Dragon-Archon's Lair of Platinums Mk.II

[Dragon-Archon]

2 hours ago, Satoshi Ookami said:

Glad I'm not the only one who thought those bad endings were actually more interesting.

Same here  . I hope the other games in the adventure series are going to be better.

 

28 minutes ago, James_Tonto said:

Hey Archon, nice to see you've made a start on 2018, with your first platinum of the year, #174. Are you going to be finishing off Wipeout HD this year? I heard the servers are closing, in a few months.

Thanks, yeah planning to finally plat WipEout HD. Already got all the mp trophies though, so won't have to worry about that.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #175: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II

January 16 2018

After seeing the cliffhanger ending in the first game, I just had to find out what happened next. This game picks up a month after said ending. Rean sets out to find the members of Class VII. Most of the characters have some development, but I still didn't care about Elliot at all. My favourite characters still include Laura, Fie, Emma, Jusis, and Crow, but after playing this game Sara, Towa, Duvalie, Alfin, and Altina are added to that list. Locations from the previous game are revisited and when importing a save file, it's nice to see the references. My only gripe with the locations is that there aren't so many new ones, the majority is still from the first game. The story is excellent for the majority of the game, except for 2 specific parts. Both of these moments feel incredibly forced. The first one is a 'Luke I'm your father' moment and the other is Class VII graduating after only 1 year. At first the game makes it seem as if everyone is getting extra lessons to make up for the 2-month gap due to the war. However, talking to people reveals they're actually cramming the entire second year in just 3 months while also doing their regular first year lessons. For a game that's keen on talking and explaining things, this was just lazy on the developer's part. The reasons for everyone leaving is also very forced. Everyone except for 3 people didn't have urgent reasons to leave, yet they all left and Rean is left behind. It feels like Falcom did this just to have some added drama. The soundtrack is just as great as the first game and some of the new ones I liked a lot are Blue Destination, Phantasmal Blaze, and Awakening. The song I'll Remember You sounds nice too, even though I didn't understand a word of it.

 

I liked the combat system from the first game a lot and it's expanded a bit in the sequel with Overdrive. When a gauge is full, it's possible to get 3 consecutive turns between a linked pair and do things like ultimate attacks or immediately casting magic without delays. Normal attacks are also guaranteed critical hits and Overdrive also heals all status ailments and restores some HP and CP. This may sound a bit too OP, but on Nightmare it's definitely needed, especially against the optional NG+ superboss.

 

Trophy-wise this game is a lot less grindy compared to the first game. There's no trophy for winning 1,000 battles and obtaining 1 million mira (money) is so much easier since sepith are worth a lot more. In fact, I managed to get it at the end of the first playthrough by selling all sepith and some endgame equipment and quartz before reloading the save. There also isn't a trophy for playing 100 hours, which I only found out after playing for 100 hours without any trophy popping  . I do wish the trophy images weren't completely identical to the first game, as I'm not a fan of recycled images. 

[Dragon-Archon]

 #176: Steins;Gate 0

January 24 2018

This game starts during the true ending of Steins;Gate. In this game Okabe gives up on trying to reach the Steins Gate world line. The story mainly focuses on the evens on the Beta world line. Most of the routes are nicely done, but some things aren't answered, such as 

Spoiler

who the woman in the motorcycle suit was during the New Year's party as Kagari was there and FB didn't send the Rounders. Yuki wasn't there and it's mentioned her arm hurts, but it's never clarified if she was the one and why she'd try to kidnap Maho. The most likely person would've been Reyes, but that's also never specified. Then there was that guy who wanted to kill Maho, Leskinen, and Okabe in the garage, but his reasons for doing so are also never revealed, nor who sent him. During the true ending Kagari is also somehow back to normal, while she was shot earlier and underwent plastic surgery to look like Yuki. No explanation is given as to why Kagari looks like herself again.

It took a while to get used to Okabe being depressed and all as I liked his Hououin Kyouma persona a lot more. It was weird how the characters hadn't aged in some world lines, while parts of the story took place 14 and 25 years later. The true ending route also ends without revealing what happens, which I found disappointing. All in all it's a good game, but just a little more polishing would've made it better.

[Kallume]

*shiver* Flame Over next? Hope your RNG is better than mine... GL!

[Dragon-Archon]

3 hours ago, Kallume said:

*shiver* Flame Over next? Hope your RNG is better than mine... GL!

Thanks, I've been having terrible luck with it. Only play it like once a week now.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #177: Mary Skelter Nightmares

February 9 2018

This game mixes various fairy tales together and the story is more faithful to the Brothers Grimm version. A city was consumed by the Jail and the inhabitants are now being tortured by Marchens (the enemies in this game), because they can. Jack and Alice are rescued by Red Riding Hood and try to find a way to escape the Jail. The story is ok, but gives the minimum amount. To find out more about characters, it's necessary to raise their affection and see events. Most of these are in the base, but some are in the dungeons. Hameln is by far my favourite character, followed by Gretel. The dungeons are nicely done and each represents a different fairy tale. The Underground Cavern dungeon was too big though and had lots of branching paths. Finding the correct route in that one was a pain, luckily, it was only 3 floors. One thing I liked about this game was the Jail Bonus system. Fulfilling certain requirements while exploring fills one of 3 gauges and when those are full, a roulette mini-game starts and players can choose a bonus. This can also happen during fights. All in all it's a fun dungeon crawler.

[Dragon-Archon]

The guide for Mary Skelter Nightmares has been published.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #178: Salt & Sanctuary

February 20 2018

I've been waiting a long time to play this love child of Dark Souls and the metroidvania genre and it was definitely worth the wait. People who have played any of the Souls games will feel very familiar with this as most of the mechanics and controls are the same. Even the story is just as ambiguous and to understand it all, the lore on descriptions must be read. Then there are NPCs that move to different locations and their dialogue must be exhausted before taking on certain bosses. It took a bit to get used to the 2D format, but after an hour or so it all felt natural. As with Demon's Souls, I wanted to defeat the prologue boss too to get the rewards. However, this took 13 attempts to get it done, which was a good opportunity to try out all the classes. It was so worth it though, as the rewards are pretty good to start the game with. The Charms are a nice addition too, these give permanent effects to weapons for as long as they're equipped. The boss fights are unique too, which is always a good thing. Some of them weren't required for the plat, but I still defeated them all.

 

The skill tree had its advantages and disadvantages. It's a good way to see which build to create for the character, but on the other hand not having a node unlocked also means not being able to equip certain weapons, armour, or even shields. One thing I didn't like was how there wasn't a better weapon to be found for almost half of the game. I did find starting gear for other classes, but nothing better. So it took ages and lots of retries to defeat a few of the bosses with my crappy starting weapon. Especially the Kraeken Wyrm was challenging, but eventually they all went down. That moment when I found an awesome Tachi when exploring made it all worthwhile, which is also the weapon I used for the remainder of the game. I also liked the pumpkin head helmet a lot, as that reminded me of Halloween and the Headless Horseman, which felt fitting for such a game. For the armour I went with something that was aesthetically pleasing. Though my biggest gripe with the game were certain platforming sections with disappearing platforms in the Pitchwoods. This couldn't be skipped as there was a trophy tied to reaching the Creed at the end.

 

All in all a great 2D Souls game, which I recommend to everyone that likes the Souls games.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #179: Forma.8

February 23 2018

This game wasn't as much fun as I expected. You control a forma (round robot) that's deployed on a planet to explore it. Along the way you get more powers and defeat bosses. The bosses take some time to figure out how to beat them. The game's graphics are good, but that's about it for the pros. The cons far outweigh the pros. The game is boring, enemies are agile, can easily damage forma, and it takes a while to defeat some of them. My biggest gripe was how incredibly slow forma moves, which is completely unnecessary. All the collectables also need to be obtained to fight the true final boss, which isn't even a fight. I do like how these collectables unlock extra powers. All in all this game is disappointing.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #180: Grand Kingdom

March 17 2018

Where to begin? I guess with some good things: the online wars are just fights against A.I.-controlled characters from other players. It's possible to transfer stats between equipment, that way it's possible to use the ones players like the most and also trick other people when using weaker weapons. Online wars are also very good to earn lots of exp, gold, and royals (a special currency). It's also possible to use up to 2 characters from other players during wars, it doesn't matter if they're working for a different nation. Wars are also a good place to get flags, but obtaining one is random. There's also a rare Monokuma flag that can only be acquired from a war. There are 17 areas that can be freely explored without being limited to an amount of steps and these have bounties. These are strong enemies that drop blueprints when defeated, which can be used to forge better equipment at a blacksmith.

 

Now for the bad: the game depends too much on RNG for almost everything. Items and equipment received during quests and wars, equipment that's sold in a nation's store, skills that characters learn, abilities that characters have, and which characters can be hired. After completing a quest or a battle in an online war, the characters that can be recruited change. These characters learn some skills, but it's random which pattern it'll choose  . Likewise, characters have a passive ability that's also random. There's a trophy for one unit to learn all possible attack and support skills. For the attack skills this requires players to level up multiple units of the same class. Support skills requires at least one unit of each of the 17 classes. Besides that, there's one support skill that can only be received as a reward from a liege. You've guessed it, that's random too as it's possible to receive items and field skills too. There's a way to receive only a support skill, which raises the chance to obtaining it to 1/43. It took 94 hours and 42 minutes before I got that skill . Now to transfer all skills to a single character, there's a mechanic called Gran Grimoire. That basically means a skill can be duplicated and taught to another unit. This sounds really neat, which it is, but there's a requirement: a skill needs to be leveled up to lvl 3 to create a grimoire. Only equipped skills gain mastery when finishing a fight, regardless of they're used or not. A character can have 1 field skill, 7 attack skills, and 4 support skills, though support skills requires SP to equip. Each skill needs 1,000 mastery points to level up once and each fight yields 18 points. It's possible to level up attack skills faster by equipping certain pyroxene. These are items that can be added to weapons and armour and have various effects, such as increasing skill power, reducing skill damage, increasing stats, or increase a specific attack skill mastery. There are 3 types of attack skills (melee, ranged, and arcane) and each one has 3 sub-types. Obtaining the right pyroxene is, of course, random. Support skills can't level up faster though, unless an online war has a Skill+ effect. It's also possible to use an Orb of Training, which makes it possible to create a grimoire with only 1 level of mastery. And yep, these are random and also very rare  .

 

But that's not all RNGrand Kingdom has to offer, there is a mechanic known as policy points. These increase the amount of exp, gold, or royals, and requires players to do some tasks. When the player's mercenary rank increases, the amount of policy points increase too as do the requirements for the tasks. I wasn't aware of this at first, so didn't focus on policy points when my rank was low. It's not clear what the requirements are for increasing a mercenary rank, so getting to rank S took a lot of time too. That about covers all the major grinds for the platinum.

 

I also tried to create a perfect unit that has rank S for all 9 stats by doing a Class Up, which was an optional grind. Doing this requires tomes and scrolls that are specific for each stat and obtaining them is random. Story quests always have a tome, scroll, or Orb of Training. A tome increases a stat rank by 2 and a scroll by 1. To use a tome, a character needs to be at least level 30 and a scroll has a requirement of level 20. Using either of these reverts a character back to level 1 and adds extra stat points to invest based on how much a rank increased. This can't be used to learn new skills though, I already tried that. When a stat rank is increased, you'll get bonus points faster. At rank F you need to invest 8 stat points to get a bonus point, while at rank S every 2 points yield a bonus point. Doing this was very tedious, so I only upgraded 6 stats to rank S (see the image in the spoiler below). The results were above expectations though, as the Valkyrie class unit tore through most of the enemies with ease. This is the same unit I used to learn all skills, so it seemed fitting to make it a perfect unit. Doing a Class Up also unlocks extra colour palettes for the armour, but only for that unit and not for other units of the same class. Up to 4 palettes can be added this way and some of the best are among those 4. 

 

Near-perfect Valkyrie unit

Spoiler

 

This near-perfect Valkyrie unit also helped a lot to defeat a Hero from the previous war. During a war the player from each of the 4 nations that has the most points becomes a Hero and acquires Hero weapons. Defeating an A.I.-controlled Hero rewards a player with a Hero weapon with the Hero's username on it. Heroes only show up randomly after many consecutive victories and it took 3 attempts to figure out a strategy to defeat @Shinumade, which yielded the King's Spike spear (shown in the image above). With the new Hero weapon added to the Valkyrie I was able to become a Hero myself for Landerth (one of the 4 nations) during the 663rd war, which was a nice way to finish up this game. Since I already got a spear, I got the King's Hammer for becoming a Hero, which has my username engraved on it  . The bard in Landerth will sing a song about each Hero until the next war ends, which is a nice addition.

 

Becoming a Hero

Spoiler

 

 

The bard's song, in hindsight I really should've picked a better name for my mercenary squad  .

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

All in all, this game was fun at the start, became boring and grindy afterwards, but trying to become a Hero was fun again. Also if anyone wants to hire the Valkyrie unit, my search tag is Dragon. Note that you have to be at least lvl 94 to hire her.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Dragon-Archon

[Dragon-Archon]

 #181: God Eater 2 Rage Burst

June 1 2018

This plat image isn't nearly as badass as the one from GE Resurrection. It's also way too blurry. Anyway, this game takes place 3 years after the events of GER. The Aragami continued to evolve and some variants gained the ability to disable God Arcs (the only weapons that can kill Aragami). In response Fenrir created the Friar division that researched for a way to defeat these Aragami. This resulted in the creation of the Blood unit, which the player's character joins at the start of the game. Members of Blood can use Blood Powers. This game improves some of the gripes I had with the first game: there are a lot more Aragami, there are a lot more areas where missions take place, and the Fierce Kongou doesn't take forever to kill anymore. Though the developers added a new variant (Rakshasa Kongou) that's even more annoying to defeat, especially when there's 3 or 4 of them. The story is good and I like how most of the characters from the first game make an appearance. Would've liked it if it was possible to import a save file from GER and meet the main character from the first game in GE2RB. Emil used to annoy me a lot, but after a while he grew on me (though this event helped a lot with that).

 

My favourite Aragami (Hannibal and Susano'o) from the first game returned. From the new enemies the Kyuubi is my favourite one. Orochi was a huge disappointment as it resembles a 3-headed dog instead of an 8-headed serpent, so the name "Cerberus" would've been better. My most hated enemy type is still the Kongou and its variants. New additions are Character Episodes, Blood Arts, Blood Bullets, and Blood Rage. Character Episodes are side stories about certain characters. Blood Arts and Blood Bullets add various effects to melee attacks and gun attacks. Blood Rage makes your character invincible and very powerful for 30 seconds, but only if you manage to activate it. Obtaining a full set of rank 15 equipment is also much easier than the first game.

 

Some things I didn't like were unlocking Blood Arts, as this requires using the same attack over and over again. It's way too grindy. The equipment in GER felt more balanced as they had some good skills. The ones in GE2RB only have a few good ones, which means relying on RNG to obtain good ones. Obtaining 400 pieces of clothing was also unnecessary and way too grindy. It's a shame that male clothing is still so disappointing. There are hardly any good outfits, while female characters have a lot of good ones. Just like with the first game, I would've liked some kind of romance system.

 

All in all it's a very entertaining game. I liked it so much, that I created a second character and did another playthrough.

[ZeroGeass1]

Is it necessary to play the first GE game to enjoy the story in this one? I watched the anime but haven't played the first game

[Dragon-Archon]

Just now, ZeroGeass1 said:

Is it necessary to play the first GE game to enjoy the story in this one? I watched the anime but haven't played the first game

IMO the anime is a terrible representation of the game and doesn't even cover half of the God Eater 1 story arc (there's also the Burst and Resurrection arcs in the first game). You can play the second game, but I'd advice against it as it spoils some things about the first game and it may be confusing.

[ZeroGeass1]

2 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

IMO the anime is a terrible representation of the game and doesn't even cover half of the God Eater 1 story arc (there's also the Burst and Resurrection arcs in the first game). You can play the second game, but I'd advice against it as it spoils some things about the first game and it may be confusing.

Bought GE2RB but it didn't came with a GER download code... and since you can't buy it separately I guess I'll have no other choice than to only play the second one...

[Dragon-Archon]

1 minute ago, ZeroGeass1 said:

Bought GE2RB but it didn't came with a GER download code... and since you can't buy it separately I guess I'll have no other choice than to only play the second one...

Did you buy it from the PS Store? If so, check if GER is free. I had something similar with a TellTale game before where episodes 2-5 became free after buying a season pass, but I still had to purchase them first.

[ZeroGeass1]

Just now, Dragon-Archon said:

Did you buy it from the PS Store? If so, check if GER is free. I had something similar with a TellTale game before where episodes 2-5 became free after buying a season pass, but I still had to purchase them first.

No bought it physical but it didn't include a code ?

[Dragon-Archon]

1 minute ago, ZeroGeass1 said:

No bought it physical but it didn't include a code 

Weird, unless it was a used game there should be a code for Resurrection. If it's still possible, I'd return the game to the store and get one from Bol.com (PS4) or the PS Store (Vita).

[Dragon-Archon]

Guide #31: God Eater 2 Rage Burst has been published.  

Edited June 4, 2018 by Dragon-Archon

[Satoshi Ookami]

On 6/1/2018 at 3:30 PM, ZeroGeass1 said:

No bought it physical but it didn't include a code 

You should ask for a refund.   

EU GE2 must come with GER code.

 

Unless you bought used copy obviously.

[ZeroGeass1]

15 hours ago, Satoshi Ookami said:

You should ask for a refund.   

EU GE2 must come with GER code.

 

Unless you bought used copy obviously.

Didn't bought it used, but I already have the game for over a year, it's a little too late to ask for a refund I'm afraid ?

[Satoshi Ookami]

37 minutes ago, ZeroGeass1 said:

but I already have the game for over a year, it's a little too late to ask for a refund I'm afraid 

Weeeeeell, yea, that's a bit too late.

[Dragon-Archon]

57 minutes ago, ZeroGeass1 said:

Didn't bought it used, but I already have the game for over a year, it's a little too late to ask for a refund I'm afraid 

You could always sell it and buy a new one  .

[ZeroGeass1]

Just now, Dragon-Archon said:

You could always sell it and buy a new one  .

I read that the gameplay is pretty similar between the two games, so I'll just read a summary somewhere about Resurrection so that I can fully understand the story in the second game ?

[Dragon-Archon]

15 minutes ago, ZeroGeass1 said:

I read that the gameplay is pretty similar between the two games, so I'll just read a summary somewhere about Resurrection so that I can fully understand the story in the second game 

Yeah, it's similar, the only real difference is that GER has 5 predator styles and GE2RB has Blood Arts and Blood Bullets, besides that combat is the same. Though Resurrection has better and smoother controls due to it being remade from scratch while GE2RB just received an HD upgrade.

[Satoshi Ookami]

2 hours ago, ZeroGeass1 said:

I read that the gameplay is pretty similar between the two games, so I'll just read a summary somewhere about Resurrection so that I can fully understand the story in the second game 

Don't do that. Play both.

GER is the actual true first God Eater, without the Blood Arts gimmicks