Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Hit a boring patch so this is a good time for an update

Meh-meh-meeeh! Kina can’t decide whether she likes Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or not. On one hand I’ve been playing it almost non-stop for the past two days and having a great time. On the other hand, the “story” is pissing me off and the battles have gotten a bit stale.

I hate stories where people stand around muttering cryptic stuff they refuse to explain. And eeeeverybody knew eeeeverybody 500 years ago except Rex so they’re always talking over his head. Today I’m going to bide my time and go easy on the spoilers but just you wait until I learn the whole story. I will spoil it all, oh how I will spoil.

But I suppose it’s not much of a spoiler to mention that Rex and his not-girlfriend Pyra are still trying to get to Elysium 40 hours after the game started. And everywhere they go it’s the same story: “Thank you Pyra, but your Elysium is in another castle. Oh, and wasn’t it fun 500 years ago when we blah blah blah…. *long cutscene* Anyway if you go over to Place X they’ll definitely be able to help you.” Of course they won’t, they’ll just repeat the same sequence of long cutscenes and dark hints and send you over to Place Y.

And it’s not like it’s a quick process either. You’ll have to jump through a load of hoops just to get a big fat “I dunno, ask this guy” at the end. No wonder people report 100+ hours of play. I just wasted hours trying to meet this ruler in this huge palace. “Go to your room.” Trek 3 miles. “Go to the audience chamber.” Another 3 miles. “Go back to your room.” 3 more miles. “Back to the audience chamber.” Yuuup. “Now back to your room.” I’ve been sent to my room more times in the past five hours than in my entire life to date. At least we’re finally getting out of there.

But disliking the story while liking the rest of the game is how I played the original Xenoblade Chronicles too, so it’s nothing new. At least the battle system is getting more interesting now that I’ve unlocked some rare blades and picked up some new party members. I’m bored with using Rex all the time so I’m going to try Nia and some of the new recruits for a bit, see if I can rustle up some new combos. Is it just me or are ice and light blades super-rare? I don’t have a single one so far.

There’s plenty more I want to write about the lengthy, unrewarding quests and the random ambushes by high leveled enemies and the ugly designs of the generic blades and how quickly I ran out of Merc Group quests to do, but all that can wait till next time. Because the story has barely progressed, I feel like I’m just pressing buttons and running from place to place instead of playing a proper RPG. I’ll be back to post again once something interesting happens to draw me in. Either that or whenever I finish the game, whichever comes first. See ya later!

Shelved Sorcery Saga so I can focus on Xenoblade Chronicles 2

This was supposed to be my final post-game review of Sorcery Saga, but… eh… maybe I should just ahead and finish it, since I’ve made it to the final dungeon after many ups and downs and one very painful freeze. It’s not a bad game either, it’s just not exciting. Like, at all. I’ve been carrying the same sword and shield since the beginning of the game and now have so many plus marks on them that I can one-shot 90% of the regular enemies. At the same time I don’t see why I should nerf myself just to enjoy the game – nor do I see any evidence that things would be more exciting if I did shed all my super-gear. So I just want to finish it.

But not now. Right now I want to play something exciting. Which reminded me that I had unfinished business with Xenoblade 2. Which I am moderately excited to be getting back to, especially after the tiny little boxed-in dungeons of Atelier Totori and the same-old corridors of Sorcery Saga. I want a BIG map where I can roam and roam! Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me~~~~~

I’m having a little problem loading XC2, though. Every time I turn the Switch on, I find myself playing Picross S. Curse you, level 60!!! Picross 3D Switch when…

Yeah anyway, that’s what the situation is. Sorcery Saga semi-dropped, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 queued up, Picross S actually being played. See you someday with updates on at least one of these.

Finished Atelier Totori Plus long after running out of stuff to do

Or, more accurately, long after running out of stuff that I actually wanted to do. You will remember that Atelier Totori Plus is about an alchemist who wants to become an adventurer. For that reason, alchemy is de-emphasized and adventuring is prioritized in this game, meaning you will run out of recipes to synthesize long before you run out to places to explore. The adventure side was extremely robust while alchemy was not quite ignored but definitely “that thing you do when you’re not adventuring.”

…Somehow I’m all tuckered out after finishing the game so I’ll make this brief again. I uh… have nothing to say about Atelier Totori Plus. It was very good. I enjoyed it a lot. I made a lot of stuff, pretty much everything except the Ruby Prism. I had a lot of time to kill near the end of the game so I played around with unlocking different traits and skills in my usable items and accessories. I also beat most bosses except the dragon at the tower and the new ones that show up when you hit Galaxy adventurer status.

Umm… oh yeah, the ending. I got Melvia’s ending. A bit surprised about that, since I ditched her very early on and ran a team of Rorona and Sterk most of the time. But since I got her events involving Ceci, somehow that locked me into her ending. Also I was hoping this would be like Shin Atelier Rorona and show me all the endings I qualified for in one playthrough, so that was a bit disappointing.

But it was a good ending nevertheless because it wrapped the whole story up nicely. While I usually prefer my Atelier games to have next-to-no story, I liked the focused nature of Totori’s story. “I’m becoming an adventurer so I can do X” and then she goes ahead and does X, and then you get an ending that addresses X and that’s it, nice and sweet.

And… that’s it? It’s a good game. The characters didn’t really interest me (hence my clinging to more familiar ones like Rorona and Sterk) but I didn’t hate anybody virulently like I did with Astrid and, to a lesser extent, Esty. The game world takes a while to open up, but eventually you get to explore a lot of places, even overseas. That’s cool.

Alchemy seemed to take a backseat to the rest of the things you could do, especially once you can register goods at stores and double-especially once you get helpful assistants known as Chims. They’re so broken it’s ridiculous. You just show them a sample of what you need and they’ll reproduce it exactly no matter how rare it is. They don’t even need raw materials! And you can get up to five of them without really trying. The game tries to work around it by giving them lengthy production times but in the end the only real limitation is the size of your container. It’s pretty crazy.

What I liked about Atelier Totori Plus
– A lot of alchemy to do
– I didn’t care for “trait” alchemy when Gust first trotted it out in Atelier Lise, but to their credit they’ve really hung in there and made something halfway decent out of it.
– The characters aren’t completely horrible.
– Bright happy colors.
– It’s good to see an Atelier character with a real family life for a change.
– I enjoyed going back to beat bosses that gave me a hard time once I had upgraded gear near the end of the game.

What I didn’t care for
– I wanted even more alchemy! This is how I usually feel after an Atelier game so it’s nothing unusual. I have no idea if this problem is even solvable.
– Totori is too cutesy. Everything about her from her voice to her outfit to her running style is an attempt to be cute.
– Why is there so much fanservice in my Atelier? Panty flash, panty flash, wobbling bags of jelly on everyone’s chest… Am I playing something by Complile Heart?
– I liked the music at first, but it began to grate on me after a while.
– The quests were really boring…

TL;DR – Play Atelier Totori Plus if you like RPGs and/or crafting games. It’s nice. The end.

Atelier Totori Plus – Starts slow then gets really good

I’m not sure how to check my playtime, but I estimate I’ve been playing Atelier Totori Plus for about 15 hours now. I’m in the middle of year 2, Adventurer Rank 6. Unless I mess up horribly I’m certain to avoid the bad end so that’s a load off my mind. I’d still be playing right now but my controller needs charging. Give me my old wired PS2 controller any day.

I’m too lazy to write a long post today…. Aahhhh… I JUST WANNA SLEEP… So let’s note a few salient points.

– The first 3 months of Totori were horribly boring because you can’t do much or go anywhere interesting and Totori is horribly weak. Things pick up dramatically once you get your adventurer license and can explore a lot more. Right now I have a ton of places open on the map that I haven’t explored yet, which is great.

– Boring beginning aside, Atelier Totori Plus solves most of the problems I had with Shin Atelier Rorona. Firstly the characters I hated most like Astrid and Esty haven’t shown up at all. Secondly most events involve Totori herself, not other characters standing around gossiping about her. Most importantly there are many recipes to synthesize. In practice the total number is probably similar to Rorona’s but in Totori there is much more available right off the bat, if only you can afford it. Which I can’t, which is good.

– That said, even though Totori is definitely the better game, you should still play Rorona first. There are waaaay too many references and recurring characters to make it fun otherwise. Unless that sort of thing doesn’t bother you.

– Getting license points for doing stuff you would do anyway like exploring and taking quests and synthesis is a cool concept. That way the whole adventurer thing doesn’t get in the way of the game but you still get regular rewards. The three-year deadline is generous and easy to meet as long as you play normally.

– I’m having a hard time thinking of anything I don’t like about Totori apart from the slow start and her silly running style. It’s pretty close to my ideal Atelier game. Plenty of things to synthesize, lots of places to explore, a generous time frame to do it in and very few restrictions on your freedom. And it’s only going to get better when I get a homunculus like Rorona did. Speaking of which, where did Hom-chan go?

– Long story short, Atelier Totori Plus is a very good game. There’s not much to say about it besides that, so I’ll reserve any final comments for when I finish it. Adieu!

Got the hang of Legend of Legacy. It’s fun!

What is this fraudulent promotional art? The characters don't look like this at all!

Brief update post. Now about 17 hours into Legend of Legacy. HP in the mid to high 200s, SP around 28 for all party members. I just unlocked the rest of the continent and started exploring the Ship Graveyard. I spent most of the weekend on LoL TBH, and would still be playing if my brother hadn’t kidnapped the 3DS on Sunday night. “*mumble mumble* Metroid remake *mumble* cya” and he was gone. ¯\_(⊙︿⊙)_/¯

Anyway, things were going pretty well before I stopped. I’m actually enjoying Legend of Legacy quite a lot now that my party is so much stronger. Once you get some hit-all Arts and Charms and better equipment, battles don’t take as long. And if you can survive the first two turns and set up some good barriers and buffs, victory is all but assured. I’m making better use of defensive skills like Parry and Intervene instead of trying to go out guns blazing from the start. Once you have someone tanking or deflecting the hits, the others can use risky skills like the Fire Contract to make mincemeat of the enemies.

It’s a shame that I still have to run and dodge enemies while trying to explore, but the frustration has gone down by 30% because I can end things quickly. The enemies I can’t dispose of quickly are the ones that drop the occasional good equipment and help me level up my stats, so it’s all good. The only thing that would make this better would be more boss battles. I’ve got all these great skills in my arsenal and no one to use them against. More bosses, please! I also want to try out some new weapon types. I picked up a powerful spear by accident but haven’t put it through its paces yet. Oh, and I need to go back to old areas to talk to NPCs so they can give me new formation options in battle. All minor stuff that won’t take long.

Apart from that there’s nothing to say about Legend of Legacy since it’s not a story-heavy game. You explore a map, you beat a boss, you explore another map, beat another boss, and on and on. According to the FAQs I have four areas (Bogsaur Marsh, Bottomless Pit, Summit of the Gods and City of the Unseen) to clear and some optional sidequests/bosses to do before finishing the game. Just hope I still have a passion for the game by the time I finally get it back.

In the meantime I’m still playing Atelier Totori and (on-and-off) Sorcery Saga so I’ll post about one or both of them next time. See ya!