point near that boss anywhere which is a pain, but I managed her on the first try anyway. Carlie having Heal Light on such a short case time that it's basically instant is a huge help.

[Tattersail_]

I am playing Rocket League at the moment

[Mentalist]

Did the 4 "Arkham Episodes" mini-stories. Fun, but short, some cool closure.

Apparently, a brand-new expansion for AoK HD is out on Monday! Rise of the Rajas features Malay, Burmese, Vietnamese and Khmer civilizations. As if I didn't have enough content to play through....

[Tiste Simeon]

Can't remember if anyone mentioned it but have any of you posted Mafia III? I loved the second one so I'm hoping the third is also great.

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 18 December 2016 - 07:47 AM

[Aptorian]

Played around 8 hours of Mafia 3 with a buddy. We only play every now and then so it's going to take us forever to finish the game.

Our initial impression is very good. In terms of presentation and story telling it's one of the best games of the year. The production values and period design are excellent. It has some propblems with the shooting being uneven and the game reuses mission locations a bunch (or maybe it just copy pastes buildings?) but generally it's a fun game.

I'd say that Mafia 3 is not an open world game like Assassin's Creed where you'd want to run around collecting stuff all day. The game is more narratively focused. Sort of like LA Noire was.

EDIT: There are hints to the older games by the way. Among other things, one of your underbosses is a character from Mafia 2.

This post has been edited by Apt: 18 December 2016 - 08:45 AM

[Morgoth]

Invisible Inc is free on PSN. I played a couple of missions and it seems really fun. I remember it found a spot on the Giantbomb top 10 list of 2015.

[Aptorian]

Morgoth, on 22 December 2016 - 10:49 AM, said:

Invisible Inc is free on PSN. I played a couple of missions and it seems really fun. I remember it found a spot on the Giantbomb top 10 list of 2015.

I did a playthrough on a play configuration that probably constitutes as easy. It's a strange game. Sort of X-com like, sort of like Volume and sort of like Mark of the Ninja. I liked the possibilities the game gives you buy I think the money-upgrade system is sort of unfun and the game doesn't offer a ton of variation in terms of challenge.

[Mentalist]

Crazy busy at work, been unwinding with AoK HD.

Having encountered a progress-killing bug in the King Arthur custom campaign (Scen 3 won't load. Scen 2 was a lot of fun though, recommended), I moved on in the master-list, finally playing the Battle of Bokhara from the "Forgotten Battles" in the first new expansion. Took me 2 days to figure out, as it's a fun scenario pitting you (persians) against Huns raiding you, and neutral Mongols (White Huns) demanding tribute from you so that they won't curb-stomp you while you try to get set up to take them on.

There's a few twists to it, even once you turtle successfully, complete cool secondary objectives, get access to super-OP mercenaries (cataphracts.... with regeneration) etc. A ton of fun to be had with that one, and the AI made me think a lot, even on "Moderate".

Moved on the Forgotten Battle for the Mayans, "Dos Pilas". Easier to start, though once you complete the initial objective (tech up to Castle age), it ramps up A LOT. I wasn't really ready for it, and i made a really bad castle-drop, so i'll probably need to go back and re-think my strategy from the point I need to make the big decision.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Checking out hotline Miami. Fun game, sweet soundtrack, great excuse to dust off the vita while traveling.

The underutilization of the vita by Sony is a fucking crime. That thing should have been a game changer but they fucking ignored it.