Frontier Gate Boost+ – Of course I’m still playing

frontier gate boost plus_frontDon’t worry, no whining today. After 55 hours and 221 quests, I’ve already turned in my Right to Complain card. Unfortunately I don’t have anything new to report about Frontier Gate Boost+, just more of the same.

Accept quest, do quest, accept quest, do quest, accept quest, do quest. It’s not like the quests are all that interesting either. It’s either exterminating monsters (80%),  catching monsters, finding missing persons, finding X of a certain item or delivering items to villages. Sometimes they get a little creative with the descriptions. One recent quest involved tracking down a thief who had stolen a swimsuit recipe, for example. But it still boiled down to finding him and beating the tar out of him, just as I’d done with the other 22,430 enemies before him.

I got two new party members, rather unwelcome additions at this point.

Arsha: Foreign (spy?) girl allegedly looking for medicine ingredients. I haven’t gotten much use out of her yet because she can only go on specific quests that require items I don’t have.
Kurotaki: Samurai guy. Might be a spy too, but I doubt it. Seems like a nice fellow, but I don’t have the tyrannosaurus fang I need to be able to upgrade his katana further. Which is a shame because even at a low level it’s extremely powerful. I’ve killed about 5 tyrannosauruses in vain, but I might attempt a few more captures before I give up.

Difficulty has gone up quite a bit, which is another not-entirely-welcome addition. Not because I have anything against hard RPGs but because this game is “hard” in my least favorite way: it ramps up enemy HP, DEF and ATK and arms your party members with the equivalent of cotton wool and jelly. Part of it is my fault for trying to give all my party members equal attention and another part of it is my fault for experimenting with different weapons instead of sticking with what works best (knuckles. So broken it’s not funny).

But self-imposed challenges aside, the giant leap in enemy levels and stats is still a PITA. Especially since I’m expected to farm items to upgrade my weapons and armor, which I don’t want to do. I’m plodding on as best as I can, chipping away at the harder quests one at a time, but somehow I’m not feeling the same joy one usually gets in RPGs after killing a tough boss or fulfilling a difficult request.

And yet I’m still playing. Because really, Frontier Gate Boost+ is more fun than I’m making it sound. I just don’t know how else to make it sound because I’m describing it as accurately as I can. I think it would be a good game to play multiplayer, with a real life person controlling your battle partner and making individual decisions. As it is right now, enjoyment of the game boils down how much you can stomach killing the same frogs and wolves and hornets for 58 hours in a row. Luckily I’ve got plenty of experience in that sort of thing, so I’ll be at this for a while. Don’t wait up!

Frontier Gate Boost+ – 44 hours in

frontier-gate-earlyMC level 31, play time 44 hours and 20 minutes, two weapons mastered, 174 quests fulfilled and at least another 100 to go. My left finger, wrist and elbow hurt from constantly pressing L to run. It really should be press L once to run and L again to turn it off, but game developers never learn. And the boost in speed is so slight that it would be millions of times better to make the running speed faster in the first place.

And still Frontier Gate Boost+ doesn’t have much of a story beyond “Explore and do quests until you get tired.” There are these two legendary heroes who have gone missing, and there’s mention of a “Frontier Gate” out there somewhere, but nobody’s really on my case to do anything about those. My partners have a little bit more story now that I’ve gotten our bonds up to level 4, but not much. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Hatakeppi – Get the veggies you harvest in real life(?)

hatakeppi I have long since given up hope of ever seeing Shepherd’s Crossing 3 come out. Or so I keep telling myself, but every now and then I check on Success Corp’s website juuuuust in case they’ve changed their minds. They haven’t, of course. That’s why I’m here and not running down the streets shouting Hallelujah. But they did release an interesting smartphone app two days ago, a farming game called Hatakeppi (official website). There’s a Youtube trailer as well.

I know, I know, *groan* another “free”-to-play money-grubbing app, not another Farmville *groan*. The twist this time is that you can use the points you earn in the game to order up to 30 different types of vegetables and other farm products from real-life farmers across Japan. I highly doubt they deliver overseas, but I’m very interested in learning how this works out practically. After all, I must have harvested at least 10,000 veggies in Harvest Moon, Rune Factory and Shepherd’s Crossing combined. If I could get even 1% of the them in real life, I’d be eating well for weeks! Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Frontier Gate Boost+ – Monster Hunter for the fainthearted

frontier-gate-comboFrontier Gate Boost+ is a turn-based questing RPG by Konami. It seems to be aimed at gamers who find the idea of Monster Hunter interesting but are too intimidated to actually play it. The idea was good so I don’t want to come down too hard on them, but making it turn-based makes Frontier Gate way too easy, even for me. After playing games like Phantasy Star Portable and Rune Factory, I can’t help feeling wistful about how great Frontier Gate would have been if it had just a little more bite to the battle system.

This isn’t a full post about FG, by the way. I’ve been playing for 16 hours, but I just don’t feel like writing about it. There isn’t much to say. You’re an adventurer, you belong to a guild, you take a mission, you do it, you take another mission, you do it, you take a third mission, you do it, and on and on it goes. You have partners who have their own backstories and agendas, but there doesn’t seem to be an overarching story, at least not yet. You either like mission-based RPGs or you don’t. I’ll talk about the two-member party battle system some other time. I just popped in to let everyone know I was still alive. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Territoire demo – Not my cup of tea

Territoire is a will-totally-come-out-one-day-we-swear game from EasyGameStation, makers of Recettear and Chantelise and some other cutesy stuff I haven’t played. A demo has been out since 2010-ish and the game itself will probably be released sometime before judgment day, but I’m not holding my breath.

Even if it does come out I’m not sure I’ll play it because it’s not really my kind of game. That’s because Territoire is an awkward melding of SRPG, a genre I usually love, with a real-time strategy game in the vein of Age of Empires (edit: apparently 4X Strategy is the correct name of this genre). That’s a genre I can’t outright say I hate; it’s one that I often find myself drawn to but also one that I now avoid after several painful experiences. As a matter of fact, I have these in my collection right now:

rts backlogI bought them brand-new from Amazon a few years ago but I can’t bring myself to play them. I love the idea behind these games: building new worlds, managing their progress, solving problems, advancing my cultural level and all the other things they entail. What I just can’t handle are the enemies! Why do there have to be enemies???? Why can’t I just have fun on my own? I’m okay with rivals but why must anyone attack me? I have yet to play a Civilization game, but I played quite a bit of Age of Empires when it first came out. I still remember that horrible sinking feeling I would get whenever hordes would pour out of nowhere and start hacking down my innocent workers. How can anyone be so cruel? ;____; Do please go on, this is most interesting →