Rondo of Swords – Path A Finished (spoilers)!

Cotton, savior of a million lives

*huff, wheeze* Phew! *pant, pant* Finally! I finally killed that bloody Mephreyu!

FI-NA-LL-YYYY! Gawd, what a pain in the ass that final stage was. I must have tried it at least 10 times. At least. But it’s all good and nice, I finally managed to put that sucker away for good. Smug bastard, that last hit felt so, so good. Death and Destruction to the Mephreyus of this world! All hail! All hail!

Now then, there’s a famous quote attributed (most likely apocryphally) to Einstein that goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” By that definition, the final stage of Rondo of Swords must have sent me stark raving nuts, because I kept trying to use the same strategy and something kept going wrong. Then I’d try again, something would go wrong again. It wasn’t until I gave up and went all medieval on Mephreyu’s behind that I finally managed to beat him. But thinking back, the correct strategy was so obvious! All those wasted hours…

My failed strategy: Team: Altrius (Serdic), Alberich, Cotton, Ansom, Marie, Alhambra. Clear out mages with Ansom, clear out all other bad guys with rest of team. Slowly work way up to the top. Park Altrius and Alhambra at bottom of wide platform to lure reinforcements down and up. Place Cotton by one upper spawn point and Alberich by another. Slowly take out enemies on Mephreyu’s pyramid by having Ansom go up, shoot them and be rescued by Marie’s Holy Favor. Have Ansom take down Mephreyu’s MP by the same method until his MP is gone and half his HP is down. Have Alberich finish him off with OB level 3.

All well and nice, except either Ansom or Marie or Alberich would get themselves killed somehow. This often happened when the linesmen reinforcements refused to play nice by going up instead of down. Or when Ansom accidentally found himself out of range of Marie (my own carelessness, I know), and more than once Alberich’s Null ZOC failed him and he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And on one occasion Altrius got himself critically countered, Game Overing me within a few turns. Even at level 54 he still failed to one-shot some of the level 45 linesmen on occasion, leaving me in a sticky position to say the least. Needless to say I kept him far, far away from Mephreyu.

My successful strategy: Same team as before, same strategy as before except for a few things. Firstly, I had Altrius take the fight to the linesman on the right, standing right on top of the stairs ready to take him out. I also had Alhambra hide in the corner on the top right, keeping the armored guy busy and frustrated. That was all by-the-by, the important thing was, Ansom got killed again. And this time I didn’t restart because I had an epiphany: Cotton. My Queen. Ansom had already cleared all the guys on the platform, and Cotton is strong as hell against magic attacks. If anyone could survive Mephreyu’s attacks it would be her. I’d already used her as a mage killer before, why couldn’t I do it again?

So I tried it, and it worked beautifully. Not only could she survive his attacks with ease (he hit her for 196. Pfft, she’s got over 450HP), but she could hit back as well with Fire Dragon. Hard. That meant she was double-draining his MP every round, all while parked in one spot instead of moving back and forth like Ansom did. She could even take a hit or two from the rogue sniper or linesman without breaking a sweat. AND she could refill her own HP and MP with her OB. I still had Marie standing some distance away using Cure Drop every once in a while, just to be on the safe side. I whittled down Mephy’s MP and then HP to half, then he used an item to refill his MP. Pfft, you’re only prolonging your suffering Mephreyu! Give it up, you can’t win!

At some point Marie wandered into the path of a stray sniper and got taken out, but by that point I’d taken the boss’s MP out completely, so I cornered him with Cotton and Alberich, hit him with Fire Dragon and followed it up with Alberich’s OB 3. Narrow Victory for the win.

So glad that’s over with. That was the most frustrating final boss fight I’ve ever faced, bar none. For all my troubles, the ending was surprisingly perfunctory. Marie becomes Queen, everyone takes off back to wherever they came from and Altrius goes adventuring in parts unknown for reasons unsaid. Roll credits, the end.

About the game itself, though… Once I got used to the Route Maneuver System it was surprisingly fun, and definitely strategic in its own way. I both liked and hated the way you couldn’t just rush into battle blindly but instead had to lure enemies down slowly and carefully. The main downside was that every battle took forever even with super-powered freaks like Ansom and Cotton in the house. My Serdic/Altrius was roided up from taking on all the bad guys in “Escape from Egvard” but after the first 15 chapters or so he was just like everybody else. I shudder to imagine how utterly worthless he would be without all that extra grinding. Worse than unpromoted Roy from Fire Emblem 6, I bet. In any case, this is one game I definitely won’t be whining “It was too easy!” about. Oh, and the music was good too. I say it was good because I must have heard the same themes about a thousand times and I still never turned the sound off. That qualifies as good in my books.

The problem with Rondo of Swords was the story, really. The lack of a story, I mean. Enemies invade, you run, you rally, you turn back and press your way back to your kingdom. At one point most of your allies desert you, then a few chapters later they’re back like nothing ever happened. The Grand Meir villains just invaded because they were evil, no other reason. And Mephreyu’s pissed off because Verona killed his friend, so supposedly he wants to… uhmm… release the Darkness so that…umm… You know, I’m really not clear on that part. Anyway, he was mad about something and wanted to release an ancient evil to solve it, but we stopped him and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. Yeah, I’m not impressed either.

Now for Path B, the path where you kill Marie and Serdic becomes this awesome hardcore emperor dude. I made sure to get two saves when the choice came up, so I don’t have to replay from the start. I’m only two chapters into Path B, but I’m loving this no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Serdic. I can’t believe the milksop Altrius had this side to him, it’s so cool. It’s hard to get used to being weak again though. This could take a while.

First trailer of Nora to Toki no Koubou

Atlus updated their official website for Nora to Toki no Koubou today, adding a character description for Nora’s companion Keke as well as a two-minute trailer that shows the creation system, but not in detail. All we know for sure is that she manipulates time and uses it to make items somehow. It showed a bit of the battle system as well, but not in any kind of detail. It’ll be probably be like other Gust games where you hire adventurers to accompany you when item foraging, which raises their affection for you. Nora’s “Nani ga toreru kana,” “yatta!”, “dekita!” and “un, kanpeki!” lines gave me serious Atelier flashbacks as well. I’m looking forward to this!

Youtube trailer (the one on the official website is slightly higher quality and less squashed)

In other news, I’m almost done with Rondo of Swords Path A! This would have been an update on it except that bloody Mephreyu just won’t die! I think I’ve figured out how to get him, but both times I tried, I made a careless mistake and got either Ansom or Marie killed. I cannot go on without him so it was back to the  drawing board again. I can’t imagine beating him without either of those two. As for Serdic/Altrius, he’s one of the most useless main characters I have ever been forced to take into battle before. I wish I could kill him off, I really do. *sigh* Okay, time for attempt number three.

Nora to Toki no Koubou

There is still life in the DS! Hallelujah!

*ahem*
Atlus and a team of developers that previously worked on Etrian Odyssey and the Atelier series are working on an RPG for the DS, Nora to Toki no Koubou. It’s due out in Japan on 21st July 2011, which should give me enough time to get Rondo of Swords out of the way and possibly play a little something else. Will it come to the US? Should I wait to play it? (hell no) Only time will tell!

Nora sounds like an Atelier kind of game: fulfilling quests and making items in order to make the villagers like you. According to Famitsu there’s a time-related component to making the items, so it’s not like the usual alchemy system we’re used to. What Nora does is described as “導刻術”, using the characters for “guide”, “time/engrave” and “technique.” It allows her to manipulate time, but we’ll have to wait for more details on exactly what that entails.

The story sounds simple enough: a little girl named Nora goes on a training trip, finds herself accused of being a witch and has to prove her innocence. Like most recent Atelier games (yes yes, I know it’s not an Atelier game), this one has a time limit of three years, during which she has to build up the trust of the villagers while keeping her skills hidden from them. I’m not saying they copied it or anything, but remember how in Atelier Lina Lina is accused of burning down the forest and is forced to help the fairies rebuild it? Just saying.

Btw, the romanization of Nora’s full name is given on the official Atlus website as “Noora Brandor”, but seeing as that same page misspells “character” as “charactor”, I think we’re safe going with Nora for now.

It sound like there are multiple endings depending on how you related to your companions in the course of your adventure. No Saga 3 style hidden requirements, please!

From the sole battle screenshot I saw, the battle system is a regular turn-based one. Probably nothing too complicated either. As long as the quests and the item creation system is rich and complex enough, I don’t really care what they do to the battle system. As for the cutesy-wutesy character designs, I’ll get used to them eventually.

Btw, is it just me or does the world map look an awful lot like the world map from Atelier Lina?

Anyway, massive props to Atlus for continuing to develop games for the Nintendo DS at a time when other companies are shifting their loyalty to the 3DS. Between this and Devil Survivor 2, Atlus is my new favorite company! Three cheers for Atlus!

After all, I don’t have money for a 3DS right now, and if I did have that money I’d spend it on a PSP and a couple of games. I’ve had a DS since 2006 and I must have played at least a hundred (whoa… but yeah, I think so) games on it, but I’m not quite ready to move on yet.

So, looking forward to move details being added to the Official Site and Official Development Blog soon!

Rondo of Swords – Ten hours in

It was going to be “first impressions”, but after ten hours you kind of lose the right to call it that. Anyway if I’d written my first impressions when I just started out, it would have been a real disaster: “I hate this game! WTF is this! This isn’t a tactical RPG! It…it’s TRASH!” and other expressions along those lines.

I confess I didn’t really pay attention to what the game was about before starting it. I didn’t feel I needed to, I just saw the grids and the top-down view and thought it looked like Fire Emblem with a few gimmicks and that was all it took to draw me in. I’m easy like that, but I’m learning fast not to judge games by appearances any more.

Rondo of Swords may look Fire Emblem-like but it’s a completely different kind of game. Sure there are different classes, and all units have set ranges, and enemies and allies take turns to move and you can recruit people by talking to them and if your main character dies then it’s all over… but still! The fundamental part, gameplay, is waaay different.

Instead of walking up to to an enemy, you draw a path on the map and run (skate? fly? your legs never move) through them, inflicting damage on the way. You can also run (skate/fly) by allies to get all kinds of abilities. It follows then that if you can’t run through an enemy then you can’t hurt it, and vice versa. This makes no sense, but no need to sweat the small stuff. It works in your favor more often than not, because you can hole up in alleys or create chokepoints that will hold out for pretty much ever.

Before you get to that point, though Rondo of Swords has one of the steepest learning curves I have ever seen. If you can make it through the first stage, “Escape from Egvard”, alive, none of the other chapters will make you break a sweat. It’s that hard. I had muddled my way through the tutorial because I thought I’d learn by doing… WRONG. Gawd, that was a nightmare, I don’t even want to talk about it.

See, with future chapters you can just quit if things aren’t going well. You get to start all over again with your items restored and all gained EXP still with you. It’s like the Egress skill in Shining Force, for the older gamers among us. “Escape from Egvard” doesn’t have that: succeed or perish miserably. And I perished, oh how I perished. I was on the verge of giving up, really, but mentally I’d been really, really looking forward to playing this game so I just couldn’t bring myself to. Eventually Youtube came to the rescue and I followed a step by step guide to a Chapter 1 Rout. I failed three or four times, and the whole thing took me 3 hours to do (especially after I lost Margus to a mage), but I got it done in the end. Phew. What’s that saying about appreciating things we have to work hard for? After having to work this hard to pass the first stage, I’m not going to let Rondo of Swords get away that easily!

Now that my Serdic is ridiculously overlevelled and I can use him as bait without worrying too much, the game is a hundred times more fun. It helped that the subsequent chapters were a lot easier, especially since I had more characters. Having learnt from my Saga 3 experience, I looked at a FAQ early on so I’ve been getting all the side characters I need to create a powerful team. I let Rukia die though: the world doesn’t need any more thieves. I’ve also been sending them on Errands regularly, though I’m not sure it’s making any difference to their stats.

Anyway, thing are really smoothly now and I’m having fun, more or less. The layout of some stages is a bit frustrating, and I hate, hate stages with lots of mages, but since you can withdraw from battle and restart as many times as you like, it’s not a deal breaker. The fact that you can’t can’t move and use magic/items/skills on the same turn would bother me if I wasn’t used to it from Tactical Guild (copycats!) but luckily I am. And the story is a bit barebones and the characters are bit shallow, and it’s sad that optional characters don’t get involved in it, but these are all things I can live with.

I’m at the “Thunder Emperor” stage, dunno how much further I have to go. Probably a looong way, because the real bad guys have only just started to surface. May is going to be a busy month for me, though, so I might not finish it any time soon. Well, no rush.

Nanatsuiro★Drops: Touch de Hajimaru Hatsukoi Monogatari review

Yet another crappy game. Do I know how to pick ’em or what?

For those not in the know, Nanatsuiro★Drops is a game/anime series about a boy named Tsuwabuki Masaharu who drinks soda from another world and is cursed to turn into a stuffed animal every night. He needs to collect seven “star drops” before he can go back to normal.

Nanatsuiro★Drops started out as an adult visual novel which was then made into a PG anime. Said anime was then made into a video game for the DS, which is what I just played. Logic suggests it would have been better to port the original game (sans adult scenes) to the DS instead of making a new one, but logic never applies when it comes to quick cash tie-ins.

Btw, I watched a bit of the anime prior to starting this game, just try and get a sense of what I was in for. Hmm? “Watched?” More like “suffered through” honestly. I’ve never liked the magical girl genre. I’ve tried several: Card Captor Sakura, Pretear, Nanoha, etc, but I never get far because quite frankly, they all suck they’re just not my thing. Nanatsuiro★Drops was not an exception. Sure it was boring, sure it was repetitive but the really annoying part was the main girl Sumomo Akihime with her faux-cute faux-hesitant demeanor, generic “cute anime girl” looks and sickeningly squeaky high voice. From now on my requirements for picking up anime series will “must not have any shy, stammering girls with stupidly high-pitched voices that JUST WON’T SHUT UP!”

Back to logic though, surely logic suggests that if I hated the anime that much I would hate the game too. As usual logic was completely right. I’m starting to think I have a masochistic streak. Or maybe I just played it to confirm that my Sucky Game radar wasn’t broken after all, what with the Tactical Guild incident and all.

If that was the case then my fears were for nothing; my radar is fine. It’s probably working overtime to compensate, in fact, because there wasn’t that much wrong with the game. The main issues I had with it were the incomprehensible plot and the stupid mini-games. Oh wait, that’s all there is to the game. Right.

First, the game will make very little sense unless you’ve watched the anime. Nanatsuiro★Drops is less of a video game and more of a whirlwind tour through several famous (?) scenes from the anime. And not in any proper order either. A random scene here, a random character appearance there, that sort of thing. They used some animated footage directly from the anime, which came out pretty well, but logic suggests anyone who wants to see anime footage would be better off just getting the anime. But of course, logic is ignored as usual. Poor logic.

Anyway, I plodded through the random scenes and eventually got the bad ending where Tsuwabuki loses his memory, tries to recall what happened in the past six months and eventually decides it doesn’t matter. Wait, that’s not a bad ending, that’s a good ending! Banzai! Afterwards Nona had the gall to tell me if I’d done better in the mini-games, I would have gotten a better ending. Nona dear, there’s no better ending than forgetting about Akihime forever, trust me.

Those mini-games, though. Man. The subtitle Touch de Hajimaru Hatsukoi Monogatari roughly means “First love that starts through a touch,” so somehow doing the same weeding games and math games and music games and sheep-counting (yes, sheep counting) games will somehow win you Akihime’s love. If they were serious about that, logic sugg– wait, no it doesn’t. Logic has gone on strike. All right then, in my opinion, this game needed better mini-games and a bigger variety too. The weeding game is okay, if a bit frantic. The math game is straight out of Brain Age, it’s okay as well. Sheep-counting is exactly what it sounds like.

The worst game is the music game, though. It’s like Ouendan-gone-crazy, with the stars flying like crazy all over the screen (allegedly in tune with the music, but this is a filthy lie) and Akihime gasping irritatingly every time you miss one. Which is often. The best I managed in those was 0 points – yes, that’s a good score – after which I resolved “Never again!”

Enough about Nanatsuiro★Drops, I can’t believe I wrote such a long post for such a crappy game. Looking ahead, I want to play a plain old turn-based jRPG, but I’ve almost exhausted the DS’s supply of those, apart from Dragon Quest VI which I can’t play so soon after DQV. Play-Asia has Level 5’s Ninokuni on sale (i.e. $50 instead of $80 -_-), but I’m hoping it will come out soon in English. *fingers crossed* That leaves me with the action RPGs, a few strategy ones (Rondo of Swords!) and several visual novels I’m not really looking forward to. Well, I’ll find something eventually.