MALADROITHIM'S PROFILE

EDIT!!

I wrote about the following game at www.brandonabley.com after being inspired to by the following forum post. Please check it out!

POST:

I appreciate Roguelikes, but I only enjoy graphical "light" roguelikes. The serious, hardcore stuff is intimidating and I don't think they are very fun!

My favorite is Lost Labyrinth, a German-developed homebrew game that is fairly popular. I was ranked #300 or something on their online leaderboards at one time! It's constantly under revision and nobody knows when it will be finished. Most of the graphics are taken from RPG Maker 95.

One of the major themes is that you will always be trying to conserve light and food -- if you don't create a character that has a reliable way of generating light (is able to move great distances before torches burn out or can generate magical light) or food (can conjure food or butcher animals), you'll be in a lot of trouble. Generally, you will get through a game of Lost Laby in under a half hour, and you can Ascend within a few hours of starting. You probably will not though.

It's my favorite Roguelike because it has decent homebrew-quality graphics, snappy controls (works great with a joypad), and is fairly forgiving once you've figured the game out. It's pretty fun to tweak one or two features of the character you've created each time you die until you've made the perfect character. Also, since many character skills aren't useful until you get very far into the dungeon, you'll find that as you get better at the game, you'll find more use for obscure abilities. Very cool and I highly recommend it if you find Roguelikes a little too hardcore.

Official site: http://www.lostlabyrinth.com/

Here is a screenshot:

You should change this topic title to "What have you done recently?"

So this weekend!

I picked up the Oblivion expansion! Holy crap, what an awesome expansion. It's so much better-designed and more creative than vanilla Oblivion. I recommend it to everyone.

I slept in Saturday, because I literally did not sleep Thursday night, and was bushed on Friday. You should never, ever to go a concert on a Thursday, get hammered at the show, go to a bar until close, then go to a 24-hour restaraunt afterwards AND, when you get home at 5:00 AM, play video games until you have to go to work. It's so weird when you're awake through the whole drunkeness-that-turns-into-a-hangover thing, and you feel like you're going to die when you sit down at your desk the next morning.

I played video games pretty much the entire day.

On Sunday, I went to a friend's birthday party. I didn't know any of her friends, so most of my interaction was limited to my girlfriend, but at least I got out and I looked gorgeous. Beforehand, I went to the mall to buy a new sportcoat or at least a classy sweater, but nobody was selling them! Ridiculous! I could have picked up a suitcoat for $200 from a place that sells those sorts of things, but I wanted a sportcoat, and not some starched thing with shoulderpads. A girl at the mall complimented me on my hair, and I thought about what it will be like when I do not have any hair. I will probably spring for replacement surgery -- in fact, I will DEFINITELY spring for hair replacement surgery if I have to. WIP says that this is why I am a bad person.

I played video games the entire evening. I continued playing PSP after going to bed until about 3:00 AM; D&D Tactics is UNCANNY, because it isn't a BLAST or anything, but holy crap you won't be able to put it down. This may have had less to do with the game and more to do with my fucking neighbors that need to be impaled on a pole. I have about 15 hours invested already, and I only play PSP in bed or during road trips. Everyone should buy a PSP, because it's actually pretty cool these days.

Tonight I will see if there are any midnight releases of Bioshock and probably drive to Minneapolis to pick it up, if there are any, because there definitely won't be any in the burbs. I haven't been there for awhile, and I really miss the place. It's a pretty awesome city and everyone should move there (which, judging by the awful traffic, they are).

ABOUT D&D GAMES

I really liked KOTOR, and its modified D20 ruleset. It was definitely rigged, though because in real dice-based games, you tend to do wildly different amounts of damage (it sucks in D&D when you throw a fireball, which can do up to 50 damage or whatever, and it hits a tree en route to its target, exploding prematurely, inflicting 7 damage on the enemy, and killing your entire party). That definitely wasn't the case in KOTOR. But, you know, maybe they were trying to make a decently balanced game or something!

The thing with games like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale is that D&D just isn't any fun when it's Diablo-style real-time game playing. The rules are so complicated and there's so much to do that turn-based strategy games based on D&D are a really good in idea. In that regard, D&D Tactics excels admirably; it's way too cool to have like 7 different movement commands (cautious step, run, charge and attack, charge and tackle, tumbling/acrobatics, strafe and withdraw, and I think there are even more I haven't discovered yet) and to actually have all sorts of situations where they are useful. Planescape: Torment gets special exception because, while it isn't the best D&D game, it's a brilliant imagining of the Planes and it's a ridiculously awesome game with some of the best writing you'll ever read in a video game.

author=demondestiny link=topic=184.msg2631#msg2631 date=1187322249
A couple of weeks ago i bought Final Fantasy 12 for the playstation 2 and it is one of the most challenging games i have ever played. I am currently half way through the game and i can barely keep up with the monsters. If anyone has any tips on beating the game please reply.

Well, I'd hardly say that FFXII is one of the hardest games out there, but it's definitely much more challenging than your average Final Fantasy game. In order to smooth out the difficulty, I can really only offer one suggestion:

You know how big and open the areas are? You should explore them. Try to fill out the maps and try out all exits from a particular map. You'll fight a ton of monsters that way, and you'll probably be at about the right level all the time. You shouldn't need to stop to grind as long as you explore plenty.

Also, make sure that you have every major type of skill specialized in. It really makes a big difference to have a wizard who can capitalize on enemy weaknesses or a character that casts a lot of buffs.