Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=138https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1473Playing again, I found that I've gotten good enough to make it all the way through the first section without dying, but that seems mainly because I've already died so much that I've learned what not to do... like on of those experiments where the monkey is in the cage and one button gives him a shock while the other gives food. That is not my idea of a good experience; games shouldn't punish the player for holding in a direction for a split second too long. Anyways, I got stuck at the same place as before, the segment where the easter-island heads shoot blue discs at you. Somehow I died even though I had a fresh shield, and it was basically over after that because I'm not good enough to maneuver through all those discs without any power-ups. One good thing though, is the fact that all the enemies that have power-ups are red, which is a good way to make them recognizable to the player. Now that I am good enough to make it two or three sections into the game, it feels like a scramble to gather upgrades at the beginning and then a desperate struggle to hold onto them once there are more enemies, narrower paths and more shots flying at you. While this game is fun and definitely challenging, I feel like it would be more accessible and fun if they had made it a little less forgiving, for example make it easier to maintain a shield. I'm not going to keep playing this game, but it has made me interested in playing some more balanced space shooters.Fri, 23 Feb 2007 23:32:08 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1473&iddiary=3103https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1473Gradius is definitely a classic ancestor of the space shooter genre. It has that "easy to play, difficult to master" quality, for at least the first 3 minutes. The simple controls are just move the ship, fire, and use upgrades. I like the cycling upgrade system which adds a surprising depth to the gameplay, considering it such a simple system. However fun the gameplay is taken by itself, I very quickly found myself extremely frustrated at this game. Although you have three lives, usually dying once makes it pointless to continue unless you are an expert, which probably requires a certain amount of memorization. Since you lose your upgrades (except any that are unused) on death, and since death usually happens at the more difficult parts of the game, you suddenly find yourself surrounded by swarms of pixelated plasma and alien ships without your precious laser, shield, or speed boosts. Even if you make it past the first cavern or whatever you fly through, at the end you have to dodge the eruptions from twin volcanoes, something I found impossible without having a shield when I got there. After playing the first 3 minutes of the game over and over for about 40 minutes, I began to realize the importance of the upgrade strategy, especially in the first few moments of the game. I learned that by taking the right upgrades and moving in the right pattern I could collect all the upgrades before reaching the cavern and by then have several speed boosts, laser, and the "option" companion gun. Having these allowed me to rake the entire screen of enemies much more effectively so that I could build up upgrades to get a shield, which helped me get through the last few waves and then the volcanoes. The first boss was a pushover compared to the level before him. The levels got considerably more difficult after that, adding in some new enemies and barriers that have to be shot out of the way. Overall my initial impression is that this game is fun and very good but that its difficulty is too unforgiving to the player that just wants to play it without having to memorize endless patterns.Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:51:15 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1473&iddiary=3100https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1109Aaaah, finally, the finale. As I mentioned in my previous entries, the story and dialogue of this game are somewhat cliche and melodramatic, but the series' charm and gameplay (with the exception of the large amount of time spent casting spells from the menu) tend to save it in my opinion. Pickup up from the last time I played, I battled my way through the Cave of Darkness a final time, this time reaching the Dark Castle. They picked a good, relatively intense song for this area that made the scene more exciting as I fought through more enemies deeper into the castle. Even though at this point in the game, enemies have 1-hit-kill abilities and other strong attacks, for the most part they're only difficult if I don't cast any spells. I continued into the Castle, finally reaching an empty throne with some creepy demon-flame things flanking it. Upon approaching the throne my party fell into a dungeon where we had to fight "Full Metal Hunger" a giant crab-like boss that is a repeat of the first boss in the game. I don't even think it damaged me very much... The fight was over quickly as I used my routine of raising my stats and lowering the enemies and then alternating between having my sorceress ("grand divina" class) use attack spells while my two melee characters attack. After that boss I continued yet deeper into the castle until I finally reached the roof. I fought another repeat boss, this time a giant harpy that was even easier than the crab. I continued past the blocked-off central door to a side room where I fought Isabella/Bigeu, one of the few recurring characters in the series and the person who threw Hawk's (the main character in my game) life into turmoil. She told us how her Dark Prince (another recurring character) was all she had and that she'd defend him with her life. She transformed into a humanoid cat and attacked, using a few powerful spells but for the most part she wasn't that challenging. Before she died she explained how she had hoped to return Dark Prince's soul to him, which might have stopped him from continuing his evil plan (muahahaha) to merge the underworld with the ... main ... world. I went back to the roof and into the previously blocked door and then up some stairs to Dark Prince. After the classically cliche "I'm evil and powerful, want to join me?" speech, he took off to seal away the Mana Godess for good returning bringing the underworld. I flew away on Flammie to rest and stock up before going after him in the Mana holy land. Once I got there, I was treated to some somewhat tedious fights against shapeshifters (mostly easy but some would turn into my party and use their techniques against them). I reached the Mana Tree to find that Dark Prince had already destroyed it. The mana faerie inside Hawk's head attacked him but got tossed aside. So, the fight against Dark Prince began. If more enemies had unique strategies like his color shifting, the game's combat might have been more interesting and challenging. It made it so that the most effective element to use against him (and thus the one that healed him) would change occasionally, accompanied by a change in his color. While the fight was interesting and accompanied by more good Seiken Densetsu boss music, it never got really challenging even when he changed into his true form (as all good final bosses do). After defeating him, the characters learned that Mana would disappear from the world for 1,000 years until the faerie grew into the new goddess. After that, the characters all visit their respective homes together to find loved ones back to normal and recovered and their respective kingdoms back in order. Roll credits. I love this series of games, but I'm glad that I've finished this one because while the gameplay was good to me, there was a relative lack of story when compared to the other games. It's possible that if I had chosen different characters for my party that the story would have been more fleshed out or unique. The combat also never really changed very much beyond needing to use different elements to attack or raising and lowering statistics to gain the upper hand. As I've said before, it's definitely a game for Seiken Densetsu fans, as its main saving grace is the charm of the series. Fortunately, I happen to be one of those fans, so now I can be content to have beaten another game from the series.Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:38:31 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1109&iddiary=2479https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1109I played SD3 for my gamelog assignment since we get our choice this week.. The last time I wrote I hadn't yet ventured far into the "Cave of Darkness" but since then I have gone through the cave, defeating the god-beast of darkness, which was essentially a group of 3 giant, evil floating heads. The boss posed about as much difficulty as the others. Because now my ninja character can hit multiple enemies with stat-down and damage spells while my wizardess can hand out multi-target level 2 attack spells while my valkyrie casts multiple stat-up spells, fighting bosses is down to pretty much a cyclical routine of doing just that. That's unfortunate since much of the enjoyment of the Seiken Densetsu series for me comes from the visual style and other trappings of the series while fighting in this way means most of the challenge is just getting back to the menu to cast another spell before the enemy does. Today I went into the cave of darkness again because I needed to go past where I fought the god-beast in order to reach the Dark Castle where some Dark Prince (at least the naming scheme is consistent...) who has only been mentioned so far is waiting to fight me, presumably using the Sword of Mana against me. So I went deeper into the cave until I came across Jagan a vampire who has been working against me on the side of the Dark Prince for the whole game. I fell into a pit where he attacked me along with a few minions that died in the first few exchanges of spells. Jagan was one of the most challenging bosses, repeatedly reducing my whole party to near death and occasionally to just one character barely clinging to life. It required me to actually shift my strategy to occasionally sacrifice some damage output in order to keep my characters over 50% health since Jagan would sometimes pop out 2 or 3 spells in a row. A good challenge, but still one that was mostly just trying to time spell casting to get several characters casting at the same time while using healing items and delivering some physical blows. Despite my characters' healths fluctuating more than usual, I eventually prevailed and found myself in an earlier part of the cave. Since I had picked up a few weapon/armor seeds (they produce the best equipment in the game) I went outside and flew on my dragon back to a town to rest, buy some recovery items, and see what I had gotten in the seeds. I got a couple of pieces of armor that I hadn't already gotten, so I equipped them and returned to the cave one more time, as I haven't actually made it into the Dark Castle yet. About halfway into the cave and one hour into my play time, a ninja's "split image strike" combined with a dragon's lightning spell got lucky and managed to wipe out my party so I decided it would be a good time to stop. As much as I adore this franchise, I think I could have made it a little better. My main problems with it are that despite being an action RPG the action part is too simple and too much time is spent in the circle menu picking spells, abilities, and items to use, even when 2 of my characters are supposed to be primarily melee characters. Also, I would mostly eliminate the system of upgrading characters by leveling up and buying armor and weapons that are different only by virtue of having a different number for a statistic. MENUS ARE BORING (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:54:22.)Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:53:18 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1109&iddiary=2444https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1104I played some more Kirby. It's really frustrating to see how much better this game could be if they provided some more purpose to the game, or some more variety in the levels, or more challenge. The funnest part for me right now are the somewhat more difficult boss fights and the occasional mini-game. The hardest challenge I've had so far was a run-in with MetaKnight's subordinates that I had to retry several times before passing. Interestingly enough, I'm not sure if it actually took away any of my lives, or maybe I had just gotten some extras so I didn't notice. Anyways, it got harder since I lost by weapon ability the first time I died. I had no choice but to just eat everything, which actually made it easier to pass. I moved through a few more zones but I barely noticed because it all looks and plays exactly the same, with the same enemies, abilities and items. I think I'm around the 4th or 5th world-zone thing but I'm not sure. Playing this game has made me remember playing Kirby All-Stars on SNES, which has several Kirby games included in it. These games have much better designs in my opinion, as there are games that are exclusively the fun mini games that I mentioned before, there is one in which you just look for secrets and ways to collect treasure, and one in which you have to race to clear the game as quickly as possible, adding challenge. There are also a wider variety of abilities. Since I know about this game, I won't go so low as to say that the series has no redeeming qualities, but in this first installment the best things that you can enjoy constantly are the base gameplay and the charm of Kirby and his world, though these get bogged down by the repetition of the game.Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:25:19 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1104&iddiary=2384https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1109CS 80K TA's and Prof: The classics list is too short and lacks variety and ignores the SNES, Genesis and PS1 entirely. What the hell? It should include games the library can get, but shouldn't be *limited* to those. Anyways, I'm writing this log just for the hell of it. I love the Mana / Seiken Densetsu series, even though I personally own only a few of them. They're kind of like a dumbed-down Zelda game challenge wise but with a more compelling story. I've been playing SD3 for a while now since looking at its sprite work for our upcoming game project inspired me to revisit it. I don't know why it was never released in the US, but I wish it had been. My recent play experience was finishing up putting down the 2nd-to last god-beast that was released when some vampire bastard named Jagan stole the Mana sword from me in exchange for the life of one of the Mana tree's guardian faeries. This led me all over the world on the back of Flammie, a dragon who is a consistent ally in the non-portable Mana games. The last one I fought, the god-beast of wind (I don't remember it's name) had the most interesting fight "room" so far. Rather than just walking into a room where the boss appeared, my party spotted it in the sky and then jumped on Flammie's back to pursue the god-beast. My party fought the god-beast from Flammie's back, flying over clouds, with the camera angle occasionally changing. The fight wasn't particularly difficult since I've already got the hang of the fighting system and my characters have abilities to boost their own stats while lowering enemies' stats all while pumping out some heavy damage thanks to Angela, the game's main offensive spell-caster. After beating that god-beast, I flew to an ancient destroyed city that had reappeared because of space-time fluctuations caused by the weakening of the world's Mana power. In this city I got the final armor for my characters (until I get their "ultimate" equipment that can only be had from weapon/armor seeds). Outside the city are a few screens of jungle with enemies of various difficulty. More importantly these enemies are the first to drop "???" seeds in the game, which grant items that allow the second class change. After a loooooooong time hunting for these seeds and encountering a bug that makes the item from them be the same, I used a code to give me 99 of the seeds so as not to waste any more time on them. Finally, equipped with these I went to the Mana holy land to change my characters' classes to Ninja Master, Grand Divina, and Star Lancer. These three classes specialize in targeting either all enemies or all party members, to attacking and defending en masse will be no challenge after a few more levels when they upgrade their spells. Before stopping I peeked into the first few rooms of the Cave of Darkness where the last god-beast is hiding out. I didn't go very far because it was getting late and I ran into enemies like ninjas and werewolves that can instantly take off about 500 hp from all three of my characters if I don't kill them within a few seconds of entering the room. At least the game has challenges!Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:09:37 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1109&iddiary=2373https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1104So I sat down to play the ancestor of the many Kirby games. My first impression was that it is exactly like all the others, with very little difference between this first episode and some later version that I played years ago on my Super Nintendo. The main change is just graphical updates. Anyways, this game, while fundamentally very fun and relatively fast paced with good controls, gets repetitive after the first level. It's cool to play around with the various abilities that you can take from enemies, but there isn't that much of a difference between some of them. For example, the "needle", "spark", and "freeze" abilities all cover an area near Kirby, and the "beam" and "fire" abilities both attack in a cone in front of Kirby. Since there doesn't appear to be any kind of "this element is stronger against this other element" kind of thing, I don't see any reason for using one of these substitutes over another one. The game progresses through these levels that are accessed by entering doors in the "over-level". You can also get to mini-game rooms and mini-boss fight rooms from this over level, which, as far as I am into the game, are the main source of interesting challenge. There are games where you try to catch eggs in Kirbys mouth but not bombs, and games where you have to hit the A button fast enough to beat your enemy to the draw in a western-style shootout. These minigames are pretty fun and it would be more interesting if they played some larger role or were at least more frequent in the game.Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:36:57 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1104&iddiary=2364https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=700I played for another hour and a half today, this time bringing in two of my friends who happened to be eating their dinner in their kitchen while I played in their living room. I asked for help finding some of the secrets since I don't remember / never learned where the magic flutes are. We quickly got two whistles and where whisked away to world 8 which was interesting, because I'd never actually played there before. The continuous mini-boss challenges were and interesting test of skill and a decent break from the basic levels found in world 1. I realized that my Mario Bros. 3 skill isn't honed enough to get through world 8 yet without significant frustration, so when I got my second game over I decided to restart the game. This time I got another flute but went to world 4 instead, another world I had never seen before. Before tonight I hadn't played nearly as much of this game as I had thought I had. I beat world 4 before long and moved on to world 5. The variety they included in this game is surprising, since they work off a very simple base of gameplay and can create varied and different challenges just by adding a new enemy or item and arranging them in different ways. I also discovered that this game is one that is far more enjoyable when played with another. For me, this kind of game gets boring quickly without someone else taking a turn. Perhaps this is because the base gameplay is relatively simple and requires more reflex and instinct than it does strategic or problem-solving thought, since games based around those kinds of challenges are generally more engaging for a solo player.Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:47:06 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=700&iddiary=1662https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=700I played the 2-player mode of Super Mario Bros. 3 with my girlfriend tonight, with her playing as Mario and myself as Luigi. I haven't played this game in probably at least 7 years when I rented Super Mario All Stars for my SNES. Playing this game definitely brought back a feeling of nostalgia, reminding me of playing early NES, SNES and Genesis games with my friends back when these games were not very old. I did very poorly with my first few lives, instead watching as my girlfriend took on the first 4 or so levels, passing each one within a few minutes. I tend to play Mario games at a faster pace than her, leading me to make a few embarrassing mistakes like running into enemies or pits, while her more cautious approach seems to fit this game better. I got my Mario play style from playing Super Mario World, in which the controls might be a little more responsive due to the newer system, or perhaps because the collision behavior with enemies acts differently. One thing I admire about the 2D Mario games is that they manage to have some fairly deep emergent gameplay that exists solely because of a combination of the simple 2-button controls and the choice of using different power-ups. It's nice that this game in particular has a wider variety than some others, with such unusual things like the frog suit and music box. Since I haven't played this game in a while and because I needed to play for about an hour, I didn't (remember how to) go for the secret flute that takes you to the last level in a matter of minutes. We continued through the first world and I finally made a comeback when I stumbled across a 1-up in a level and then went on to get 3 stars at the ends of levels, giving me another 5 lives. Once I settled into the pace of the game I started doing a lot better than my girlfriend, who had probably done better when she saw that I initially had been floundering. The old-school 2D graphics and simple sounds allowed the gameplay to really come out. One thing that I don't like about some newer games is that they rely too much on features and graphics as selling points rather than simply making a fun game, but that isn't the case here. The game is so well balanced that the players with the "twitchy" skills can enjoy it as a challenge and the more casual players can simply pick it up for a fun time.Thu, 18 Jan 2007 02:48:27 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=700&iddiary=1585https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=380I played for about an hour and twenty minutes today between 3:40 and 5 pm. I again played as my assassin character, this time attempting to complete the story missions for the Factions expansion. I started out at Raisu Palace, the second to last campaign mission. There weren't very many players around so I went over to the Kurzick area of the world map to investigate what I would have to do to get some of the Kurzick elite armor, which is the best looking assassin armor, in my opinion. Before the armorer would even talk to me I needed more Kurzick faction points, so I went and fought on the Kurzick side of Fort Aspenwood using the same build and technique as before. I found that defending felt a lot easier than attacking. Two of my teammates quit out, leaving us undermanned, but I never once felt seriously pressed to defend the inside of the fort, although the Luxons did get inside for a few minutes once or twice. The enemy team probably had a few unfamiliar players or they were just uncoordinated, or perhaps even more of their members left the game than on my team. Either way, it wasn't a particularly challenging or exciting battle, but winning it allowed me to go back and have the option of buying the armor I was looking for. However, I soon discovered that the armor I had thought cost only 1500 gold per piece was in fact the 15000 per piece version. So, in order to get the armor I wanted I'd need to fight my way down to a new area in search of a different armorer and then spend 70,000 plus materials on armor. Feeling disappointed but mainly just because I hadn't paid enough attention to the GuildWiki article, I went back to look again for a party to beat the final missions with. This time I was lucky and ran into a few people that I had done a mission with about a week ago and I quickly joined their party which fortunately filled up with an acceptable variety of classes fairly quickly. The Raisu palace mission felt somewhat repetitive but it was at least satisfying to move through groups of at a rapid pace as we raced against the clock to save the emperor from being killed. We came close to failure only once when we decided to run through an area full of traps and beat a single boss at the end rather than engage in a long battle on those traps. After a few more groups of enemies that fell under the weight of a small army of necromancer minions aided by my poison and other degeneration skills, we had reached the end of the mission. To no-one's surprise, Master Togo, an NPC playing the role of distant headmaster to the characters starting in the Factions realm, is taken by the nemesis, Shiro Tagachi, and killed in order to complete a spell returning himself to the mortal world. My party quickly jumped into the next mission in which our only task was to charge and kill Shiro Tagachi. On our first attempt, it seemed as though everything was going well until suddenly Shiro snuck some ability through and managed to take out most of the party in a matter of seconds. It was confusing to me, but we retried the mission a moment later and everyone must have been focused on executing their skills more effectively because Shiro was finished in under 3 minutes. After beating him, the party partook of an award given by a group of NPCs in the final area, I used a ranger skill to tame a phoenix as a pet, and I ran through a long series of stilted dialogues between the NPCs who played some role in the game. Since Guild Wars doesn't try very hard to immerse players in the story and I was being waited on to go to dinner, I didn't pay much attention to any of this dialogue and simply ran past it all towards the exit in hope of something being more interesting, but there wasn't, so I left for dinner.Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:18:30 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=380&iddiary=1518