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Etrian Odyssey IV: It Bites Back

Etrian Odyssey IV: It Bites Back

Posted by on Aug 5, 2014 in Commentary, featured |

Etrian Odyssey IV is a dungeon crawler RPG from ATLUS. And similar to most games from ATLUS, EOIV is hard. Hard like a rock covered in concrete. I like how it takes your hand and guides you through the character creation process then feeds you to the hounds when you get to the first dungeon. Well, not hounds exactly. They’re more like giant purple bears that chase you around only and kill you with one swipe only to get distracted by wood. Thankfully literal wood, not metaphoric. And when you die, you’re reloaded back to town. You’re alive, sure, but you just lost everything since your last save.

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A Quick Review of Divinity: Original Sin

A Quick Review of Divinity: Original Sin

Posted by on Jul 15, 2014 in Commentary, featured, Reviews |

Divinity: Original Sin is the latest game in the Divinity franchise, setting itself up as a prequel to the previous titles. You play as a pair of Source Hunters and it’s your job to save the world, I think. I haven’t been paying attention to the story very well so don’t expect a lot of that in this write-up. I’m going to focus on the gameplay—the glorious, bloody gameplay.

The important thing you need to know about Original Sin is that it’s like a modern version of Baldur’s Gate. Combat is turn-based with an action point (AP) system similar to classic Fallout. Actions such as attacking and spellcasting cost points. The more points you have, the more actions you can do per turn.

What makes Original Sin’s combat stand out is how it plays around with elemental and status effects. For example, you can drop oil on your foes to cause Slow, reducing their AP, then light that oil on fire, causing Burning, a damage-over-time effect. Fire plus poison causes explosions in this game, so poisoning a target that’s on fire often yields impressive results. The variety of things that you can do removes the act of simply hitting the other guy repeatedly until he dies. Crowd control abilities such as knockdowns and stuns are also present, contributing further to the large amount of options that you have when you fight.

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Dragon’s Dogma: A Quick and Dirty Magick Archer Guide Part 1

Dragon’s Dogma: A Quick and Dirty Magick Archer Guide Part 1

Posted by on Feb 7, 2014 in Guides |

Create a Mage, Level a Sorcerer

The damage of your ranged attacks is based on magick, so you’ll want your magick stat to be as high as possible. At +5 per level, the Sorcerer vocation offers the highest Magick growth from levels 10-100, as you can see in the table below.

HPStaminaAttackDefenseMagick AttackMagick Defense
Lv10+16152155
Lv100+10100031

Reference: http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Stat_Growths

Staff Attacks + Holy = Profit!

Charged staff attacks (AKA Focused Bolt and Magick Agent) buffed with Holy Boon or Holy Affinity are effective against almost all of the enemies in vanilla DD. Take advantage of this exploit to plow through your foes. The only monsters that you’ll have to look out for are Grigori, who is weak to Dark, and Magick-immune golems.

Note that the Holy exploit does not work very well in Bitterblack Isle.

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Review: Shadowrun Returns

Review: Shadowrun Returns

Posted by on Aug 18, 2013 in Reviews |

Shadowrun 2013-08-18 09-26-19-91

Shadowrun Returns is a tactical role-playing game set in a future where magic, technology, humans and meta-humans co-exist. You are a shadowrunner, a professional body-for-hire doing jobs for whoever pays the most.

Gameplay

The core gameplay of Shadowrun Returns is a throwback to the isometric, turn-based tactical strategy games of old like Fallout 1 and 2. Plainly speaking, you and your opponent take turns trying to kill each other using a combat system that’s a bit simplified compared to games using similar mechanics. For example, turns are on a per team instead of a per individual basis, magic is cast with no resource/mana restrictions and ammo is unlimited. To balance that, there are cooldowns for the more powerful spells and reloading will usually cost a turn.

Shadowrun 2013-08-18 22-33-42-95 Shadowrun 2013-08-18 22-33-44-73 Shadowrun 2013-08-18 22-34-10-14

The gameplay shines when it comes to variety. You can fight using conventional methods like shooting, punching and kicking. Or you can go medieval fantasy and cast spells or summon creatures. There’s also the option of going high tech and use drones to do your bidding. Bottom line, the game offers several viable options for combat so it deserves more than one playthrough.

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Rants and Raves: Final Fantasy XIII-2

Posted by on Aug 21, 2012 in Commentary |

I have to admit that I completely ignored Final Fantasy XIII-2 the moment I learned that Lightning wasn’t going to be the lead. I found her cold, no-nonsense attitude very appealing. She was strong, determined and hell-bent on completing her mission. Her demeanor was a refreshing change from the young, male protagonists from previous titles of the series. As if not having her as the main character wasn’t bad enough, she was replaced by her sister Serah, the damsel in distress whose purpose was to merely give Lightning somebody to rescue.

Why did I buy it? Because I couldn’t pass up on a premium title that was being sold at one-third of its price. So a couple of weeks ago I found myself the owner of Final Fantasy XIII-2. I had no idea how good it was going to be back then.

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