okay impressions so far
- blablabla why i'm in this town and not punching mamul's in the face?
- finaly found the event flag! off to the forest,those mamul will not punch themself! (i mean it's not like they have any hands to begin with...)
- the level up gingle is always awesome
- first dungeon is really easy,and it's full of tutoliarish message
- first boss goes down without much trouble,just a few healing herbs (which the first dungeon gave profusely) used
- second dungeon is still a yet tutorialish dungeon
- game goes like "we have 4 villain,go and beat them!"
- third dungeon is still somewhat easy
- second boss is more interessing
spoiler (click to show/hide)
he burrows himself in the ground and you have to escape him until he resurfaces,if he catches you while he's burrowed,he springs and sends you flying
- third boss is pretty boring,doesn't do much besides shooting you,some healing staves and he's down
- i go to the fifth dungeon wondering when i will finaly get killed,the game spawns me in a room with 3 monster,i bash 2 of them but they escape,i scratch my head only to realize that these guy heals when they touch water,then get sammiched between two of them and die,good one shiren! it was time
- well alas in my second attempt i get more lucky and make a smarter use of items (remember kids using your stuff is how you play shiren) and proceed to finish it
- fourth boss lacks any sort of gimmick too,i had only a revival herb but it's enough to kill him before he kills me
- so it's off to the last of the four villains and sixth dungeon,the monster are starting to hit pretty hard but maybe it's because my level is quite high,maybe it's because i'm well equipped,the game still doesn't feel much hard,the game is starting to pull off tanks (a dangerous monster that always deals 20 damage each hit,consider that shiren has around 60 hp)
- fifth boss again almost kills me
spoiler (click to show/hide)
he gets to pull off a skills that blows me away and drops my weapon but by the time he reaches me,i've already re-equipped everything
- of course there are spoilerish development
- there is a sixth boss
spoiler (click to show/hide)
actualy two bosses,if you get caught between them they'll do a team attack where they crush you,very cool! shiren escapes in one direction and his companion escape in the other and the two bosses eventualy get distracted while trying to focus on different character
- also two very boring short dungeon
- and it's off to the seventh (ninth?) dungeon
- monsters are starting to hit really hard,i ends up in a monster house (it's a room full of monsters,it's the way of the game to say "fuck you!") i want to retreat but one of the monster blocked the passage by teleporting behind shiren,i'm forced to retreat using an escape scroll
- other consideration
- i played more or less for 3 hours
- so far it's been easy which disappoints me a little but i'm hoping for the best,i know this happened only because this was the only way to get at least a 7 with the likes of ign and similiar :(
- shiren can dual wield which gives him two attack in a row,why you would give up an extra attack just so you can soak some extra damage is beyond me
- having companions is really helpfull and make things easier
- keeping your level also makes things easier
- there have been tons of new monsters but so far with the exception of the fish of the fifth dungeon,they all either act like older shiren monster or simply don't do anything interessing (there is a bee which take a step back everytime it attacks)
so what was the last update... ah yes
- seventh dungeon goes off in one try
- seventh boss
spoiler (click to show/hide)
actualy an entire army of seven samurai,i pull off an attack which weakens all of them then proceed to pick them off singulary,none of them has a lot of hp so they fall pretty quickly but before i can kill them all they gangbang on shiren and he dies,luckily he resurrects thank to a resurrect herb and he proceeds to mop the rest away
- ninth dungeon features some familiar faces like death reapers (act twice,hits fairy hard) gazes (they can hypnotize you forcing you to waste a turn,not as bad as they were in the original since you have a partner) and mecharoids (goes around planting traps) i finish it off but...
- i get my ass handed by the eigth boss
spoiler (click to show/hide)
basicaly you fight two invincible character and a bunch of henchmans,your job is to push some button but well i tought you could defeat the bosses so i went in with the idea to actual fight,it didn't end well
- actualy i discover that being without weapons sucks pretty hard,while in the original you could afford to traverse the first floors just by punching stuff,here having a weapon makes a huge difference
- i spent a while replaying older dungeons,trying to get some stuff back
- i end up dying a lot while trying to recover,i end up wasting a lot of time :-\
- in the end i get some nice weapons and some nice shield,with my new equipment i finaly defeat the eight boss
- there is some story exposition
- and then the tenth dungeon,which is again pretty short and features a small gimmick
spoiler (click to show/hide)
you have to find certain items or you can't proceed
spoiler (click to show/hide)
a huge jar which spits enemy out,sadly it dies before his pals could do anything
- tenth boss almost scares me off when he confuses me but i'm choke full of healing items and a good chunk of them also heal confusion so he ends up dead quickly
- total playtime is around 8 hours but if i didn't have to rebuild my equipment when i failed the ninth boss i guess i would have taken around 7 (maybe even 6) to reach where i am at the moment
- i forgot to say in my last post... so far no dungeon has gone deeper than 10 floor with some (the one i call shorts) being only 3 floor!
what bit about it?
currently my problem are
1) feels too easy,the monster do hit hard and it's not like i haven't been in danger but it lacks that "you could be screwed anytime like right now!" feeling that the older shiren had,and man controlling two characters make a world of difference,you pull off twice the attack and if one of your character is hurt you can switch to the other and distract the monster around while the other is resting.
I still can tally only two death that happened while i was equipped and fully geared (seriously you really need some weapons or you barely do any damage,also healing herbs never hurts) still in the last dungeon there was a big mine trap,you step on one of those and *BAM* you are instantly reduced to 1 hp! so again as i was saying i'm giving the game time to pull off his better stuff,it's not like i'm not enjoying the game even this way
2) shorter dungeon mean less "can't afford to die" moments,sure getting your gear back is a pain but it's not terrible,if you have saved money you can even buy back most of the item you need
3) tons of new monsters but a lot of them are just vanilla and only a few of thems seems to be pulling off new tricks,some that caught my interess spoiler (click to show/hide)
this box that basicaly takes your ability to read scrolls away and then hides in the dungeon,if you find him again and kill it you regain the ability to read scrolls,another is a fish that escapes to the nearest body of water when hurt badly,if he touches water he gets back to full health,the last dungeon also had a daruma who could possess your character and apparently a possesed character is treated as an enemy by the AI but it seems quite a dumb status effect since you can just take the control away from the AI and solve the problem like that
for the rest it's the same game i love,if it makes for any sort of comparison (tough i guess not) i like it more than torneko the last journey but not as much as the original
beating the last boss was the biggest pain in the ass ever,i made several run to the dungeon before so i could level up a bit and while there also snatch some really needed healing items (bosses are immune to all your tricks so it becomes a matter to overpower them) this boss in particular
spoiler (click to show/hide)
has the ability to swallow one of your character,if you kill it while one of character is still inside,your other character dies and it's game over so i couldn't attack him for several round for fear of killing it,it also summoned annoying vines who would bash you for around 10 damage
i'm also starting to understand how the new dragon orb system works,basicaly you put an equipment inside the orb,cast a spell (which you have to find which is what makes these things unabusable) and then you just wait for the thing to cook over,when you break it your weapon will gain several +1,a blessing or new powers
so i restarted the game on easy and after 5 hours i was back to where i was with my normal save (for comparison my normal save clocked 17:30 hours,it also had character who were 8 level higher!) i think i made the right choice because bosses are getting more ridiculous (the last one had double attack AND minions) and it would be impossible to defeat without a proper equipment something that would NEVER happen on normal,uh anyway
spoiler (click to show/hide)
i now control 3 characters,this mean more damage but if one of them dies it's game over for everybody,also the first page of my inventory is all spent in equipment
i finished the game with the game clock around 10 hours and my character around the level 45 mark,final dungeon was around 10 floor,you would think that after throwing around the big hitters like the dragon and the tank on the dungeon's before they would do the same on the final one but nope,still it features tons of rank 3 hard hitting monster so it's no cakewalk either,anyway i said once and i'll say it again,the game is unplayable on normal,the beatiful of the original shiren was that you could outskill the game,use your staves and scroll to dodge monster,knowing how different kind of monster could screw you over... here you still have a vast arsenal of trick but ultimately you are forced to confront bosses and they are immune to all those stuff so you can't do anything else besides punching them to death,the only way to punch them to death? by having a good sword and a good shield (or two good swords) problem is those give you a pretty big advantage over normal monster too so while it's not like the monster are pushover ultimately you end up killing everything without ever feeling in danger once (the fact that even the final dungeon is only 10 floor longs also help killing off any sense of danger) what if you don't have any good equipment? well you are fucked,simple and straight because everything will take barely any damage while you punch them with your bare hands and that's what's going to happen if you are going to play normal, because you will die...
anyway completing the game has unlocked the post dungeon stuff so far i have
spoiler (click to show/hide)
- a special dungeon where you start at level 1 that features rank 3 monster,the idea is to never get attacked by anything,most item here are found within the idea of letting you evade monster
- another special dungeon where you start at level 1 but you can bring item from outside... i'm not sure what make this one special
- the bufu dungeon,this is a special dungeon found in every shiren game where you are equipped with a special weapon called the bufu cleaver,if you defeat a enemy with the bufu cleaver there is a chance that enemy is going to drop a piece of meat,if you eat that piece of meat you'll turn into that monster and gain his special ability so for example if you turn into the mushroom enemy,you can scatter spore which cause negative status effect,and if you turn into a evil soldier,when you die,you'll turn into a ghost who can possess other monster
- there is also a tournament,this annoy me so much,i finaly tought i was free from fighting boss and such and what they do? they throw me a boss rush of sort! >:( the first boss is a rehash of an older boss fight with higher stat (>:( >:() i haven't defeated him because man he hits hard!
- last i forgot to mention in the game,whenever you want you can access a special dungeon called the portal where you start at level 1 with no item but you get to keep what you find if you are able to escape to safety,the further you go with the game,the bigger the portal become,having finished the game the portal is now 99 floor
spoiler (click to show/hide)
as i said the first fight was a rehash of an older boss fight which disappointed me,but after that you get to fight ninja's,insults like "you guys fly on a ship,you are just a bunch of pirates" and "we'll kill you so hard your ancestor will cry" fly around,they blind you,teleport around and there are around 5 of them but they fall pretty quickly,after that you fight their leader but it's pretty much the same fight only instead of 5 weak ninja there is just a decently strong one,then you fight a masked super mamel (mamel are the shiren equivalent of the classic dragon quest slime) called "mobile mamel zz" the guy can put you to sleep (the worst status effect in shiren since you can't do anything at all while sleeping) by telling you lame jokes (i heard there is a teahouse on the moon but i don't like the place,there is no atmosphere) and can shot laser for 50 damage (quite a big number when you think shiren has only around 200 hp) he falls eventualy and it's revealed that he's a rabbit from the moon,weird! after that you get to have one final fight against MASTER X who is clearly one of your party member but only with a mask (he also declare that having a mask show how strong he is) but here is where it gets weird,after you defeat him it is revealed that the tournament was a ruse,you see at a certain point in the plot you go to the yomi,the japanese equivalent of hell,apparently taking this trip has free all the baddies from the previous shiren games and they have banded together to kill you,as such you have one pretty badass showdown where you fight the tainted insect (the original shiren final boss) kuras (shiren GB 2 final boss) and another guy i don't known (tough i can only assume he's the final boss of shiren 2 for n64) all at once! i'm really surprised they saved such a fight for the optional stuff because it's definitely good stuff,the boss i don't known is pretty weird,he controls 4 hand and spins itself (you see he has 4 faces) depending what face is showing the hand gets a different color (and i guess different skills) he also teleports around and shots laser! kuras gets to hit really hard and can also heal for 100 damage (with my current sword i deal around 50 damage per attack...) i wasn't even able to touch the tainted insect tough if it's like the original there is nothing special about him other than that he hits really hard
i think i need a training montage right now
therefore he's dumb and shiren sucks
buy pokemon
:( :( :( :(
uh anyway... i brought a weapon up to awesome level and proceeded to complete the tournament sidequest,apparently after the first tournament there is a SECOND tournament,i wonder what happens when you finish the second one,also two other dungeons got unlocked
spoiler (click to show/hide)
one features only floor with dragon orbs,the new system that let you power up your stuff making this the ideal spot for cooking awesome piece of equipment,the other is a 999 floor dungeon which you can bet that if i am ever going to explore it's going to be the last thing i do
to my surprise the game is employing new family of monsters which make me wonder "if you had more kind of monster there why you didn't use them in the main story instead of saving them for the post story stuff?" these include firepuff's (cute mini dragon who can do fixed damage by breathing fire) and moles (a new monster to the series that dodge everytime you throw something at him)
so after yet another failed try to the void of the strong dungeon (tough this time i was smarter and decided to retreat... i entered i was level 55,i went out at level 67) i decided to try the bufu dungeon,to my surprise the bufu dungeon this time is deeper than other shiren game,you see the bufu dungeon is one of the special dungeon that appear in every shiren game,in case you don't know
spoiler (click to show/hide)
in the bufu dungeon,you get a special weapon that turns monster into meats,if you eat a meat of a monster,you'll gain his special skill (or special skills related to him) so i ended up in a monster house (a place full of baddies) and since i was pretty sure that i was going to get killed,i decided to turn into an evil soldier,evil soldier are special in the fact that when they die,they get resurrected as a ghost and then the ghost can possess other monster,in the case of a ghost monster the monster that get possesed just get stronger but in your case you take control of the monster you decide to possess,anyway as i predicted i get killed but the room is full of other evil soldiers and ehy i can take control of them! basicaly i get killed 3-4 times in a row while i keep jumping from one evil soldier to the other,then i finaly find a hole between all the monster,you see one of the monster that was chasing me has the ability to move 2 times in a turn and can also hide in the walls,i take possess of that monster and then quickly escape inside a wall,after that i kill everybody inside (as you can't get attacked while inside a wall) and then proceed to re-emerge two level higher before the whole ordeal!