Revenge of the Hand: MacDaddy Mike's playthrough topic part 2

Poshul has been awesome in battle so far. I'm so glad I got her/him/it. It has charming dialogue, too.

I went to Cape Howl. With every plot point so far, Poshul physically distances himself from Serge. So after Serge reads his tombstone, Karsh, Solt, and Peppor come walking up and Karsh, keeping the stride of his walk, kicks Poshul off the edge of the cliff. It gave me a good laugh. This entire interaction and the introduction of Kid is really cool. I like the birds flying in the background during everything. A reminder that life is going on everywhere no matter what events you're dealing with. Anyway, we know that Lynx sent them to retrieve Serge. He's only referred to as "him" in this scene, but the fact that there is somebody out there who knows what's going on with Serge adds another layer of mystery to what is happening.

Kid joined my party. In Fossil Valley I grabbed the bellflower, Skelly's head, and the big egg. I like how all the dragoons comment on how you're (the exorcist) younger than they expected. I also like how there is a reference to a "ghost in Arni Village," which obviously means Serge.

I fought Solt and Peppor and they targeted Serge exclusively. They highered their attack power, then lowered Serge's defense, and did a double tech that f***ing killed him. I won the fight easily, but the killing of Serge caught me off guard and pissed me off. I'm mad he couldn't share in the stat increases.

Saved after. Really enjoying this.

Battle system was good, but the story was horrid, there were about a billion characters for whatever reason, and there's a really annoying pro-environmental theme that doesn't really work.

You live in bulls*** thriving tropical archipelago that doesn't even exist in Chrono Trigger. Seriously, there's nothing there in any of the ages in CT. The environment is thriving, it is nice, and for the most part man and nature are living in goddamned harmony.

Almost done with Arkham City on my end. I beat the main game and am almost 100% done with the sidequests, need to save a few more political prisoners (ugh), and finish off 2 more AR challenges. Going to save Riddler's Revenge and New Game + for some time.

After this its either going to be LA Noire or Human Revolution, not sure which yet. Or maybe Sonic Generations.
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Spider in the ditch, she saw it all.
World has fall on bad times.

More stuff that I didn't really notice, damn.

More characters = bad, I guess? I dunno, allowing for a greater variety in party customization and a unique experience for every playthrough doesn't seem like a detriment to me, and seeing as how the story is leagues more deep and richer in characterization than Trigger, it's not like development suffers as a result of more characters.

Yeah. So?

I've got one for the next night you have off--hopefully it's not two months from now:

NG3 looks like a lot of fun, btw.

Star Tropics 2, which I played in the last topic, has you revisiting the entire first act from Star Tropics 1, but it doesn't happen until the very end of the game, it really shows a contrast between the two games' play styles, and there's more to the level afterwards. That revisit was something that the game had to really earn.

I'd be fine with visiting a location from the other game with different story significance (which does happen in Cross), but having a sequel set primarily in the same world map as its predecessor would make it feel less like a sequel and more like a romhack.

I think this is partly why the Silent Hill series has been drifting more and more from the actual town of Silent Hill in their games--SH4 and SH:H weren't even set in Silent Hill, but in towns neighbouring it, and I appreciated the story and the gameplay of SH4 far more than the typical fan-favorite of SH3, which I enjoyed the least out of the series.

THEN I MUST BE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.

**** THIS GAME, BRO. **** THIS GAME.
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Attractive people love Mac's playthrough videos ~ Reliable Internet Personality
http://www.youtube.com/user/MacDaddyMike

There's too many. Chrono Trigger had 7. It was enough to cover the entire spectrum of the elements used in the game and let the developers come up with interesting combos and strategies more most of the combinations.

Chrono Cross has 45. Not all of them are accessible in a single file, that's alright, but by game's end you're going to have 20-30 characters to stick into 2 slots. It's overkill. Most of them are redundant fodder that you can banish away into the nether without much care. Like Poshul. This wasn't a strategy game like Shining Force or Fire Emblem. Having so many characters for so few slots, just isn't a good thing. 
The story, well honestly isn't all that good. 

CT isn't as deep as trying to figure out what the hell happened in CC, I'll give you that. It takes a very deep understanding of parallel dimensions, alternate timelines, time travel, and all that to try to even put together the CC timeline. Hell the Zelda timeline was easier to put together than how exactly all the events in CC intersected to create the plotline. I think it was needlessly complex for what it ended up being.

For the most part characterization in CC is actually...well lets see. Serge doesn't really change all that much, one character is a walking plot device that can't literally change at all, and just about everyone else in the game receives about the same characterization as lets see...Rico from Xenogears, I guess. No real characterization or development once you get past the plot thread that you need to use them for.

The thing about El Nido is that...well...yes I know that its explained into the plot why it isn't even there in CT. It's an incredibly stupid reason that a large portion of the plot hangs on, but it's at least a reason. However, the major bone I have against it is that...for the most part outside of places not named the "Isle of the Damned"...El Nido actually looks like a pretty good place to live. It doesn't look like a place where man is abusing nature. It's just something where the art direction and locale doesn't mesh well with the plot, and the constant hammering of "Humanity sucks and are a cancer on the planet" theme.

Then if you don't like a character, don't use him/her. The game's not forcing you to, so why is it a problem? It's like you're complaining about having options because you only like certain ones--other people may like the others, and there's no harm in having options for everyone.

Development doesn't have to equal change, and I got in a rather long-winded argument with someone on the Tales of Symphonia board about this a few years back. Character development isn't about the characters themselves becoming something different, but about our perceptions of the characters changing throughout the story--development is about the reader as much as it is about the text, and to that point our relationship with Serge changes dramatically from his introduction in the game to discovering his purpose in the grand scheme. In Arni we find ourselves substituting ourselves in for Serge (which is something that a silent protagonist is supposed to be for), reflecting on our own childhood, our own choices, and the futures that denied us. When you arrive at Cape Howl to find Serge's grave, it's your grave that you're seeing in your mind, and I'm sure everyone takes that moment to wonder how much the world and the people they know would be different if they weren't around.

The player's relationship with Crono is similar (though SURPRISE SURPRISE you don't complain about how he doesn't "change" in Trigger), in that his decision to follow Marle through the mysterious portal is our decision to thrust ourselves into adventure and become heroes ourselves. Cross flips and somewhat subverts that relationship by having us thrust into a story that works around us--instead of being the hero throwing himself into danger to save the girl and, subsequently, the world, we are placed in a situation in which everything we know is stripped from us and are forced to question how we would personally act in that situation.

That. Is. Depth.

I've yet to play Xenogears so I can't comment, but I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here.

I agree that it's certainly not blatantly obvious, but between the eradication of the Hydra Marshes and all of the excavation going on in Fossil Valley or the various Dragon Isles in the game, I think the theme has its place. It speaks more of man's need for knowledge and the destruction that can come as a result. Scientists go to locations in the game looking to understand what came before them, whether it's to hunt for the "mythical Dragon Gods" or to dig up old bones, but I felt that it's merely meant to draw attention to the problem of study: as in the famous river test, by trying to understand the world around them, these humans are in fact affecting their own results and having consequences on the planet. It speaks to human nature and the drive we have to understand, but that's at the very core of this narrative--every pursuit of knowledge has its consequences, whether it be excavating a canyon or trying to bend the laws of time.

I came into the game having been a fan of Arkham Asylum, and I wasn't really disappointed. In some ways, the way the game feels is different then Arkham Asylum. In Asylum, the focus was on sneaking through the inside of buildings, rather than having an expansive overworld. City is more of a polar opposite, where it has a much more expansive overworld, and much smaller confines (There's only 3 really large interior maps as opposed to the 6 or so in Asylum). This really isn't all that much of a bad thing, since they tightened how gliding works, so you now get to be Batman swooping around from rooftop to rooftop, stopping to take out inmates or crimes.

Gameplay wise, the game is pretty much the same. They changed how some of the enemies work (knife mooks no longer auto block) added shield dudes (who work more like knife guys did), but otherwise they tightened the combat up. It's good that they added more crowd control methods than were present in Asylum since the enemy mobs are much larger. 

In Asylum, you mostly had multi-batarangs, and the ultra-batclaw. In City you no longer have those, but you can rapid fire batarangs to get the same sort of thing. Without going into to many spoilerly details over the nature of the gadgets, there's 3 or 4 gadget you can pull out to deal with large mobs.

Gadgets are pretty good, they range from being useful in brawls, or being extremely useful for the predator rooms. It's a pretty good mix.

Story wise, it's kind of meh. Lot of diversionary stuff. Good comic book fodder I suppose, but you don't ever really get out of running extended macguffin hunts.

I do like the new riddle system in the game. Adding a bunch of physical/skill challenges to the hunt for the trophy/picture spot was a good change of pace.

Kind of running out of steam now, maybe a few more thoughts later.

It's pretty much the opposite of what I look for in books, surprisingly, 'having just finished Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy this week. I typically like written texts to be very open-ended and having much leeway in terms of interpretation, but for games I'm more interested in following a stricter series of events. It's weird, I know.

The eradication of the Hydra marsh isn't exactly a good thing, since the ecosystem really didn't collapse, and there's actually still a hydra there. Mostly it's dwarves being sentient douchebags. (Also killing it isn't exactly something that humanity even has a choice in)

It's also incredibly arguable if humanity trying to figure out how to get into a quicksand pit is something worth eradication over, but who knows.
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Spider in the ditch, she saw it all.
World has fall on bad times.