Playing demos

Finally got the PS3 online... by moving upstairs temporarily. It was weird... Early in the day it was hovering around 30~35%, then I left for a little grocery shopping. When I came back, the download at the time, Biohazard 6, had advanced from 6% to a measly 35%. In the span of 3 hours. I was, however, able to get onto the PSN for a short amount of time. With that, I managed to nab the E.X. Troopers and DmC Devil May Cry demos (why does DmC have to be that long?). They, uh, didn't really progress for quite a while. In fact, they barely downloaded 3MB before "stopping", which was around 3PM when I last checked. I put the system to shut down once all downloads were finished, which it did when I checked again at around 6PM. No idea when the connection decided to cooperate because all downloads were finished and installed, even the demos that I didn't bother installing at least 5 months ago (whee~ Dragon's Dogma). Not going to complain, since the connection eventually ended up hovering around the 57% range and stayed that way through the night + Sunday morning when I decided to play the demos.

Speaking of which, I played 4 of them. I felt "this is fun~" for 2 of them, "..." for one, and "what the hell is this" for the last. Those who know me well enough can probably guess which ones got which reactions. But I'll spell it out anyways, mostly because of reactions to them.

This is fun~:
E.X.Troopers for both the 3DS and PS3 were great. Love the arcade feel to the missions, so I really don't know which version I want to get. It's not like I'm going to be playing co-op online for the PS3 version, and locally for the 3DS. I mean, really. Who's crazy enough to import a Lost Planet spin-off at this point in time? No one knows if it's going to be localized either, although I wouldn't count on it simply because of its visual style. Just look at it! Brightly coloured, manga-styled visuals/panels, 少年-like feel, etc. Still, it's great fun for short bursts. I'll think some more on the version. Really leaning towards the PS3 because I like the controls more, although I like the portability of the 3DS.

Dragon's Dogma would fit here, and it did. It was basically like a more action-oriented, faster paced Demon's Souls (don't ask about Dark Souls, I'm waiting for a better sale on Steam for that). Playing on a certain TV with glare made getting through one of the areas more of a pain than necessary, but it was still fun seeing the pawns doing most of the work while I was running around being an idiot. The fight against the griffon(?) was pretty bad. I didn't know/pay attention to what attacks I had, so the game actually progressed so far in the day that it was dark. Couldn't see a damn thing, ended up dying. At least the archer was someone fun to play as. Couldn't aim to save my life though. Then again, it's not like you had much of a chance to learn how to aim in the first place. Might look into it at some point.

"...":
Biohazard 6 fell here. Mostly because I decided to try Jake and Chris's campaigns first. Big mistake there, as those 2 throw you straight into the fray as soon as the session starts. Leon's starts with some exploration, so that helped with getting used to the controls. Too bad that was while I was eating dinner with a nice little bit of glare from a lamp. Didn't get to any combat, so no further comment. I did get a nice little death scene by running under the Ogroman's legs. He stomped on Piers. Someone should remind me to not do that during the main game... Also did something completely unnecessary, but oh so fun. I sniped a J'avo at short range with the anti-materiel rifle. That was a OHKO~ I'll try playing the demo again soon. Need to focus on other things.

"What the hell is this:"
And the last one. DmC Devil May Cry. This deserves its own post, so I'm giving it one.

Just rounding up a few things

Well, that was nice. There was a decent spurt of activity over on the PC LasRem boards. Nothing too hard to answer, but at least it was something to stave off boredom. After all, I'm not a Fire Emblem expert, seeing as how I haven't exactly played most of the series, so answering those questions is really only limited to FE13. I should probably play FE4 and FE5 at some point, but the Judgral setting doesn't look all that appealing. Don't care enough about Elibe to do much more than FE7, although I should go through FE6 as a formality. Own the art book after all.

Anyways. The boards. It was mostly discussion about class changes and getting through the first half of the game. I think most of them should be pretty well off now to deal with the rest of it. If not, well... The board's always open for questions. The X360 side pretty much died off. Expected, since the game's coming up to its 4th anniversary now. I think a lot of them are using the Wisdom's Echo grind because it makes things a lot easier. I don't really like it, but I'll use it if I have to. Like I did with the AGO run because of half the team being missing until I closed the quest (it's because the ones in the Third Committee also counted for the run, but were locked until "The Fated One" was finished, which was dependent on "Wisdom's Echo" being successfully finished). Which reminds me, I need to get going on compiling the rest of the quest dialogue at some point, along with all the rumors. Too bad a bunch of the rumors can't be dealt with until you finish "For Love the Bell Tolls" and "The Silent Soul" in Balterossa. But if I have the patience for dealing with all that, it shouldn't be a problem. At least I know that they're being cycled in a set order. Just a matter of visiting enough times to get through them all... This is going to take a while since there's till Undelwalt to unlock and all the earlier quests will more than likely have rumors reaching that forsaken town. At least I gathered all the ones associated with David's quest ("The Distant Promise"). A few funny little real-life references here and there. Don't want to transcribe the JP since I'm pretty sure that it's going to be different in a fair number of places. Localization and all. That, and I can't really transcribe JP text without taking an ungodly amount of time doing it. I need lessons, dammit. At least I'm almost through with converting the formation pages to a format. Also caught a rather glaring mistake on the Trident page. Stat mods were off... Hopefully nothing else will pop up, but it's not too big of a deal if it does. I'll just cross-reference with the tool and correct whatever needs correcting.

On the FE front, not much about my files has changed. Still stuck on Ch.6, still bumming around with the extra Lunatic file, still haven't done anything with the Normal file's pairings. There should be just 1 more DLC episode left, which is the last Ultimate Training and it's priced at 300yen. My guess is that Minerva is the reward since the Whitewings were featured for the other 3. Hopefully there's going to be something else because of the slightly higher cost when compared to the other Ultimate Training maps. It's going to be one hell of a map... I doubt that I'll get a team ready in time since I haven't exactly been training anyone lately. Too lazy to do so, and it looks like it almost requires using the children because of their much higher modifiers. It seems that it's an Anna that'll be the boss. Wouldn't be surprised since she can travel on a multi-verse scale...

Still haven't downloaded the Biohazard 6 demo, but that's because the PS3 can't seem to connect to the net. Going to find out what's wrong since I also want online access while playing Journey once I get around to it. Although that's also going to come with the little "good luck staying connected" because of the distance between the system and the router. Maybe it won't be that bad since all the other systems (save for the 3DS, but that's the 3DS) don't have much of an issue connecting and staying connected for long periods of time. If I can get it connected, going to grab the E.X. Troopers while I'm at it. The 3DS demo was actually really fun so I want to see how the PS3 version holds up.

Speaking of which... E.X. Troopers definitely has an arcade feel to it. I'm not exactly fond of how the mini-map works. The directional FOV cone doesn't rotate with the character smoothly, only changing its direction if the camera has rotated enough. Kinda annoying. At least the map is fixed. That much I liked. Also, you can toggle the zoom by tapping on the -/+ on the bottom screen. Just make sure that you don't accidentally press the big yellow one, or else you'll use their special attack (メテオ or Meteor? in Bren's case). The controls aren't too bad either. It takes some getting used to using the d-pad to change the camera, but that's fine. It's not like the system has a second analog stick to help with that. Might be a tipping point for getting the PS3 version instead. But I do want to tag it along for short bursts since the gameplay and mission-based setup lends itself well for that. The demo's pretty short, and can be finished in less than 10 minutes. Consists of a tutorial (you can't die) with a short "boss" fight, and a mission where you have a real chance of dying if you flounder around a little too much. You also have to defend Julie to proceed in the mission since she's vulnerable while hacking an entry point. It can get a little bit hairy if you don't watch where all the bullets are coming from. Oh, and getting turned into a snowman sucks. You have to mash B to get free... Pretty sure that it's not going to be localized.

Oh, and I watched an entire playthrough of Operation Raccoon City. Eh... doesn't really look like something I'd want to play. Plus, some of the missions don't look all that well designed. Facing off against 2 Tyrants with only their faces as their weak spot with weak player AI? Yeah, no. Even worse with the DLC, where there are 4 of them running around and already mutated. Have fun getting stunlocked! And that final boss for the Spec Ops missions? It took forever to get through. Was not that fun watching/listening to the guy cuss his way through the battle because the Tyrant-parasite thing would. Not. Go. DOWN. In a reasonable amount of time. I guess that's why they give you "unlimited" ammo during those kinds of fights.

By eventually, I mean four months later

Started my Lunatic run for FE13. And it's definitely hard. Maybe I should have started on Hard first? But that wouldn't be much fun, now would it? I have my Normal file still hanging around, mostly for continuing to build supports and to check out the newest DLC episodes.


Actually, I "finished" it a little while ago. Since you can carry over units from previous and current playthroughs (among other units) if you register them into the "My Unit Compendium", I carried over a few units that I maxed out from my Normal file. My curiosity got the better of me for Lunatic+, so I split off my legit Lunatic run to race through to the end. Then when poking at the Prologue stats...

HOLY CRAP IT'S QUITE LITERALLY "THE COMPUTER IS A CHEATING BASTARD" UP TO ELEVEN.

A bunch of them had Absolute Hit, Luna+ and Vantage+. It's semi-randomized too, so it's possible to really get screwed with the distribution. Oh, and all of them have Pass, so no bottlenecking (not that you could in the Prologue in the first place without dying horribly). Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out how to proceed in Ch.6 without losing anyone, without cheating. I don't want to reduce deployment because it'll screw up EXP distribution, but deploying the max number is pretty much suicide at the moment. Can't use skirmishes since by the time you reach Ch.5, they're practically at max stats anyways (it's barely manageable on Ch.4 with Frederik+Chrom on a fort, and he needs to have gained at least 2SPD to avoid being doubled if there are Myrmidons). Don't want to use the DLC to train them, although I've run through the more manageable ones to nab their rewards so I don't have to deal with it later. It's a little difficult when you're working with 3 maxed units. I should probably finish maxing Rufure from my initial Normal run already. In terms of skills, not stats. Almost done with that, including Limit Breaker. *ahem* Gaia is proving to be a bit of a pain since he starts as an enemy. I haven't checked if he attacks anyone in range. If he doesn't, I might be able to use that to my advantage. Not counting on it though.

I really need to figure out how to distribute EXP more evenly. It's a little disconcerting when MU is sitting at 16.99 with Chrom trailing behind at 9.58. Everyone else is sitting around base or has gained a level at most. Or if it's Frederik, sitting at 30.18. I think I fed him too many kills... I know that I gave him a lot of EXP during Ch.5 because of he choke point, trying to kill anything that would kill Mariabell and/or Licht. At least MU got some EXP from initiating Dual Attack every now and then. Ronkuu scored a few kills while going west. Then I had him sit on a fort to prevent reinforcements, because those would have ruined my life and he needed the healing because Liz was too far away due to using Rescue on Mariabell+Licht and staying out of range of the incoming Dragon Knights. And in order to even use Rescue on them, Liz needs at least MAG8 to reach them. The other option is using Sumia and Frederik (requires a Change Proof to give him wings). Since I also put the restriction of "No Fame Bonuses", no Change Proofs, so limited to efficient killing and/or using Rescue. And you're only going to have Rescue if you've completed S1 or gotten lucky with a Merchant. And S1 was a nightmare in itself if you want to recruit Denis. Good thing you can lure and trap Archers... Or else he'd never get the EXP. Could always risk fighting the Thieves or Barbarians, but getting doubled and Weapon Triangle disadvantage.

I think that's about enough for FE13. Next bit has spoilers for an ending...




Been watching Bio6 vids. Also been poking at Pixiv. The amount of art Piers is getting is rather disproportionate to everyone else that's featured in the game. The only thing more popular from what I've seen is Jake/Sherry. Not individually either, but as a pairing. Capcom pretty much doomed him from the start anyways... So it's not exactly surprising that a lot of them refuse to believe that he's dead. If the Haos doesn't survive an underwater facility blowing up (after being electrocuted in the damn ocean), I don't think Piers has much of a chance either considering that he was still somewhat human when it blew up.

And just like with Emma, he has an article of clothing that I liked. Instead of a cool hat, he has a nice scarf (I have a soft spot for scarves...).

I think the funniest thing I've seen so far of Piers is him as a Pikachu (ピアチュウ, and it makes sense in context. maybe). Or him as a puppy. Attacking Jake. He is rather puppy-like, isn't he~?