Summer Games Challenge 2018 - begin when ready!

[pierrot]

Oh interesting. I didn't realize Monsters was part Fushigi no Dungeon.

I'm still a little incensed by being gated out of endgame in DQVI by the final boss, but I found out about a glitch with the Tiefling's Hammer and the psyche up ability that causes the hammer to auto crit. Haven't actually tested that yet, but I also ended up mastering the Dragon class with Hassan. I'm probably covered, but I ended up doing another grinding session just outside of the door to the Magician's Tower. I actually gained a few levels along the way, too. I'm close to getting Hustle Dance on a few more characters; Particularly with the Hero, Terry, and Mireille. I just knew the playboy/playgirl class was going to end up gating something borderline necessary.

So, I was not too keen on the idea of more grinding, and ended up doing something crazy to make it feel like less work: I was simultaneously playing FF Gaiden - Hikari no 4 Senshi, which I've been playing for probably close to two years at this point, and which should really be called Dragon Fantasy, or something. I've been in the latter part of that game for a while, and haven't really touched it in months, so this seemed like as good an opportunity as ever to make some progress in two games at once. It went pretty well actually; I mean, I managed to master a bunch of classes, get to level 40 on a couple characters, and get the cash I needed to fill out my equipment on Hassan, mainly, in DQVI, while also doing the revisit to past-Ghoula in the desert, in Hikari no 4 Senshi. I was fighting Asmodeus, and had come equipped with water spells on Jusqua (who I've just always used as a Black Mage) because the townspeople were telling me about Asmodeus' weakness to water. Well, after a turn of using Judgment with Brandt (which did the healthy damage I was expecting from it), and my usual Meditation setup with Jusqua, Asmodeus hit Jusqua with a single target silence spell. So, I was thinking, 'Well damn that sucks, guess I'll be using a panacea here-- oh, what's this? I can still use "madou." Let's see what it's all about-- OH MY GOD!' As the turn plays out, and Asmodeus thinks he's building an impenetrable defense with crap loads of silence and other status effects, plus reducing everyone's vim, he got a hit in the face with 1700+ damage, which is a whole ass load of damage in this game. I thought it might have been modified by Meditate, but when I went to try to reapply it the next turn, it missed the way it does when it's still applied. With a few Judgments, that 'madou' hit, and a meditated Watera, I pumped about 3000 damage into his face in three turns, and he was out like a light. I probably shouldn't be too surprised by that, since I seem to have been doing these past revisits in almost a reverse order, and that was the fourth one I had done, out of six, I believe. I think the game expects that one to be the first place people go, though. Anyway, it gave me a cool shield, that I boosted up to max stats already.

What's kind of weird is that I have not particularly enjoyed 4 Warriors of Light at any point of the game, but I did kind of enjoyed it while I was playing it at, literally, the same time as DQ VI. It also helps tremendously when things are actually going right in that game, and I was also collecting tons of Emeralds for once. I might try this approach again while I have a bit of grinding left in DQ VI, though.

[pierrot]

I'm doing more double posting recently than I can remember doing at any point in my life, and it feels icky--.


I finished Dragon Quest VI for the Super Famicom the other day. I went a bit overboard, but Hustle Dance was definitely what I needed for the fight. The extra levels I ended up with probably helped a bit too. I was still having to res Mireille, and Chamoro constantly, though. After the credits, I went and picked up the Liquid Metal Enlightenment, and trained it up a bit to five of eight stars, in order to open up the bonus dungeon. I went through everything in the bonus dungeon, and tried out the extra boss, but as anticipated, he's impossible. I'm not really going to bother with anything in DQ VI at this point, I don't think. I didn't end up doing anything in the Slime Colosseum, or getting much for coins in the casino (about 60,000, with the Metal King Armor costing 150,000 coins each). I didn't really do much monster recruiting, either. I recruited a Furret early on, when I gained access to classes, but it just sat in the carriage most of the time, anyway. I got 100 mini-meddles, and finished the best dresser contests, though.

So, I realized that people who played the DS version were potentially looking at me cross eyed when I was complaining at times about enemies, and bosses, because I found out there's a whole laundry list of changes from the SFC version, beyond just the graphical changes. I've included the changes in a list under the spoiler tag (there are some potential story spoilers). Some of them are fairly minor changes, but there are a number of game balance changes.

I got these from this website: http://dq-gh.com/dq6/sfc-ds.html

1. There are a few name changes between locations; In particular, the second town (originally Shaina, which is also the name of the Queen of Laydock). The spell for checking what floor you're on was changed to work inside of wells and things, too.
2. The party chat dialogue was added, obviously.
3. The typical DS passerby swap dealy was added.
4. I don't really know how I would translate it, but the beastmaster class' name and function was changed a bit. Basically they removed the DQ V mechanic of possibly having a monster join your group when you have a beastmaster in the active party, and replaced it with a bunch of recruitable slimes in towns.
5. Added Slime Curling (I'm not sure if it's actually curling, or not. I don't know what that mini game is about).
6. Changed items on the ground to give off a sparkle without having to use the Thief spell.
7. There were actually some book shelves that had books of interest in the DS version. In general, the ones in the SFC version just say there's nothing of interest, or that they look like difficult books.
8. A lot of item management courtesies that were introduced with the SFC remake of DQ III were used in the DS version: Things like being given the option to immediately equip something taken out of the bag, or passed between characters, and being able to use items directly from the bag.
9. When buying things in the DS version, they added the option to have a character's inventory cleaned up if they can't carry the purchased item.
10. Added the ability to assign tactics per character, instead of on a party-wide basis.
11. Mini-medals were changed in the DS version to not take up inventory space like a typical item.
12. Basically everything other than the Metals were changed to give out about 20% more exp and gold. (Would have been nice--.)
13. DS version changed it so you couldn't cast healing spells on characters when it wouldn't have an effect, thereby not wasting MP.
14. I guess some characters are a bit more kind in their scripts, like the soldier in the Tower of Trials who gives the gold ring was given more text to tell the player that the ring is not what Captain Soldi is requesting.
15. They got rid of the "remember" and "forget" family of spells for the hero.
16. When meeting Barbara for the first time, the DS version added a text option to use the Dreamer's Drop on her right away (apparently, I could have just used the item at any time, but I had no inkling to do that).
17. DS version gives access to the maps immediately, without the need to buy or find them like in the SFC version.
18. Rula was given an "other world" location in the DS version. (Oh man, would this have been nice.)
19. DS version added the ability to return from Mudo's island without having to use Rula, or a Chimaera Wing.
20. I guess the DS version added a scene upon walking into the room with Hassan's body in it, inside Mudo's Castle, instead of making you walk up to it, like in the SFC version. (Seems like kind of a useless change to me.)
21. A bunch of things were changed with abilities in the DS version, like Reckless being given an aspect of always going first, like Gale Slice (holy crap!), and Madante damage being reduced from 3x MP consumed to 2x.
22. Tiptoe was made to increase the occurrences of surprise attacks in the DS version. Supposedly it does exactly the opposite in the SFC version.
23. Some armor was changed a bit, like the Holy Armor only restoring 30 hp per turn in the DS version (instead of 50--if it had been 30 in the SFC version, I would have been boned), and the Sands of Time being changed from a one-use item to an unlimited use item.
24. Sage's Stone was changed in the DS version to affect characters in the carriage during battle as well.
25. Man-eating Boxes and Mimics were made to always drop certain skill seeds in the DS version.
26. Rob doesn't have a ridiculous range of vision when following him in the DS version. (He can see everything 180 degrees in front of him in the SFC version, no matter the distance. It's crazy.)
27. The curse "jingle" was added into the DS version, but the cursed armor can still just be unequipped at any time in both versions.
28. The statue in the Mysterious Cave was changed in the DS version.
29. The construction of the best dresser stage, and adjacent rooms were changed a bit.
30. In the DS version, they fixed it so that all the items on a character, that aren't equipped, aren't just put into the bag during a number of events, and things like the best dresser contest. (I can't even begin to describe how annoying this was to deal with.)
31. I guess the DS version censored the snow village's custom of giving little kids liquor. They changed it to a "special herb tea," instead. (Ri~ght. )
32. I don't really remember what happened here to really describe this one, but apparently the hero runs off into a different direction when meeting him in the lower world's Lifecot. Beats me.
33. I guess in the DS version, you can go to the Hellcloud Castle without the Hero.
34. Terry joins at level 28 in the DS version, instead of 23. He's also made a master Martialist, instead of just a master Warrior, and Battle Master.
35. In the DS version of the Prison City, you can actually close the cells if you open them, unlike the SFC version.
36. DS version changed it so that you don't have to actually use the Old Smoking Pipe, or Orb of Truth from inventory to progress. (That's kind. I was annoyed about that with the pipe.)
37. The room in Mua Castle with the layout that can only be seen during lightning strikes was changed to light up for longer, with shorter intervals, in the DS version. (This was also ridiculous. I timed it on my way through the second time: It takes 10 to 15 seconds between lightning strikes, and lights the walls up for under a second. I got so fed up the first time that I just checked a map. I found the treasure chests all right, but getting to the door might have taken me an hour. Just stupid.)
38. I guess there's a recruitable slime added to Laydock Castle during the ending.
39. DS version removes the need to fully light all the chalices in the Temple of Dharma, by getting five stars in each class, to open the bonus dungeon, and instead gives the player a gospel ring as a reward for doing so.
40. The DS version adds some cosmetic alteration options to Deathcot, I guess to hammer home that DQ is supposed to be a prequel to DQ IV and V. I still kind of think it's more like a prequel to III, personally.
41. The bonus boss was given a new enemy sprite in battle, instead of just being a recoloring of one of the regular enemies.

This actually didn't mention the changes to the Casino, which I found out early are numerous. They basically completely overhauled the casino, because the one in the SFC version is a total nightmare. It's basically impossible to get anything until the last casino, without supreme willpower, and dedication. Even in the last casino, it's still just hours of grinding, and praying (both in the game, and out).

Anyway, I'm glad to have another Dragon Quest under my belt. It was a pretty nice looking game, even if it didn't have the insane level of detail in the enemy animations like the remake of III. I enjoyed it overall, but it's probably one that I wouldn't really recommend, as with DQ II.


So, I also happened to be dumping on Streets of Rage earlier, in the "How's your Genesis gaming going" thread. (Not really, though. I was more outwardly ruminating on some of my lack of fondness for it.) I ended up popping it in after that, and had some kind of out of body experience, or something, because I ended up beating it with Adam, on normal difficulty. The big thing was that I somehow managed to get into the fight with the twins, at the end of the hallway in Round 8 on the first credit, but they saw to it that I made it no further on that credit. I managed to scrape by without losing too many lives to them, and ended up having to use another continue to finish Mr X, but I was assuming, once I got into that last room, that I'd be down to my last life on the third continue if I were to beat him at all, just because I'd never seen him before in my life (shocking, I know), and I seem to have this thing where I end up barely beating games on the last life of the last continue. I suppose he was similar enough to his Streets of Rage 2 incarnation that I was relatively prepared to not completely blow it, whether I actually knew it or not.

Anyway, I totally understand why Adam was kidnapped. That dude is a raw beast, and messes thugs up! I almost always prefer speed in practically any game, but this was one where power really saved the day. I still think those fat boys are some of the most stupidly overpowered enemies I've ever seen, along with those twins, but that's in the past now. SoR was tough, but it is quite a good game. I enjoy the style, and I really liked how you can see the sun rising in the windows as you travel along the hallway in the last stage. It feels almost poetic. It's not my favorite game, and I have some serious issues with some of the priority, and AI patterns certain enemies have, but it's definitely another stellar verse in The Ballad of The Genesis.


1. Garou: Mark of the Wolves
2. Sega Rally
3. Killer 7
4. Metroid Prime
5. Super Monkey Ball
6. Streets of Rage
7. Zelda II
8. Uncharted 1
9. Virtua Racing
10. Dragon Quest VI

Reserve:
- Final Fantasy VI


I'm sort of eyeballing Metroid Prime or Uncharted next, but is there any sense of one of those two being shorter than the other? I'm probably going to restart my old file of Metroid Prime, just to give it a fair shake, since I made it pretty far, and wouldn't have a whole lot left to play of it, I don't think. I'm not really much of a Metroid fan, in general, but I still feel like it would be a little unfair to Prime to play the end of it, when I barely remember anything about the bulk of it.

[alienjesus]

I’m currently on holiday so haven’t been posting or commenting much ch. but here, have a post so your next entry on this thread isn’t another double post!

When I get back and I’m not typing on my phone, I have a lot of fire emblem updates to make

[pierrot]

Thanks, AJ! I appreciate it.


I started up Uncharted last night, and wow, those textures. --hot. The characters looks kind of like they've applied their skin by jumping into latex body suits. Anyway, I feel like I'm reminded a bit why I don't really play games in this generation anymore: Screen tearing. It's possibly the most upsetting visual artifact to me, now. I actually tend to kind of enjoy 6th gen 3D graphics, but 7th gen, while considerably more detailed, just has a far more fake feeling, even though the developers are usually trying so hard for realism. It just feels like it really misses any Goldilocks zone for me, in terms of distance from realistic visuals that I don't find at least mildly revolting. Then on top of that, the screen is tearing all the time, and I just start feeling a little nauseous.

I actually didn't make it very far at all, though. A few years ago, when I picked up Uncharted 2, I had a hard time stopping after an hour or so. I didn't really want to play it before the first, but it flowed so well, with the intriguing cutscenes, and stealthy scaling, and climbing. The first one feels, "dated," I guess. It starts with the gunplay that I kind of hate already, and then I just got stuck, because I have no idea how it wants me to drop the fallen statue onto the hollow ground below it. I see no way to get over there. There was a stone that broke off one of the pillars I was standing on, but it's locked in place against a wall that goes to nothing, and I can't seem to push it anywhere, or pick it up. I got so frustrated by this tiny, visually (overly) busy area, that I just started firing off the handgun into semi-random directions. (Maybe I should have shot Sully--. Maybe then he might have been useful.)

Yeah, not off to a great start with Uncharted. Might circle back to it, or something.

[Xeogred]

Screen tearing should really be a rarity honestly, out of all the current gen stuff I've played it's only been an issue with a select few games over the years for me. I can't even remember which ones.

That said... I can't defend Uncharted anyways haha, especially the first one. The combat is so bad... and just wait until those jet ski levels. I didn't get too far overall, kind of shocked this birthed one of Sony's current biggest IP's... the first game is a hot mess.

[pierrot]

Screen tearing should really be a rarity honestly, out of all the current gen stuff I've played it's only been an issue with a select few games over the years for me. I can't even remember which ones.

Oh, my bad. I forgot they rereleased the first three on the PS4. I don't have any of the current consoles. I'm playing it on PS3. Feels like screen tearing is a frequent part of a bunch of stuff on the platform.

That said... I can't defend Uncharted anyways haha, especially the first one. The combat is so bad... and just wait until those jet ski levels. I didn't get too far overall, kind of shocked this birthed one of Sony's current biggest IP's... the first game is a hot mess.

This doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the game, for me, yo--.

[alienjesus]

So, its been a while since I updated as I've been on holiday.

But whilst I was away, I've made a lot of progress on Fire Emblem: Fuuin No Tsurugi. I picked up on Chapter 8X, and played through 18 chapters, meaning I'm now on chapter 21x.

The mid game around chapter 11-14 was much harder than the levels prior but also much harder than the levels since - it's basically where everything comes to a head - They are levels with multiple objectives on a strict time limit (chapter 11 features 8 villages that need visited before brigands destroy them, 2 recruitable enemies - the second of whom is recruited by the first, at opposite ends of the map 2 turns apart, 8 rescuable NPCs you're rewarded for saving, a recruitable NPC who appears surrounded by enemies who immediately attack you in the middle of the map at the same time as she's needing to be recruited by your dancer who needs to be near but arrives in the level at level 1 and can't defend herself. To boot, this is about when enemy units start getting more than just iron and steel weapons and start bringing the scary stuff like killer weapons along, and is before you've had many promotion items to power your team up.

However, whilst it's a lot to handle, it's far from impossible, and I feel the difficulty of this game has been overstated to me previously. Aside from chapter 11 and 14 most of the levels haven't been all that bad, and once my team promoted it's been fairly reasonable overall. I'm having a good time with it, and with only 4 levels left to play, I shouldn't take too long to polish it off.



I have also started Mother 3 a little bit, although I won't really double down on it until FE6 is finished. I played the intro bit and now I'm playing as Flint and Alex searching for the runaway Claus. I met some magypsies.



Finally, I started up Conker's Bad Fur Day this evening too as it fits in with this months Together Retro theme too. I posted more about that in the TR thread though!

[Key-Glyph]

Never feel bad about double-posting in here, guys! I'm enjoying reading it all, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm especially happy for activity in the thread because my own challenge progress has gotten derailed by the new No Man's Sky update. So, keep it up! You know. Please.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to be able to pick up my challenge momentum, but here's hoping.

[poisonknight]

Woah this concept is super coool! How do I start, I still don't get it. Maybe any of you guys wanna lead me? It looks super fun thou! Hopefully there are more challenges like this in the future maybe like for a particular genre or what !

[Key-Glyph]

I've made progress towards playing The Last Express! Or, rather, made progress toward understanding what progress isn't going to work and should thus be abandoned. To sum up, I installed a program in my Win95 virtual machine that allows me to increase the screen resolution, which is awesome -- but after installing it, Last Express would freeze on launch. So, that's being dropped. The whole experiment was moot anyway, because the game won't launch in a bigger resolution itself regardless of how I've tweaked Win95. I have to play it tiny no matter what! I'm going to give it a go and hope that I still have enough window area to register my clicks properly.

Woah this concept is super coool! How do I start, I still don't get it. Maybe any of you guys wanna lead me? It looks super fun thou! Hopefully there are more challenges like this in the future maybe like for a particular genre or what !

Hey poisonknight!

To answer your questions, this Summer Games Challenge is something we do just during the summer. The idea is to pick some "classic" games you've never beaten and try to finish as many of them as you can before the fall. Folks typically pick between 5 to 10 games, and as tradition dictates, former moderator dsheinem comes in to symbolically bless or blight the legitimacy of your game selections' statuses as "classics." Then we get down to playing and talking about them!

What I love about the Summer Games Challenge is that its focus on well-known titles basically guarantees that your list will be filled with things that at least some other participants have played. Because of this, conversation is ongoing and varied, because everyone has an experience or opinion to share!

As far as other challenges go, you should definitely check out the Together Retro subforum if you haven't already. Over there they pick a new theme every month, and everyone picks their own games to play that fit the bill. Sounds like something you'd really enjoy.