Ready to get the party started.

And just when I thought that it wasn't arriving until school started, it shows up at noon (last Thursday)! Second time unlocking everything, so I'm obviously less than enthused at the idea. Or not... Even though I'm unlocking everything really slowly, I'm still having a blast killing lots and lots of Soldier As. I don't even know if I'll be able to do it a third time with the NA version. Too bad it'll be $45CAD (or $40CAD from amazon.ca), which further dampens my enthusiasm. But hey! Can't be as bad as Devil Kings! Really. It can't be.. as bad... *goes into a dim corner because that game seems to have killed the PS2*

Noticed that I can cancel the slash from Mitsunari's 号哭 into pretty much anything. Timing's not exactly strict, but it's pretty easy to input your command a little late. You would actually want to cancel the slash into something because the ending lag is atrocious, unless you follow up with a Sengoku Boost activation or BASARA. Maybe I'll just make another post with all the little tricks that I know. It'll just be for my reference all in one place since I'm pretty sure that other sites will have that information.

Well, managed to do all of Shimazu-don's routes (seriously, the -don part makes me think of food), save for the Honnoji ending because I still haven't unlocked Oichi, Keiji, or really anyone else. This also means that if I have another controller, Shimazu can OHKO while keeping the other character safe from harm. Or I could just use Mitsunari and his crazy slashes of doom on Extreme to rack up a massive hit count for some extra EXP, which should also help with accruing a large ryo count. Still don't have too many of the trophies, and haven't exactly gotten the "No damage" one either. I've gotten "no damage" twice so far, but not during an Emaki run. Don't really know who's the easiest to do it with. Probably Mitsunari at this point in time, or even Yukimura. But he's on Extreme at the moment, and it's gotten somewhat difficult because not having high level weapons. There's also a bunch of random trophies that force you to go out of your way to finish. Not exactly looking forward to it. One involves using on the normal attack string throughout the entire battle. Should really get moving on the other Emaki routes because those are easy trophies that don't really require too much time to deal with. Probably taking longer than usual because I'm trying to get whoever I have up to lv.20 so that they get their first special skill. Ah well, there's still lots of stuff to do in this game! As an aside, Ieyasu's theme occasionally reminds me of "The First Awakening" from LasuRemu. No idea why.

And since I mentioned Devil Kings, might as well say something here.
It killed my PS2. I think the constant loading killed the lens or something with the wiring (leaning towards wiring). It's not booting up certain games anymore, so I'm a little miffed about it. I'll probably just get a new one with Swap Magic since the damn thing's about 7 years old already and seems ready to die as a whole. I could have sworn that SenBasa+2+2H didn't load that constantly on the MUSIC menu. What the hell. Anyways, onto the actual gameplay. I can't believe that when the save loaded, that I've left it mostly untouched. Then I started playing. I can see why I stopped after getting Masa-- I mean Azure Dragon up to lv.19 and a bunch of others to about lv.10. Also couldn't see a damn thing in some of the stages that well because of how dark they were, combined with the dark colour palette the enemies had. I was squinting just to try seeing where they were, and I had the health gauge display on as well. I'll type up some more stuff in a later post. Well probably make more posts on this later on because I do intend to finish the damn game, like I did with SenBASA. Should probably play SenBASA2/2H to completion (mostly done though), along with Battle Heroes because there's apparently some story in there that I might have missed. Namely Ieyasu's transition.



Oh. New DMC game announced. Turns out that the rumours of it being developed by Ninja Theory were right. Someone's asking for death. The reception so far has not been favourable, which is understandable. If you look at the trailer and the screens, there's hardly anything there that represents what DMC is about. And it's being called DmC. That kid is not Dante! If this is what the final product is going to look like, and be the 10th anniversary release, there will be blood. Chances are, he's not going to have something sharp and pointy shoved into his torso in a comedic manner. OK, it wasn't that funny in 3 either, but there was a reason for that.

... I believe I'm going to mimic Kuroda Kanbei's expression of pure despair:

なぜじゃーーっ！！


Now I really have to ask... Will they remember the jump button? I remember Heavenly Sword not having one in the demo, and that really pissed me off. Although the one thing that really pissed me off with this little teaser is "Dante" smoking. I think someone at Capcom said that he was a non-smoker. Don't remember where though... An LJ reply said that it was from an old Kamiya interview (I think I remember reading it), and I have a feeling that little tidbit it was in one of the older novels (which I bought and enjoyed). I want my strawberry sundae loving, white haired pretty boy who playfully insults his enemies back! AND HE DOESN'T SMOKE. This is an insult to the original creation (and by extension, the creator)!

And the music. Holy crap did the music suck. It was painful playing the trailer with the volume on. While the DMC soundtracks were never really that spectacular as a whole (only a few tracks here and there really stood out, but provides very good atmosphere), this is really hitting rock bottom. That track was incredibly obnoxious.

By the way, the reaction on Pixiv is hilarious. Some are drawing the new guy without much of a problem... then follow up with Dante, Nero and/or Vergil beating the crap out of him or not being impressed. Or in one case, Deadpool poking out his eyes (MvC3). That comic even remembered that Dante doesn't smoke, which (I think completely in-character) Deadpool teases him about.