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Feb 23rd, 2007 at 23:32:08 - Gradius (NES) |
Playing 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.
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Feb 23rd, 2007 at 22:51:15 - Gradius (NES) |
Gradius 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.
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Feb 7th, 2007 at 20:38:31 - Seiken Densetsu 3 (SNES) |
Aaaah, 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.
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Feb 5th, 2007 at 21:53:18 - Seiken Densetsu 3 (SNES) |
I 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 edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 5th, 2007 at 21:54:22.
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Awesome Juice has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 13 days |
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