RPG Progress Report

[Xeogred]

Skyrim is a nice filler game.

[noiseredux]

Skyrim

DAY 2

I've spent most of my evening in a single cave. I had a couple of items I was looking for to finish up quests. While I first encountered only human enemies, I soon found myself up against a giant spider. Luckily he was wounded, so a couple of arrows and a few sword swipes to finish him off and I was off on my way.

I helped a fellow out of some webs but he tried to betray me. I let a couple of reanimated dead knights have their way with him before finishing him off. Luckily I saved before an awful spike trap. Reloaded and made my way deeper into the cave. What seemed a small area turned into a sprawling one. I leveled myself up to level 4 in here attacking the skeletal dead. I have to admit, I'm have a lot of fun with the first person combat. And I commend the level-up system which seems to adapt to your playstyle. For instance, successful blocks will up your shield block stats. It's almost like if Final Fantasy II was good.

I found what was presumably the "boss" of the area and defeated him with a mix of fire and sword. Found my way out and realized I had never found the Dragonstone. So back in I went, this time exploring leisurely as everything was dead. Grabbed the Dragonstone off the corpse of the "boss" and called it a night just outside the cave.

[MrPopo]

You forgot to loot the boss? That's the very first thing you learn to do in TES games.

[noiseredux]

You forgot to loot the boss?

Not my proudest moment.

[pierrot]

I finished up Dragon Slayer: Eiyuu Densetsu yesterday. I'm really glad I got all the Rum drops that I did as I was heading through the final dungeon(s), because I needed every one of them for the final boss. He was pretty wicked. I'm pretty sure I only won through attrition, as before he appeared to run out of MP, he was hitting me Obis 3 (basically guaranteed insta-death) Saktas 5 (500 HP drain) and healing himself with Res 5 (2500HP restore of his 8000 max HP). I was about to give up hope when I had him down to about 3000HP, and tried to use a barrel of gunpowder I was saving for him, only to find out that he was resistant to it. Anyway, I managed to defeat him, and his true purpose was revealed in glorious JRPG fashion. It was a twist that's seen quite often in JRPGs, but I don't know if it was all that common in '89.

I kind of enjoyed the story, even though there were some glaring deficiencies in things like Akdam's motivations, and I still don't understand why Deena was part of the story at all. She really didn't need to be. She was kidnapped for two chapters in the middle of the game, and it was really so tangential to the overall story that it served little to no purpose. Perhaps that was intentional, though, as the game does appear to poke fun at the genre a little bit, with free lodging, and an NPC in a town in the later part of the game who explains how the building he's in used to be an inn that charged weary adventurers exorbitant prices for lodging, but went belly-up after the rise of Warp technology--there are two levels of warping in both item and spell form, and the second allows for instantaneous travel to any previously visited location.

The Mega Drive version is still fairly obviously a port from PCs, but Sega-Falcom did a nice job of dressing it up more like a console JRPG of the time. It plays well, and the monster designs are actually really cool, and nice to look at, which is something I don't think I've ever actually said about an RPG before. Final Chapter Bestiary

Something that concerns me a little bit, is that on Gamefaqs, across all platforms, the times for beating this game are in the 40-60 hours range, which seems absurd. I probably spent 9 or 10 hours finishing up the last 3/5 or so of the game over the past five or six days. I would be shocked if I spent more than 24 hours on this game total. I don't know how those times are so inflated, unless they all incorporate time spent on rare equipment drops from the monsters in the last chapter of the game, which I didn't really bother with.

So with that, my attention turns back to Ogre Battle, I suppose. Hopefully I'll be done with that one by the end of the weekend.

[BoneSnapDeez]

GameFAQs length estimates are WAY off. No idea where they get those numbers. Use howlongtobeat instead.

I do enjoy good ol' Legend of Heroes. Been meaning to get it on Mega Drive.

[Exhuminator]

GameFAQs length estimates are WAY off. No idea where they get those numbers. Use howlongtobeat instead.

This man knows what he's talking about.

You can safely say if a time submission aggregate is blue on HLTB, that's rather accurate.

[pierrot]

I don't spend much time looking at Gamefaqs for estimates on game length, but I add my input there for finished games, and was struck by the time shown for this one, and more so when it was roughly the same across all platforms.

Looking at HLTB, it seems there's only two entries, and only for the TG-16 version, though the times given there are certainly more what I would expect.

Been meaning to get it on Mega Drive.

It's not an easy one to come by. I've had my copy for a while now, but it took some work to get, and I ended up settling for a lesser condition than I would have liked, but it had the pin with it, and that's what I cared about. It's pretty slim pickings out there.

[Betagam7]

Am I actually supposed to fight with him?

You're supposed to use him as a sex slave.

In the GBA rerelease he does crazy high damage (along with some story sequences that have him power level while the party is asleep). I think in the original if you're willing to grind some levels on him his growths are really good.

Yeah, I tried it and he jumps on average around 3 levels per battle out in the field.

I have him up to level 45 already and my main party are around level 60. He starts at level 8 so that's quite the level jumping. I don't really see what the use of him is though as I prefer the two magic wielders to his bow.

Anyway, I found Electro and can now fly around the map which is incredibly confusing as I get lost easily enough on the ground. I'm getting on for 35 hours and the game doesn't seem to be nearing any climax soon....Well, I have a week off so I'm going to give it a shot at finishing it.

[noiseredux]

Skyrim

DAY 3

I now have a companion, Lydia. We've been exploring a nearby mountain in the hopes of finding the Greybeards. What we've found instead is another dragon. And this one seems a lot tougher than the last. Plus I had a whole team last time. Now it's just me and Lydia. I know I could probably just try to find a way around him, but damn it would be cool to take him down. And I'm sure the XP boost would be nice. But he's strong. He shoots some kind of ice magic at me, which makes me think that I should be using fire magic on him – which I am, but so far no good.

I'm still getting some weird glitches. Mostly with animals. Horses and elephants seem to hover above the ground and "hop" in unnatural ways. Water also seems to be affected. Sometimes it looks like water and sometimes a solid sheet of a single color. It's weird. I don't know how much time I want to spend trying to troubleshoot visuals.