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Oh god, I'm experiencing flashbacks. Horrible, horrible flashbacks. I will say precisely one thing to this game's credit, and that's that after selling it to Gamestop I merely lost $6 on it. You are a brave, possibly suicidal individual Camel Pimp, and you have my sympathies.
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Nov 17, 2014 04:12
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 22:12 |
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I really hate how the dialogue just happens on the same box.
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Nov 17, 2014 04:15
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I was starting to wonder if I regretted getting a Lunar game, and then realize that I'm probably better off without this one upon observing the LP. Camel Pimp has my condolences, for the combat at a first glance looks to be needlessly complicated. As a result of seeing this LP, I am tempted to look for other LPs of the Lunar games to see how good they are. I actually like the idea of this game, but I can see where the execution went terribly wrong. Augh, that minimap!
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Nov 17, 2014 04:38
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Is this game actually worse than White Knight Chronicles? If so, that's pretty impressive.
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Nov 17, 2014 04:39
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To be fair about the low MP thing, not having much MP is very much a thing in the first Lunar as well (not sure about 2). Most late game boss battles became a race to see whether their HP or your MP-restoring items ran out first, and with severely limited inventory slots as well as a limited number of high-end MP restoring items, it was always more of a pain than it needed to be. Of course it was never to this ridiculous level of only being able to cast one spell before running out. That's just silly.
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Nov 17, 2014 04:53
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I'm really excited to learn why we don't want to level up, because so far it sounds like a bunch of ideas that individuals on the team came up with and jammed together without talking to each other or testing to see if they worked to actually create fun.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:02
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I've never heard of the Lunar series, and this game is looking really bad so far. I can't wait to see how much of a trainwreck this is gonna be. How much better are the other Lunar games?
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Nov 17, 2014 05:05
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ultrafilter posted:Is this game actually worse than White Knight Chronicles? If so, that's pretty impressive. As a person who has played both games? Easily.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:06
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Onmi posted:As a person who has played both games? Easily. Nice. I'm looking forward to seeing this go off the rails. Dr. Fetus posted:I've never heard of the Lunar series, and this game is looking really bad so far. I can't wait to see how much of a trainwreck this is gonna be. How much better are the other Lunar games? The other Lunar games are legitimately good games, although they're definitely products of their time.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:19
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Lunar Dragon Games doesn't really borrow mechanics from the older games, either. All of its really terrible ideas? Original to this game. The only good gameplay idea it swipes is the ability to save anywhere.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:25
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Camel Pimp posted:Lunar Dragon Games doesn't really borrow mechanics from the older games, either. All of its really terrible ideas? Original to this game. The only good gameplay idea it swipes is the ability to save anywhere.
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Nov 17, 2014 06:46
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On the one hand, you have to give them SOME credit for trying new ideas. On the other hand, they lose that credit and more due to said new ideas being possibly the worst things I've ever heard. And that's just what you've covered in the first update. I'm almost eager to see just how terrible the game is going to get, despite the damage it will do to my love for the first two games, my eyes, and my sanity. Anyway, love your work Camel Pimp.
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Nov 17, 2014 07:48
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Bellmaker posted:Doesn't 4 Heroes of Light not let you target either? Anyway, I've technically played this game, but it was just so unrelentingly horrible that I didn't get very far in before selling it to a Gamestop so somebody else could suffer instead. It might be interesting to see just where the plot goes. Or it might just end up being very depressing to see in full what happened to this series.
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Nov 17, 2014 09:09
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Shaezerus posted:Jesus mother gently caress this game's menus and interface look completely terrible. So much clutter, and that weird fixed-width RPG-Maker-knockoff font doesn't help either. The menus kinda remind me of the Mario and Luigi games, in a way, just incomprehensible. Getsuya posted:To be fair about the low MP thing, not having much MP is very much a thing in the first Lunar as well (not sure about 2). Most late game boss battles became a race to see whether their HP or your MP-restoring items ran out first, and with severely limited inventory slots as well as a limited number of high-end MP restoring items, it was always more of a pain than it needed to be. Of course it was never to this ridiculous level of only being able to cast one spell before running out. That's just silly. I only played the PS1 remake of L2, but I don't especially recall MP being a particular problem after a while. Characters were at least able to cast spells more than once every trip to town, at least, so that puts it far ahead of this thing.
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Nov 17, 2014 09:09
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In Breath of Fire 2 there's a character who learns magic as she goes up levels, but her MP pool is less than half of what's necessary for a single cast. Yet she's not someone you have to rely of for magic.
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Nov 17, 2014 10:20
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SelenicMartian posted:In Breath of Fire 2 there's a character who learns magic as she goes up levels, but her MP pool is less than half of what's necessary for a single cast. Yet she's not someone you have to rely of for magic.
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Nov 17, 2014 10:50
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That natural flowing dialogue! And who picked those atrocious colours for keywords.  I do like that the hero kicks the enemies at least.
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Nov 17, 2014 11:16
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Endorph posted:Not to mention that's kind of the gag. She wants to learn magic and has some natural talent but she isn't dedicated enough/intellectual enough to stick with it. There's a story reason. Also she's kind of a dumbass and obviously wanted to learn the strongest magic possible without considering whether or not she could actually cast any of it. Which I guess is the same thing more or less.
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Nov 17, 2014 11:50
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Oh, I have this game. I played 2 hours of it about 5 years ago, realised it was a hunk of poo poo and moved onto a game that I could enjoy. Weirdly, it was released in the PAL regions and Japan under the name Lunar Genesis. I'm morbidly looking forward to where this goes.
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Nov 17, 2014 11:52
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How much do we need to know about the original games in order to understand the true horrors of this unsightly abomination? On a side note, thank you for doing this LP. With White Knight Chronicles wrapping up, I'm very happy to see something supposedly worse has popped up to take its place.
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Nov 17, 2014 13:16
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I'm impressed that there's a spoiler policy against game mechanics, because there will be even more terrible ones. As if the ones shown aren't bad enough already. I've heard of a few baffling mechanics beforehand like running costing HP, so this should be great. Can't wait to see what else is in store in terms of design decisions.
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Nov 17, 2014 13:24
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Arcade Rabbit posted:How much do we need to know about the original games in order to understand the true horrors of this unsightly abomination? I've read spoilers, so I can say that you need to know nothing about the other games to "enjoy" DS.
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Nov 17, 2014 15:27
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Oh god. I remember this game. I think I am having PTS flashbacks about it.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:23
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closeted republican posted:I've read spoilers, so I can say that you need to know nothing about the other games to "enjoy" DS. I don't know. Knowing more about the other games in the series might make you 'Enjoy' the game more, since you know what's being ruined mechanically and narratively.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:04
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Ryushikaze posted:I don't know. Knowing more about the other games in the series might make you 'Enjoy' the game more, since you know what's being ruined mechanically and narratively. True but you don't need to know all that to see how godawful the game is. Seeing the game piss on SSSC is just icing on the cake, not the meat of it
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Nov 17, 2014 20:13
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closeted republican posted:Seeing the game piss on SSSC is just icing on the cake, not the meat of it That sounds like a terrible cake.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:23
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MythLisp posted:
I wondered why I'd never heard of it and yet the boxart looked so familiar. Now I know it's the same Lunar game I see in the second-hand game store all the loving time. The only games you see 6+ copies of on the shelf are the unplayable ones!
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Nov 17, 2014 20:37
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AnotherGamer posted:Also she's kind of a dumbass and obviously wanted to learn the strongest magic possible without considering whether or not she could actually cast any of it. Which I guess is the same thing more or less. Also one of her fusions actually has enough MP to spend it casting spells. She's still better off attacking.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:39
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Camel Pimp please don't do this to yourself. You are a good person, you've done nothing to deserve this. Don't punish yourself. Also holy poo poo I forgot how bad the art was in this. I... I followed both your other threads but... I just don't know if I have the strength to go through this one. It's like watching torture.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:46
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ultrafilter posted:That sounds like a terrible cake. I agree. What kind of monster has meat AND icing on/in their cake?!
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Nov 17, 2014 20:49
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Can you play the star fox DS game next? I sold that game for 60 cents at gamespot and that was a good deal.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:49
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Dragonatrix posted:I agree. What kind of monster has meat AND icing on/in their cake?! I see some people have forgotten the Volcano Bakemeat debacle from that one Pokemon hack game.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:59
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This game looks... magical  . Camelpimp, you are a braver soul than I, and I salute you.
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Nov 17, 2014 21:28
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Y'know, the only other RPG I can think of with such a crippled spellcaster is Rydia in FF4, where when you get her she has enough MP to cast Cure1 once. But she also will gain like six levels after your first fight (giving her enough mana to contribute meaningfully), and she can use a Rod to deal significant damage without using MP. By the time of the DS, it is downright shameful to have an RPG where your only options in the early game are "hit things" or "run away".
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Nov 17, 2014 21:31
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Running costing HP doesn't even turn off in town. Wow.
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Nov 17, 2014 21:59
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Y'know, the only other RPG I can think of with such a crippled spellcaster is Rydia in FF4, As far as FF4 goes, can't forget their experiment with casters that had a huge list of spells, but a small (and capped) MP pool to use them with. Even there, though, Tellah still got 3 uses of the good stuff (6 if your "good stuff" is Petrify) before Ethers. And naturally, there's good old FF1 and the game it filed the serial numbers off of and digitized (the original AD&D). 1st level mages in FF1 got two spell slots, and generalist magi in D&D started with one spell per day. Shwqa posted:the star fox DS game What? 
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Nov 17, 2014 22:16
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Wayne posted:As far as FF4 goes, can't forget their experiment with casters that had a huge list of spells, but a small (and capped) MP pool to use them with. Even there, though, Tellah still got 3 uses of the good stuff (6 if your "good stuff" is Petrify) before Ethers. The fun part of FF1 is the fact they incorporated a dozen odd items that cast midlevel versions of most spells you'd want to use, so you never even really had to bother with spells.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:23
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Chapter 2: The Word for Today Is: Tedious On the way back through the Thieves' Woods, I realized there was another blue chest. If there is a blue chest on a screen (and there isn't always, and no there's no way to tell until you see it), there's only ever one. Five fights and one level later, we get the chest.  It's a weapon for Lucia! Why not? It's still not making her useful in battle, mind you. Mainly she goes from hitting for 1 damage to 7. Meanwhile, Jian is still hitting for about 14 per hit, and he gets three. Actually, having gained four levels and a new weapon, you'd think Lucia would be starting to pull her weight.  Also, enemies still seem to be doing the same amount of damage. It's hard to tell at first, but enemies scale with your level. That's why you don't want to level. You'd think this was in place to prevent grinding, but all it does is change it from grinding for items instead of EXP. It'll be brought up, so I'll mention that another Lunar game, Lunar Silver Star Story Complete to be precise, also had some enemies scale with your level. Namely, only bosses scaled, and they won't scale past a certain level. Neither of which is true here.  Anywho, we just return to the first screen of the woods and go to the left this time.  Oh hey, they put a Althena statue in case seven piss-easy encounters was too taxing for you. And we found the people.    And we go back to Perit. This sure was an important thing and not blatant padding.   Oh yes! A fearsome monster, currently making Delrich Temple its home. ...Delrich Temple?? That's right... Once a place of worship of the Four Dragons. ...Four Dragons? It seems there is quite the echo in here. You don't know much, do you?! Cool White in the north Deep Blue for the south Flame Red in the east and night Black for the west! I see. As the temple is hardly used nowadays, that Sasquatch had taken it for its nest. And it's the one causing all the recent trouble? The very same! And it's causing me no lack of sleepless nights! In fact... Well... But no, I could never ask such a thing... Oh, you can't just say that and then stop! Please, go on. Don't leave us hanging like this! Ah... maybe... But, no, no, I could never...Jesus loving Christ dude get on with it. Very well then! We shall defeat this monster for you! But... that is exactly what I was going to... How ever did you know? It was obviously going to happen. I was just speeding the process up a bit. Ah, well, very well then. Hagar and Micah should have moved the rocks in the Thieves' Woods by now. The way to Delrich Temple should be open.Wait how the gently caress do you know that? Then we will head straight over there. Just a final word of warning... Please, take due care in this matter! Those rocks were places there by the Sasquatch, so he is obviously extremely strong! I want to see you come back alive, understood? Understood. Then I send my hopes with you!Yeap, we're going back again to the Thieves' Woods. Yay. If you talked to those two in the woods before going to Perit, I believe you can actually avoid that second trip and just go straight to Delrich Temple, but that doesn't prevent it from being bad game design.  I just noticed this, but the game keeps referring to the Sasquatch as singular, but we saw multiple Sasquatches take the package.  Quality work, Ubisoft.  Anyway, now onto a new Thieves' Woods screen.  Of course there's a blue chest here.  Believe it or not, straight up money is going to be one of the most welcome treasure we'll get from a chest. At the end, everyone reached level 7. Lucia got Tender Rain, which cures all allies for 30 MP, and Grand Shell, which increases defense for all allies for 24 MP. Her max MP is 35.  The blue chest has a new piece of headgear for Jian. It's actually an improvement, and a substantial improvement, so finally getting one of these blue chests has paid off!  Now we are at the what I suppose is the first real dungeon of the game. Although I suppose the Thieves' Woods does count, but this area is a bit of step up, at least.   Yeah, but... what about them? I'm not sure... Just something about them suggests some kind of puzzle to me.It's almost as though there might be puzzle where you have to find out what order to press the switches in and each switch correlated to one of the Four Dragons which is a very original puzzle and has never been used in a Lunar game or any RPG before.  Speaking of a step up, sometimes the red spider here can't always be killed in one round by Jian. Lucia actually killed it here. Oh my gosh.  Also the bats here can blind you. I was going to complain, but Lucia does have a status restoring spell and it's "only" 8 MP. Blind goes away at the end of combat anyway. But the gameplay is evolving, at least. Right? Yeah I still auto-battled past every fight.  Enemies parties are getting a lot larger, though. Considering that I have no way of killing more than one enemy a round, it gets tedious. I know, shocking.  One bone the game throws you is that Jian starts with something called the Counter Prototype. When he assumes this position when an enemy goes to attack him, they miss and he counters.  It's rare, but at least it means one less round.  Oh there was a blue chest in the first populated room of the temple. And I got... another bandana? Is it for Lucia?  Nope! Two blue chests in a row contain nearly identical treasure, this bandana just has slightly higher defense and no luck bonus. The hell? I go for the defense because I like big numbers.  Past that chest, there are no more blue chests in Derlich temple, so I can keep Virtue Mode off. But now we have a puzzle.  After this conspicuously empty room.  Anyway, there are four doors with a thing above them. Each of them has a statue inside.  Indeed. Apparently you have to examine the statues at the beginning to get a hint, but I didn't do it. I mean, it's four buttons in a sequence, it's not that hard to guess, and there's no real punishment if you guess wrong.  It's actually really not hard to guess. These two doors are directly left of the door with the black orb above it. After pressing black and white, I found that red is where you start. And then directly right to white, and then black. From the black statue you go down to find the blue one. You just go left to right and down. Not a brain teaser.  In one of the side rooms, there's a statue of Althena and an accessory, which Lucia gets.  Right below it is the statue we need.  "Hugging" pillow, hm? Is that all-  What. Oh yes, there are monsters that can steal from you. I don't think they can steal anything other than sundries and items, but I could be wrong. And you don't get it back at the end of the battle. Again, this "modern" Lunar game somehow includes way more dated gameplay mechanics than the originals had.  But anyway, we're onto the second part of the dungeon.  There are four paths that branch out from the center that lead to four different rooms.   And each one leads to a fight with a Sasquatch and his buddies.  Unlike the other enemies we've seen so far, these guys are actually kind of dangerous. Not that I had to go off of auto, but I definitely had to heal afterwards.  Hey, the script remembered that there are plural Sasquatch how nice.  In any case, this seems as good a time as any to start using these cards. So how do you use cards? Well, some cards are used in battle, and others can be used on the field. The one pictured is a field card. Each card has a number of points, and it goes down by 100 when you use the card. Once it's zero, you lose the card. You can only carry one of each type of card at a time. Still, 13 uses of a MP regan card is drat nice. This actually goes a long way in making Lucia useful. I have to heal after each Sasquatch fight, and it's more economical to use her spells rather than my items. The Gloomwing card's MP regen is pretty fast, it brings her up to max rather quickly. Also it lasts a decently long time, so it can restore her MP more than once, depending on how fast you use up her MP.  As for using cards in battle, it's pretty much just like using an item. We have a number of cards to be used in battle, one that increases luck, maxes out accuracy, or decreases enemy luck.  The poison card might be the best of the lot, though. It hits all enemies, and near as I can tell, next to nothing in the game resists poison. That includes bosses.  The damage isn't spectacular, but any bit helps.  And the Sasquatches can drop a card. This card, however, is only for show and does nothing. Yay.  One of the Sasquatch battles has it surrounded by two of its buddies, one of whom drops a Yeti card. The Yeti card prevents items from being stolen, which is definitely useful. In any case, all four of them drop soon enough.  Yes! I feel a lot better now, Jian! But... where is the package? They must have hidden it around her somewhere! Come on, let's get searching!Where could it be indeed? I wonder if it's in the one room that served no purpose but was very conspicuous about it.  Whaddya know.  Now we won't get fired! Thank Goddess Althena for that. You can thank her from me, too. Now, we have a delivery to finish! That's right. Let's go!And we're done! I kind of forgot that Lucia had the Escape spell, but any area you cleared out on Virtue Mode stays cleared out until you exit the dungeon, so the only room I had to backtrack through was empty anyway.   The game isn't even pretending we have an actual quest. "There's a new area. Go to it."  Oh yes, we'll be getting more of fantasy racism so look forward to that.  Sweet.  Now that we've got the package, we can start to do Gad's Express jobs.  You know how in some RPGs they have a quest guild or whatever and you can take on all sorts of varied jobs? Yeah, not here. It's all item collecting.  And they want a lot of items. Even if you remember which monster drops what, trying to fill a list like this can take a long time.  However there isn't a set job list; the available jobs shuffle every time you search the jobs. Also jobs will repeat. This means that at least if you take on a job you really don't wanna do canceling it doesn't mean you permanently lose out. You do have to pay a fee if you cancel, though.  Which is nice, because you can only take one job at at time.  Some of the jobs are fairly easy, and any resources you have enough of are highlighted in blue. Since I've already got what I need and the recipient is in town, let's go.  Slight problem; the game gives you a name, but not where they are in town. You see, each NPC has a unique name, but not a unique sprite or portrait. Sometimes you can find them if they own a house, since their house will be listed as "so and so's house" but if it's a shop keeper or someone else then good luck.  I can see it. I can understand it, I can. Oh yes, Jian. I can.Uh, okay.  Anyway, found the client. So we give her what she wants, and return to Gad's for the money.  There we go. And that's how you make money through Gad's.  Oh, and sometimes the recipient is in another town. Still, the "To Gad's Express" jobs are very easy, you just run to another Gad's with a package that the game gives you. That does mean you have to run through the Thieves' Woods again. Yay. Still, you might be wondering: okay, so the items you get when you battle on Combat Mode are for delivery. But... honestly, this whole rigmarole is such a boring pain in the butt. Many jobs require so many items that's not feasible to do them unless you wanna battle for a long rear end time, the ones that don't require as many items don't pay very much. You have to go through the Thieves' Woods every time you want to go to another town (and many of the jobs require this), and you can't load up on a few jobs at a time so your stone can only kill one bird at a time. So... why not just sell the items you win from battles and forget Gad's?  The sundries you pick up are worth next to nothing when you sell them. You'll go broke pretty quick if you just sell loot instead of using it for deliveries, so don't bother. So yeah, the boring rear end item collection is pretty much the only way to make money in this game. And money is kind of important, since levels don't give you an advantage. Be very thankful that this is an SSLP, and I'm going to be glossing over a lot of this Gad's poo poo.  In any case, I ran a few jobs, and with the money I got I bought Jian some Leather Gloves and this Adventure Jacket. Lucia gets nothing. After taking a package to Port Searis, I'm pretty ready to continue on with the game. Can't wait. Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2014 00:44
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I can't help but notice how lazy the NPCs are, 'here's this dude we recolored' - it seems almost worse then using no portraits at all.
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Nov 18, 2014 00:56
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 The design decisions the devs made are baffling. Why is this game so terrible? This sounds painful to play.
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Nov 18, 2014 01:16
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