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Postby Alaska Slim » Fri Nov 21, 2014 1:40 am

Bought a boxed copy of Command & Conquer Red Alert a few months back, including manual, jeweled case and poster.

The manual revealed aspects of the game that I, 16 years of gameplay in, did not know were there. For instance, if you scroll-box select units, and make them a numbered group, you can de-select individual units from that group without having to gather all of the other units together and re-numbering them.

... Honestly though, could have used the manual just for scroll-box select, as knowing about that sooner would have made certain levels ~so~ much easier.

Between that and beating Rouge Squadron with just arrow keys and a space bar, or playing through a 1st person shooter without knowing to use the mouse, I have an inferiority complex with my childhood self who I suspect was a far better gamer than I am now, if also less intelligent.
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Postby Giji Shinka » Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:09 am

View Original PostShinoyami65 wrote:I remember one interesting time I killed a Desert Sorceress and she got stuck in the wall in a position that made her skirt clip through her legs and show her underwear.

Speaking of those sorceress': if you look closely at one's breasts (While using binoculars ofc.) after it has died you'll notice that even after their death their breasts still bounce. :tongue:
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Postby Rosenakahara » Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:20 am

^Fromsoft has the best priorities.

Since metroid was mentioned i was playing metroid prime again earlier, gonna play all 3 (even if 2 really annoys me at points) and god it just reminded me how much i love the prime series and how disappointing other m was, for a lot of people the best metroid game is super, for me its a total tie between prime 1 and prime 3.

I was also playing rayman legends, i played origins but only played the castle rock level of legends before and.......i cant stop playing this game, its so fun :D
Also Barbara too stronk.
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Postby A.T. Fish » Fri Nov 21, 2014 12:08 pm

View Original PostSorrow wrote:I'd like to hear your thoughts on it, if you get around to it. It's often cited as the best of the best "Metroidvanias", and I would be inclined to agree; though maybe that doesn't mean much, as I haven't played them all, personally. Certainly a contender for the best PSX game.


Yeah, you hear that a lot, but I was actually disappointed with it. The problem is that Symphony of the Night was the first "Metroidvania" and as such it introduced a lot of elements to the series that were later reused and even improved on. For the people who had their first experience with a "Metroidvania" playing Symphony of the Night it must have looked like the best Castlevania ever, but I had already played more recent titles of the series when I first finished SotN so it didn't leave that good of an impression on me, since most of the other titles were better in my opinion.

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Postby Sorrow » Fri Nov 21, 2014 5:48 pm

I don't think Symphony of the Night gets so much respect simply because it was the first of its kind, but I respect your opinion as a valid way of looking at it. The gameplay may not be the most polished as you say, but the setting is unmatched, the sprites are all fresh, well drawn, and interesting; the soundtrack is certainly still arguably the best, and the many secrets are very well done. Entire sections and bosses to be discovered by exploration. Flipping the entire game upside down to double content and present further challenge was ingenious.

I think the reason 'Symphony' was, and remains, superior is because it was originally meant to be a spin-off, and was essentially Igarashi running an independent team funded by a major company. It's an Indie game with a lot of financial backing. Due to its success however, every "Metroidvania" to follow adheres to the rules set by 'Symphony'. A massive portion of 'Symphony's' sprites are always reused, the settings and music are always good, but never as good, and the gameplay can be polished, but there is never anything completely new or worthy of respect. 'Symphony' didn't need much polish, anyway - it doesn't really suffer from a lack of anything, with the exception of no explanation on how to use relics and familiars; but the game encourages trial and error anyway.

It may not be perfect, but it remains better than any I've played or seen. It isn't nostalgia speaking either, as I didn't play it as a child and it wasn't my first experience.
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Postby Monk Ed » Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:41 pm

Symphony was my first Metroid-style Castlevania experience. It scratched a set of itches that remains unscratched by any other game to date. It is the first game I ever played where you play as a classic cape-toting vampire with the ability to transform into bat, wolf, or mist, and play as those forms in ways that feel right and logical and (perhaps most importantly) like they were added far more for the fun of it than as a veneer on some mundane part of the design (c.f. bat "form" in Blood Omen which was nothing more than fast-travel, mist form in Blood Omen 2 which was nothing more than a situation-dependent stealth-kill mechanic). No other game has done that since, even though I keep wishing for one to come along. Some let you do the mist thing, some let you do the bat thing, etc, but few the way Symphony does it where you can assume the form at any time, and none besides Symphony have all the elements together in one package. I've been a huge fan of vampires for as long as I can remember (in fact one of my very earliest memories is a vampire movie), and my favorite style of vampire has always been the cape-toting transforming kind, and this game was the first (and, to date, only) to embrace that archetype and utilize it to its fullest.

I used to replay it more often, but eventually I came to acknowledge its flaws as a game. Its setting and such are superb, as others have mentioned, but its balance is all kinds of fucked up. Compared to later entries it gets too easy too quickly. When you can just spam Soul Steal (which is such a sweet power, by the way), no boss is ever that hard. At the same time as I appreciate the fact that the game lets you do such things rather than, say, arbitrarily disabling the more abuseable abilities during boss fights (such as by having the boss be flatly immune to them), I must acknowledge that they are indeed game-breaking. Symphony remains my favorite 'vania but in terms of sheer gameplay goodness and challenge and whatnot I got far more out of Rondo or even (to keep it within the Metroidvania subset) the more recent Order of Ecclesia.
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Postby NemZ » Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:47 pm

To be fair a good portion of SotN's enemies were sprites taken from Rondo of Blood and/or Dracula X.

It did have an overall excellent feel and mood, but it's also really badly balanced and actually the only real challenge is to find ways to make it a challenge. It's a very deeply flawed game, but still legitimately awesome anyway.
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Postby Sorrow » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:41 pm

View Original PostNemZ wrote:It did have an overall excellent feel and mood, but it's also really badly balanced and actually the only real challenge is to find ways to make it a challenge.
I agree that you're capable of becoming far too strong, but it does require a good bit of farming. The game certainly wouldn't suffer from a "New Game +" sort of mode. Still, I agree it is a genuine flaw.

Funnily enough, it was my biggest issue with Dark Souls, and the reason I shan't be playing the second. I sort of just let it go with Symphony of the Night because I wasn't sold it under the promise of gruelling challenge. Dark Souls was disappointing for me; I was told on my first time playing that I would do well to get the Drake sword and farm against the Phalanx because otherwise the game is too hard. I got to the Phalanx pretty easy with the Drake sword, so I thought I'd rather use the Black Knight sword instead, as it wasn't a secret weapon, but I may as well farm so I can hold it in one hand, and it unfortunately remained a relatively easy game.

I could have restricted myself, but the illusion of challenge was already broken and so I was already disappointed. It's a serious flaw in a game sold on difficulty when it offers you the chance to spend your time to get overpowered. In 'Symphony' it's more of a waste of time getting strong than it is entirely ruining the very point of the game.
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Postby NemZ » Sat Nov 22, 2014 7:21 am

I think the real problem with SotN is the level up system + random drops. Because of these two design choices there's no way to actually build a solid challenge around the player's abilities because the designers can't really know what the player can do. If improvements had to be found and earned through gameplay as in the Metroid games (sequence breaking notwithstanding) this wouldn't be a problem.

Case in point, I randomly got 2 Crissaegrims on my first playthrough while wandering around the reverse library not trying to grind at all, and then the game basically gave up even pretending to give me any challenge whatsoever. The same could be said of the poison mist ability: invincibility + free movement + damage on contact to nearly everything? That's just dumb.

Richter mode is better, but the super moves are just stupidly powerful. It's completely ridiculous how fast you can make bosses just go away with pretty much any of them.
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Postby Sorrow » Sat Nov 22, 2014 11:57 am

I never managed to get a Crissaegrim, even with a bit of grinding after I completed the game. Shield rod + Alucard Shield was another, nonsensical even, overpowered implementation. Richter was far too powerful, from start to finish. Playing as Alucard though, everyone is going to experience a period of time where you're too weak, or just about right, and it isn't until after Shaft you start to feel you're a bit too much of a god.

The problem in regards to balance, but also why many are probably so fond, is because it seems to have been made with "vampires are powerful, vampires can do all this interesting stuff, let's make our character do it" approach, and then try and implement it into how it affects your progression after the fact. I agree it's got its flaws[s:2rmiae8p]---[/s:2rmiae8p]especially for multiple playthroughs where you now know the most effective methods[s:2rmiae8p]---[/s:2rmiae8p]and it's certainly not some unbeatable achievement in gaming; I just don't think another game in the series has done as much right as is presented here.
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Postby A.T. Fish » Sat Nov 22, 2014 2:18 pm

View Original PostSorrow wrote:The gameplay may not be the most polished as you say, but the setting is unmatched, the sprites are all fresh, well drawn, and interesting; the soundtrack is certainly still arguably the best, and the many secrets are very well done. Entire sections and bosses to be discovered by exploration. Flipping the entire game upside down to double content and present further challenge was ingenious.


The thing is, all of these elements you brought up as proof of SotN's superiority are things that are now staple in the series, so at this point it's just a matter of personal preference. The setting is very good, but it's nothing new, SotN's rendition of Dracula's castle is great but I don't think it is superior to the ones from later titles, in fact I think later titles improve on it by expanding the setting beyond the castle, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia come to mind here. The soundtrack is good too, as are most soundtracks for Castlevania games, and honestly I don't see that big of a difference in quality between them, though I will admit SotN's is slightly ahead of the others. The same goes for exploration, it's present in every title that came afterwards and I don't see a clear superiority of SotN in this regard, I actually think that the excessive length of the game coupled with how easy things were going for me made the exploration somewhat boring. When I first saw the upside down castle I thought it was very clever but the novelty quickly wore off once I realized I'd have to explore an entire castle again.

In the end though, what really disappointed me about the game was the lack of a challenge, specifically in the case of the boss fights, as has been pointed out above, they were just too easy. I didn't even have to spam soul steal or luckily stumble upon a Crissaegrim to easily defeat bosses, and I'm not the most skilled video game player either. In my opinion the boss fights are an integral part of what makes Castlevania games fun, they interrupt the exploration and pose a new challenge for the player to figure out before he can carry on, but in SotN the bosses felt like mere speedbumps on my way through the castle, and as a result I never felt like I was doing anything other than exploring a castle, which can get boring pretty quickly when you have to do it twice.

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Postby Aiko Heiwa » Sat Nov 22, 2014 7:44 pm

Played some Style Savvy: Trendsetters earlier today. Haven't played it in forever (I think since like April or something). Secret best 3DS game because of how much of a cutie my character is in the game.
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Postby The Eva Monkey » Sun Nov 23, 2014 1:20 pm

Finished up Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Not bad. Story and dialogue were pretty rough around the edges in spots, but gameplay, leveling, and acquiring abilities were all pretty fun. I'm debating whether or not to follow it up with Dawn of Sorrow or Symphony of the Night.

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Postby A.T. Fish » Sun Nov 23, 2014 2:34 pm

View Original PostThe Eva Monkey wrote:Finished up Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Not bad. Story and dialogue were pretty rough around the edges in spots, but gameplay, leveling, and acquiring abilities were all pretty fun. I'm debating whether or not to follow it up with Dawn of Sorrow or Symphony of the Night.


Well, I've never played Aria but Dawn of Sorrow's gameplay is supposed to be similar, I know for sure that abilities are collected the same way, there is a new element though that people loathe, the rune drawing system. I guess it will depend on what you want out of your next game, a similar experience and the continuation of the story or something different so that you can take a break from what you were doing and try something new.

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Postby The Eva Monkey » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:02 pm

So it occurred to me that I had recently played up to but had not completed the final mission in Ace Combat Zero. So I decided to conveniently cross it off my list of games. Decent game, just not nearly as good as Ace Combat 4, which ts served as a prequel for.

Since I recently played through Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on SNES, I popped in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, also on SNES. The first MMPR game was by no means a masterpiece, but it was compared to MMPR:TM. What an awful, unenjoyable game. Ugh.

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Postby Dataprime » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:03 pm

View Original PostThe Eva Monkey wrote: What an awful, unenjoyable game. Ugh.

What did you expect :tongue:

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Postby The Eva Monkey » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:14 pm

View Original PostDataprime wrote:What did you expect :tongue:

More of the same? :/

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Postby Aiko Heiwa » Mon Nov 24, 2014 8:11 pm

Been playing Tokyo Crash Mobs lately. This game is fucking nuts, it's basically a version of the game Puzz Loop (those games where the marbles are heading towards the center of a thing and you shoot marbles to match 3 or more and prevent them from getting into the center), only instead of marbles, you throw scenesters into crowds of scenesters and stuff. And the whole game is live-action.

Also it's 200 coins on Club Nintendo North America, so uh if you got a 3DS and got some coins to spare.
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Postby Shinoyami65 » Mon Nov 24, 2014 10:54 pm

Finally finished playing the first Bayonetta so I can go out and buy the second game. The game is awesome, although I did have a lot of trouble with a few QTEs and insta-kill sequences which I have heard the second game removes entirely. For example, in one late-game chapter I'd finally killed a troublesome end-level enemy when a giant flood of lava came out of nowhere and killed me before I could decide whether I was supposed to run or jump over it. A few boss battles also practically require you to use QTEs to survive, which can get annoying if you don't react in time (it's particularly annoying if you get the correct input in, but not in time, or the wrong input at the right time) and dying really decreases your end-level score.

Outside of QTEs, though, gameplay is slick and fast and pretty much awesomness incarnate. I especially liked the time-slowing mechanic, which hasn't really been done well in any other games I've played. The game's also very visually impressive, particularly the boss enemies. The game also has a good difficulty curve; while it's very hard at the beginning when you don't know most of the enemy attack patterns and weapon combos, you get better at anticipating attacks and using weapons as the game progresses, while still feeling challenged.

I can't wait to get the second game, which is apparently even more awesome and does away entirely with the annoying QTE sequences.
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Postby riffraff11235 » Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:10 am

So my gaming experience for this semester is basically boiled down to two games, one being Osu and the other being League of Legends. Just made it to Bronze I in LoL (not that it matters with the Season 5 reset coming up) and I just passed rank 60k in Osu (1054 PP). I know I've seen a few of you mention that you play League, but are there any other current Osu players around here?
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