Edward_R_Murrow
Arcane
Wasting time on a lot of different things over the past few weeks.
-Speedrunning Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. My first few runs were pretty bad, at 4 and 3 hours respectively. I thought Strider->Assassin was the correct routing and didn't realize just how robust the game is against sequence-breaking.
Checked out some SDA strats (there aren't many people running the game), and found that the credited vocation selection is to go Mage->Ranger.
The Mage vocation helps you to get past the escort section much faster, as you can keep the ox topped off with regards to health. Not only does this allow you to continuously kick the ox, causing it to run, but higher health means that the ox runs faster and further with each kick.
The change to Ranger is made before undertaking the two Wyrm Hunt quests (Dragonforged and the Catacombs) and after the Catacombs, you essentially do nothing but spam Sixfold Blast Arrows with stacked periapts. Even though you are unlikely to go beyond level 38 in the run, your character still has tremendous damage potential. The Maker's Finger takes care of Grigori and then it's off to the Everfall for a particularly vexing RNG-fest.
I'm not entirely certain what is the optimal route in there. Obviously the chambers with quick access to "boss" enemies are a good bet, because they can be quickly blasted for high Wakestone drop rates. And any chamber with Hell Hounds should likely be avoided, because they can easily kill a naked, under-leveled character and their grab attack causes serious frame hemorrhaging. But aside from that, I'm not certain. There's a lot of room for optimization here.
Have had a couple of runs around 1 hour and 55 minutes, which is decent, but far from the world record of 1 hour and 20 minutes; I make a lot of mistakes, especially with regards to menuing or timing my route around NPC schedules. I even take a death or two in most runs (usually to Snow Harpies when I try to pick up the Signs of Valor or getting trampled to death by the ox).
Perhaps I will, with practice, gitgud. Or maybe I'll stumble upon some goofy glitches that will speed up the run.
-Playing some Devil May Cry 4. Gotta gitgud in time for the special edition. I can still reliably S-Rank missions on DMD and go deep into the Bloody Palace, but my gameplay with Dante is still a bit stiff and kind of boring to watch.
-Screwing around with emulation. I'm playing a lot of different titles, so I'll just list a few that stand out.
*Secret of Mana: I suppose you had to "be there" to enjoy this game.
While it's quite nice looking and has a few interesting innovations, I was struggling to have any fun with the game 4-5 hours in. It simply isn't that well designed. It's, ostensibly, an action-RPG that does everything in it's power to discourage action. There's a universal cooldown between actions, the character's movements are stiff/clunky, hitboxes are strange (not bad, merely visually unintuitive), spells (both player and enemy) have no aiming/twitch component, and dodging/blocking is handed by random chance.
It all adds up to be a clunky mess, that's topped with uncommon annoyances like party members getting "stuck", forcing a reset if you don't have an additional controller (score one for emulators!), and infinite stunlocks aplenty.
I don't really like using the terms "outdated" or "aged poorly" with regards to games, but I'm unable to understand the gushing praise heaped upon this game. Do things change up significantly once you start acquiring multiple elements and explore new maps?
*Paper Mario: Guilty pleasure, but I really enjoy the way this RPG-lite is designed. Plenty easy for newbies to grind through, yet offers a compelling experience for more skilled players who will fight as few encounters as possible, dodging them via twitch skills or platforming, and make good use of special abilities to defeat bosses while being seriously under-leveled. Danger Mario is Best Mario
*Banjo Tooie: Some chan greentext seems appropriate here
>get to factory level
>spend 40 minutes just exploring and opening up the level
>have zero jiggies out of ten
>tfw a decade-old kid's game has more complex level design than most games nowadays
-Speedrunning Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. My first few runs were pretty bad, at 4 and 3 hours respectively. I thought Strider->Assassin was the correct routing and didn't realize just how robust the game is against sequence-breaking.
Checked out some SDA strats (there aren't many people running the game), and found that the credited vocation selection is to go Mage->Ranger.
The Mage vocation helps you to get past the escort section much faster, as you can keep the ox topped off with regards to health. Not only does this allow you to continuously kick the ox, causing it to run, but higher health means that the ox runs faster and further with each kick.
The change to Ranger is made before undertaking the two Wyrm Hunt quests (Dragonforged and the Catacombs) and after the Catacombs, you essentially do nothing but spam Sixfold Blast Arrows with stacked periapts. Even though you are unlikely to go beyond level 38 in the run, your character still has tremendous damage potential. The Maker's Finger takes care of Grigori and then it's off to the Everfall for a particularly vexing RNG-fest.
I'm not entirely certain what is the optimal route in there. Obviously the chambers with quick access to "boss" enemies are a good bet, because they can be quickly blasted for high Wakestone drop rates. And any chamber with Hell Hounds should likely be avoided, because they can easily kill a naked, under-leveled character and their grab attack causes serious frame hemorrhaging. But aside from that, I'm not certain. There's a lot of room for optimization here.
Have had a couple of runs around 1 hour and 55 minutes, which is decent, but far from the world record of 1 hour and 20 minutes; I make a lot of mistakes, especially with regards to menuing or timing my route around NPC schedules. I even take a death or two in most runs (usually to Snow Harpies when I try to pick up the Signs of Valor or getting trampled to death by the ox).
Perhaps I will, with practice, gitgud. Or maybe I'll stumble upon some goofy glitches that will speed up the run.
-Playing some Devil May Cry 4. Gotta gitgud in time for the special edition. I can still reliably S-Rank missions on DMD and go deep into the Bloody Palace, but my gameplay with Dante is still a bit stiff and kind of boring to watch.
-Screwing around with emulation. I'm playing a lot of different titles, so I'll just list a few that stand out.
*Secret of Mana: I suppose you had to "be there" to enjoy this game.
While it's quite nice looking and has a few interesting innovations, I was struggling to have any fun with the game 4-5 hours in. It simply isn't that well designed. It's, ostensibly, an action-RPG that does everything in it's power to discourage action. There's a universal cooldown between actions, the character's movements are stiff/clunky, hitboxes are strange (not bad, merely visually unintuitive), spells (both player and enemy) have no aiming/twitch component, and dodging/blocking is handed by random chance.
It all adds up to be a clunky mess, that's topped with uncommon annoyances like party members getting "stuck", forcing a reset if you don't have an additional controller (score one for emulators!), and infinite stunlocks aplenty.
I don't really like using the terms "outdated" or "aged poorly" with regards to games, but I'm unable to understand the gushing praise heaped upon this game. Do things change up significantly once you start acquiring multiple elements and explore new maps?
*Paper Mario: Guilty pleasure, but I really enjoy the way this RPG-lite is designed. Plenty easy for newbies to grind through, yet offers a compelling experience for more skilled players who will fight as few encounters as possible, dodging them via twitch skills or platforming, and make good use of special abilities to defeat bosses while being seriously under-leveled. Danger Mario is Best Mario
*Banjo Tooie: Some chan greentext seems appropriate here
>get to factory level
>spend 40 minutes just exploring and opening up the level
>have zero jiggies out of ten
>tfw a decade-old kid's game has more complex level design than most games nowadays
