Classic DMC = Yay~

It took a little bit, but I finally bought End of Eternity (NA version -> Resonance of Fate), Bayonetta for the X360 and the Devil May Cry HD collection for the PS3. The only one left is Vanquish, but I have no idea how hard it is to find it. It wasn't hard tracking down a copy online, but I kinda want to support the local game shop that's a walk away. Plus, the store owner kinda knows what I like to play, so that's always good.

Having bothered booting up EoE or Bayo yet, so I ended up spending time with the DMC collection. More specifically, the original DMC. Because it's still my favourite out of all of them despite all the advancements to the systems throughout the years. Made it to Mission 3 before deciding to stop for some studying. I thought I was going to be able to complete Mission 1 without taking damage, but that was thrown out the window as soon as I started getting swarmed by Marionettes. Luckily, they didn't kill me. Unfortunately, I don't remember them doing that much damage on Normal! It was a pretty good wake-up call, since a lot of the games I've been playing were a little bit on the easy side, until I decide to ramp up the difficulty (that's not to say I don't enjoy easy games, just want a bit of a challenge).

Still love the castle, cheesy voice acting and whatnot, even 11 years after I've started playing it. Got up to Mission 3 then stopped. I don't know if I'm quite ready to take on Phantom, even though I remember the strategies behind it. I'll take a stab at it at some point. Not right now though.

And since I'm still looking for Vanquish, I decided to play the demo for the time being. Showed me just how badly I suck at those kinds of games. Still doesn't stop me from playing them though! Died 5 times during it, suffered a 5000pt. deduction for it. I think I might be able to get through the mission without taking too many deaths if I try again. At least I know how to pace the battle now to keep the turrets around long enough to force the boss to show its cores. It's just really fun sliding around, engaging in bullet time, shooting up your enemies, etc. It's got a really fast pace, which is something I like. It might be a little too fast at the moment, but I'll get used to it eventually.

I'll get a Borderlands post up at some point. Still playing around with Mordecai and haven't exactly planned out his skill set. I think I'll go for being a sneaky little bastard. Although using Bloodwing is starting to look more attractive because of improving drops...

Because this deserves its own post

I was already biased against this for various reasons (mostly art direction and whatnot), but this demo really did the trick. I had watched a few demo vids beforehand too, which looked OK. Almost fun. Until I got a good look at the controls. Thankfully, you can remap the controls. Nothing special, but at least you're not locked. What really annoyed me was the inclusion of 2 dodge options, but there's no lock-on. WHERE THE HELL IS THE LOCK-ON. I mean, I couldn't figure out how to use his Stinger until I read how to do it. It was forward-forward-attack (Y/Triangle). What the hell, Ninja Theory. Million(sorry) Trillion Stab is activated through Stinger, which IIRC, the same as the previous DMC games, but it lacks impact. It's also harder to connect to it from other moves. ETA: OK, DMC1's multi-stab move is actually activated through a combo. You can't really combo from the Stinger. For DMC3, it should be from using a Crazy Combo, or something like that (button mash like crazy). As for DMC2... Eh...

The only good thing, so far, was bringing back Brea. She suddenly reappeared on my YT feed with a combo vid. It was definitely faster than most of the other vids I had seen, but the JC'ing was pretty messed up. Because of how slow the animations were, everything was getting canceled too early. Was amusing to watch though, since it resulted in Dante spazzing like a freak. Not stylish at all. Start up animations are really long, which is a bit of an issue when cancelling because you count on the move hitting the enemy to cancel recovery. Definitely not twitch-based since you don't have that many frames to work with.

The Style System was kinda broken before, but now it's completely broken. There's no reason for it to be built around scoring as much damage as possible in a single strike. This meant that the Arbiter, the axe, was the single most useful weapon during the demo because of its extremely high attack power. Coupled with easily telegraphed attacks, you can just dodge+hit without much issue. And this is coming from someone that hasn't played in about 3 years. I'm really out of practise. You should not be able to score an SSS ranking within 30 seconds with piss-poor timing (the Demon Dodge has a massive window to work with, much larger than Bayo's Witch Time). I can understand if it were a Distorted multi-hit attack that wipes out at least 1/2 a health bar. Actually, don't think that's possible either without initiating counters. Not even spamming Lucifer (which is kinda easy to do) can get up to SS comfortably. Anyways, I saved a bunch of links that echoed my concerns for the game. I'll probably pick it up along the way on sale on Steam. I'm not about to drop money on this for a console, especially knowing that it performs worse on the PS3 (can definitely blame UE3 for that, not that it's a bad engine). A DMC not hitting 60fps is unacceptable. Neither is the difficulty. It shouldn't be original DMC3-level hard, but still enough to actually be threatening. I mean, not having any practice for 3 years then running in on Nephilim without dying? Sure, I screwed up the boss fight a few times, but even that was too easy (used the Vital Star, even if it turned out that I didn't need it).

Default controls (PS3, because I didn't download it on my X360):
Jump - X
Shoot - S
Basic - T
Special - O
Angel - L2
Demon - R2
Evade 1/2 - L1/R1
Devil Trigger - L3+R3
Gun Special - X+T
Cycle Gun - U
Cycle Angel Weapon - L
Cycle Demon Weapon - R
Center Camera - R3
Cycle Ranged Target - L3


Devil Stars are now Devil Trigger Stars (what). Health Crosses instead of Blue Orbs. Devil Trigger Crosses instead of Purple Orbs. They're really gunning for that cross theme. Gold Orbs are still there. It's just a demo, but you can apparently carry up to 10 for each of the S/L Vital and Devil Stars. Definitely less than the 30 from DMC4, but I somehow doubt you'll need that many. It's certainly not as restrictive as the original DMC, seeing as you couldn't even carry more than 1 on the higher difficulties. Then again, that game was a offshoot from Bio4, so I guess it ended up retaining some of the survival-horror elements.

Idle animations: looking around. And... not much else. I might have seen something else, but I didn't want my controller to idle for too long (it goes auto-off after 10 minutes).

Seemingly random capitalization here and there. Even missing ones. It's really nitpicking at this point, but it does speak ill of their presentation. The font, while it's not ugly or as bad as the rather wide one Capcom used for their Sengoku Basara localization, looks pretty bad when blown up to the full screen. I'll have to check how it looks when forced to 1080p. I have the PS3 to output its native resolution (1280*720, supposedly at 60Hz). I find the colours to be over-saturated, but that just might be the screen settings. It's also probably what they were going for since the normal world's colours are rather drab.

The Achievement/Trophy list is also out. Not sure how accurate or official it is, but in a way it's a nice nod to the original series. Most of them of are lines from the previous games. Let's see if I remember them all...

Achievement	Origin
Time to go to work guys!	DMC1 - Dante firing E&I on motorcycle
Come on Puppy. Let's go!	DMC3 - Cerberus battle
Thing drives me crazy	DMC4 - Nero, referring to his arm after fighting Berial (M02)
Only kind of gift worth giving	DMC4 - Dante giving Nero Yamato (M20)
Flock off, feather-face!	DMC1 - Dante vs. Griffon 1
It's got to stay in the family	DMC4 - Dante to Nero, talking about Yamato (M10)
This baby sure can pack a punch	DMC4 - Nero, about the Devil Bringer (M02)
He's a demon too	DMC3 - Lady, referring to Dante after she shoots him (M07)
You are not a Human, are you?	DMC3 - Dante, after defeating Cerberus (M03)
More than just a few sparks	DMC4 - Dante, after defeating Berial (M16)
No talking!	DMC3 - Agni&Rudra acquisition (M05)
Whatever, Lady	DMC3 - Dante dismissing Lady (M09)
You're not going to shoot me	DMC3 - Jester, to Dante (M12)
It's time to finish this!	DMC4 - Dante telling Nero to hurry up (M20)
Cleaning up his Dad's mess	DMC3 - pretty much the whole plot (spoken by Dante while talking to Beowulf, M11)
The end? Don't bet on it	DMC3 - M01
Looks like it's your lucky day	DMC2 - Dante "accepting" his job from Matier
Every hero has a weakness	DMC2 - Dante to Lucia (D-M14)
It's only the rain	DMC3 - ending
A man with guts and honor	DMC1 - vs. Nelo Angelo 3
Now my coat's all charred	DMC4 - Dante vs. Berial
Where does the time go?	DMC3 - Dante "accepting" Vergil's invitation (M02)
For Tony Redgrave	DMC - Dante's alias, engraved on his guns
In the name of my father	DMC1 - Dante declaring that he'll kill Mundus (M16)
You'll never have her fire	DMC1 - Dante, to Trish after Nightmare 2
Impressive	DMC3 - Rudra, after Dante's showy display (M05)
Bring it on!	DMC3 - Dante
Looks like we have a winner	DMC1 - Trish, vs. Mundus 3
Sensational!	DmC Devil May Cry - SSS style ranking
It's showtime. Come on!	DMC3 - Dante vs. Cerberus (M03)
This is my kind of rain	DMC3 - Catching Lady after she falls (M07)
Absolutely crazy about it	DMC3 - Dante, ending
Let's rock, baby!	DMC1 - Dante, breaking the warning screen
You can't handle it	DMC3 - Vergil telling Arkham he can't handle Sparda's power (M19)
Power... Give me more power!	DMC4 - Nero's awakening
Dude, the show's over!	DMC3 - M13
Let's welcome chaos!	DMC3 - Arkham breaking the seal (M13)
And you are set free	DMC4 - Lucifer acquisition
Fill your dark soul with light	DMC1 - narmtastic scene of Trish's "death"
Keeps getting better and better	DMC3 - Dante getting ditched by Lady (M03)
Stylish!	DMC - general. Appeared as S style rank in 1
Too easy!	DMC3 - Dante after acquiring Cerberus (M03)
Devils never cry	DMC1 - Dante consoling Trish DMC3 - ending
This is what I live for!	DMC3 - ending
And welcome to Hell!	DMC3 - Jester, M05
Jackpot!	DMC - general finisher
This party's just getting crazy!	DMC3 - start
One hell of a party!	DMC3 - start

Looks like most of those are quotes. Not too surprising, although some of them are quite similar to other quotes from within the series. Did end up looking them up (scripts!) to clean it up and add which missions they were from (not all though). Turns out that I didn't miss that many of them~

I might have more thoughts later if I go back to it. Got Project X Zone from a StreetPass friend, so who knows. There's still SoS mode to conquer.

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.

It's been a while...

Since I've played a Tales of... game. Tried out the Tales of Graces F demo, and currently? I'm not exactly sure what to think. Don't really get the A/B skill system, not particularly fond of using just the analog stick for movement (Vesperia was the same), and the camera is kinda weird. Then again, the last Tales I played was in 2D and I didn't exactly read what the instructions said. Plus, the demo just kinda throws you into the fray. But unlike the Vesperia demo, I actually enjoyed making a total idiot out of myself. Managed to pull off a 秘奥義, which was nice. Pascal likes making things go boom. I think I get how to restore CC. This is definitely not a Tales game that I'll be doing co-op with anytime soon. They already had enough trouble with Tales of Rebirth. This is going to kill them even faster. Definitely faster than Tales of Destiny Remake, that's for sure. One thing I did notice... the AI's actually fairly intelligent. Anyways, like all the other Inomata Tales, no chance of localization! Not even Tales of Hearts was localized and that was on the DS.

Got 2 other demos: Fist of the North Star (Hokuto Musou) and Castlevania - Lord of Shadows. Didn't exactly enjoy either of them. Hokuto felt pretty clunky and a little slow after playing some Tales of Graces and Sengoku BASARA. I'm also not a HnK fan, so there's even less reason for me to even play it. Only checked it out because they were comparing the 2 games and wanted to know which one was the one to get. It was originally between SB and SM as they were released about 2~3 weeks within each other and HM is coming out next month, and was brought into the mix because of how badly SM3 burned some of the players. I'm kinda going "eh" at SM3 because it was recently announced that it was going to be up-ported to the PS3. I might decide to check it out if they release a demo on the PSN. But as it stands, I don't really like playing KOEI games.

Castlevania. It's OK. There were a few problems with the camera and the lighting effects (somewhat inconsistent). Combat was pretty simplistic. Didn't expect anything like DMC, so... it was OK. I wasn't exactly having fun with it, but I wasn't frustrated either. Just something about the aesthetics doesn't sit all that well with me. Maybe because I'm still stuck in the old-school Metroidvania era? That really can't be it, or else I'd be saying that 3D (not the new 3D supported ones, still no opinion on it) games sucked. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm still not quite past the little bit of knowing that 3D Castlevania games in general aren't very good. It already plays a little better than the previous entries, but it's still not as fluid as I would like it. And it was only supervised by Kojima Productions. Not like they had much of a hand in this.


Still haven't booted up the game...