HALI'S REVIEW THREAD (REQUEST YOUR GAME!)

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halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
Eric Gita's silly quest has continued, now with even more friends in tow. We recruited the good-turned-bad knight and the bad-turned-good assassin, and the guy who's full of himself. Now that we've escape prison, becoming not-ugly is our top priority!

I keep wandering up walls and over objects that shouldn't be passable, but I've loved the innovation with the puzzles and dungeons so far. I still hate Shift to run and I wish it had died sooner.
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
Took another step forward in the Chain Game. The party is no longer ugly and we have two new people in tow. I'm still climbing up every wall I can find, but this time, I managed to soft-lock the game!



If you enter this door from the side, Gita gets stuck in the cutscene afterward because she's set to move forward (but can't if she's not facing up). Thankfully, my last save was not far back.

We're partway through Shiverburn Castle now. We finally met the real Eric and scared him off like the pack of idiots we are.
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
This week...I completed the Chain Game! I'll draw a picture and write my review this weekend. It was fun and put together well enough, all things considered.
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
The Chain Game is reviewed!



A game with an identity crisis.

Onward to Touhou Fantasy!
Do let me know if you need help with anything, including the download and any bug fixes, since it's bound to be riddled with bugs I haven't found and/or fixed. ^^;
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
Well I got my feet wet in Touhou Fantasy...literally.



I'm kinda lacking some direction in this one. I visited the human village and didn't find any leads (but I did find a house full of murder fairies I can't possibly hope to fight). I looked all over the world map and discovered places that were mostly empty or that the characters said they had no reason to enter. Eventually, I tried to explore the Easy forest path even though Marisa said there was no reason to. Since the enemies there didn't one-shot me, it seemed like a good place to start.

Then I got stun locked and murdered by a pack of fuzzballs.

I'm not very familiar with Touhou and I'm basically going into this blind, but if I'm on the wrong track, a point in the correct direction would be useful. And if I am on the right track, maybe Marisa shouldn't say I'm not...
Wait...where is that? That....can't be Youkai Mountain, since you can't get there. The Human Village doesn't have that so...I don't even know where that is! ^^;

Marisa states that you should visit the Human Village BEFORE going to Misty Lake to stock up on supplies (this was stated in the opening, and I think Reimu even reconfirms both places too?). So the real goal is Misty Lake, which is north of the village.
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
The screenshot? That's from some village in the bottom left corner of the world map. It was very empty there.

Don't sweat the directions thing too much. I ran the game's intro to make sure it was working, and I didn't pick it back up for a couple days. I've been very scatterbrained lately, so sometimes this is just me being trash at life. To the lake it is!
Oh lol. I guess I never put any hitbox on the waterfall because that graphics is generally unreachable. Oops!
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
Went another round with Touhou Fantasy this week. Things went a bit more smoothly this time, but not significantly more. We found the lake like we were supposed to and made some actual progress. In the mansion, I found somebody stuck in the wall.


"Can I help you?!"

After meeting Hope, I was directed to the forest for real this time, so I went and beat the boss guarding the entrance. Then I met the boss again and got utterly destroyed repeatedly by her entourage of minions. The first fight was a total wash because I didn't know to prioritize the rabbits. I reset out of frustration when I'd killed one, the other revived it, and the boss healed it before I could even move again. >:C

Second battle, I took out the rabbits decently quick, but then the fight was still impossible because the boss healed the fuzzballs faster than I could damage them. I also couldn't keep up with the damage they were doing, and the fight truly became unwinnable when the boss decided to spam her all-hitting super move. Great.

I hate stopping to grind in RPGs, but this just doesn't seem doable without a few more levels on me, so I decided to hunt in the area for experience. Well, the forest monsters are still too much for Reimu, and some of them can drop her in just a couple hits, so I went back to the lake to grind instead.

And that's where I left off for now. Not gonna lie, this is kinda aggravating. I might not mind it so much, but the battle system is really clunky. You can't choose your actions while battle animations are playing, so it's very chaotic and I grow weary of waiting to take my actions. Similarly, the ATB just crawls most of the time, and only gets worse with more things on the battlefield. I'll keep at this, but man is it grinding my gears.
For the record, the game doesn't require grinding at all outside of maybe items and skills. Levels don't matter as much at all.

Have you been leveling up skills by any chance? Statuses do matter to some degree, if you're having difficulty, which getting them and leveling them up will help. And yeah, not much I can do about the being unable to choose actions while battle animations are playing, that's something that Cherry added into DynRPG. Similarly, can't do much about the ATB because of how Speed is determined in 2K3. T-T

EDIT - Thinking about it, the game never does say that it upgrades the shops after specific dungeons, does it?? That might be where the problem lies, hm...
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
You can level up skills individually? I'll have to explore my options.

If there's a way to beat that boss without grinding, then it might favor RNG a bit too much. Seriously, that hit-all attack was a one-hit knockout for Reimu (more than her max health) and left the others critically injured. And then she did it again for good measure. Maybe I'm missing something, but that felt awfully cheap.
Aye. It generally happens after big events (or you can take 3 dungeons maximum as the length of time to go check on skills, but it's usually good to check every once in a while). That's the rule of thumb I had when I added in new skills, anyways. But yeah...it never states WHEN to check back, but I think one of the NPCs mentions to check back every now and again for new skills? I think it's even the one IN the Item shop where the skills are (sadly, the method of leveling them up is...not the greatest. I WOULD have fixed it, but that'd require me to shift through 1500 different common events and whatnot and...yeah, you can imagine why I never did. ^^; ).

I forget if there's a way to give Reimu Dark-resistance, but there probably isn't?? Alternatively, since Speed is pretty important, you could also buy some Tengu Feathers from the accessory shop in-town. Those give +10 Speed, which doesn't SEEM like much, but...never know.

As for the hit-all attack, is that the Dark Side of the Moon? Yeah, that's her ultimate if she gets in 5 charges of Darkness Falls. You're meant to take her out BEFORE she gets all 5 charges in. She will CONSTANTLY use it when at max charge too.

EDIT - On that note, SOME boss fights in this game was updated from their original designs to their current design thanks to a few people who helped, including LockeZ (who actually helped with this particular boss). It may or may not explain some things here and there, if you know how Locke designs stuff.
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
from Xenomic
As for the hit-all attack, is that the Dark Side of the Moon? Yeah, that's her ultimate if she gets in 5 charges of Darkness Falls. You're meant to take her out BEFORE she gets all 5 charges in. She will CONSTANTLY use it when at max charge too.
I suspected that might be the case. It seemed odd she'd start spamming it out of nowhere, and the battle had dragged for a while by then. I have some Dark resistant equipment Reimu can use, but my damage output is still too low for now. I had focused on the fuzzballs after the rabbits because they were dealing all the damage (plus stun is annoying), but if she turns around and blows me up for being too slow, well...I know LockeZ likes him some tough bosses, so let's say I'm not at all surprised.
Yeah, though whether or not the Dark resistance on her will help is another story, since she's weak to Dark-elemental attacks (takes 200% damage from them). It might HELP soften it a bit, but it's still probably going to kill her. ^^; So yeah, elemental resistances are a thing for your party as well (i.e. Cirno is weak to Fire, Aya is weak to...Thunder and Magic I think? I forget if she's weak to Magic still or not...).
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
All right...I was finally able to beat her on my third try. I got through it by using Cirno's ice attack to stun-lock her while we wore down her HP. I still feel like my success depended more on RNG than anything else, but I did win.

Then I went to the hard path and took on Mystia as well. She wasn't quite as much trouble, but I think I got lucky there, too. Taking out the plants first and the floaty skull guy second made it fairly simple. I guess I'm just not used to the idea that statuses are useful and actually matter for once. I kinda wish curatives weren't so expensive because sometimes there's no other way to deal with these things.

Anyway, after I beat Mystia, I lost the ability to run from random encounters. I also found what I guess was supposed to be a cutscene at the end of the hard path, but nothing triggered and Mystia wouldn't talk to me. Then I got in another overly-difficult fight I couldn't run from, and decided to stop my session there.

It seems this game likes to play hardball. I'll try to keep up, but man has it been unforgiving.
Note: Each character, if you scroll down their menus, have the Escape command. That's how you're meant to run from fights (still a chance to escape, but it's there). Also, the scene never played on the Hard Path?? That's...odd. Did you walk between the rocks for the trigger point, or around the trigger point somehow?

And what fight might this be? Was it a random encounter?
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
Ah, you're right, they have their Escape action. I just didn't realize I wasn't on the main menu when I tried to use it previously. That's a little misleading, especially if you wan to run at the start of battle.

Anyway, I checked again and I must have slipped into that clearing some other way. The trigger by the rock works. There's just a gap somewhere nearby.

The fight was just a regular Hard Path encounter. It lives up to its name. I'm glad Escape isn't actually broken, though it seems to fail more often than not anyway. :s
Yeah, though there's no nice way to get rid of that (well...there IS, but the reason I leave it there is so that you can just use that menu as a sort of Pause button, since it stops all actions I think?? Or maybe it doesn't, I forget.

Ah. Yeah, that happens in a couple areas I've heard. I didn't realize it was THERE though. I bet it's probably the trees BELOW the rocks that you can walk underneath to bypass. Probably because I changed the tile walkability and whatnot and forgot things like that. ^^;

Ah. If it was the Parasite (which was that one floating thing in Mystia's fight), then that would make sense. Those are the Notorious Monsters of the area (if you haven't guessed by the name, it's "that one enemy" that will be the hardest enemy in the area, and generally going to murder things.

And yeah, it does fail, but for every fail, it increases the chances of escaping by +10% IIRC. I COULD be wrong, I don't know how 2k3 handles escaping by default since I never changed anything about it. There IS a character in the game who has an escape command that works 100% of the time though, so that might be something that interests you~
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
The parasites are definitely jerks, but even the plant monsters were wrecking on me. Their Bio attack is just overwhelming if you don't stop them quickly.

from Xenomic
There IS a character in the game who has an escape command that works 100% of the time though, so that might be something that interests you~
Well, that should help. Most of the time when I'm trying to run, it's because I'm limping back to the area entrance and already in bad shape.

The main battle menu does halt the ATB, so it can be used to pause the fight. To that end, maybe you could change the text it displays to make it clear. If you change 'Escape' to '*Pause*' and 'Attack' to 'Resume', it won't be as misleading.