Soma Bringer – Couldn’t bring myself to keep playing.

Somabringer_boxartI usually have a hard time dropping games, even when they obviously suck. On the other hand, sometimes I  drop “good” games quickly and play “bad” ones for 60 hours, so I wouldn’t exactly paint myself as a paragon of good taste.

That being the case, therefore, it is impossible to draw any concrete conclusions from the fact that I tried Soma Bringer, dropped it, picked it up again, played for about 6 hours, dropped it again and have absolutely no desire to ever try it again. Maybe it sucks, maybe it’s a masterpiece. Try it for yourself and find out. For my part I found it dull, stressful and unrewarding.

Basically Soma Bringer was a let down on the two main RPG fronts: story and combat. Since this is an action RPG, and since the developers are on record as saying they came up with the system first and then wrote a story to match, I wasn’t expecting too much storywise. Even so I think they hit the cliche book a little too hard. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits (3) – Ending spoilers

atlt-volkAlas, the long break did me in. I finally got Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits to work again (sometimes) only to find that I didn’t care any more how the story ended. I still played on anyway, since I was quite close to the end. And so I pressed on and finished it after 32 hours and 41 minutes. There’s a long sequence of cutscenes and at least two battles between the final save and the final battle, meaning if you lose you have to watch everything all over again. I therefore advise any potential players to do like I did and FAQ the last boss before taking him on. Heck, I’ll just go ahead and share the way I did it.

My final party was Kharg, Darc, Bebedora, Volk, Camellia and Maru with an average level of 28. If I had to do it again, and luckily I don’t, I would fill the party with long-range attackers like Paulette and Tatjana instead. The last boss has a shield around him that absorbs any damage. Early on he’ll spit out brain cells, which are mini-bosses. After you defeat a number of them, the boss’s shield vanishes.

Here’s the trick: as long as you hug the walls and stay out of the path directly in front of him, he will never regenerate his shield. And not just that, but he will almost never directly attack your party. Once in a long while he’ll absorb some HP from those standing close to him, which is why it’s best to have as few close-range attackers as possible. Basically stay close to the walls, stay away from the area in front of him (I can’t stress this enough. The Return to Darkness attack hits for an average of 275. I know because I tried to tank it), pack lots of Luminous Mosses because he’s weak to Light and then go to town on his ugly eyeball. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Atelier Lilie Plus – Same end, different day

atelier lilie before kingAfter my last post about the bland Atelier Lilie ending I got, I reloaded a save from before Lilie paid the last amount of money to finish the academy and tried to get another ending. Unfortunately I had already paid 140,000 out of 150,000 into the building coffers. Since Dorunie earns 7,000 every year by taking part in the king’s contest, I could only get up to year 4 before the academy was completed and the game ended again.

In those extra two years I did my best to travel, fight, synthesize, take quests, save money and talk, talk, talk to people in the hopes of getting a different ending, but it was to no avail. Unlike Marie and Elie, Lilie does have romantic interests and male characters who take more than a passing interest (I almost wrote ‘brotherly interest’, but this is Japan) in our main character, so I was hoping to trigger one of those endings if possible. She got pretty close to the artist guy whose name I can’t remember, but nothing came of it in the end. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Atelier Lilie Plus – Unceremonious ending GET!

280px-Atelier_Lilie_Plus_Box_ArtAtelier Lilie ~ Alchemist of Salburg 3 ~ is a prequel to Marie, Elie and the other Salburg games. It tells the story of an alchemist named Lilie, her mentor Dorunie and her two apprentices, Hermina and Ingrid as they move from Kentniss to Salburg to try and set up an alchemy academy. Apart from Lilie, these names should be quite familiar to anyone who has played the other games.

Since we know from the sequels that the academy did get built you might think it’s a foregone conclusion that Lilie and co. succeed in their endeavor. But no, it’s entirely possible to fail to gather enough funds (150,000 cole) in 5 years and get an ending that I haven’t seen but that is almost certainly rotten. There are at least two other endings, maybe more, where the academy doesn’t get built in game-time but is probably established sometime in the future.

While I didn’t get the ‘worst’ ending, I got something very close to it when I saved up the 150,000 in two years, built the academy and got what basically amounted to a “Thanks for playing. Bye!” ending. It lasted all of one screen without any movies or CGs and then the credits began to roll. I know for sure this can’t be a good end because there was so much left undone. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Another Time Another Leaf: Kagami no Naka no Tantei review

another time another leaf_frontAnother Time, Another Leaf: Kagami no Naka no Tantei = “The detective in the mirror.” I mentioned this game a few months ago when I spoke about games I gave up on very quickly. Back then I quit after about 20 minutes, but I decided to play another hour or two and give the game a chance to develop itself.

As I said last time, the game is about a girl named Sakurane Kaede who finds a lookalike of herself inside a mirror her late mother gave her. Game spoilers: there’s a good chance the lookalike (Ageha) is a younger version of Kaede’s mother, but since I quit we will never know for sure. Ageha has the power to travel into the near past, where she can investigate events and talk to people but cannot touch anything or bring it to the future with her.

For example the first case involves a camera that the ditzy principal dropped somewhere. By finding out the last time the principal had the camera, Ageha is able to go back in time and pinpoint its location, then both girls return to the present and tell the principal where it is. In the second case, involving an album stolen from the library, they travel back to various points in time until they determine that the album was taken between 18:00 and 20:00, then they question the only two people in the library at the time and find the culprit. Do please go on, this is most interesting →