RPG Progress Report

[ElkinFencer10]

I wish I had the chest hair to finish a Souls game...

[Exhuminator]

Play King's Field instead. It will put chest hair on your chest hair.

[fastbilly1]

Play King's Field instead. It will put chest hair on your chest hair.

Then it rips it out one hair at a time.

[isiolia]

I wish I had the chest hair to finish a Souls game...

With all the other stuff you play, I don't think you'd really have that much trouble with one if you stuck with it, particularly if you took advantage of online resources for strategies and such.

Biggest thing is sticking with one long enough to learn the basic skills, which is largely the same thing you could say about most any genre. It's just that you've probably practiced a lot of previous fighting or FPS games (for example), making new games built on those models easy to jump into. While I'm far from being especially good at them, my replays have roughly cut playtimes in half, and could still be improved on a lot. If you can just play straight through, I don't think any of them would be more than 5-10 hour games.

Bloodborne, particularly, tends to be front-loaded for difficulty. If you manage to get past the first few bosses, most likely, you won't have a ton of trouble rolling the credits. DLC and some Chalice Dungeons...are a different matter.


That said, if it's not fun for you, then it's not fun. I can't stand being tossed back to the beginning of the game after 3 lives 3 continues (much less trying to 1CC), but a challenge on a short loop (Souls games are usually a few minutes at most) has potential to keep my interest.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Found some more interesting things about Tales of Hearts R. First off, and it's a tiny thing, but the fact that you can't skip the end-battle talking things is annoying. Especially because there aren't enemies to actually avoid on the map, so it's just random battles like the older games. The scenes also just have talking, and no blocking (movement), which I something I really liked about Graces. That's a minor complaint though. They're usually entertaining enough (there's one in particular that makes me laugh every time, but that might be because I can understand the Japanese dialogue).

Something I'm far more conflicted about is that they gate your ability to level up based on where you are in the story. You can still level up and gain AP which you can later allocate as much as you want, but you can only allocate so much before your skills max out. Granted, you'd have to grind quite a bit before you could get to a point where you would run out of places to allocate AP, but it's still a weird gating method regardless, especially considering no other Tales game (that I've played) has that O.o

I wish I had the chest hair to finish a Souls game...

With all the other stuff you play, I don't think you'd really have that much trouble with one if you stuck with it, particularly if you took advantage of online resources for strategies and such.

+1

The online wikis for what certain bosses are weak to (as well as what weapons or strategies are good for them if I'm having a lot of trouble) are how I beat the first two Souls games. I think I never would've had the patience to finish either if I'd never done that.

[MrPopo]

That sounds like what happened in FFXIII, where you couldn't level up beyond certain points until you got further in the game.

[MrPopo]

Well, I spent all morning on my solo White Mage run in FF1. I was able to get the crown in four attempts, Astos in two, Vampire in two, but then the major roadblock became getting to Lich. I was using the low level walkthrough as my base, but certain encounters were deadlier for me than that party, as paralysis and stone were instant death (occasionally I'd get lucky with the paralysis and recover and be able to run, but it wasn't a sure thing). So I ended up mapping out the specific set of encounters you get and adjusted when I transitioned floors to give me the least risky path to Lich without undue amounts of time being spent advancing the counter. The actual Lich fight required two attempts; the first one he nailed me with a crit when I was low and still setting up my defenses while the second one went perfectly. Now I'm going back to the peninsula of power leveling to grind myself up to 20 before I try the Castle of Ordeals.

[MrPopo]

This evening ended up being extremely productive. The Castle of Ordeals took a handful of times to get through (a few instances of getting screwed by instant death attacks) but I prevailed and came out with the Zeus Gauntlet, which does heavy lifting through the rest of the run. Which meant it was time for the single worst part of the run.

I'm talking, of course, about the Ice Cave.

Now, this thing is frustrating for a normal run, but with my solo white mage run it's a new kind of hell. Approximately 1/3 of the enemy groups have some form of instant death, and another 1/3 have the ability to stun. Which means there is no really good route to go through. I had a high enough luck that I was guaranteed to be able to run from every runnable encounter when my turn came up, but FF1's turn order mechanic (utterly random order) meant that I had to end up hoping more for enemies to miss with their nasty moves. I ended up grabbing the floater three times but getting killed on the way out (with one time being three steps from the exit stairs), but the fourth time was the charm. That doesn't count the many many times I didn't even get to the floater. Surprisingly I always got good luck on the Eye. Two times I went first and the other two times he missed with his opening XXXX.

Now that I had the floater I could class change, get some spells and miscellaneous treasure, and get the ProRing. I did a little bit of grinding with my shiny new Harm 4 so I could afford a Cure 4 (though I forgot to snag it and still need to pick it up on the current save). I then went and did the Volcano which was easy peasy, especially since I was skipping the vast majority of encounters by walking on the lava. The waterfall cave was also a quick trip and netted me my Ribbon and some cash. Next stop is the Water Temple and Kraken.

[Betagam7]

I finally polished off Secret of Mana 2/Seiken Densetsu 3 today.

The final boss killed me after a lengthy battle first time around so I went back and ground out an additional 4 level which seemed to do the trick.

There must be some amazing conversations in these games.

"Quick, Kevin. The Mana tree is in danger! Carlie, why are traipsing back and forth killing minor dragons. you've been doing it for hours now despite the world seemingly being minutes from mortal peril!"

I liked it better than the first game, but as with that one I really had to force myself on once it became a series of never ending boss fights most of which I seemed to be able to defeat just by standing next to them and punching them with Kevin.

[Xeogred]

KEVIN STRONG