One Hour Retry: Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (minor spoilers)

tokyo xanadu ex+ banner headerHiiiii guys~ Remember two days ago when I said I would be playing various games for an hour each? Yeahhh, that plan is kinda on hold now~ Just for a little while so I can finish or definitively give up on Tokyo Xanadu eX+. Don’t blame me, blame Atelier Lydie & Suelle. I was trying to install and run it on my laptop and it was giving me all kinds of troubles. Slow framerate, controls not working, flat out not responding to anything.

I blame the laptop mostly, but either way it was a frustrating experience. Eventually I put the game aside and concentrated on getting the controller working. And after that, naturally I had to test the controller. And Tokyo Xanadu eX+ was right there on the desktop. So I set the alarm for an hour and dived back in and now I’m hooked again.

After all, it’s not like I dropped the game because I disliked it. My save file reads 25 hours for a good reason. When the game actually lets you play, combat is a lot of fun. Enemy density is a bit low, but the dungeon lengths are getting nice and long and the puzzles aren’t too annoying yet, so I look forward to every dive into the Eclipse. When they let me dive, that is. I timed today’s session and approximately 20 minutes of it was spend in the dungeon while the other 40 was spent watching cutscenes before and after the dungeon run. That’s rough.

IIRC the reason I stopped playing was because I took a long break, and when I came back I couldn’t remember any of the controls, or any of the story. I still barely remember the story except we’re trying to save an idol singer from ‘angel’ possession. And we’ve formed some kind of monster-busting team. Now I think of it, I was very annoyed back then because Falcom made me play for 20 hours THEN began to introduce the main story. But that’s just Falcom’s way, so I dunno why I bothered being upset.

So anyway, if not for the one hour alarm, I would have felt too lazy to jump back into Tokyo Xanadu eX+. This is like the third or fourth time I’ve walked away and every time I have to memorize all the controls again. This means jump, this plus this means jump attack, this is a power attack, this is a strike, and on and on and on and on. I’m terrible at keeping those kinds of things in mind. I prefer the Rune Factory kind of “mash X to slash” attack. But, as with most good ARPGs, once you do master the controls, it feels amazing running and dashing and hitting, racking up the combos and finally, finally shaving that last point of HP off a boss. There’s nothing like a good ARPG boss battle.

All this is to explain why I have to put the One Hour Review plan on hold so I can finish/drop Tokyo Xanadu eX+. I will play and comment on Atelier Lydie & Suelle ASAP if I can get it to run on my desktop. However if I wait too long, I’ll forget the controls in TX for the umpteenth time. Sure I could still go ahead and try other games for an hour like I said I would, but I don’t see the point. After all, the ultimate goal of the exercise was to find something I wanted to play, and I found something I want to play. Better to clear this out of the way first and then continue.

Also to be perfectly honest, I really don’t want to play FFXIII again. And The Alliance Alive, eh, if it weren’t from Furyu I wouldn’t touch it. That chibi graphical style reminds me too much of games like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy 3 DS, Bravely Default and Legend of Legacy. All of those memories churn up unpleasant feelings in me, so I’m not so hot on reliving them again by playing AA. I’m better off using the 3DS to play Picross e8 and e9 instead. Ooh, Picross💕

In summary: Tokyo Xanadu eX+ time! See you later!

One Hour Review: Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment

Kirito fights Philia because she doesn't instantly cave to his charms

Join my harem or die!

I’ve realized now that if I don’t force myself to sit down and try some actual video games, I’ll be playing Candy Crush Soda Saga till the end of the year. At the same time, however, the thought of committing to another 40-hour slogfest doesn’t appeal to me at all. I mean yeah, in practice I’ve spent waaaaay longer than that on casual games, but it’s the thought, you see?

So I thought about applying a productivity hack to video game playing. Instead of saying I would “start a new game,” I set an alarm clock for an hour and told myself I would “try something new for only one hour.” My plan is to do this for a couple of games and then see which ones I want to pursue and which ones to drop.

First up, Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. I watched the Sword Art Online anime and it really wasn’t that bad despite the many negative reviews online. I even watched season two, and I’ve been meaning to watch the rest someday. While I didn’t have much success with the first SAO game I tried (Infinity Moment), the idea of a colorful RPG with a different take on the usual turn-based system was appealing-ish. In theory-ish.

sword art online hollow fragment screenshot

How? Tell me how!

Results

I started playing around 3pm, and stopped around 4:30. A little longer than I had planned, but I also spent a bit of that time eating lunch and playing with my phone, so it all evened out. And I must say, the “one hour” limit of focused play is a really good thing. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have made it past the 10 minute mark.

There was no tutorial for what different attacks did until the end of the first dungeon, so I was going through this dungeon, fighting weak mobs which nevertheless have a lot of HP, and mashing buttons without any idea what they did. My party member Philia would be begging me to stun the enemy and I’d be like WUH? Stun? Huh? Even worse, my main character Kirito is already level 100 with 32000 HP, so the puny EXP dropped by the enemies didn’t do jack for me. All in this really really boring featureless dungeon with no items or treasures to discover.

Luckily at the end of the dungeon, they finally provided some clarity about skills and how and why to use them. Also I realized too late that enemies in the first dungeon won’t attack you if you don’t aggro them, so just ignore them and run towards your target.

TBH I still don’t think I fully understand the system yet, and the game has been talking non-stop since then so I haven’t had a chance to fight again. The endless talking is a little more bearable than usual because I’m familiar with the characters. Just that IMO they’ve made Kirito too much of a typical harem protagonist. You know, the type who is always bullied and pushed aorund by girls and can’t ever tell them off or stand up for himself. The Kirito I know had much more of a backbone of that. Furthermore he was clearly a one-woman man and everyone knew it. But whatever, it’s not canon and I don’t care that much.

Oh yeah, story. Well so far Hollow Fragment is a blend of Infinity Moment and a new plot. As in IM, the characters beat the boss on the 75th floor but instead of clearing the game they’re still stuck inside. Now they’re aiming for the 100th floor. Oh, and for some completely improbably reason, Leafa and Best Girl Shinon were also warped into the game. How possible? Leafa almost makes sense because she’s related to Kirito, but Shinon literally dropped from the sky with no explanation. How does this even work when they’re not wearing the gimmicked NervGears Kayaba sold? Improbable fanservice is improbable and fanservicey!

Also in the midst of all that, Kirito got warped into a special area called the Hollow Area which only he and one other party member can enter. And now he has to deal with two girls, Philia and Strea, who will of course fall in love with him because he’s a harem protagonist. The goals of the game seem to be two fold: get up to the 100th floor and explore the Hollow Area.

Will I keep playing? I’ll give it another hour before making up my mind. The first hour was frustrating at first, then promising, then the characters have been talking ever since so I don’t know any more. It will all depend on whether the battle system “clicks” with me or not. So far it seems like a watered down Xenoblade Chronicles where your character auto-attacks until you make them use skills or items. I hear old school MMORPGs played like that in general but I wouldn’t know.

Depending on how the skill trees go, how complex battles get, how annoying the enemies become and how interesting the dungeons turn out to be, the next hour could be the last. Or I could decide to make a proper go of Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. That second hour will have to wait till I’ve One-Hour-reviewed some other games, though.

Other games in the One Hour series:

Atelier Lydie & Suelle
The Lost Child (just discovered that all the versions are incompatible with the PSTV. Cancelled for now)
The Alliance Alive
Final Fantasy XIII

There are about 200,000 other games I want to play (conservative number), but these are the candidates I’m most serious about right now. I’ll play all of them for one hour each, arrange them in order of desirability and play all the non-dropped ones. Then I’ll scrounge up another batch of games and process them that way. Let’s see how things go.

Last note: just in case you’re doubting whether one hour is enough to properly see what a game has to offer… it probably isn’t. However the point isn’t for them to show me everything. It’s enough if they give me a general idea of the story, gameplay and characters and entice me to keep playing. Any game that can’t do that in one whole hour isn’t for me.

Granblue Fantasy: Cha-la, Head Cha-la, Sparking!

When I did my annual Granblue Fantasy “state of the grid” post the other day, I realized I’ve been saying I’ll replace my Dark mainhand for ages but haven’t gotten round to it. Actually my existing Rise of the Beasts dark sword is also plenty useful, but since I have a ton of crystals and tickets to waste, I’m going to spark a Parazonium to use for dagger classes and get Orchid in the mix.

I may also spark again at the end of summer to get Silva’s swimsuit skin as well. She’s my game-long MVP so she deserves some new clothes once in a while.

No need to waste time on long intros, since this is my 4th or 5th spark and I have a ton of SSRs already. IIRC I have all the R characters and almost all the SR characters released to date as well. Thus apart from my spark target, I’m very likely to pull a ton of bronze, silver and gold moons (for non-players: in Granblue Fantasy, if you pull a character that you have already, the game gives you an item called a “moon” that you can trade for items in the shop. It’s not like most other gacha games where you need to pull duplicates to uncap characters).

TBH I was looking forward to racking up some Gold moons because I was going to exchange them for a Siero Pick Ticket and get Shiva, but I checked just now and it turns out I’ve had more than enough gold moons all along. Huh. Btw, for any new Granblue Fantasy players reading this post, DO NOT buy a Siero Pick Ticket with 150 gold moons. By far the best use of your gold moons is for damascus ingots to uncap weapons. If you’re running a Hades grid, you can also trade for a Gisla or two, if that’s still meta.If you must buy a Siero Pick ticket, use it for characters you cannot get through the game, like Visa Zooey or Bluray characters. Wasting a Siero Pick on Shiva is for lazy and jaded players like me who don’t care about the optimum way to play the game. But really, you won’t be a newbie any more by the time you get 150 gold moons, so I don’t know why I bother lecturing you.

On with the spark! I already pulled 14 times, 4 from the daily draws and 10 single-pull tickets. Didn’t get anything good, of course. I have another 94 single pull tickets so I’ll pull them all for now.

Summer Cassius get:Summer Alexiel. Lol, what are those ridiculous glasses?108 sparks get. Used 600 crystals, now I have 110 sparks. I also have 3 10-pull tickets, might as well waste them here. Unlike crystals, draw tickets only have one use, so there’s no need to save them when sparking.

Ooh, Summer Silva. End-of-summer spark is cancelled then, unless something great is released.Naoise. Have I ever had a Naoise in my party? Maybe a free SR or something? Can’t remember.140 sparks get. The rest is crystals.

Summer Teena get.Also pulled a Freyr dupe. I thought he was new, but turns out I have two already. I have sunlight stones to spare so I might fully uncap him later.

SR Aster get.Granblue Fantasy AsterThe rest were all dupes or gold moons. Time to get what I came for.Total tally

SSR: Summer Alexiel, Summer Silva, Naoise, Summer Teena, Orchid (spark target)
SR: Summer Cassius, Aster
Gold moons and SSR dupes: Yggdrasil, Summer Alexiel dupe, Selfira, Levin sisters, Romeo, Selfira (again), Summer Silva dupe, Freyr, Summer Danua, Drang

Okay, I got what I wanted, including Summer Silva. Processing the Parazonium and adding it to my grid will take a little longer due to laziness, but I’ll get round to it in the end. And now I’ll have to find other ways to waste my remaining crystals. 90,000 are reserved for a New Years’ spark. The rest, eh, I’ll figure something out.

Much more importantly, we must solve the question of how Silva looks in her new swimsuit. If it’s too ugly or tacky, I won’t let her wear it. Let’s just use the Earth unit and see. And I’ll throw Summer Alexiel in while I’m at it…

Well it’s nice enough. Kind of ordinary, but nice. I’m not really a fan of bikinis so IMO a yukata look would have been better for Silva. It would also stop her from looking so much like Summer Heles. Still a free skin is a free skin so no complaints. I should have picked a better enemy and not Leviathan, because that dark watery background makes them look cold. Ever been to the pool or the beach on a freezing cold day? Brrr.

Also in the process of sorting out my new stuff, I realized I can use Sunlight Stones to uncap the omega summons to level 200. Grinding for mats? Hell no. This means I won’t have any Sunlight Stones to spare for uncapping Shiva, so I will hold off on getting that Siero Pick Ticket for now.

Okay, that’s enough Granblue Fantasy for one day. Adieu~

I give up on Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

I give up on Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth because I can’t get into it. I’ve been struggling for months, but it’s such a chore. The game itself isn’t that hard, but mentally it’s a chore and a burden.

1. Too much talking. I fast-forwarded like 15 minutes of talking and cutscenes before they even let me play. Because there are so many characters, every scene must have everyone chipping in a couple of lines, then more lines, then even more lines.

Not to mention, a lot of the conversation is about nonconsequential “comedic” stuff that I really don’t need to see when I’m trying to get my bearings in a dungeon. Like they will interrupt critical progress with a scene of someone eating cardboard. Seriously, cardboard. Like it’s supposed to be funny. And it didn’t end there but the scene dragged on even further with Akihiko and Shinji arguing about protein bars for like 5 minutes, blah blah blah “Apologize to the food!” blah blah. No Atlus, apologize to me for making such a game. I quit after that scene. I could see the writing on the wall.

2. Not only is there too much talking but also a lot of it is out of character. I really don’t remember Akihiko being such a dumb musclehead or Junpei being so childish in Persona 3, though it has been years since I last played it. All their tiny character quirks are being played up to the max so it’s more like a parody than a spin-off game. Which is okay if that’s what you were looking for, but for me it was too much “wacky anime hijinks” for my liking – and I say that as someone who likes wacky anime hijinks in moderation.

3. I was playing Shadow of the Labyrinth partly to see the P3 characters again but mostly to see if I could get into Etrian Odyssey gameplay at last. Alas, I don’t think the series is for me. The walking is slow, mapping is tedious even with the paths drawn for you, dodging F.O.E.S. is tedious and it feels like it takes forever to traverse a single floor.

4. I’m not in the mood to fiddle with personas right now. Yeah yeah I know, why play a Persona game when you don’t want to deal with personas? Well I thought I would be okay, but I’ve realized that I don’t have any energy for complicated systems these days. When you have personas, you have to get them, fuse them, level them, switch them out when they’re obsolete, carry over abilities, etc etc. It’s way too much work for me right now.

Honestly it’s not just Persona Q. I don’t think I’ll be able to play a “proper” RPG for a while. They’re all either too talky, too slow or too fiddly. I freely confess: my attention span is 0 now. All I want are quick thrills, pretty graphics and non-frustrating gameplay. I thought I could get that from action RPGs, but even stuff like the Ys games and God Eater Burst force you to spend the first hour roaming around town, talking to people, watching cutscenes. I don’t wannaaaaa.

All this to say, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is probably not a bad game. I’m just not in the mood to appreciate a game with a fiddly system and a lot of talking right now. I’ve been trying to play it for months now, but making only tiny bits of progress. It’s time to give up and move on.

Granblue Fantasy at level 180 – Still playing, but not really

The one that got away

It’s been 9 months since I did my level 175 post. Initially I was doing these update posts mainly to track my progress, but also encourage myself about how far I’d come and remind myself how far I had to go. On some level, I guess I’m also trying to leave a record for myself when Granblue Fantasy eventually goes down.

For the first two points, they don’t really apply any more because I think I’ve come far enough. There’s still a ton of things I can do to improve my grids, but as I mentioned before, as you go along, it takes more and more effort to make a small blip in your strength levels. For example my Earth party is definitely not crap any more, but it’s taken months and years of trading prestige pendants and beating Alexiel (who never, I repeat, never gave me an axe) to get to that point.

And after all the time I spent sparking and grinding up my Varuna grid, I recently learned that the Varuna meta is no longer Fimbuls but rather some other weapon I hadn’t thought about. Doesn’t matter, my current grid is good enough. And in fact, all my current grids are good enough. I don’t intend to put much effort into improving them from now on, so there’s no need to post grid updates either.

Does that mean I’m stopping Granblue Fantasy? Of course not. And I’ll thank you kindly not to bring up my dark history of trying and failing to quit this game in the past. It just means I’m going into coasting mode – in fact I’ve already been in coasting mode since the year started – where I focus on doing events as best as I can but don’t grind or actively try to get stronger. I’m also super-idly working on FLBing the eternals and unlocking new classes, but veeeery idly because I’m not going to do anything with them. Still I’m leaving the door open for Cygames to bring out some wonderful new content that sends me running back to computer day and night etc etc not holding my breath etc etc. You never know.

Achievements since my last post

-FLB’d Eahta. I mentioned I was working on Niyon earlier, but my Earth party needed more help at the time. Through the triple combo of FLB Eahta, Mahira and a better grid, I can finally do good damage to Europa and other useless Water enemies of her sort. Let’s see if I can OHKO Leviathan Omega at strike time before I brag… eh, can’t be bothered to check. Just take my word for it.

I’m working on getting Seofon as well. Wind has fallen behind a bit in my party rankings… but that’s not the reason why I want him. The real reason is because he’s my first Eternal and I’m actually very fond of him. FLB’ing Eternals is a tedious process so I might as well do it for a character I care about.

-Unlocked the Doctor and Soldier class. And maybe some other classes, but I can’t remember them. Maybe Monk? I should really level them up for the mastery bonuses but I’ll save that for the next magnafest, which should be around the corner now that Summer characters are starting to appear.

Actually, come to think of it, I have so many elixirs and berries that I don’t need to wait for magfest to grind anything. But somehow grinding at full cost feels like a rip off, and besides my mind is already attuned to playing seriously during magfest so… yeah.

-Raised total number of level 100 characters to 29. Black Knight, idolmaster water girls, Rackham, Ayer, Percival, Zeta, Tiamat, Lennah, Eahta, Io, Katalina, Mahira, De la Fille and Anila are all between 91 and 99.

-Uncapped all Seraphic weapons like I said I would. I can’t even remember if they made any difference to my strength, but I guess more stats are always welcome.

…That’s it. I may have done some other stuff but I don’t remember so that’s okay. I still need to unlock the Lumberjack, Cavalier, Monk, Nekomancer, Tormentor and Rising Force classes, but I’m too lazy to rack up Prestige pendants these days. Next magnafest, maybe. As for Arcarum, it’s too much work lately so I’ve been sitting on a full 90 tickets for a while. Meh.

Grids, grids~ Get your grids here!

Earth

It’s peforming much better now that I’ve replaced some Yggdrasil swords with Alexiel’s axes. I believe I’m also supposed to add some Alexiel swords to the mix at some point, but no rush.

Trying to get some cuties up to level 100. They have good skills…? I think? Most of the time I just auto-away.

I only recently found out that the Xeno harp can go up to level 200. That means I missed out on getting the fire Xeno scythe to level 200 as well? It looks like lv. 150 is becoming the new standard, 100 is obsolete and 200 should be aspired to.

Wind

Same as last year. I haven’t used this year’s Anniversary Ticket yet, so I idly considered getting a second Grimnir harp. Still idly considering it, maybe I will, maybe I won’t.

Still testing out different party combinations and trying to get everyone’s levels maxed out for the lulz. I have so many characters, I don’t even remember their skillsets half the time.

Bullying Vohu Manah out of revenge for all the times she bullied me. But not really because I don’t really care.

Fire

FLB’d the Ancient Ecke Sachs but haven’t gotten them up to level 150 yet. What is that gun supposed to be? Huh, I don’t remember getting that… let me check… [Beast Weapon] Summer’s Mirage? Umm, can’t remember where I got that from but it has to be good because I put it in my grid. Yeah.

Raising characters to level 100 and I believe I have Magisa for the veil? And the blind debuff, yeah. She’s a handy gS

Same old summons as always. Both Lucifer and Bahamut are almost level 200 but not quite.

Water

Old Faithful. Now with more plus marks! I do at least one 10-roll every time there’s an “all plus marks” banner. It’s an easy way of adding more stats to your party. Eventually I might start to add them to my characters as well.

No need to show my frontline party because it hasn’t changed in ages. Same with the summons.

Dark

I think I said something about changing my main weapon? Never got round to it, but I did FLB a Hermanubis for Berserker shenanigans which I also haven’t gotten round to.

The mouse, the knight and the armpit.

Light

Same as last time. I don’t have any intentions of changing it either.

My latest pulls.

They get the job done. What more do you want?

Summary

Yeah, I’m pretty done with Granblue Fantasy. But not done done, just done. I’ve accomplished enough, now it’s time to just coast and enjoy what I’ve achieved.

Other games?

As I explained in the post before this one, I’m still playing games very actively. It’s just that they’re all mobile or casual games, so I don’t have much to say about them. I have a lot of “proper” games I want to play as well – for example I recently pulled Suelle in Atelier Online and she’s cute, so I kinda want to play Atelier Lydie & Suelle – but I’m really lazy. I need to force myself to just start something, but the will is not there. So if this blog is silent, it’s for lack of new games to play, not because I’ve gone anywhere.