This week's loot (14th June 2012 +16th June)

Yeah P4G is out. What else could I do?

Left my credit cards on my desk after ordering furniture for my new place the other day and ended up forgetting to stick them back in my wallet and not having them with me today, ended up paying for all that in cash. Eh.

Not in the loot photo: Also got Hentaiouji to Warawanai Neko #2-3. (Read the first book, it was decent.)

Edit (16th June 2012):

Got more Vita games and watched the Persona 4 movie. It was pretty eh. Loved the way they inserted the P3 movie announcement with the calendar rolling back, though.

Actually still haven't played P4G much, need to get round to doing so.

Totally unrelated to loot, I managed to kill the Urdragon in Dragon's Dogma offline. That's pretty much everything in the game murdered at least once (still missing the archhydra, can't seem to find it).

Tales of Xillia, Clear

So yeah, cleared Xillia.

It was... alright, I guess. Really not great. And I played it the way I always do and it was ridiculously easy compared to... pretty much every other Tales game I've ever played.

Story was okay but felt kind of lacking, characters were kind of bland except for that giant cunt Alvin, fuck him, battle system was fun. All round I'd say it was below average.

Sorry to be abstract here, but I just... didn't enjoy it anywhere as much as I did Vesperia or Graces. Playing it felt more like a chore than anything else.

Also yeah, 26 hours play time. What's that, HURRR TWO MAIN CHARACTERS MEANS PLAYTIME X2? Fuck that. Actually no, fuck you.

Ah well, will probably start on my second playthrough sometime later. Still have Hayarigami and Space Marine to play first.

Anyway, numbers:








Edit (16th September 2011):

Had some time to think over the game a bit more, some further thoughts...

-Battle system was really fun. COMBINATION ATTACKS EVERYWHERE.

-Dungeons were short, yes, but while it may indeed seem lacking, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact now that I've had some time to think it over, I have to say that I really prefer short dungeons to OH HEY HERE'S A FIVE-HOUR LABYRINTH WITH A MILLION ENEMIES.

-I liked how the enemies- ALL the enemies- Move slower than you on the field. You can outrun them easily if you don't feel like fighting any, and if you feel like grinding you can use a holy bottle to make them run away from you and just back attack them easily.

-Short dungeons and no five million unavoidable encounters per dungeon. In other words no padding. No dilution with unnecessary trekking and annoying encounters half a second before you reach the door. Yeah, I think that's a plus.

All that being said, though... It was still pretty disappointing. The characters were mostly bland, Elise (+ Tipo) being the only one(s) I actually really liked and Alvin being way too far down the opposite side of the spectrum (fuck that guy), the boss battles were all hideously underwhelming (and not just in difficulty), and most of all... the story kind of sucked pretty bad.

Sorry to use Vesperia as a measuring stick again, but yeah, it was way better than this. Except for the ending, of course. Seriously, fuck Vesperia's ending.

Tales of Graces F, clear (really)

And here's the usual.






That was kind of disappointing, but eh. Also, at least both endings (main story and extra) were tons more satisfying than Vesperia's.

Tales of Graces F, clear (sort of)

As usual, stats as of the end of the game.





It was alright, but I enjoyed Vesperia more. Also, is it just me or did Vesperia have a way lot more content?

The story was a bit too simple for my tastes. There are archetypal RPG stories, and then there're generic ones. This was a bit too close to the latter for me. Seriously, it's like someone took a bunch of other games, selected the least interesting portions, and then slapped them together and called it a day.

Eh.

Ah well, the characters were likeable, at least, and I loved the dualization system.

I like the battle system in here more than Vesperia's but somehow didn't enjoy it as much. It's still one of my favourite Tales battle systems, though. Then again it's probably less to do with me liking this and more to do with me hating other systems (boring Rebirth and Abyss come to mind, as do lolwut Legendia and what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here Destiny 2).

Haven't started on the future portion yet, will do so soon (hence the "sort of" in this post title).

Totally unrelated but I got Asbel the Hasewo costume just because. Why doesn't Malik have an Ovan costume?

Tales of Vesperia

Just for the hell of it, some shots of my stuff in Vesperia which I cleared about two months ago.








Only one playthrough so far, really need to start on my second.