At World's End

After many years collecting dust, I remembered that hacking a Nintendo DS is supposed to be easy and now I have a handheld emulator for several old systems.

While I'm currently playing Cooking Mama (getting those gold stars is taking more tries than I originally thought), one of the reasons I turned the DS into an emulator is that I haven't touched the Fire Emblem GBA games in like 15 years and I want to actually finish them this time (the ROMs being in English is no longer a problem! lol).

I could have simply downloaded a emulator for PC, yes, but the ***vibes*** are not the same. Plus, I work in a office, sometimes my brain doesn't like using the computer in my free time.

Finally finished the last Chapter 4 in Octopath Traveler. It's not 100% completion, because I still have some sidequests and optional bosses left, but they're optional, so I'm counting the game as beaten. I want to beat real final boss, so I guess it's time to face some gods in combat.

I have started with Balogar and I managed to get him down to 50%, but I lost quickly once he started to use his AoE attacks. Team used:

• H'aanit (Hunter/Warrior). My tank.
• Therion (Thief/Hunter). Hunter and Dancer can boost his Divine Skill.
• Primrose (Dancer/Scholar). In the team because of her boosting skills and sometimes to use her dark spell to take down shields, but the Scholar job is useless with this boss.
• Ophilia (Cleric/Dancer). Healer that can self-resurrect once and basically never runs out of SP, can also boost and use dark spell to take out shields. Divine Skill can be use to make Primrose take out 2 shields per turn instead of just one.

I may change Therion with Tressa (Merchant/Thief). I keep the Thief's Divine Skill and get Rest AND Donate BP, which would be useful if I switch Primrose with Alf (Apothecary/Cleric). It's two healers, but with Alf's Divine Skill they pair well together to prevent status ailments and buff H'aanit and Tressa.

Finished Final Fantasy 15 last DLC. At some point I want to go back and try to play without the Ring of Timely Assistance (I'm getting better at blocking), but I'm taking a break for now because that boss fight is pure evil.

THEN I decided to finish Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth... Final time is 70 hours and I still have to go back to Chapter 12 and do the collectives, mini-games and side-quest of the last three maps. I enjoyed the game for the most part, except for Chapter 14. The game's final chapter feels like a tv show that has run out of time and has to finish the season as fast as possible.

And finally... I beat Final Fantasy 1 today! I got the Pixel Remaster collection and decided that I wanted to get platinum on all the games. It was nice going back to turn based after only playing action games the last few games. Defeating Chaos itself wasn't difficult, because of the achievements is to open all the chests and complete the bestiary, so by the time you have to go back to the Chaos Shrine you can max your potions.

The actual difficult fight is the Warmech. If Chaos kills you, you just have to walk back to that room. The Warmech kills you? GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO SPAWN AGAIN. Oh my god, it took over 2 hours, and it didn't take longer because someone in the PSNProfiles forum commented that you could use the quicksave to make sure that you have a save right before a battle, so you can reset the RNG.

PS: I've created an account in Backloggery to shame myself into finishing games. If someone else is there, let me know, I want to follow some people.

Finally got all the achievements in Final Fantasy 16! After finishing the game in Final Fantasy mode, I can confirm that the game is more fun in this harder difficulty, specially because you have more abilities to chose from.

Now, the problem: I still want to finish a save without the Ring of Timely Assistance, but I know I'll have to repeat the boss battles several times and I don't know if my wrist can handle that. Several times I considered switching one of the accesories with the auto-attack ring, because my right wrist started hurting (I probably should go to the doctor and get my carpal tunnel checked, because this isn't a new problem, lol).

Playing NG+ has been interesting, because now I have finally noticed that Typhon boss fight is the first clue about who's behind everything, because one of his cutscene is similar as one of Ultima's.

Oh, and for anyone planning on getting 100% in both the main game and the DLC: Get Ultima Weapon before doing the DLC.

 This week I advanced a bit more in Octopath Traveler, so of course I want to talk about my new nemesis in this game: the Venomtooth Tiger.

( Read more... )

So.

Title.

Last couple of months have involved lots of cross stitch and playing Super Mario Wonder whenever I had time. I'm nearly done with the last world and about to go fight Bowser, and I'm loving every single second of this game.

Some levels are super easy, some are hard and some are extra fun if you turn on multiplayer to play with random players (AKA fun chaos time). There's no longer a time limit to finish a level anymore, and I think this something new? I never had a Wii and the last games I played where in the DS/3DS, so I'm not sure if this is a new thing, but I love that the game allows you to explore the level at your own pace.

The Wonder Flower is hilarious  and I always go back to the level to try to find it. To anyone not planning to play the game, at least go watch in Youtube "Piranha Plants on Parade", because I love that stupid song.

I don't know if I'll be able to get the 100% in this game, but I'm going to try. I'm definitely in a Super Mario mood, so I may go back to Odyssey and try to get 100% there, too, lol.

Games that have been added to my wishlist after today's Nintendo Direct:

• Unicorn Overlord. It looks turn based, but different from what I'm used to, so I hope there's a demo to check it out.
• Eiyuden Chronicle also looks nice.

I don't know if "modern pixel games" is a proper term for the design style that started with Octopath Traveler (at least, I remember it starting with that on), but I *love* it.

I have never played a Paper Mario game before, but I may play The Thousand-Year Door, if only to figure out why Peach is wondering if a computer has fallen in love with her and why that computer is asking her to teach it to love, lol.

Oh, and good news, the trombone game is now in Switch, lolololol

(Not announced in the Direct but that's important for me: MORE PICROSS NEXT YEAR THANKS TO A DS PORT!)

I have blocked the Fire Emblem Heroes tag in Tumblr. I have nothing against mobile (and gacha) games, but the Fire Emblem tags in Tumblr are full of Fire Emblem Heroes posts and it has finally become too annoying.

Aaannyway.

I've been farming CollectaCards in Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line and I'm only missing 27 cards... If we don't count the Memory cards that come from quests, but I need to train my teams before trying to get those, so I'm NOT counting them. The thing is: Now I kind of want to farm cards in the DS titles, because I never got all of them.

I've also spent this month sad because I can't play Baldur's Gate 3. Why? The full release is 150 gb and requires an SSD. I have seen suggestions to use an external SSD, but I could just buy the PS5 version for the same price, so I don't know.

Oh, and I'm playing Final Fantasy 16. I still don't know how to feel about it, but I know that I don't like that the new fightning style. I'm using the accesory that tells you to dodge, because I don't feel like/have the time to repeat a battle because I failed to learn the pattern of the enemy. I don't mind doing it in Devil May Cry, Devil May Cry games are short, but this game is long.

In any case, this summer I've done more reading than gaming. Partly because I wanted to bring my TBR down (15 books down!), but also because once the heat wave reached us I didn't feel like spending the afternoon sweating inside a room.

I may dedicate September to beating Fire Emblem Engage, even if it has one of the things I hate about mobile games: far too many ways to improve a weapon. I may also go back to Fire Emblem Warriors, too... I have had that game for years now, but I still have a lot of extra maps left to beat and characters to fully level up. There's a particular map from Story Mode that I have memorised at this point, because it's where I farm Lianna's Capes.

... And then I'll move to another map to farm another item, because I really want those S-rank Weapons. I even have spreadsheet so I can remember what's the best map for each item, lol

• Every single article I've read about the game involves the director saying a variation of "this game is not like those other games for kids, we're edgy".
• I still have trusts issues from Final Fantasy 15 and the Day One Patch that takes 2+ hours to install. Plus the fact that FF15 were two games badly stitched together.

I think I'll probably wait to play FF16. There's a couple of games I want to finish first, anyway.

One of my main plans for June was to finish Fire Emblem Engage, but I have come across a problem: the Fire Emblem Fates problem AKA Second Seals are back and I want to use them to make the units OP (Yunaka, I'm going to use so many Second Seals on Yunaka and her daggers).

I guess I'll decide once I figure out how the skirmish scaling works, because I have read some people say that Alear is the one that makes them scale, that the strongest character is the one that matters and that what matters is the * insert number * strongest characters. If someone knows, let me know.

I find the maps a bit more difficult than the ones in Three Houses (where my main plan was always "throw Dimitri or Byleth at them"), but I'm still not sure if I like Somniel and its 3 different methods of improving weapon stats.

Or, you know, the fact that leveling characters that have fallen behind feels impossible. Poor Jean can only level by healing people.