The Valkyria Chronicles...Chronicle! Part 1

The Valkyria Chronicles...Chronicle!  Part 1

Hey everyone, for now think I'm gonna use this blog to share my experiences playing games and other stuff, because let's face it, it can be fun to read about someone's first experience with something!  So regardless if you have no idea what I'm playing, have mastered it, or are just looking for something entertaining to read, hopefully you can find something to enjoy here.

So yeah, as you may have been able to guess from the title, I am currently playing Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3.  Valkyria Chronicles is a turn based strategy RPG with perma death features similar to Fire Emblem, though it's a little more forgiving on that note.  Your characters die if you can't get another character to them in three rounds or before an enemy unit approaches them. As a note, I will try to keep spoilers to a relative minimum or at least not go into details much, but I can't promise there won't be ANY so...just be aware of that I guess.

I'm already on Chapter 8 of the game so I'm gonna do kind of a quick TLDR for what's happened so far in the game to kind of catch you up or at least give you a bit of a gist as to what's happening.

YOU LIVE IN GALLIA TINY COUNTRY ATTACKED BY BIG COUNTRY WAR TIME, JOIN MILITIA MAGICALLY BECOME LEADER OF YOUR OWN UNIT FIND ENEMY COMMANDER AND BRAWL WITH HIM GET SEPARATED FROM REST OF YOUR SQUAD

And that's the important stuff : p So anyway, the start of Chapter 8 has you as the main two characters (Welkin and Alicia) trying to sneak past enemy grounds at night to get to safety.  The gimmick here, is that Alicia has a bum ankle and the enemy is firing Mortar shots at you every turn while you try to work your way through.  There are also search lights that if you run into will cause a mortar to be targeted toward your current location.

So this level I actually game overed on several times before finally succeeding.  The mission doesn't seem that hard overall and most of the game overs were stupidity on my part (Leaving Alicia in range of the Mortar without even thinking for one) and since you only have two main characters, either of them dying is a game over.  Biggest hurdle was a section with a scout (Speedsters) and a Shocktrooper (Heavy Hitter) and I tried to face them outright instead of dashing right by to the pathway by them (Didn't see it at first).  The first time I did that I completed the level so...failure by making things overly complicated : p

Following that, a couple of cutscenes happen, including Welkin and Alicia backstory, seeing how the rest of the team you are separated from is doing and a encounter with the opposing army.  After all of that, it's time for the second part of the chapter, which you start on the opposite side of the map from your team and have to make your way back to the tank and operate it while the rest of your team defends it until you get there.

So you want to talk stupidity, that was how I lost this mission about 3 different times.  There are a bunch of mines in the path of Welkin and Alicia as they make their way to the rest of the group and I was apparently blind and ran into pretty much every single one.

The mission becomes pretty simply once you get into the tank and can begin to really mount a counter offensive.  That being said, I unfortunately did lose my first party member before that could happen by the name of Wavy.  Put him up at a little outlook thing and I thought he was safe up there.  He was not and got knocked down from there right next to an enemy sniper, who quickly ran over to him and assured my first casualty of the run.

But yeah, tanks.  Bam bam, your dead.  That was pretty much the rest of the mission.

So yeah, this was a fun little first edition of this.  Hope you enjoyed reading this, I will probably keep doing it as long as I find it enjoyable. I'll put the current party and stats under a read more.

NEXT TIME: MEETING THE PRINCESS! I BET THINGS GO WRONG

Current team and levels

Scouts (GOTTA GO FAST) Level 8 Alicia Hermes Nancy Susie Fresia

Shocktroopers (BAM BAM) Level 7 Rosie Alex Salinas Nina Dorothy Jane

Lancers (FUCK TANKS) Level 7 Largo Walter Yoko Elysse

Engineers (FIX TANKS) Level 8 Karl Nadine

Snipers (EAGLE EYES) Level 8 Cezary Marina Catherine

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!?!? Gladius Part 5

Hello everyone!  More progress has been made and just one region remains to conquer before the high tournament at Caltha!  Or you know, the world ends, whichever comes first.

Anyway, The Windward Steppes proved to be a difficult region to conquer, partially just due to the enemies being tougher, and partially due to the increasingly strict demands for which classes could be used in certain leagues.  For one battle in a specific league I had to field a team entirely of temporary recruits to complete it.

That being said, starting to get a little more selective of which units I send into battle.  Before it was a pretty even spread, but now I’m definitely starting to favor the units that bring about the most success. If I had to split the team into teirs, it would probably be this

Tier 1: Zod (Bear), Ursula (Main Character), Eiji (Archer) and Langston (MINOTAUR) Tier 2: Urlan (Barbarian), Valens (Other Main Character), Bestia (Wolf) and Ekaterina (Plains Cat) Tier 3: Goff (Mongrel), Sim (Satyr) and Vagka (Ogre)

Not to say that the bottom tier can’t be useful, but they either can’t bring the pain like the others or in most cases, just aren’t as survivable as the rest of the team.

Onto plot progress, as we were headed for the championship tournament of the Windward Steppes, we see a group of dark affinity warriors on the world map.  The dialogue seemed to hint that they would show up in the tournament but they didn’t so that makes this scene pointless for the moment.  Though admittedly, that could just be me being bitter that the game froze on me the first time the scene triggered and I lost 2 hours of progress.

Oh yeah, and before that we ran into some dark witch that tried to tempt Valens and Urlan but Ursula chased her off.  Pretty sure she’s the one that is later shown in a cutscene trying and failing to resurrect the dark god so..all is well in the world clearly.

Speaking of Urlan (kind of), he was even more grating in this last section then usual.  Critical of every type of fighting style that isn’t of the ‘run straight ahead and bash things’ variety.  He also was very critical of Imperia, stating that Nordagh has been fine without interference or advice from imperials for centuries.  Me thinks young Urlan is forgetting that his mentor and his father’s advisor is from Imperia.

Anyway, when we get into the Southern Expanse, we see some guy being attacked by muggers.  Because we don’t listen to Urlan in this group, we run over to help him out.  Once he is safe, he is introduced to be a man by the name of Gwazi.  Urlan realizes his opinion is useless to me and we quickly recruit him.

So yeah...setting up to go rock this region of the game and earn that spot in the high tournament!  Or reserving a ticket for getting murdered by the dark god, we shall see.

Oh and recruited a Cyclops, wheeeeeee!

Digital Transformers! Storm Finishes Watching Digimon Xros Wars!

Yup, after putting it off for long enough, I have finally completed the sixth season of Digimon!  You know the drill, probably some spoilers in this write up so...you’ve been warned.

So the third part of Xros Wars is...different.  I wouldn’t call it bad necessarily, but it is a step down from the first two parts.  It’s very episodic in nature and doesn’t really develop a plot for a large part of the episodes.  The plot and development was interesting when it happened, but there was too few of them on the whole.

Some of the more stand alone episodes were...iffy at best.  One that immediatly comes to mind is the Betsumon episode, which my beef with can be summed up very simply by this paraphrasing of the plot.

Tagiru: Gumdramon!  Fight for your friend! Gumdramon: He abandoned me and doesn’t even remember me, how about no? Tagiru: NO! *Punches in face repeatedly* FRIENDSHIP!

Speaking of Tagiru, him as a protagonist was...alright.  I actually didn’t mind him as much as I thought I would and Gumdramon was a nice partner for him as well.  I’m sure there were a quite a few people dissapointed in Taiki taking a bit of a back seat in this arc but I actually kind of liked getting to see him in more of a mentor/advisory position.  

Also Shoutmon’s desgin upgrade for this season was awesome.

Something I haven’t talked about throughout these post’s but I really probably should is the music.  I pretty much love all the insert songs that get played for each digixros/digivolution and some of the themes are absolutely great for getting you pumped for the epic moments.

So where would I rank Xros Wars out of all the Digimon seasons?  Pretty favorably actually!  I would probably have to put it in sort of an interchangeable depending on the day tie for second with Savers and 02 (And without the third season, it may be second by itself) with Tamers still my all time favorite.  Really glad I finally got myself to watch the series and I enjoyed the experience!

Following up on the Purchased Games

Alright, so I've head some time to sample all three of the games I purchased yesterday so figured I'd post my thoughts here as a bit of a follow up.

Dragon Rage: Welp...it doesn't speak well for this game that it game out 8 months after Zone of the Enders and is pretty much inferior to it in every way (Controls, music, graphics, etc).  I think the moment that best defines this game is in the tutorial when the voice tells you what to do but gives you no hints as to what button to press to actually do it.  On the bright side, the dragon handles terribly but at least actually looks like a dragon...and you get to brutally tear sheep to pieces for sustenance soooo, that's something : p

Zone of the Enders: The most impressive one so far.  Very smooth controls and looks great for a game that came out pretty early in the PS2's lifespan.  Plot isn't overly clear yet and I'm seeing some Evangelion similarities (PILOT THE DAMN ROBOT SHINJI/LEO) but it's certainly a lot of fun to play so I'll be keeping at it.

Gladius: Not entirely sure what to make of it yet since I'm still in the tutorial phase of the game.  Playing the Ursula path first (Was going to anyway before I noticed the difficulties marked it as the easier one) and I'll be curious to see how the plot develops.  From the opening cutscene, basically some witches showed up to a barbarian king and were like "You're going to have a daughter and she'll bring about a catastrophe or something" except then a son was born so he through them out.  However, apparently his wife wasn't done giving birth or something and then Ursula was born and the king was like "oh shit" so they went into hiding.  So yeah...that's a thing.

So yeah, there you go everyone.  While Valkyria Chronicles will still be my focus, I'll probably be dabbling in all of these games to some extent so I'll be sure to post updates when I do.  Ta ta for now!

guys have you ever seen how you weigh a baby giraffe

So I bought some games

Went by a used video game store today and a few games for the PS2.  These include...

Dragon Rage: A game I had literally never seen before but you play as a dragon so...automatically awesome

Zone of the Enders: A game I had at least heard of.  It's some kind of space mech shooter and made by Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear fame so...could be good.

Gladius: A game I literally thought I had to be misremembering from my childhood.  It's a Gladiator based Turn based strategy rpg that I played a demo of like...12 years ago.  Very excited to find it again and at a pretty decent price.

So yeah, gonna test these games out and see what I think, may chronicle my progress throughout whichever one I decide to progress in first.  

That's all, BYE PEOPLE!