Super Robot Taisen OG: Moon Dwellers

Cleared it.

The usual numbers:

WOW it's astonishing how little actual plot this game has. Most of it is setting up stuff for sequels (Balmar, Golion, other races getting wiped out by shit pouring out of crossgates, Kadum Hakham). I mean, OG II was really good and I didn't expect MD to outdo it, but I didn't expect it to fall so short of it either.

 It was ultimately kind of disappointing but eh, all the stuff they're setting up looks cool enough so at least it looks like the next one will be great. Since they have this and OG II to work off of hopefully the next one won't take five million years. 

Hopefully the whole Asia pivot means that they're going to put more focus into the SRW series and release games faster.

This game seems to suffer a bit from the same problems as PXZ1 (though nowhere as bad) where they try to cut down on stuff that would leave new players behind, but don't seem to actually have enough content to make up for it. And then at the end they go eh fuck it and go full American comic book level "*read issue #1525 of Amazing SRX-Man to know what the hell everyone is talking about" with the Kadum Hakham anyway.

The Famitsu cross review mentioned the recaps and keyword explanations helping with that but the keyword explanations are CLEARLY not enough. I looked up most of that shit when it came up and it's only surface level stuff at best and is weirdly lacking in some areas: For example Septuagint is mentioned roughly once in passing and doesn't even have its own entry. Maybe the recaps help, didn't look at those.

For new Japanese players this isn't much of a problem since there's the wiki but this is a bigger problem for new English-speaking players because A) The previous games aren't even out in English and B) AFAIK the wikis are full of retarded bullshit made up by fucktards spouting nonsense like "the heralds of the elemental lords use their life force to rewrite akashic records with full possession"and so on.

Final boss spoilers:

 

Shuu ended up as my top ace by the end of the final stage (not reflected in the stuff above because that's from before starting it). The Neo Granzon is TOUGH. Also Shuu sstands out more than Masaki.

Gigantic Drive

Totally forgot to write a post about this game back when I was playing it in May.

This game is really, really rough around the edges. You can tell they had no budget.  The graphics for the most part aren't very pretty (character/robot models are doujin level, the environments below even that), the physics are hilariously bad (like when you uppercut a guy on the chin and he shoots up five hundred metres into the air and flips twelve times) at times, there is no semblance of balance at all, and the difficulty fluctuates from pathetically easy to plain fucking frustrating. And sometimes they even come with annoying easy five minute sequences before the frustrating bits even though there are no mid-stage checkpoints.


But you know what? The game is fantastic. It's fun. It's unique. It's SPECIAL. Nowadays most games are so fucking conservative that they're mostly the same thing to other stuff in their genre, only with different graphics and variables. That's not entirely a bad thing, of course, because a lot of those games are pretty good, and by following the formula they guarantee at least a playable game. This is NOT one of those games. It doesn't give a shit about formula, it just does its own thing. And it's great because it feels, for once, refreshing. Remember that feeling, as a kid, when you played your first video game, and everything about it felt new to you? That's what this game feels like. It actually makes you feel like you're controlling a giant fucking robot.

You don't pilot the robot, it's remotely controlled like Tetsujin. Your player character can levitate to climb up buildings and such, and so you have to find a spot to get a good view to control the robot.

Controlling the robot is FANTASTIC. The shoulder buttons control the legs, and the sticks control the arms. To just WALK you need to control the legs individually. Depending on how you move the sticks you can execute jabs and hooks and uppercuts. You also have finishers that are ridiculously hard to hit with but also do ridiculous amounts of damage, and transformations. Transformations! There are three robots available, a slow one that transforms into a tank, a fast one that transforms into a plane, and the "main" one which just gets a super power mode with a time limit to game over. You can have your robot transform into the plane, hop on top of it, fly near the enemy, jump off onto the roof of a building, and then fly it behind the enemy and have it transform and turn around quickly and punch it in the back. This sounds like nothing, but when you actually manage to execute it in the game with its wacky controls? Holy SHIT that feels good.

It makes you feel fantastic when you get good at controlling it and pull off awesome moves. And beyond all this, it has something else, a hard to describe X-factor that makes it shine brighter than many, many other games.

It's games like this that made me start playing video games, and make me continue to play them.

XCOM: Enemy Within

So yeah, cleared my first playthrough of EW (on normal).

-Didn't do the Slingshot stuff. I ignored the first request when it showed up because all my guys were still injured and it never popped up again.
-Same with the fishing town mission.

-The Progeny stuff was total rubbish. The last mission was fucking pathetic. What the hell, it's the usual abductor ship only you don't even need to fight anything? I shot 2-3 aliens, found the device, chucked a grenade at it and bam, stage clear.

-EXALT was kind of cool but got really repetitive and the last mission was, again, rubbish. They have their own special map but there's not a single unique character/boss or hell any real conclusion to the story except "we found their HQ and blew it up"? That's fucking stupid.

-The gene mods were ehhhhh. Okay, I guess, but not really game-changing. The MEC troopers on the other hand were awesome, as you can see above I had three and the existence of a bunch of tanks with grenade launchers just completely changes the game. They felt overpowered for most of the game, though, until the sectopods and muton elites showed up and they started taking ridiculous amounts of damage, but otherwise it was plenty fun.

-Most of the other new additions were inconsequential... except for the ghost grenades. Oh wow. I only used one of those in the entire playthrough, for the last room of the temple ship, but it was more than enough for me to tell how fucking broken those things are. I just chucked one at my squad and went HOLY SHIT THESE THINGS WORK ON MEC TROOPERS? and then just ran as far as I could into the room. Next turn was just "revealed" "pew pew pew" uber ethereal dies I WIN. Wow.
 
-Meld was a great incentive to get you to explore the stages faster but once I had three MECs I found myself just letting them run ahead all the time anyway.

-The base defence mission was way less fun and way more tedious than I'd expected it to be.

-New maps! NEW MAPS! In the entire playthrough only like 3-4 maps were ones I'd already seen in Enemy Unknown! That's awesome.

-There only being two new enemy types was kind of disappointing. The seekers were far more of an annoyance than ever a threat. The mectoids were kind of cool at first but got boring quickly.

If asked if I got my money's worth (paid 5300 yen = about USD$50 to get it off Amazon Japan because holy shit I'm not fucking paying $40 for a download) I'd definitely not say no, but would also really hesitate to say yes.


The changes made are pretty significant and yet in the long run kind of insignificant. EXALT amounts to nothing, Progeny amounts to nothing. The endgame is still the usual boring slog. Battleships and supply barges are still shit. MEC troopers are cool but they aren't THAT much of a difference.
 

I'd definitely recommend it to someone who doesn't yet own the base game, but someone else who has already played the game but isn't one of those looners who has given ironman impossible a million tries... Ehhh, I don't know. I'd lean towards wait for a sale or something. Also I'd say that $40 for a download of it is atrocious and definitely out of the question.

Project X Zone (Review)

 It's rubbish.

 Let's see, they had tons of complaints about the terrible tempo in Namcap and fixed it in PXZ by making battles faster and removing enemy attacks... and then went and made the tempo worse again by tossing in millions of enemies and multiple bosses per stage, each with a ridiculous HP count.

This is made worse because of the whole combo system which means no skipping attack animations. I understand how it's a fundamental part of the game but I'm used to Suparobo so this annoys me after some time. I never did clear Namcap or Mugefuro, but I just had to get this because of the series lineup (.hack! Sakura Taisen! Rockman X! Valkyria! etc.)

It's not as bad as Namcap, at least. None of the QTE for every single enemy attack (in fact non-boss enemies don't even have attack animations) or instant failure when dropping an enemy bullshit. Doing away with enemy attacks was a good thing, though some of their choices were weird as fuck (Makaimura mid-boss has an attack animation, BYAKUYA KAI DOESN'T? What the fuck?)  The crowds aren't too bad once your people learn the multi-target attacks, too. 

But it's still pretty bad. Pretty much every single stage boils down to kill everything, kill someone, kill someone THEN EVERYTHING ANYWAY, or do something else (like get to Aura in time) AND THEN  JUST KILL EVERYTHING FOR GOOD MEASURE. 

Kill everything. Oh, and the cocoon maidens from God Eater are in here, and like in the source material they don't (can't) move.  There are some stages where you mop up the bosses but the victory condition is to kill everything. And there's a single cocoon maiden on the other side of the map, which is five turns away for the closest character who'll be able to kill it in one attack. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Oh wait, because of the game system where units move according to speed you have to get your other guys to wait, one by one, once for each of those five turns. FUCKING RETARDED.

The story is rubbish too. So terrible that after clearing the game once I went back and did it again just to look at the credits and check if it really was Morizumi who wrote it. It was, and I don't believe it. Not only is the story disjointed and nonsensical, the characters, including the ones he made up (Reiji especially with his yelling Rom Stoll quotes even more than usual, at inappropriate times) act funny. It generally reads like a bad fanfiction. It's just difficult to believe that the guy who wrote Suparobo A has fallen to this level. Plus since there's barely any story there's also barely any interaction between characters. Isn't that, like, the WHOLE POINT of a crossover? 



I did like one thing about the system, though- the XP (cross points, not experience) bar shared by all your characters.

100 max.
-Hitting enemies gets you lots of points
-Getting hit by an enemy gives you 5
-Guarding an attack (half damage) costs 20, completely guarding (no damage) is 60, countering is 20 (but when you counter depending on characters you may be able to earn back way more than 20, especially considering how you still get that 5 for being hit)
-Skills cost XP too: 35 for boosting attack by 15%, 40 for boosting all stats by 10%, 15 for instantly breaking shields, 50 for a 15% defence stat boost or +2 move to all characters, etc.
-Finishers (used at the end of a combo) or multi-target specials (basically map attacks only they hit a specific number of enemies only, either 2 or 4) cost 100

If more than one character hits an enemy at the same time (cross hit) you can build up XP over 100, up to a max of 150. There are no other ways to get your XP to over 100 (getting hit by enemies and using items only get you to 100 max). Thus if you want to use a special move with a stat-boosting skill you need more than 100 XP. With multi-targets you need all the XP because the attack is activated immediately, with specials there's a bit of leeway because you can build up some XP before letting loose (if you have say 110 and use Zengar's nekketsu which costs 35 leaving you with 75 you can still build up the necessary 25 with cross hit combos in the ensuing battle before unleashing your finisher). Everyone sharing the same gauge means you need to think of who's coming up next and act accordingly.

By the way, a certain shitty English "otaku" site (hint: its name starts with "K" and ends with "otaku") has a review written by a stupid fuck who has seemingly never played the game up. Said review is utter bullshit FYI.

HE SAYS IT'S DIFFICULT. "An Unforgiving Difficulty Curve" to be precise. Hahahahahahahaha no. Only the bosses can scratch you at all, and even when they do so all the enemies drop so many healing items whenever you need to use one you'll find that you've been picking up so many that your inventory is full. The only way you can die is by forgetting to heal when at extremely low HP.


Other stuff from that review

>>Good — Filled With Insanity
What he's trying to say is "CROSSOVERS SO RANDUM LOLOLOL". Only yeah there's barely any story and thus barely any interactions between the characters which is the entire fucking point of a crossover. So it's rubbish as a crossover game (maybe I'm just used to Suparobo).

>>Good — Lots of Customization 
There is no customization you stupid fuck. You can equip two items and assign a solo unit to any twin unit, that's it.

He goes on to talk about the combo system using this as an example of  "customization" (what the fuck?) and manages to get it completely wrong too. Any attack that isn't a cross hit will send the enemy flying up into the air or to the left to bounce back towards you, and you can follow that up with any other attack. The combination or order doesn't fucking matter at all, dumbass.

>>Good — Complex Level Design
Now the guy's just pulling things out of his ass.

>>Mixed — An Unforgiving Difficulty Curve
See above. Yep he hasn't played the fucking game.


Anyway yeah this game is absolute rubbish and I want my money back. 

とりあえず某画像掲示板に貼った俺の感想とかをここにも貼っとくわ

今２７話だけどRocksを入れやがった
もうスパロボの外伝でいいよなこれｗｗｗｗｗｗ
いいぞもっとやれ


しかしいくらなんでも敵が多すぎるだろこのゲーム
しかもスパロボ以上のヌルゲーだから敵が多いと面倒なだけ…… 


やっぱり普段からスパロボをやってる人じゃないと色々と付いていけない気がするなこれ
余談だがハーケンが斬艦刀を「コロッサル・ソード」と呼んだが実はそれ英語版ＯＧの斬艦刀の正式名称
但し海外ではSuper Robot WarsではなくSuper Robot Taisen 


>>まだ10話だが、スパロボよりよっぽど難しいんだが
ないない
スパロボだと精神の掛け忘れとかボスの１％命中率で命中とかがあるのだがＰＸＺだとアイテム禁止縛りでもない限り死ぬことはないじゃないの？


>>これでナムカプばりの増援ゲーだったらもう変態的だな
ああ、その画像は増援後だわ
ちなみにたまに変な場所で出るから困る。
よし、そこの敵あと３体、そろそろ片付けるか！→突撃→キャラの周辺に敵増援３０体出現 


>>これはダメージ負った仲間の回復が楽すぎて死ねない・・・
これだな。スパロボだとボスに一撃でやられたりするからスパロボより難しいってことはない


>>スパロボが終盤でダレてくる俺には辛いかもしれん
これぶっちゃけサルファより酷い、２０話あたりから１ステージをクリアするのに普通に２時間までかかる。システム上、戦闘演出をオフに出来ないからな……その上敵１００体とかもう悪い冗談としか


>>どう違うのかわからん
スパロボはＳＰがすぐ尽きるがＰＸＺは回復アイテムが尽きない
俺意識してアイテムを取ろうとしたことはないが毎回アイテム欄を見ると数が尋常じゃない
ついでに言うとひらめきと不屈は一回しか効かないから敵ターンでボコられて死亡なんてこともあるし、最近のスパロボのボスはフル改造＋集中でも当たって来るからな


>>適度に休憩挟んでやらないとそのうち飽きると思う
どうでもいいが俺はCivをやりながらやってるｗ


んー、何か物足りないと思ったらボスとの会話がないな。スパロボからの習慣でボスに同じシリーズのキャラを当てているが別に何も起こらないからな……


やっとクリアした
これは酷い
ぶっちゃけスパロボ学園のほうが面白かった
どうしてこうなった 


酷い
スパロボのシナリオはずっとどうこう言われてきたけどそういうレベルじゃない
「シナリオ」と呼べるかどうかすら疑わしいほど薄い
戦闘はつまらない上いらいらさせる面が多い（追いかけっこ、護衛、タイムリミット、動かない敵、自軍の攻撃が届かないボス）。そして無駄に多い敵＋増援（上のセーブデータを見れば分かるよう一面をクリアするのに普通に９０～１２０分かかる）
それなら別にいいが、クロスオーバーの醍醐味である別作品のキャラの絡み合いがあまりない。戦闘前の会話がほぼすべて、しかも自軍同士の会話しかない（ボスと戦うとボスとの会話どころか　自　軍　の　会　話　も　発　生　し　な　い　）
とにかくまあ、うん、酷い 

>>糞ゲだったのか
>>３ｄｓだとこれくらいしかやりたいのが無かったが
>>もう買う必要も無いな
ＦＥ覚醒は幼女と子作りできる神ゲー！ 

Robotics;Notes, clear

It was good but the ending kind of sucked what with a whole lot of shit not being resolved. Ah well.

Edit:
とりあえずなんとなく日本語で書いてみたくなったんでとりあえず書いてみた
いつも通り（と言っても日本語でこれやるの初めてだっけ）、ネタバレはハイライトで

とりあえず不満点を挙げると：

 ・５～８章、キャラ別に分ける意味あったのこれ？
一本道だろ？たまに見る、基本的に同じことが起きるがエンディングだけヒロインと結ばれるifならともかく、これ完全に一本道だよね？

・攻略が面倒くさい
かなり面倒くさい。ツイぽ面倒くさい。遊ぶだけなら結構面白い（まあ返事が来ない場合が多すぎるが）。が、攻略に必要となるとかなりうざい。君島レポート探しもそうだ。つか今時ピクセル・ハンティングって……３０年前のポイント＆クリックアドベンチャーじゃあるまいし何考えてんだよ。

・最終章がいまいち盛り上がらなかった
phase１１は結構燃えたのにな。ちなみに一番気に入ったのは７話のサイバーパンク的なノリ。犯人の洗脳とかはありがちな展開なのに鳥肌が立った。

・フラウのどもり具合と昴のテンパり具合がちょっとわざとらしかった
うんまあそういうこと。

・未回収の伏線が多すぎる
 澤田とか明らかな続編への伏線はまあよしとして、７話のあとフラウ野放しとかありえないだろどう考えても。エンディング後のミサ姉も。つかミサ姉への伝言どうなった。昴のことも消化不良で終わったしモノポールも結局ただのマクガフィンだった。

・エンディングが微妙
エピローグくらい付けろよ。

・ロボメインのはずなのに何故かロボ成分低め
どちらかといえばARのほうがメインだったんじゃね？結局ロボが目立ったのは１話だけだったような……


勘違いはしないで欲しい、何も糞ゲーとか言いたいわけじゃない。むしろすごく熱中したし点を付けると１０点満点では個人的に８～８．５くらいになると思う。ただまあ、好きな作品だからこそ不満点が余計目立つ、そしてその不満はある種のストレスになり、それを発散しないといつまでももやもやした気分になる。つまりまあストレス発散のために俺はこんなのを書いてるわけだ。

オチはないよ？

Edit:
Eh might as well put this up in English as well.

What I didn't like:
・Was there any need to split chapters 5-8 into separate routes?They all take place in the same timeline successively. Hell, they're even numbered that way. What the hell was the point of splitting them up?

・Conditions for unlocking the routes was stupid. Playing around with the twitter-ish thing is kind of fun (I especially liked being able to follow news and the responses to it), though it was kind of disappointing how a lot of the things you say don't get answers.. But using it to unlock routes? Hell no.

・Final chapter kind of sucked. I don't know, it was kind of a bit of a letdown after all the buildup towards it. Hard to describe why, it just was. Chapters 1 and 7 were the best bits, personally.

・Too much stuff left unresolved. Way too much. (This is of course not counting the stuff that obviously leads to a sequel.)

・Ending sucked. Too abrupt, could've used an epilogue or something.

・Not enough robots. Why the fuck? I'm not complaining about all the AR stuff, I loved that, it's just that despite the supposed focus on robots there just didn't seem to be much in the way of them at all.

Not saying it was bad, I loved it (on a scale of 1-10 I'd put it at around 8/8.5). It's just that the stuff that bothered me kind of really bothered me.

Madoka Magica Portable

Pre-ordered my copy directly from Bannam's Lalabit Market which got me this phone strap.


Been through all the scenarios except Kyouko's, which I only just unlocked.
Playthroughs so far were:

Madoka → Madoka (same ending) → Mami (didn't let her turn into a witch, lost to Walpurgis) → Mami (let her turn into a witch, lost to Walpurgis again) → Homura (saved Mami, prevented Sayaka from contracting, fought and defeated Walpurgis with Homura, Mami and Kyouko) → Extra scenario (wow it was bad) → Sayaka (no witch).

Defeated Walpurgis in the Homura and extra scenarios (my problem in Mami's was the group of three familiars on the last floor that surround you as soon as you enter; With Homura I just stopped time and took them down) and wasn't very pleased with how the game just acts like you lost even if you do so. If you're going to let me fight and defeat the fucking boss then fucking make it so that that changes something, if not then make it undefeatable you morons. Bah.

Oh and Madoka's scenario's ending was a total fucking cop-out.



I've heard a lot of complaints online about the game freezing up, but it hasn't been a problem for me. Only froze once so far, in the artist witch's introduction scene. I can see how freezing can be a big problem, though, because the dungeons are long, sometimes they force you through two or even three dungeons in a row without giving you a chance to save in between, and the stupid fucks decided to make it so that even if you save inside a dungeon, said save is deleted upon loading. That's not too bad if freezing wasn't a problem, but it is, so they really shouldn't have kept it in.

And there're still a lot of bugs. The ones I've gotten so far are:

-Tutorial: Flip a page and it just shows you the previous page and once you've seen the correct number of pages it closes. Even though ALL YOU SAW WAS THE FIRST PAGE.
-Sayaka route: Spots where you can use the QB button are marked even without you buying the thing which makes that happen (this is a good thing).
-After clearing Homura's or the extra scenario (forgot which) the fifth mystery dungeon was unlocked for me... except not really, it just showed up in the menu after 1 and 2 but when I entered it it was actually dungeon 3. After I cleared Sayaka's route dungeon 3 showed up but 5 was still there and still marked "new". When I entered it it was actually dungeon 4.
-Sayaka route: After clearing the scenario I didn't get the fucking clear bonus points (this is not a fucking good thing fuck you assholes FUCK), I just got like 300 points for emotion levels and that was it. (This also happened to me on some of the mystery dungeons)

Considering how fucking insignificant the points you get from emotion levels (maybe 200-400 per playthrough, while the clear bonus is supposed to be somewhere around 3000-9000, and the important shit you want to buy in the shop is priced in the thousands too) that last bug is EXTREMELY annoying.

Bugs aside this isn't too bad a game. I only really have a few big problems with it.

First of all is the terrible skip- Hitting start auto-skips everything... including stuff you haven't seen. Considering how clearing a scenario once unlocks more story portions that really isn't something you want to do. Not to mention the stupid Q button system where you can break into conversations... which you can't do if you're skipping. Even if you buy the option to reveal the bits where you can use the button, the stupid skip function SKIPS THOSE PORTIONS TOO, and does so so fast that you can't even tell that you could use the button there. To the fucking morons who made the game work this way- What the fuck is wrong with you people?

Second of all is the lack of being able to change the story. Before release they were going on about changing stuff with the Q button and how anyone can become a witch if their soul gem is too clouded and so on... but all of that was pretty much bullshit. The Q button really doesn't do anything at all, the story is mostly linear, and the girls turning into witches only happens at specific points if you fulfil the right conditions. I mean, yeah, it's an ADV so that's to be expected, but some of those points can only be found in certain scenarios.

Finally there's the way learning skills is implemented- You can only learn skills by using items (spellbooks) which you get from defeating certain enemies. For the most part it's totally fucking random so you might barely be able to learn any skills at all, plus since the books are shared among all your characters you need to choose really wisely (especially since you can never tell if Mami will die or Sayaka will become a witch or Kyouko will go back to her own fucking town). But then there're some dungeons with enemies with ridiculously high drop rates for them which means you can fill up your entire fucking skill tree. That's just stupid.

Ah well, the dungeon-crawling in the game is still pretty fun. I have no idea why I'm enjoying it despite all these lethal flaws, but I am, so eh.

Edit: Also took a look at the bonus BD, there's some interesting stuff on it, in particular these:

The Madoka witch's interior and core, and Homura's witch.

Homura's witch's name is interesting- in Japanese 此岸の魔女- 此岸 ("shigan", literally "this side") is a Buddhist term referring to the mortal world, filled with Earthly desires and doubts, which is used in opposition to 彼岸 ("higan", "the far side") which is basically Nirvana and enlightenment or something (I'd elaborate but being Catholic and all I wouldn't have any idea what I'm talking about so go Google it if you want to know more).

But anyway what's interesting is the contrast the name suggests it has with Madoka's Witch of Salvation, which aims to absorb the entire planet into its zone and mould it into a personal heaven. Homura, even as a witch, refuses to accept that, hanging on to her one desire of saving Madoka. Pretty cool.

The name of the witch itself is apparently "Homulily" (that's the text on top, the text below is fittingly, considering how you only see it in a game over screen, "game over").

Unrelated but it appears that for some reason (fansubbers?) most of the English-speaking world insists on taking shitty Japanese → English dictionaries at face value and translating　結界 ("kekkai") to "barrier". This suggest ineptitude in not just Japanese but also English since it's pretty fucking clear that the kekkai in Madomagi are not fucking barriers. Hence my use of "zone". Just saying.

Edit: Cleared Kyouko's scenario. Aiming to get the best ending in Homura's route next, and I'll clear the last extra dungeon after that.

Also since when did Madoka's witch become a grief seed with limbs?


Also, another observation.

From the custom theme: A bunch of the witches' emblems, including two which I don't recall seeing anywhere else.

One is a soul gem/grief seed with wings (gee, where did I see that before), and the other is an hourglass superimposed on top of a flower. In Japanese it's called the "higan-bana". That's the same "higan" ("彼岸") as in the opposite of "shigan". Plus in English it's called the red spider lily, and Homura's witch's name is "Homulily".

Also according to the Japanese Wikipedia article, in floriography, the various meanings of the higan-bana include: "Passion", "independence", "reunion", "sad memories", and "I think only of you".

Pretty fitting.

Edit: Got the best ending in Homura's scenario.




Edit: Cleared the last extra dungeon.





Ended up at around level 60.