Category Archives: RPG

Cobblers Vs. Blacksmiths

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Didn’t have time for a game yesterday, but today I finally got to check out Guild Wars 2, albeit in beta form.  I’m only up to level 4 so far, and haven’t checked out crafting or the skill tracks or such, but it’s been fun.  I still don’t fully understand mesmer combat yet, but there are a couple interesting twists from the usual cast-damage-over-and-over.  And besides the typical quests (‘tasks’ in this case) there are events that everyone can jump into as they happen, and are a big, hectic ball o’ fun.

About Time

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Today’s game is actually a fairly familiar one: Ultima V.  It’s the one entry in the main series that I never got around to playing, since it didn’t come out for the Atari that I had at the time, and I later got it as part of the collections but it was left in “I’ll get back to it at some point” state for ages.  So, today I finally gave it it’s shot, and…yeah, of course it’s a keeper.  I’ll probably continue to play it alongside the other game-a-day entries for a while.  So far, I’ve picked up most of the people I want in my party (Iolo, Gwenno, Julia, Jaana, and Mariah), and visited most of the major cities, but I need to farm a bit for some gold, food, xp, and equipment.  I nearly starved to death at one point, but I think I’m safe for now.

I originally tried to get the Amiga version working in an emulator, since it has better music and sound, but it also loads a lot more slowly and I couldn’t get it to actually write to the disks, so I couldn’t save the game or create a new party.  Oh well, the PC version will do.

Pure And Simple

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Like the name says, in Hack Slash Loot, you hack and, uh loot.  That’s about it.  It’s a roguelike, but the mechanics are extremely simple.  There’s no inventory, so you just have to decide whether to use or discard anything you come across.  You attack just by clicking on the enemies.  If there’s anything deeper to it later on, I don’t know, because I kept dying over and over again because it’s also hard as hell.  Cute, but I want something a bit deeper in my roguelikes.

I did at least get one achievement though, for dying in less than 20 turns…

The Lost Year

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So, what have I been doing in all that time missing in this blog?  Probably a lot of small stuff I’ve forgotten, but the major games are:

Minecraft: I played a whole ton of Minecraft, including not just further developing my own private worlds but checking out various mod packs like the Technic Pack, Yogbox, TerraFirmaCraft, and Hack/Mine.  I also completed some challenge maps, like Feed The Beast, Vechs’s Legendary map from the Super Hostile series, and one of those Skyblock-like minimal starts.

Diablo 3: I’ve gotten a wizard into Hell difficulty so far, but still have to check out the other classes.  It doesn’t seem to have as much staying power as D2 did, a large part of which is that the loot seems blander, but I’ll still get a lot of hours out of it.

Disgaea 4: And once again, I got sucked into putting a ton of hours into yet another SRPG, getting some characters up to pretty much insanely maxed-out stats.  I haven’t done the DLC chapters for it yet though.

MMOs: I started up LOTRO and got a character up to level 20ish, but haven’t gotten back to it recently or played any other MMOs, really.  Kinda feeling a bit burned out on them for now.  I’ll give Guild Wars 2 a shot when it comes out, though.

Skyrim: FUS RO duh, of course I’d be playing this one.  I played a kitty wizard through the end of the base game, but actually left a good number of side quests unfinished.  I figure that I’ll wait a couple of years for all the good mods, DLC, and an expansion to come out, and then go back and do a proper clear-everything run with a different type of character.

Forza 4: Good, especially with the new stuff like Rivals challenges, but I’m still only a sliver of the way through the full event list, and I’m not sure if I’ll bother to clear them all like I did with 3.  Just not feeling the driving urge lately.

Mass Effect 3: Controversy over the endings aside (I haven’t seen the revised ones yet), still a pretty good game overall, and I enjoyed it just as much as the second one.  Lots of different environments, good gunplay, and a decent story along the way.

Portal 2: Yay! Lots of good puzzles, interesting new elements introduced as you go, longer without being too long, and even a really good story around it.  Definitely worth it.

Damn, that’s a lot of sequels…

Seriously

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Today I played Serious Sam: The Random Encounter and it’s…a bit of an odd duck.  Take the frantic shooting action of Serious Sam, and put it in…a turn-based JRPG?  It actually kind of works though, as combat consists of you running backwards away from a huge pack of enemies, selecting which weapon to use, and then you can move up and down to adjust your aim and dodge bullets while the turn executes, and then it freezes for the next turn and you can pick another weapon or item, etc.

It’s an interesting take on the JRPG style that’s appropriate for the Serious Sam series, but it got kinda repetitive very fast, as you wind up in fights every few steps you take.  Interesting, but not a keeper.

Mmmm, Bacon…

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I played The Baconing once before, but couldn’t remember much about it, so I revisited it as today’s game.  It’s a fairly standard ARPG whose main strength lies in the setting and characters rather than the combat, but it’s a bit too “monkey cheese” for me and I kept dying since you can lose health extremely rapidly.  Not a keeper.

Hallelujah!

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Tonight, the SOE games suddenly came back online sooner than expected (the last update Sony gave said it was still “at least a few more days”), and I immediately hopped back into EQ2. Doing the tradeskill dailies in Odus for my Illusionist bumped him up to level 85 crafting, and with that I headed off to Velious and knocked out almost the entire tradeskill quest chain within a few hours. That took him right to level 90 jewelcrafting, and he now just has to go back after a day or two (the NPC won’t talk to me again until then) to get the whistle for starting the flying mount quests.

The MMO Mashup

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WoW: The big news here of course is Cataclysm, which came while this site was idle…and went. I made it through all of the zone content fairly quickly, usually only taking a couple days per zone. It was fun enough, but it’s awfully railroaded, with almost no choice in how to go about working your way through things.

After that, the expansion felt kind of empty. There wasn’t really any reason to revisit the zones, I didn’t feel like grinding instances over and over for equipment I didn’t really need for anything, the faction grinding rewards seemed kind of weak, archaeology was fun for a while but now it’s down to tediously grinding for Uldum sites… Cataclysm is probably the expansion I lost interest in the quickest. About the only thing I really ought to do is work some more on my Worgen druid and see what the revamped lower level zones are like, but it’s a low priority.

EQ2: I can’t remember where I left off, but our group has pretty much finished with The Bonemire, and…we haven’t really done anything lately. Scheduling problems meant we couldn’t get the group together for a few weeks, and with that loss of momentum, we haven’t even bothered trying to regroup in a couple months now.

I’ve still been playing a fair bit by myself, though. I got my mystic up to level 90 alchemy and took him through all of the tradeskill quest lines in the Odus and Velious expansions, netting a flying mount in the process and unlocking some faction gear I can’t wear yet. I’ve also been leveling my illusionist alt, getting him to 72 and taking him through the Kunark zones right now and working on his tradeskill as well.

Vanguard: And I finally gave Vanguard a shot, along with a handful of other forum members who got caught by the curiosity bug around the same time. I’m only level 14, having gone through the tutorial island and a small handful of quests on the mainland, so it’s still early yet, but it seems like a pretty decent game. It has some of that old-school EverQuest feel, but with a more interesting combat system, unique crafting and diplomacy systems, and a lot to see and do.

Champions Online: And oh yeah, I tried this too, but the tutorial section didn’t really grab me, so I never bothered going back to it, even though it’s now free-to-play.

I’d like to get back and play more EQ2 and Vanguard still, but, well, there’s still that whole SOE-is-down-for-who-knows-how-long thing…

Oh Right, This Thing

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Yes, it’s time for yet more catching up.

I finished Forza 3 today. Well, again… I finished the six basic seasons long ago, but that left a lot of events unfinished, and today I finally got the Solid Gold achievement for getting gold in every single event. It took a while, and now there’s pretty much nothing left to do in it. Just in time for Gran Turismo 5…

I also finished off Mass Effect 2 shortly after my last post about it. There wasn’t really that much left to do at that point, just finishing off the loyalty missions and then off to the Omega 4 relay. The final mission worked out pretty well, requiring you to actually know your team, even if the final boss fight was a bit dumb. Still well worth it overall, and I’ll be looking forward to Mass Effect 3, where Liara better be more grateful about my remaining faithful to her!

I started Etrian Odyssey 3 on the DS, and it plays a lot like the first one so far, with a new sailing/fishing/exploring side game that haven’t done much with yet. I’m still only on the first floor though, and just about to gather up enough courage to go down to the next one.

And I also started a rather unusual game on the PSP: Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman. It’s by the Disgaea guys and is kind of similar in certain ways, but different in a lot of others too. It’s turn based and you accumulate levels, but you only have yourself, you move one square at a time, your time in a dungeon is limited by an energy meter, items have a durability and wear out fairly quickly, enemy behaviour is somewhat more explicit about activation ranges and how they’ll react, you have a prinny wife… And of course, the story is Weird As Hell. It’s interesting and fun so far though, but I’m still only just barely out of the tutorial.

And in the MMO world, I did more of the Hallowe’en event quests, and am down to 11 quests left for Loremaster on my priest, but that’s about it. In EQ2 we did some more quests in the ‘Peacock Club’ quest line, but took a break last week and checked out a new zone, Pillar of Flame, picking up and completing some more quests there. We’re still level 60, but will probably begin leveling up again sometime soon.

By far I probably spent the most time in Minecraft, but that’s a whole separate topic…

The Price Of Loyalty Is About 35 Hours

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I spent a fairly large chunk of the weekend playing Mass Effect 2, and after 35 hours I’m finally at the point where I’ve recruited all of the crew members and done their loyalty missions, aside from the one missing one which I know will be filled in later (in comparison, it only took me 28 hours to fully complete ME1). In keeping with the one-of-each-strength philosophy, I usually take Samara and Grunt with me, for biotic and ‘tank’ support.

Amazingly enough, this actually puts me pretty close to the endgame, as apparently the recruitment and loyalty missions are the bulk of the main story in ME2, not just initial preparation, like in ME1. It makes sense though, with so many more crew members this time around and some missions are fairly extensive. Most skills are fairly well filled-in, and I’ve done most of the important research, so I’m pretty well prepared.

I’m now at a point where I can start the point-of-no-return mission, but I’ve still got a bunch of side quests I can do, largely from the DLC packs. I’m enjoying it well enough that I’m certainly going to finish off all of those first.