Dragon-Archon's Lair of Platinums Mk.II

[Leon Castle]

14 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Are there any title grinds?

Yes, there's 2 or 3 title grind per character.

1. Fatal =  Perform 100 Fatal Strikes with each character (all characters)
2. Berserker = Win 255 battles on Hard difficulty (A title for Yuri but he does not need to be in the battle party to get it)
3. Chef = Win the Cooking Battle in Dahngrest with anyone AFTER mastering every recipe but Dog Food with one character (all characters) Note: Don't use Flynn as He's Vesperia's Worst Cook
4. Big Bad Bandit Dog = Steal successfully 100 times by using Thievery. (Repede)
5. Sexy/Cute outfits = gather Cheagle Fur x3, Spirit Fragment x3, Sacred Tree x6, and Cockatrice Claw x6 and see the shop keeper in Heliord inn (Judith, Estelle and Karol)

There was other grind titles for Judith, Patty, Raven and Rita but with the free DLC there was no need to do those grinds.

[Dragon-Archon]

2 hours ago, Leon Castle said:

Yes, there's 2 or 3 title grind per character.

1. Fatal =  Perform 100 Fatal Strikes with each character (all characters)
2. Berserker = Win 255 battles on Hard difficulty (A title for Yuri but he does not need to be in the battle party to get it)
3. Chef = Win the Cooking Battle in Dahngrest with anyone AFTER mastering every recipe but Dog Food with one character (all characters) Note: Don't use Flynn as He's Vesperia's Worst Cook
4. Big Bad Bandit Dog = Steal successfully 100 times by using Thievery. (Repede)
5. Sexy/Cute outfits = gather Cheagle Fur x3, Spirit Fragment x3, Sacred Tree x6, and Cockatrice Claw x6 and see the shop keeper in Heliord inn (Judith, Estelle and Karol)

There was other grind titles for Judith, Patty, Raven and Rita but with the free DLC there was no need to do those grinds.

Thanks for the information  . I'm glad Berseria had no cook grinds. Only Velvet needs to reach cooking level 20 (out of 25) and you can cook without fighting.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #203: Fallen Legion Flames of Rebellion

The story is a bit confusing at first, because there are a few events that are revealed later on. In this game players assume the role of Laendur, a general in the Fenumia army. There's a lot of lore to be read in the History section that gives background information about terms and names. The emperor has passed away and his daughter, Cecile, is next in line to inherit the throne. Due to some events Laendur decides to become emperor too and part of the story revolves around his motives and reasons, which even he confesses might not be solely righteous. There's another game (Fallen Legion Sins of the Empire) where players see Cecile's side of the story, meaning most of her motives and events are unknown. At some points during the story Laendur and Cecile cross paths, but 95% of the story is separate.

 

The combat was a lot of fun during the first 1-1.5 playthroughs, but became very repetitive afterwards. Laendur can summon 3 Exemplars (physical embodiment of legendary weapons) to fight for him, while Laendur himself uses magic (healing, revive, offensive, and buffs). He can only equip 3 spells at a time and only use 3 Exemplars in battle. Examplars evolve into a Chaos form and Order form, which greatly boosts their stats and unlocks new passive abilities. From the second playthrough on it's possible to have both a Chaos and an Order form of the same Examplar in the party.

 

During the levels, players need to make choices that permanently affect morale and how events unfold. This is also how optional bosses and levels are unlocked. Some of these unlock new ultimate attacks for Exemplars.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #204: Nights of Azure

Somewhere in the 11th century the first Saint defeated the Nightlord (the demon king). Upon the Nightlord's defeat, his blue blood rained all over Ruswal. Anything that came into contact with the blue blood became a fiend. Since the Nightlord is a pure blood demon, he will eventually revive and bring back the Eternal Night. Since then, a Saint is selected every 10 years as a sacrifice to strengthen the seal that holds the demon king. In the game's present day Arnice arrives in Ruswal to guard the next Saint, Lilysse.

 

The game is very easy, in fact I'd say it's way too easy up until the final boss. The final boss can heal itself and seal familiars, but leveling up a bit is more than enough to overcome this. The story is ok as are the characters. Not much is explained about secondary characters, which is a shame. The post-game has two more bosses and the first one is a good challenge. 

 

After clearing the main story, the Extra section is unlocked. This enables players to view concept art and listen to soundtracks. I like that each soundtrack has a personal note from the composers.

 

This game also has its share of grinds, such as summoning familiars 1,000 times, defeating 10,000 enemies, and completing 300 side quests. Completing 300 side quests is by far the worst and most pointless grind and I barely reached 100 when completing the main story (and even that was only because I did as many quests as possible). There are only around 30 side quests in the game and these are recycled over and over again. Defeating 10,000 enemies is also very pointless, as there are much faster ways to level up.

 

All in all the grinds reduce the fun factor a lot, since it takes up about a third of the time to plat the game.

[Dragon-Archon]

It's been a while since I updated this thread. Got a few plats this month and I'll update it over the next couple of days.

 

 #205: Nights of Azure 2 Bride of the New Moon

August 3 2019

The second game takes place an unspecified amount of years after the first game. After the defeat of the Nightlord, the Moon Queen attempts to become the new ruler of demons and start the Eternal Night and she's very close to achieving it. To slow her down, a Bride of Time is selected and sacrificed. The game's main character (Aluche) is tasked with escorting the new Bride of Time, which is when they're ambushed.

 

This synopsis sounds similar to the first game, but luckily, it's not a copy-paste story. The game has a combination a brand new cast of characters and some old ones. Arnice is only a party member and IMO she's introduced very late in the game and won't even become a party member until the penultimate chapter. Even that is missable. All of the seven party members have their own personal questline that fleshes them out and completing those quests also increases affinity, which in turn unlocks stat boosts, new attacks, and even equipment slots. The Servan system is altered too: instead of being able to create Servans, there's now one of each and they must be collected. Information about the Moon Queen is also revealed over the course of the story, though sometimes it's subtly hinted and its up to the player to connect the dots. This is an improvement over the first game, where the player only got some more information just before the final boss fight.

 

As for the things I didn't like about the game. Well, there's a limited amount of days to complete the first playthrough. During NG+ and beyond the time limit is removed, so that compensates it. However, the biggest grind in the game (obtaining enough ability points to unlock all of Aluche's abilities) is tied to leveling up, which means defeating enemies to obtain blue blood. Each day also has a time limit of 10 minutes, which can be increased to 20 minutes by leveling up. Due to the limited amount of days, it's impossible to reach 20 minutes during the first playthrough. Upon reaching NG+ your level and party member levels are reset to 1 (to enable ability point farming). When clearing the game with the normal ending, players receive an accessory that adds ability points as quest rewards. Even with that + reaching the max level, I still had to do about 25% of the story during the third playthrough to unlock all abilities. This is by far the biggest grind in the game and it could've been mitigated if the developer added ability points as quest rewards from the first playthrough on. Servans have to be collected again during NG+ and their ultimate evolutions don't carry over.

 

I had fun with the game, but the ability point grind was unexpected. Had I known about that before, I could've used all my remaining days during the first playthrough to farm blue blood.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Dragon-Archon

[Leon Castle]

Two Nights of Azure plats in row just like I did around the time Nights of Azure 2 was released although Nights of Azure 2 ended up being my 6,000th Trophy.

 

Hearing about Nights of Azure 2 again, reminds me of my Beloved Puni.

A Puni so to speak.

[Dragon-Archon]

40 minutes ago, Leon Castle said:

Two Nights of Azure plats in row just like I did around the time Nights of Azure 2 was released although Nights of Azure 2 ended up being my 6,000th Trophy.

 

Hearing about Nights of Azure 2 again, reminds me of my Beloved Puni.

A Puni so to speak.

 

Lol, that Puni looks funny. I wish the DLC servants were available free.

 

Btw I completed Touhou Scarlet Curiosity as Remilya and I have some trophy screenshots with her equipment for the health, critical rate, and drop rate. Do you want those for the guide? Currently, the guide only has information about Sakuya's setup.

[Leon Castle]

4 minutes ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Btw I completed Touhou Scarlet Curiosity as Remilya and I have some trophy screenshots with her equipment for the health, critical rate, and drop rate. Do you want those for the guide? Currently, the guide only has information about Sakuya's setup.

I gladly take those trophy screenshots of Sakuya's Master as I did want a setup for Remilya in case of Remilya players.

7 minutes ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Lol, that Puni looks funny. I wish the DLC servants were available free.

What's even more funny it turns into a Rocket and that I used it on the Moon Queen.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #206: Megadimension Neptunia VII

August 14 2019

This game exceeded my expectations. I've played the first 3 main games and Cyberdimension Neptunia, so I figured this game was similar. Let me tell you, it's not. The biggest surprise was the soundtrack, which is so much better and epic. My favourite tracks are ABSOLUTE, Will Be Venus, Encounter of Destiny, URANUS, and PROVIDENCE. The story is also a step up: the bad guy girl is much more powerful, so the CPUs need to step up their game too. This is were the NEXT form comes in, which is even more powerful than their HDD form.

 

As for things I didn't like: well, this game has a card collectible that can only be obtained from a special item. 62 of these items are obtained by correctly answering questions, but the rest needs to be farmed from enemies. Oh, and lets not forget that you can only hold 30 at most, because this item also doubles as a healing consumable. Opening it has a chance to award one of the 33 collectible cards, which are divided into 3 rarities: normal, rare, and super rare. Super rare has a chance of 0.1% and the game can give you multiple of the same card. This requires save scumming, lots and lots of save scumming. I got super rare cards 16 times before I had all 4 unique ones. Normally, I tend to stay far away from this lootbox crap, so having it shoved down my throat like this was a huge disappointment. It took almost 7.5 hours of reloading and opening card packs (it took me 23-25 seconds to open all 30 card packs and another ~5 seconds to reload), so this got extremely boring after the first 5 minutes.

Then there's the Spelunker dungeon: the second dungeon was very annoying to complete, as I'd sometimes die just by jumping. Eventually, I had to resort to watching a video to get past a section of the third floor where I always died when jumping from one platform to the next one. It turns out you can skip the first platform and immediately jump to the second one without dying, which is something I don't get, but ok.

 

All in all it's a fun game with amazing soundtracks, except for the collectible cards. Whoever came up with the idea to implement this should be fired, as no one in their right mind would enjoy wasting hours reloading the game and mashing the  button.

 

On 30-8-2019 at 9:30 PM, Leon Castle said:

I gladly take those trophy screenshots of Sakuya's Master as I did want a setup for Remilya in case of Remilya players.

What's even more funny it turns into a Rocket and that I used it on the Moon Queen.

Here you go

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Leon Castle]

3 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

 #206: Megadimension Neptunia VII

August 14 2019

This game exceeded my expectations. I've played the first 3 main games and Cyberdimension Neptunia, so I figured this game was similar. Let me tell you, it's not. The biggest surprise was the soundtrack, which is so much better and epic. My favourite tracks are ABSOLUTE, Will Be Venus, Encounter of Destiny, URANUS, and PROVIDENCE. The story is also a step up: the bad guy girl is much more powerful, so the CPUs need to step up their game too. This is were the NEXT form comes in, which is even more powerful than their HDD form.

 

As for things I didn't like: well, this game has a card collectible that can only be obtained from a special item. 62 of these items are obtained by correctly answering questions, but the rest needs to be farmed from enemies. Oh, and lets not forget that you can only hold 30 at most, because this item also doubles as a healing consumable. Opening it has a chance to award one of the 33 collectible cards, which are divided into 3 rarities: normal, rare, and super rare. Super rare has a chance of 0.1% and the game can give you multiple of the same card. This requires save scumming, lots and lots of save scumming. I got super rare cards 16 times before I had all 4 unique ones. Normally, I tend to stay far away from this lootbox crap, so having it shoved down my throat like this was a huge disappointment. It took almost 7.5 hours of reloading and opening card packs (it took me 23-25 seconds to open all 30 card packs and another ~5 seconds to reload), so this got extremely boring after the first 5 minutes.

Then there's the Spelunker dungeon: the second dungeon was very annoying to complete, as I'd sometimes die just by jumping. Eventually, I had to resort to watching a video to get past a section of the third floor where I always died when jumping from one platform to the next one. It turns out you can skip the first platform and immediately jump to the second one without dying, which is something I don't get, but ok.

 

All in all it's a fun game with amazing soundtracks, except for the collectible cards. Whoever came up with the idea to implement this should be fired, as no one in their right mind would enjoy wasting hours reloading the game and mashing the  button.

VIIR reminded me that Megadimension Neptunia VII had cooler ost then the rest of the series, I liked Never Give Up. The card collectible along with figurines was a pain so I'm glad VIIR removed that. I like to see Adult Neptune and Uzume in a new game

I did return to this game then DLC characters came out Like God Eater-chan(Damn VIIR removed DLC characters instead of making them base characters)

Instead of Aragami her God Arc eats clothes.

 

4 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Here you go

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Added to the Guide. Now the Guide can be helpful to anyone that wants to play as the Vampire Remilia Scarlet.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #207: Fairy Fencer F Advent Dark Force

August 21 2019

After the disaster that was Omega Quintet, I was very hesitant to try a new series from Compile Heart and Idea Factory. Some people on this site told me this game is nothing like Omega Quintet and after playing, I wholeheartedly agree.

 

The game starts with a brief summary about events from eons ago: the Goddess and the Vile God waged a war that lasted years and at the end they both exhausted all their powers and went into a deep slumber. They created the fairies, which are tied to a weapon (called Furies). These furies can be used to unseal the deities and revive them. People that can wield a Fury are known as Fencers. The game starts with a lazy protagonist who only likes to eat and sleep. After hearing a rumour about a Fury that will grant the wish of whoever can wield it, he tries his luck and succeeds. This sets him on the path to awaken the Goddess and the protagonist reluctantly goes along.

 

At the halfway point of the game, the story goes into one of three routes. Each of the routes is vastly different form one another, though the Goddess route is very similar to the first half of the game, which was a minor disappointment. I consider the Evil Goddess route the true ending, because at the very end some new information is revealed that can be used for a sequel. Besides that very short scene, any of the three routes can be considered the true ending. I liked the fact that certain characters are allies or enemies depending on which route is chosen. The characters are diverse and I like the protagonist's character growth. As for best girl, I'm leaning towards Tiara with Ethel being a close second.

 

After completing a route and starting NG+, unlocked characters can be used at any time, even when playing other routes. There's one soundtrack (Sherman's Theme) that I liked a lot. Even the grinds aren't so bad (you know, for a Compile Heart/IF game). The 5 million gold can be done by defeating a boss during the story. This boss has a ridiculously high defence, so it can't be done during the first playthrough. Defeating it yields 5.75 million gold. The only real grind is defeating 10,000 enemies. After four playthroughs I only had a little over 6,000 kills (and even that was because I defeated every enemy I encountered). Farming the remaining 4,000 kills took around 5-6 hours of constantly fighting enemies. There can only be 6 enemies at most per battle.

 

On 1-9-2019 at 7:09 PM, Leon Castle said:

VIIR reminded me that Megadimension Neptunia VII had cooler ost then the rest of the series, I liked Never Give Up. The card collectible along with figurines was a pain so I'm glad VIIR removed that. I like to see Adult Neptune and Uzume in a new game

I did return to this game then DLC characters came out Like God Eater-chan(Damn VIIR removed DLC characters instead of making them base characters)

Instead of Aragami her God Arc eats clothes.

 

Added to the Guide. Now the Guide can be helpful to anyone that wants to play as the Vampire Remilia Scarlet.

That OST is pretty good too. 

 

I didn't know the cards were removed from the VIIR version. Didn't mind the figurines thought, I got all of them in 7-10 minutes with save scumming. Seems odd that the DLC characters were removed too. Would've liked to add God Eater to the party as it's one of my favourite game series.

[Dragon-Archon]

 #208: Shining Resonance Refrain

August 27 2019

I had high expectations for this game, because it seemed like a fun JRPG with dragons and music in a fantasy setting where the protagonist goes on an epic quest to save the world. However, after completing it, I have very mixed feelings about the game. I can't help but wonder if my high expectations caused that.

 

The story starts of strong with the synopsis, but becomes a bit mediocre after chapter 4. Luckily, it picks up again near the end. The game has multiple character endings and I was relieved when finding out it's possible to work on all endings simultaneously as the game puts you back before the final boss fight when clearing it. This enables players to choose another character and get their ending (provided you have enough affection). Something I appreciate a lot is that the game has optional epilogues that show what happens when choosing a love interest. These take place after the game's ending. 

 

The best thing about the game is definitely the graphics, everything looks very nice. The locations are diverse as are party members and their personalities. Each party member plays different, which adds variety to the combat. The main character can transform into a dragon and I also like how musical instruments are incorporated into special weapons, which can be used for extra buffs or debuffs during battles. These buff/debuff songs are nice to listen to. The soundtrack in the game is ok, it fits the environment and situations, but I wish there was an epic boss battle theme. I did like the dessert theme, which reminded me a lot of the music from The Mummy (the movie with Brendan Fraser).  Another thing I appreciate is: the game hardly has any grinds, which is very rare in RPG games.

 

Now as for the things I didn't like. The game has two game modes: Original and Refrain. The difference between those is that in Refrain you have two more party members. I thought Refrain was some kind of enhanced story mode where the two party members (Excella and Jinas) would join at some point during the story. But that doesn't happen. They're both there from the start and you can interact with them and take them with you, but that's it. No explanation as to why/when they join. This is especially disappointing considering Excella is featured prominently on the cover of the Draconic Launch edition and on the image in the XMB menu, which makes her seem like the main heroine.
At the final boss fights there's some new information revealed that's meant as a plot twist. I don't mind that, but it's not done properly as the new information was never mentioned or even hinted at before. The final boss just casually mentions that there used to be a group that set things in motion, but the group has never been mentioned before nor is there any explanation that follows about the group, so I'm wondering why he bothered mentioning it now. It doesn't add anything to the story.
From chapter 3 on it became necessary to farm levels as enemies' levels are increased by 10 at the start of each chapter. Unfortunately, the amount of exp they yield hardly increases and even decreases when leveling up. Side quests don't yield exp either, which is a shame considering the game likes to recycle quests a lot. Almost all quests don't offer money either, which means most quest don't add anything and are pointless.

 

The game has no fast travel system even though there are resting camps. That means players have to go from the hub area to wherever the main quest tells them to go. There is an item to teleport back to the hub area, but you'll have to manually return to continue the story. The frame rates drop a lot when fighting lots of enemies or when enemies/allies use AoE attacks, which is very annoying as this happens a lot. The bestiary only fills when obtaining the information from enemies (very rare drop) or when using a RNG mechanism at the cost of gold that likes to give duplicates. The game needs more in-depth explanations about the bond mechanic. It only explains what the mechanic is, but doesn't go into detail about the colours of the traits and bonds and what those mean. Something that was missing are endings for secondary characters. I liked the scenes with Primula and Rapple and would've loved to see a conclusion.

 

All in all, the game had a lot of potential, but needed to be polished a lot more. It's a real shame it was released like this as it's very mediocre. There is enough room for a sequel, especially after seeing some of the character endings. If there's ever a sequel, I hope the developer improves the cons while keeping the pros.

[Leon Castle]

21 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

 #207: Fairy Fencer F Advent Dark Force

August 21 2019

After the disaster that was Omega Quintet, I was very hesitant to try a new series from Compile Heart and Idea Factory. Some people on this site told me this game is nothing like Omega Quintet and after playing, I wholeheartedly agree.

 

The game starts with a brief summary about events from eons ago: the Goddess and the Vile God waged a war that lasted years and at the end they both exhausted all their powers and went into a deep slumber. They created the fairies, which are tied to a weapon (called Furies). These furies can be used to unseal the deities and revive them. People that can wield a Fury are known as Fencers. The game starts with a lazy protagonist who only likes to eat and sleep. After hearing a rumour about a Fury that will grant the wish of whoever can wield it, he tries his luck and succeeds. This sets him on the path to awaken the Goddess and the protagonist reluctantly goes along.

 

At the halfway point of the game, the story goes into one of three routes. Each of the routes is vastly different form one another, though the Goddess route is very similar to the first half of the game, which was a minor disappointment. I consider the Evil Goddess route the true ending, because at the very end some new information is revealed that can be used for a sequel. Besides that very short scene, any of the three routes can be considered the true ending. I liked the fact that certain characters are allies or enemies depending on which route is chosen. The characters are diverse and I like the protagonist's character growth. As for best girl, I'm leaning towards Tiara with Ethel being a close second.

 

After completing a route and starting NG+, unlocked characters can be used at any time, even when playing other routes. There's one soundtrack (Sherman's Theme) that I liked a lot. Even the grinds aren't so bad (you know, for a Compile Heart/IF game). The 5 million gold can be done by defeating a boss during the story. This boss has a ridiculously high defence, so it can't be done during the first playthrough. Defeating it yields 5.75 million gold. The only real grind is defeating 10,000 enemies. After four playthroughs I only had a little over 6,000 kills (and even that was because I defeated every enemy I encountered). Farming the remaining 4,000 kills took around 5-6 hours of constantly fighting enemies. There can only be 6 enemies at most per battle.

Well the Goddess route is the PS3 Version Story(The PS3 version money grind is bad compared to PS4 version), I love the Cover art of this game while The Limited Edition Cover art is the stuff of nightmares for me. I wish more Fairy Fencer F games could be made or it gets a crossover with Neptunia and Date A Live

[Dragon-Archon]

3 hours ago, Leon Castle said:

Well the Goddess route is the PS3 Version Story(The PS3 version money grind is bad compared to PS4 version), I love the Cover art of this game while The Limited Edition Cover art is the stuff of nightmares for me. I wish more Fairy Fencer F games could be made or it gets a crossover with Neptunia and Date A Live

If there's ever a cross-over, I wonder if Eryn will be seen as Fairy Fencer F's version of Neptune. I'd like it if there was a sequel to FFF.

 

Btw did the PS3 version only have one route?

Edited September 3, 2019 by Dragon-Archon

[Leon Castle]

7 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

If there's ever a cross-over, I wonder if Eryn will be seen as Fairy Fencer F's version of Neptune.

I think Fang is the Fairy Fencer F's version of Neptune and the two of them traded their swords (FFF PS3 and Neptunia Rebirth 1 DLC only)

 

7 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Btw did the PS3 version only have one route?

Yes, instead of having to clear three routes, you had to get Eryn, Tiara and normal endings.

[Dragon-Archon]

On 4-9-2019 at 7:00 AM, Leon Castle said:

Yes, instead of having to clear three routes, you had to get Eryn, Tiara and normal endings.

Ah ok, sounds like FFF Advent Dark Force improved that with the additional routes.