The battle for the Holy Gra-I mean, Tears Crown begins!

Hello losers, how's everything going? :3

Me? I've beaten Nostalgia. Easy game through and through...except for Airship battles. But anyway. Summon Night X came out in japan. So of course I have to try it out. It's good fun. Another NORMAL RPG to play on the DS! It's 2D too! I know, what is this madness!? I can only hope this gets localized, like how Tales of Hearts should have been localized. >:|

It starts out in typical Summon Night fashion. Choose either the male or female main character(I chose the male, He looks cooler. 8D). Then watch a long winded intro play out. Yeah, I know. PEOPLE TALKING IN AN RPG!? Well then you haven't played a Summon Night game. They have the most long winded intros ever. But once you get past that and start playing, it's good fun. Have a video.



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In other randomness...I got an external HD yesterday and got all my important stuff off my laptop. It's a much better backup method than a dinky flashdrive. So now my project's future is no longer in jeopardy. Hooray!

Anyway, I leave off with randomness.

Ah, how nostalgic

So in my neverending battle against the evil lord of boredom, I got my hands on the new DS RPG 'Nostalgia'. It's a typical by the books rpg, random turn based battles, characters and a story that trips nearly every cliche in the book, etc.

...This is exactly what I needed. A good old NORMAL RPG on my DS. There are way too many goddamn SRPGs on the DS, it pisses me off. Mostly because they're all on the PSP. But anyway, I want to lay waste to my enemies and freely explore maps and solve puzzles! Not to move my characters around a stupid grid and navigate a ton of command menus!

Needless to say, I'm enjoying the hell out of this game. Sure, the personalities of your party members are pretty much paper thin archtypes. But I like them anyway. There are random battles, but I'm okay with that. The battle system itself is nothing like anything I'd make. It's slow typical turn based fare, but I like it. You can predict every major plot point before it appears, but I don't mind too much.

The game pulls it all together and makes it fun.

That's really all that matters in my opinion. It would be nice if the story was more varied and the characters were deeper than their assigned archtypes. But that's just an add on to good gameplay.

I'm about 10 hours into the game and loving it. Though the game is a little easy, character battles in particular. Not even bosses are a real challenge.

On the flipside, airship battles are 'LOL EFF U' hard at times. They play like 'Wild ARMs 3's Sandcraft battles. Each of your party members mans a part of your airship for battle. However Nostalgia uses small number scaling for stats. So at Lv 20, my main character has about 143 HP. The Airship starts out with 100 HP, and airship enemies generally hit for about 30-60 damage. Now you can have anywhere from 1-6 enemies on your ONE airship so needless to say, you get gang raped. My Airship's HP now is 310, but I'm still getting my butt kicked if I run into a bad monster group.

tl;dr it's a huge contrast from the laughably easy character battles.

Anyway, that's enough from me about Nostalgia, go play it.

And to finish off, have a visual.



Annnnd awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay I gooooooooooooooooooo

The Wheel of Fate is NOT Turning

It's time for yet another boredom blog post. Yessssss!

So what have I done to stave off the looming dark cloud of evil(and boredom) this time?

I've been playing BlazBlue. Story mode specifically. I tried Arcade mode on Hard. I can't beat Hakumen. DAMN YOU HAKUMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

I actually really like the presentation of story mode in BB though. It's like a perfected version of GGXX's story mode. To be simple though, I suppose you could say it's like a visual novel with fights here and there. It's really addicting. You have to play through each character's individual story to unlock two extra story paths and then after you beat those, you can play the true ending. The true ending is the most epic thing ever. Unlimited Ragna is also pretty damn cheap to play as!

I hope story mode in Continuum Shift takes place after Calamity Trigger's story mode, because I really want to know what happens next. That is, if there WILL be a story mode. *glares at Guilty Gear Accent Core*

'Teach me, Miss Litchi!' is also the most hilarious thing ever. Seriously, I laughed like crazy. I only wish there were more episodes. D:

Well, despite all the fun I've been having with BlazBlue. I doubt that it will last very long. That dark cloud of evil is only going to draw closer and closer until it finally consumes me. Maybe it's for the best, huh?

I need to plan...

Edit: onooooooooooooes, I forgot a visual! Here have this.



Later.

My despair. Feel it.

Wow, I am so bored these days that I'm blogging about it. There's not much else to do. :<

FFTA2 is getting annoying. My handy sketchbook has been run out too. At least I went out with a nice group picture for the last page. Too bad I can't scan still.

So what have you losers been up to these days? Is Tales of The Great Old One finished yet? Did Anaryu fall off Mount Everest? Has Ocean given in to the Foodmonster? Is Sacred Eternal Seraphim Cirno done yet, Nessiah? Has Project DOAD gotten that one star review yet? Has Neok made AAG even more impossible while I wasn't looking? Will I ever stop asking inane questions? Find out next time onnnn, Cloudreach Ball Zeeeeeeee

*cough*

Moving along. I read that Ar Tonelico 3 was announced a bunch of days ago. I like the character designs so far. But...but...Why 3D!? D:

I guess it's sort of inevitable with the industry these days. 2D is very quickly becoming obsolete. Every game review I've seen for 2D games these days has been 'bawww the graphics suck!', which is kind of a downer. I like 2D :<

First it was Trinity Universe, then it was Atelier Rorona, and now it's Ar Tonelico 3!

To their credit though, they look great imo, but...but...3D! D:
Oh well.

What else...

Have some random videos!





*Skie runs*

So we meet again...and again...and again.

Beware, there is not a single mention of Sacred Earth in here. You have been warned.

I swear, if there is a god of luck in some far off mythology somewhere. I formally present to you this message:

SCREW YOU!

SCREW YOU WITH A RAKE!

*ahem*

So over the past few weeks I've somehow managed to catch a cold, get over it, catch another one, get over that, and then catch yet another one on top of that. Back to effing back! What the hell? >:V

Needless to say I am not happy sitting here running through paper like some kind of sniffling, sneezing automaton...

Heh, an automaton.

I AM A SNIFFLING AUTOMATON *BZZT*...*SNIFFLE*

ANYWAY, moving away from my health issues...

I've beaten 'Star Ocean: The Last Hope' some days ago. Thank the heavens. I have to say though. The last boss is so cheap and annoying. I mean, I beat him on my first try, but all of his attacks are all designed in such a way that they all piss you off. The ending was nice though. Too bad I didn't get the special endings. Ah well, I'm not playing that again. Moving right along.

I also picked up 'Final Fantasy Tactics A2' upon beating SO4. I was already playing this but I had put it down some time ago. Getting back on my current playthrough, I'm currently just messing around doing quests and training my party for the big story mission that I lost to the last time I was playing. I hope to finish that soon. As much as I hate to admit it though, this is the best DS SRPG I've played so far. Imagine if Paradise Blue was an SRPG and you have FFTA2, heh.

What else...Ah right, I'm almost out of sketchbook paper. I've been drawing a lot and I'm actually happy with a good amount of them. Too bad I'm definitely not going to feel like scanning all that crap in once I can. I guess that's not too bad. It's not like every piece has to to leave my sketchbook...right? D:

Anyway, I leave off with random visuals.

Art by KeyPassions

Still alive...barely

It's been many centuries since I made a blog entry. It's been really....er, busy for me as of late. So I haven't been working on my projects much...or at all. I've switched modes from RPG Maker to drawing and playing games.

I've been playing 'Star Ocean: The Last Hope' at the moment. In all honesty, it's a terrible game in many, many aspects, but it's one saving grace is the battle system. If only that battle system was attached to a getter game! Ah well, I'm almost finished with it. Just a little bit more and then I can free myself from it, ...'kay?

What else. Ah, right. Drawing. I've been doing a lot of drawing in my sketchbook recently. I think I've gotten a lot better in that aspect. But I bet my tablet-fu has regressed. It's been a long while! D:

It's a shame my scanner won't work on this computer. Otherwise I'd show some of my recent work.

ALSO!

It's a little late incoming from me, but Project DOAD was finished and released in full some time ago. I decided to forgo custom music and just release the game. It pains me to not have what would no doubt have been some excellent music from tyvb, but he had his own problems to deal with. Anyway, it's there on it's blog page.

I'm also helping out with a cross over game effort called Cross Retro. It's actually really amusing, but it's still in progress. Check out the test videos!

And finally, can't end a blog entry without some kind of visual. Let's see now.....

Aha, Videos!

"Caith is not pleased"

Alright enough dumbassery. Skie signing out! ( ' w ' )/

Video: Boss Test Final + Menu Musings

Annnd we have a video with all characters in and such.




Let's see now. All characters are playable, most of the spells have been given custom spell effects, barring Earth Rage, all systems are demonstrated.

I already explained Kell's strategy. Flann's Strategy is to attack with debilitating fire spells and then support Kell with a Fire Barrier spell to make up for her weakness. However, Kell does not do the same for Flann, so you can easily strike at her weakness and take her down first. Kell, however is more dangerous since she has an AOE ice spell on top of three other ice spells, giving her three chances to reduce your Ice resist to nothing and deal ridiculous damage, as you can see in the video.

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Anyway, in other news, I was brainstorming ideas for how to avoid having to make a custom menu. I do believe I've found it. Delegate all the character growth systems to town locations and savepoints or what have you. This would reduce the need for a tricked out base menu to about say....0%? I am however going avoid the default menu still. I'm probably just going to provide a simple objective/quest reminder menu to replace an involved main menu.

Also that poll totally is not going to decide who the main character is. That's already done. It's more of a 'who do you like more?' thing. I wouldn't delegate major story decisions to a poll.

Speaking of story, I've already outlined the the basic game flow for SEBR. I'll share it with you. It'll at least show that I'm doing something other than battle stuff.

--- Game Flow Design ---

Follows the pace of the old SEL. Take missions, explore and do other stuff. Once you finish the general missions, the story mission will open up. This constitutes a single chapter.

So, game flow is...

Chapter Begin Scene --> Free Missions and Exploration(5) --> Story Mission --> Chapter End Scene

--- Mission Board Design ---

The game takes up a mission based system. You go to the Mission Board, choose requests and fulfill them. Once you've done enough, then the story mission will open up. Finish this mission and the chapter will end. But you can still explore and finish the other missions before doing the story mission.

-- Mission Types and Difficulties --

Hunt: Take out a specific monster. Usually a strong monster. but can sometimes be a group hunt.
Gather: Gather items for the client. Amount and type vary
Volunteer: Minigame type missions where you must assist the client in whatever they do.

- Difficulties -

Easy: You will have little trouble completing this mission.
Normal: There may be some challenge involved in this mission.
Hard: There are many challenges involved with this mission.
Expert: The challenge level is through the roof. Fulfill at your own risk.

- Rewards -

There are no items in SEBR, so Rewards are going to have to be SP and Ether Shards. With this in mind. I should balance it so that Missions are the best source of SP and Ether Shards.

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That's all from me. Have some randomness to leave off.