I've stepped into unknown territory with a game called
Kamidori Alchemy Meister, I saw a review of it by a witty YouTuber and his thoughts were "came for the ass, stayed for the gameplay", I guess it can't be all that bad. I looked up the company that made the game, well, most of what they made were pretty much someone's wet dream. But I wondered what the RPG elements were like and how far replayability goes.
In the beginning some things seem confusing but you get used to going into dungeons to farm and get what you need to progress or craft a particular item. Elemental resistances kick in really early in the game for Boss type enemies, so you can expect a challenging fight when you don't have a weapon or a skill that counters that, likewise your guys are going to die fast if an enemy takes advantage of low damage type resistance.
Some enemies can be really annoying if you don't have magic users in your party to exterminate them. In particular those that can teleport and retreat as much as they want to. Others will just do a suicide run and B-line straight for the weakest guys.
Well I liked the art, it hits home, but a lot of the music is hit or miss. I don't think there were any tracks that I genuinely liked. Now, for the story... It's average, about what I expected, there weren't any moments that took me by surprise, but depending on which of the three heroines "you pick" changes the course a bit, and you get access to dungeons exclusive to that route and loot that you can't get until you start a new game and try a different route. That in of itself means if you want to get everything in the game, it's going to take a
VERY long time and you need patience for these kinds of games, luckily for anyone that has already played Elder Scrolls or Diablo should have no problem at all. You can either do everything bit-by-bit or power level and steamroll through the chapters without even looking at the optional stuff. And believe me, the main story seems short compared to the amount of side-quests and dungeons there are, especially in new game+.
The main characters are semi-interesting, albeit generic. You know. You have the loud one, the fun one, and the one that doesn't talk much. But they change depending on how far in the story you're in. And of course there's you. Yes you. You are playing with a set-up backstory and a name, which means you're pretty basic, they didn't really bother making the player character stand out. The PC is a goody two-shoes that wants to help everyone and anything because that's what he wants and that's it. Oh well, that isn't the filling in your favorite pastry though.
What is important is growing in power and getting that
sweet, sweet loot and tricking out your workshop, which is your home base.
I spent 80+ hours for only the first game, due to lots of farming and leveling involved so better rewards can be had as soon as they are available when starting NG+. Now I nearly finished the NG+ main story within less than 20 hours, it can be cut much shorter though if you aren't interested in the many side-quests and dungeons. I added 70 more hours to playtime with NG+ so far and finished most of the new dungeons that appear only on NG+, but there is a lot of weapons and loot I still haven't gotten, plus 1 more heroines' route to play.
The game is a time sink. I religiously played only this game for more than a week. And as a time sink it did it's job.
As a side note, there are a lot of sound bytes of squishy noises, it's like they had to have as many as conceivable. I think that's where all of the effort went in because everything apart from gameplay is kind of
okay and not much more than that.
Beware, if you want to try it, you have to get the english patched version and run it on a locale emulator set to Japanese or else it will crash or bug out. If you've played games released only in Japan then this is normal. The options menu shouldn't be touched, unless the aspect ratio looks wonky. In which case I suggest getting a picture translator and upload the screenshot of the cropped options window to decipher what the resolution options do. And oh, if you weren't aware yet, at some point a lot of the parts in the game become NSFW as a progression with main and side characters and can't be avoided if you want weapon upgrades and what-not, though you can fast skip all dialogue and the scenes.
Downloading Daggerfall! I have always thought of the game as "Dagger
fail" in my head, but some enterprising fool is in
process of recreating it in Unity. He's working on the last little things before releasing to Alpha (jumping, and something else). The core game is needed, which is free at Bethesda's site, and he's on the 0.9 release right now, but I think I'll take at least a look around and see how he's done.
I played the free release build bundled with patches, but I never completed it, the dungeons and enemies got really stale, as soon as I got full Daedric gear, I just quit without getting far in the main quest. The leveled loot, really screwed everything up. I think it's a shame, because I finally got used to the controls and saving often, I would often get stuck in a wall or the game would just crash. But you can buy houses and stuff and make super OP spells that are absolutely broken by Elder Scrolls tradition. I wanted to try it out, just so I can say I also played ES1:Arena because they're so similar and I think that's what ES1:Arena should have been in the first place. Morrowind will still be the ultimate classic. I might retry Daggerfall once the Unity project has had it's final major updates.
Come to think of it, a lot of the times I've played games with lots of RNG, I get extremely lucky. I remember barely starting one playthough few weeks ago as a Mercenary in S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Chernobyl, I got 3 expert level tools within few days of in game time by looting random stashes, when you're only supposed to get these almost extremely rarely. The downside was that the previous Basic and Advanced level tools were nowhere to be found, which made Expert tools useless, because you have to give Basic and Advanced to the mechanic of choice before Level 3 upgrades are available.
If only in Multiplayer games everything that's good wasn't deliberately made super rare.
I forgot now, what was that rare sword in WoW:Cataclysm that was the bane of my existence. I wasted so much time trying to get it and I never got it.
a photoshoot simulator, fun timekiller
