Attractive people love Mac's playthrough videos ~ Reliable Internet Personality

Once you get the Firefly accessory at the Stilshrine of Miriam, then have the user grind LP for all by phoenix downing undead enemies such as Dustia, it's easy going from there. Equipping the inactive party members with Golden Amulets speeds up the process.

Nothing I'm concerning myself with, as I've already leveled Vaan up a bit. Now, it's just choosing each character's general roles, and whether I should use Dustia now to make things easier.

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Fair Lucrezia could not sate her appetite for lovers.

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Fair Lucrezia could not sate her appetite for lovers.

Oh well. Won't touch it in this run.

So, Chadarnook. There are two forms to this guy, the demon and the painting of Starlet. Attacking Slarlet is bad. She automatically revives if you deplete her HP, so it's pointless to start out with. She counters when attacked, most notably with Phantasm, which sets the HP Leak status on everyone. It's exactly like Seizure, in that you lose HP slowly over time. However, it'snot Seizure, so you can't protect against it or override it with Regen. She also likes to set Condemned status and Charm status on party members. Charm can't be stopped and I only have Shadow to handle Death attacks. The two forms switch back and forth intermittently, sometimes two can happen in a row. It's not a case of if, but when you'll hit the Starlet form of this fight.

Chadarnook itself casts Bolt 2 and 3 spells and after taking enough damage, starts using Flash Rain, which is an Ice/Water element attack despite also looking electric. Ice and Fire Shields absorb and nullify this attack respectively. I took advantage of the Debilitator and Wall Rings for this fight as well, since Chadarnook likes to counter with magic and the Starlet form doesn't use anything reflectable. Eventually he falls, the Starlet Magicite is acquired, and Relm rejoins the party.

Owzer is...

...

With Relm comes getting Strago from the Fanatics Tower. I really like the music for this place. For the tower itself, would a ladder have killed them? From there, it's off to Mt. Zozo to pick up Cyan. Summoning Phantom makes this place trivial to get through. Great treasures here. The Storm Dragon is left alone for now. It can one hit kill everyone with Rage and there's nothing I can do to stop that yet. Locke's in the Phoenix Cave. This place is annoying to get through since Phase enemies can't be run from. There's a save point midway through, luckily.

The Red Dragon can be Poisoned and Muddled. I made it hit itself a lot. Its reward is the Strato, which is meh.

Finally, with Locke, I can pick up Mog and Umaro (6) in Narshe. Useful Locke makes himself incredibly useful by breaking and entering into the locked homes to get the Cursed Shield and the Ragnarok sword. Useful Mog is then recruited for the glorious Moogle Charm. I also incorrectly referred to the Ice Dragon as the Blue Dragon earlier. Whoops. Umaro's nigh useless to me in this run. I named him yeti.

With Mog, Kefka's Tower and the Fanatics Tower are free to be raided for splendid treasure. The White Dragon in the Tower does nothing but cast Pearl and Dispel. He's vulnerable toMute.

...

...

To do: Illumina, Paladin Shield, Ancient Castle, Doom Gaze, Cyan's Soul, magic teaching, Colosseum fun, Towers for real.

Should be perfectly doable (or even great fun):

Kirby's Canvas Curse
Super Mario 64 DS
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Double Dragon
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Metal Gear Solid
Resident Evil: The Director's Cut
Spyro the Dragon
Heavy Rain
F-Zero
Secret of Mana
Excite Truck

Either hard or frustrating:

Trauma Center: Under the Knife
Legend of Zelda: The Adventure of Link
Vagrant Story (but I will SO join in on this)
Actraiser

Not sure on:

Metal Gear
Indiana Jones & The Infernal Machine
Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
Megaman X Command Mission
Rygar
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Interestingly though, most of these games are pretty good and earn their place in your collection, you just need to love them a little.

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http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4013/4591402418_3a88c484e3.jpg

You must be kidding me. I always had it at the fastest because I thought it was doing me favors.

Charmeleonook was a fight that I never really understood, and didn't know that you weren't supposed to attack the Starlet form until my most recent playthrough when I decided to play things more cautiously (because, well, I had to). In the past I would just go all out and it would eventually die, but my guys were always tough enough to handle any counterattacks he/she threw at me. As for Owzer, my favorite memory of him is when some guy on the FFVIa board misspelled his name "Ownzor", and I've been calling him that ever since.

Is there a point to you fighting the dragons, or are you just doing it for completion's sake? I can't imagine the Esper you get being much use and some of the prizes you're winning don't seem to be worth the hassle. The Storm Dragon is a beast but I didn't even have trouble against the Blue Dragon in my playthrough.

And lol @ yeti.
From: Big Bear is back | #036As for the next topic........

You wish. Okay, maybe not that unlikely, but it'll at least be a ways away from now.

- MGS, SM64DS and RE are null'd because I have better versions of them that I would rather play. In the case of SM64DS it's mostly that I hate the controls for the game on the DS and refuse to get one of those thumb pad things.
- LoK, Spyro, Rygar and Actraiser are unopened. I'll probably eventually get to these.
- Most of the NES titles I'll gladly play for a review capacity, so they'll probably make it.
- Canvas Curse and Trauma Center just turned out to be games that weren't my style. I appreciate the gameplay but it's just not something that appeals to me.
- I would LOVE to play Secret of Mana and have it for the Wii VC, but I want to play through it with someone else. If I can trick my old roommate into playing with me on a regular-ish basis, it's so in.
- Heavy Rain, Command Mission, Raven Shield and Indy are all games that I just sort of lost interest in in favor of other games I was playing at the time, but I wouldn't mind finishing those off or even starting fresh on some of them.
- **** Vagrant Story and **** Star Ocean. Those games are trash.
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Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Final Fantasy 3/6 - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

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http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l317/bikeparts2006/bigbear2copy-1.jpg

I'll more-than-likely never play it again, but I wouldn't mind watching a good LP of it.

You could have used Strago's Sour Mouth Lore to cripple the Pugs. They'd have been Imped, Muted, and Poisoned in one go.

jk
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I honestly don’t game much anymore—at least little that’s current. I’ll revisit a ton of games I’ve played in the previous gaming generations or attempt ones that managed to slip under my radar (I’ll get to Earthbound eventually, I swear), but it’s gotten to the point where I’ll only buy one or two games a year. Since Silent Hill: Downpour is still a while away (and I don’t own a PS3 yet, so I guess Uncharted 3 is also out), the only game I really had to look forward to this year was Skyward Sword, and it’s one of the few games that I’ve ever pre-ordered…actually, it may be the only one other than SSB:B. I don’t even consider myself much of a fan of the series, but lordy did this game eat away my free time, and surpassed my expectations with ease. This is, er, kind of a review.

Skyward Sword has the best traditional Zelda story to date, and though not with the depth or small-world scale of Majora’s Mask, it does well to hold its 40+hour playtime. Being quite obviously the first game in the Zelda timeline thus far, Skyward Sword tells the story of one of the oldest legends of the Zelda universe and the birthing moments of Link and Zelda’s lineage of destiny, in a time well before Hyrule. Since we see that Ganondorf’s introduction is in OoT, it’s fairly obvious that he won’t be appearing in a game set long before those events, and I personally applaud Nintendo for keeping him out of this game and going for an original antagonist—seriously, we’ve had enough of Ganondorf, and though I loved the final battles in TP, I did think his inclusion felt forced and fanservice-y.

The characters shine more than any other installment, given far more personality than I could have expected out of the series. Zelda stands out as being much tougher than her previous incarnations, actually being the one who protects Link from bullies in the town of Skyloft, and unlike stories where the damsel is in distress and in need of rescuing, Zelda spends a majority of the game on her own adventure, traveling to many of the areas that Link goes to himself. Other supporting characters like the hot-headed Groose or the self-proclaimed “demon lord” Ghirahim (who makes for a wonderful and strangely unconventional villain) steal any scene they’re in with ease.

I’ve always been more interested in art style over graphical capability, and there’s just no denying that this game looks gorgeous. Wind Waker had a gorgeous color palette and great character designs but the world was bland and had nothing to look at, making a waste of the color Pictograph item that you could acquire in the game. Twilight Princess had gorgeous architecture and world design that was wasted on a “next-gen” art style that consisted of brown and bloom. Skyward Sword manages to combine all the strengths of WW’s and TP’s art styles with none of the weaknesses, relishing in vibrant colors while offering a beautiful world to explore. Characters are at the most expressive in the series, easily outperforming WW’s Link, and the cutscenes lean more towards TP’s cinematic style than others.
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Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Final Fantasy 3/6 - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

As for the harp, itself, I am getting a little tired of musical instruments being so integral to the plot, as they were completely one-shot or practically optional items in the series until OoT, and we need to stop milking that. I’m hoping that the next game will forego instruments in the story altogether and take them back to just being useful items.

Speaking of foregoing, I’m still pleased as ever that the Zelda franchise doesn’t have any voice-acting. Look, I love voice-acting in my giant RPGs and whatever action titles, but it’s something that does not fit with this series. Link’s never going to talk, and I feel the little grunts and cries and laughs of all the characters in this game have more than enough charm without taking anything away. I much prefer to use my own voice and inflection when reading the text than to have it read to me, and that is something I hope will never change.

Of course, the biggest selling point of any Zelda game is its gameplay, and I can say with a straight face that this Zelda has the best. The swordplay is exciting and strategic, ditching waggle controls for practically one-to-one sword fighting that will make it really difficult for me to go back to TP. Bosses and mini-bosses require specific sword attacks to overcome and switch up their defenses according to your own fighting stance, making for some of the most challenging and exhilarating fights I’ve encountered in gaming, period. The sword controls aren’t perfect, mind you, and swinging the remote faster than the animation on screen can cause some problems, but that’s your own damn fault. There were a number of times during the final boss fight when I wanted to do a stab motion and ended up doing a spin attack, but that was also my own damn fault for thrusting the nunchuck forward when I didn’t want to. Other facets of the Motion+ controls such as aiming or selecting from menus are easy to get a hold of, and any time you find yourself mis-calibrated from the centre of the screen, all you have to do is hit down on the Wiimote’s D-pad to fix it instantaneously.

I’ve seen people on the SS board whine about “only three areas?!”, but they are so diverse and contain so many different locations within each region that open up as you progress through the game, that it’s easily the most expansive Zelda overworld to date—and unlike TP, there’s actually stuff in the overworld to do. More in the vein of MM than OoT, the overworld feels like a massive dungeon in itself, often containing large-scale puzzles to overcome or even minibosses about. There are seven “dungeons” in the game, but if you consider all of the mini-dungeons from the overworld, that number grows enormous. Despite the large overworld, traveling is quick and easy, with it taking about as long to get from one end of the sky to the other as it did in WW to get from one island to another, and travel within the three regions made painless with Save Points scattered throughout that you can descend to from the sky portal.

The “dungeons”, themselves, are all top-tier, and though you’ll strangely find yourself going through two fire dungeons in the game, they’re distinct enough. One of the game’s best mechanics is the use of timestones, which change the landscape within a certain radius to several decades in the past, making for fantastic puzzle opportunities as well as brilliantly contrasting a dead-looking desert world with lively forest vegetation and buzzing machinery. Dungeon items are more useful than I could have expected, with not a dud among them, and even items earned late-game get enough use to make them worthwhile. Moreso than any Zelda game, I found myself switching between items frequently in dungeons, so that every item gets its fair share of screentime for combat or puzzle situations. A new item configuration and subsequent “adventure pouch” make switching between varieties of items seamless.

For everything you must do there’s always plenty to keep you distracted, and I found myself spending more time on sidequests than I anticipated. My progress through the story was slow-going because I would spend hours playing the various minigames, hunting for bugs or heart pieces, upgrading items with treasure (which is a brilliant system that I hope returns), hunting for Goddess Cubes that transport treasure to the sky world, or collecting Gratitude Crystals by doing sidequests. Rupees are used to great amount in this game and feel like they have a purpose that isn’t tacked on *coughTingleTreasureChartscough*.

Then there are tiny references scattered throughout, such as lines of dialogue from other Zelda games, jokes made at Link’s expense (“No, don’t say anything, I can tell by your face”), in-jokes about previous installments (the item check girl is sure you only visit her because you have a huge crush on her, and I swear this is an intentional parody of the blue-haired girl at the Bombchu Bowling Alley in OoT), and story elements that seem to reference LttP, LA and AoL.

More than anything, this feels like the Zelda game that the series has been leading up to, in both gameplay and narrative. For its 25th anniversary, Nintendo could have easily fan-service’d this game up and just lifted bosses and story moments from every game in the series into a jumbled mess that brainless Zelda fans would have eaten up (“omg we get to fight Phantom Ganon again!? best game evars”), but instead Skyward Sword manages to be both a culmination of everything that has come before it and a completely unique experience. New locations, new heroes, new villains, new items, new music, new everything, while still keeping the Zelda flavor and throwing in tiny homages every now and then that only serve to remind instead of being shamelessly lifted, and every old favorite (or not-favorite, as I’m being told the Tear segments in TP were not loved by many) gets a unique spin.

The only question I have is…where do we go from here? In terms of narrative, this appears to be the birthplace of the entire franchise, and in terms of gameplay we’ve evolved from pressing B to swing forward one square into practically one-to-one swordfighting. Are there any holes in the story that need to be filled? Is there anything perhaps beyond AoL, or are they going to milk the alternate timeline some more? Whatever plans Nintendo has in store for Zelda, they have set an extremely high bar to beat.

And for those curious, my rankings are as follows:

SS = MM > LttP > TP > LA > OoT > WW > the rest