Big Dynasty Warriors/Koei analysis coming up. I have yet to write it, though...and lots of school work to do. I'm predicting that I should be done with it by the end of the week. And here's some addicting game I found:

http://www.rautasydan.org/bounce/smallgame.swf

A few things. I have a lot of ideas and not that much free time due to school and other things, but here's a breakdown of what has happened since the last update:

-I got a capture card. This means I can now take screenshots and record videos of whatever game I play. I will be using http://www.youtube.com/user/SombraDelColoso to upload all videos.

-I bought a lot of games.

-I am playing a lot of games.

-I am writing a lot about all these games.

-I remembered this blog existed.

I guess that's it for now. I have also created a forum and Livestream channel I use to stream videogames for a couple of people I know. I'll try to update this blog more frequently from now on.

Drakengard

Drakengard is a very unique game which borrows elements from flight simulators, RPGs and Hack and Slash games. You play the role of Caim, a very angry young man whose keep is attacked by The Empire at the beginning of the story. Caim tries to repel the Empire’s attack, but he’s wounded and as he sees an enemy soldier burn his keep’s flag, he rushes back to the castle where he finds a mortally injured dragon that he makes a pact with in order to stay alive. A pact is basically a spell that binds their lives so if any of them dies, so does the other (making them drastically stronger and restoring their health in the process, it seems). They then embark on a journey to protect Caim’s sister, Furiae, “the goddess” from the Empire. I’ll start talking about the gameplay right away and continue talking about the story on a different entry to avoid spoilers for those interested in playing this game.
Gameplay: As I already mentioned, the game borrows elements from more than one genre and there are 3 types of missions.

-Ground Missions:

You control Caim in these missions and make your way through hordes of enemies mostly by yourself. You may also mount your Dragon by pressing the SELECT button if there are no obstacles impeding you from riding it (such as being inside a building, thick forests which hinder maneuvering, etc). You may bring up eight different weapons to each mission plus one ally. The victory conditions vary from reaching a certain point in the map or slaying targets.
These missions play out much like your regular Hack and Slash games (think of Dynasty Warriors, only the combat is a lot simpler). You may roll to the left (L1) or right (R1), block (L2) or change your equipped weapon (R2). One of the biggest faults of this mode is that the AI is a letdown, even on normal mode. The battles are usually fairly easy (but this is coming from someone who has played over 10 games from Koei’s warrior series) and the combat probably gets repetitive quite quickly for today’s standards. Button mashing will get you nowhere, though, so don’t think this is some mindless button masher. Some might not like the way it’s always Caim and the dragon versus the world, but there were sometimes justifications for this on some missions. The developers should have probably focused a lot more on the combat system and interaction with the backgrounds to enrich the experience, but I don’t know about the team’s budget.

-Air missions:

My favorite missions! You take control of the Dragon and beat these missions by exterminating everything at sight or flying to a certain place. The controls are simple. Dashes are made with the L1(left dash) and R1(right dash) buttons. Pressing both buttons will make the dragon turn 180 degrees. You lock on a target with the R2 button. I liked these missions so much that it made me buy Ace Combat 4…which wasn’t quite what I expected, but I’m still looking for other flight simulators just for fun.

Misc. Mechanics/Oddbits


Allies:

After unlocking allies, you may summon them up to 3 times per ground mission. Their HP bar is gradually depleted and they have infite MP so repeatedly using their magic attacks is usually the best strategy for them. Arioch is the strongest of the three as her magic attacks can easily slay a couple of squads per use. I wish they could have made it so your allies could summon their pact beasts to the battlefield with the SELECT button like Caim, but that is not the case. Still a nice feature to quickly get rid of magic resilient enemies since their “magic” attacks don’t trigger the fireball counters.

Magic:

Each weapon has a unique magic spell which can be used once you fill your magic gauges be it by smacking enemies around or finding magic orbs. These spells are quite useful and since you can carry 8 weapons per mission, it allows for the player to switch them around in order to adapt to many diverse situations. Just to name a few, there’s a speed up, invisibility, damaging aura and fireball spell.

Magic resilient enemies:

After a few hours, the game will introduce red versions of regular units which have an automatic magic counter to all of Caim’s spells. These units also shoot the dragon on sight and make for a great way to prevent abusing the dragon’s power in some levels. They can be damaged by magic, but the damage is nothing compared to their counter magic blast.

Finishing blows:

These are basically combo finishers. Each weapon gets extra hits as it levels up. So let’s say you have a lvl 2 weapon that can attack 6 times. There will be moments during combos when a flash will shine and pressing the triangle button at these times will unleash a finishing blow which is different for every weapon.

Dragon on Ground missions:

You can ride your dragon on most ground missions. It clears crowds a lot faster than Caim, but the anti magic enemies will shoot it down at sight so it’s not like you can just beat the game by exploiting this.
As a sidenote, as weapons level up they change their size and shape. The player also unlocks fragments of the weapon’s story/legend as it gets stronger.
D’s comments:
Many reviewers complain about the camera but not once did I struggle with it. Odd. Oh yeah, and although the game is labeled as an RPG, the only grinding one can do is replaying missions to increase Caim’s strength a bit plus leveling up your weapons to their 4th stage.

Oh yeah! And all the images were taken from Blue Laguna, RPGFan and Gamespot. I just directly uploaded them from my saved images because direct linking could hurt their traffic or something. Please don’t sue me.

Been lazy. Currently playing Dark Cloud and put a lot of "reviews" on hold. In this game you play as a boy named Toan. His village is seemingly wiped out by some shady character who awoke a fat, man-eating genie which I can't help but associate with Majin Buu after he and his summoner take flight and start destroying random villages.

The game is extremely simple, gameplay wise. You travel through randomly generated dungeons and collect these spheres called "Atla" which you need in order to rebuild the world. Each Atla contains a person, house or object which you can later release with a magical gauntlet given to you by the Fairy King. The fight system is simple enough. Pretty much Zelda with no sidestep(so far) and allies.

Your weapons can break if you don't repair them before their HP drops to zero and these can also level up. You may equip special items to your weapons in order to make them stronger, and once they level up, they will absorb them so you may further equip items to them and so on. After they reach a certain level, they can be permanently transformed into one of these items with a fixed percentage of the original weapon's power. This makes me wonder if there's a limit as to how strong a weapon can become. I'll keep updating and I'll write about my findings plus other things.

Oh, and I read one of Yahtzee's articles on The Escapist. He mentioned the family mechanic on Fable 2 not being rewarding enough so the first thing that came to my mind was "make it so your son or daughter can follow you around and do tasks for you or be trained as a warrior". I haven't played the game but someone I know told me about it. I thinkit would be pretty cool to raise your own son to be a killing machine or to have him run some errands for you. I also tried to play Street Fighter 4 online only to be reminded of how bad I am compared to the good Sagat players. Oh well.

Game of the day:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/492477
This is a turn based RPG. Kind of just a Final Fantasy with less plot and items but A LOT of abilities and status effects. Still a great challenge if you play on Heroic mode(battle system goes ATB instead of TB).

A picture of the ability grid:


Battle system:

Well, I haven't updated at all which is probably OK since nobody is currently reading this. Anyway, I've been playing Megaman X8, Dragon Quest VIII and plan to beat this Duel Masters game I got for 2.99 at Gamestop. Currently typing out a Drakengard and Drakengard II review. I'm not sure yet, but I'm most likely going to be posting an English and Spanish version of each game review/analysis thing I make.

Random thoughts of the day:

-Gouken and Seth from Street Fighter IV borrow moves from Third Strike characters.

-Soul Calibur IV is great and all as a fighting game, but how they got rid of all the fun single player stuff from II and III was kind of a letdown.

-I should be hired by KOEI to make the ultimate Dynasty Warriors game.

First Entry Thingy

I created this blog mainly to write about video games I play and maybe throw in a few game design ideas I have while I'm at it. I'd use a notebook, but I'm a very messy person and would probably lose it. Another plus is the feedback I can get from the comments.