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* Shoot the Bullet [PC]
- Completed every spellcard up to 7-7

Nice!

* Shoot the Bullet [PC]
- Completed every spellcard up to 8-3

* Demon's Souls [PS3]
- had a bit of a lan session with one of my friends and took out "The Penetrator" in both of our games (New Game +)

<3 Got in the mood yesterday to play Rune Factory Frontier what with the weather being so GORGEOUS outside.

Now that I've married Anette and only have a few final tasks to complete, I'm debating whether I should start another game file and which girl I want to go after.

:3 I can't decide!! Tabitha and Lara are easy to decline and I'm not a big fan of Uzaki.

My choices are: Eunice, Selphie, Rosette, Melody, Bianca, Mist, and the Iris sisters (but I don't want to do them since they are difficult and they will be left to last).

>_< I CAN'T DECIDE!! They are all so cute :3

So I won't be getting FFXIII until Friday, even though I preordered it. Bleh. >_> To wallow in my misery, I am just gonna study for my chemistry and biology tests on Friday.

I can't tell which I loathe more ._.

Meh, at least FFXIII won't distract me >,>

My FFXIII came in today.

I put in an hour.

I have four exams in the next two days.

...

Joy.

[spoiler]Incidentally, Vanille's (English) voice bugs me less than most made her out to be. Lightning is trying a bit too hard to be "GRR" and Snow's alright. Sazh is the winner so far.

Well, that and Lebreau. Who I wager will die or become insignificant by hour 3. If that long.[/spoiler]

<_< I'm going to be listening to your guys' rants, so make them good ok. I still dunno if I wanna bother and attempt to break my FF-curse with this game or if it will just deepen it.

Devil Survivor gets ridiculously easy if you fuse properly. Also, Magic > Physical for the most part; Pierce makes Physical less worthless but you can't have it on multiple people.

Edit: While I'm at it, EX Turns aren't effected by Agility really (well, unless your Agility >>> their Agility). You'll be far more focused on Magic plowing them down in one-shot or hitting a Weakness to trigger an extra turn; also, high Magic lowers the Magic damage you take (if proper fusing didn't net you nearly all resists/nulls). Tailwind pretty much negates the need to ever raise Agility too >>

As for FFXIII ... I know the main complaints and I have a giant failure-to-fucking-care at the "lolzlinearity" bullshit. I quite well agree with S-E on linearity = better story telling if only for the fact it's easier to make it cohesive when you know A precedes B which precedes C; open-end (Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 3, Mass Erect 1/2, DA:O, mustIcontinue) feels more like canned responses to a flag as opposed to part of the narrative.

But, yeah, I'll keep some updates and be relatively spoiler-free.

That said then:
[spoiler]First and foremost, the camera feels a little loose; takes like a minute to get used to but nothing major. The sheer amount of side information via the Datagram is staggering (I think I checked it out after the first section with Lightning ended and I had like 10+ entries at two pages each?).

Combat so far is easy and slow. No Paradigms yet so it's literally just an ATB version of FFXII before you have Gambits. Your partners just sort of do their thing while you wish you could tell them to STOP USING POTIONS WHEN I DON'T NEED IT. That'll change later, sure, but it made me laugh.

My best description of the (early) combat is take Persona 3 but as an ATB system and not P3s turn-based system. You/Enemies take actions as you can. From what I gather of Paradigm Shifts later, just think of it as an on-the-fly swap of P3s tactics (All-out, Debuff, Heal, etc.) with associated growth you control (i.e., FFXs Sphere Grid). When I get to that I'll cover it better but that probably won't be until Thursday night maybe.

Again, this is like an hour into the game so I've done like two sections (Lightning and Snow) and stopped at Vanille section start. I will say the game is pretty, combat looks like it'll pick up when I HAVE FUCKING OPTIONS, and the voices don't irritate me yet. So ... it's beating out XII by a fuckton.[/spoiler]

Simple question:

is the combat fun at least?

So far? it's kind-of-mashing-X. Like I said, I haven't opened up ANYTHING of the game yet.

Edit: More so with who I have now (Vanille, Hope) as they have no fucking Abilities. ATTACKx3 ohgod watch the bar.

I'd definitely wait until Paradigm Shifts to make any form of a judgment.

[spoiler]To expand, let me just type out an example:

Lightning's ATB bar is separated into two halves; each half gives one "stock." So, a full bar yields two charges.

Attack costs one and Blitz (point-blank Area of Effect Physical) costs two. You either select Auto-attack which just picks whatever is appropriate (Attack x 2 unless there's a lot of bunched up enemies where it'll pick Blitz) or go to Abilities and divvy out your stock as you see fit. But, since all I have right now is either Attack or Blitz, this is pretty much pointless.

So ... I can see where it'll get crazy when I CAN DO THINGS but right now, it's a lot of "MASH X FOR VICTORY."

Also, your other team members are automated (but can be switched on the fly via Paradigm Shifts later) so ... not much input there for them.

If nothing else, at least I'm doing something instead of moving dialogue like a lot of other recent RPG starts (Persona 3, Persona 4). For a game that tries to start you in the thick of things, you'd think you'd have a bit more to do in the starting combat besides "select attack, watch bar fill." Then again, that is typical ATB combat so whatever I guess.

Hell, Vanille and Hope have JUST ATTACK for their 3-stock ATBs. At least the other two had an ability to use (Blitz, Hand Grenade) >>

Oh yeah, Attack Chain to Stagger enemies but since all I have is attack, it's just a neat bonus when it happens.

Seriously though, one hour in. And that's with a smoke break in the middle somewhere.[/spoiler]

I was mostly just trying to point out how American reviewers pass off the Dynasty Warriors games as "more of the same shit, lol. 5/10" while in Japan, they're like "more of the same shit, ftw. wwwwwww 9/10".

Like you said with Modern Warfare 2, Japan did give it a good score, despite certain "cookie-cutter" opinions.

It just seems like over here, games that are considered "cookie-cutter" are generally given poor reviews, with a strange exception to games that are immensely popular (in America) and First/Third-Person Shooters.