ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!?! Gladius Part 2

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!?! Gladius Part 2

Hey everyone, been a few days since I was able to do an update but I feel like I’ve made enough progress that another one of these was in order.

Plot wise, there still hasn’t been a whole lot of development.  It has essentially been, encounter witch, witch says ominous thing, Urlan tells witch to screw off and for Ursula to not listen.  Probably the most interesting development was when we were tasked to go find a Galdr, Sigi, who is apparently responsible for singing or something to keep the dragon that the Mordare arena is hosted inside of dead. You have to trigger a random battle outside of Roanar where she is being attacked by 6 Mongrel Shamans and you know, keep her from dying.

Not gonna lie, lost that battle the first time and the second battle was cutting it close but I managed to succeed. After we return her, she and Ursula have a talk about sensing something in each other and Urlan interjects again,only for Sigi to maintain that she means Ursula no harm and wishes her well.

So yeah, outside of that I kind of stumbled throughout the area of the map I have access to going to each arena and knocking off their challenges one by one. I only have the Mordare tournament to go now to qualify for the regional tournament.  Currently have a 5 member team with four of their levels maxed out at 5 (Level caps for current school rank, will go higher when I beat regional tournament).  Let’s get a little more in depth shall we?

Ursula: Main character who is an interesting mix of a barbarian and a witch with her moves. She’s honestly pretty badass with her moveset right now, with multiple spells that can hit from range and multiple opponents at a time, as well as a move that buffs her stats (mainly making her super dodgy). Her biggest flaw for me so far is that her combo meter goes very fast and I have a hard time timing the button presses for her.  Other then that though, can’t complain.

Urlan: The elder of the siblings is much more straight up brute then his sister, for better and for worse.  A little slow and bulky but can certainly pack a punch.  He doesn’t really have any super useful abilities at the moment aside from him being my first party member to get a three hit combo, which obviously wrecks shop.  Not great but can certainly handle himself at the moment.

Zod: Bearrrrrrrrrrrr. Okay, he started kind of weak at first but could still take hits.  Now he is an absolute murder beast and I love him.  He is capable of shrugging off pretty much any blow that comes at him while dishing it back with interest at this point.  He has a combo attack that can dish out good damage as well as a special move that wrecks that only takes 1 special point (did I mention you get 1 special point replenished each turn?) and has an ability that reduces the amount of damage he takes, making him even more impenetrable.

Oh, and did I mention he has a counter attack?  He has a counter attack.  Zod kicks ass and I love him and he will forever be my murder bear.

Bestla: My wolf buddy who just recently reached the current level cap.  Very swift, but certainly not the most sturdy or effective from an offensive standpoint. Main use so far has been getting to top of the hill in the king of the hill battles or similar situations.  Has been getting some more useful abilities, such as a combo attack, being able to heal herself...

Oh, and ripping throats out, so that’s a plus.

Sim: Saytr who I just recruited fairly recently.  Still trying to figure out his strengths a bit but he’s definitely got some assets that I can use once I figure out how to use him.  Seems very quick and deals decent damage for being a lower level then the rest of the squad. Has some buffs and some range attacks as well but neither of them seem super effective yet.  Kind of a jack of all trades so we’ll see how he develops.

So yeah, that’s the update on gladiator land!  Thanks for reading everyone!

Digital Transformers! Storm Watches Digimon Xros Wars Part 2

Okay, so I may be getting somewhat addicted to this show.  Have watched through episode 54 now so...this post may be quite a bit more spoilery then the last so...you have been warned!

Have to say, the whole Death General arc was pretty interesting, even if it did have some pacing issues at times.Starts off well enough with the dragon general to show you how strong they are (forget his name) even if he’s a little bland himself.  Then there was NeoVamdemon who...wasn’t that interesting in himself, but it was also the first time that the series didn’t wimp out and actually have an ally die so that was good enough.

Then there was Zamielmon...fuck that guy and fuck those two episodes, whose only remote purpose was to begin preparations for the next episode, Yuu’s proper introduction.  This, by all means was suitably epic and engaging and had me really excited for the coming episodes!

And then Yuu and Darknightmon proceed to disappear for the next ten episodes or so.  Dissapointing, but the next couple of death general’s weren’t too bad.  I liked Splashmon’s deceptive games and Kiriha and Taiki both suitably outsmarting him.  Olegmon’s mini arc was a little meh but it was nice to see some more development for Balistamon.  

Then Gravimon’s arc happened, which was probably the most interesting of all the death general.  The action was awesome, tearjerkers were involved and the general had an awesome gambit to win that I felt wasn’t overcome in a complete BS manner.

And then we had the showdown between Yuu and the three main characters...which was also completely epic and I think really helped solidified this season as one of my favorites.

I don’t have too much to say about the rest of those episodes, my minds honestly kind of a blur at this point.  I will say it was nice to see everyone get some screentime in the final battle against Bagramon though and I’m looking forward to seeing what the last third of this season brings to the table!

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!? Gladius Part 1

Alright, so the trip to the beach in Valkyria Chronicles is proving to be a bit more hazardous then expected so I’m going to be focusing on Gladius for now until I have more time to focus on Skirmishes and upgrading my tank and stuff.

So Gladius, turn based Gladiator RPG and it’s pretty enjoyable so far.  Battle system is pretty standard turn based stuff with the exception of time button presses to do maximum damage.  Basically, you run a gladiator “School” (Well, your brother does but your the main character so screw him) and you recruit new members and go around to different arenas to earn certificates of worthiness so you can compete in the big time games.

Oh and some witches are stalking you and talking about dark gods, but I’m sure that’s not important.  Feel like I should reiterate, playing as Ursula, barbarian lady with magical powers.

So nothing to exciting in my progress yet, traveling to different arenas and earning certificates in battle. Sometimes the battles are different then standard battles though, like point battles (however much damage you do is how many points you get) and king of the hill (HOLD THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN) for instance.  Also fought a big ass wolf, so that was fun.

But yeah, recruitment!  Every arena has a section for this where you can buy gladiators either temporarily (one battle) or permanently add them to your school.  Apparently, animals are quite intelligent in this universe and are capable of  negotiating fees for gladiators to pay for their services.  Naturally I added Zod the bear to the roster and I love him and I will never let him go and he will be my right hand bear and murder everything.

So yeah, that’s the notable progress at the moment.  Currently at the ice arena place so I think I’ll be hanging around there for a while.  Bye bye everyone!

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 4

Hello again peoples!  Progress has been made, allies have been gained and many asses have been kicked and mauled!  Let’s get to the recap.

There is a much more difficult spread of missions in the Imperia region, including some tournaments (due to my...somewhat undiverse team...) that forced me to temporarily recruit members to complete certain tasks.  It was honestly a pretty nice balance between challenging but not to the point where you wanted to bash the console in with a hammer.  I did however, recruit some new members to the team, which I will get into at the bottom of this.  The most notable though (to me) is Langston, who is a Minotaur and my first heavy class and is quickly becoming one of my new favorites.

Once we clear out the Imperia region, there is surprisingly little fanfare and plot as we head into the Windward Steppes.  We do see Ursula having the same dream again, though this time it is extended and we see more destruction and beasts before it just kind of slowly pan’s up into the sky and relaxing music plays?  So...not entirely sure what that’s about but alright.

Oh, and then there is a brief scene where a narrator talks about Mutis raising an army for the dark god.  Full disclosure, I kind of wasn’t paying attention to the scene until I heard the name Mutis so I could totally be missing some things here.  I’m not entirely sure we’ve met Mutis but if we have, he’s the assclown who taunted us in Imperia and if not, he was an old war buddy Usus met that was still kind of an assclown.

Anyway, once we get to the next region, it is revealed you can’t compete in the games here unless you have an archer...so that’s arbitrary as hell, but it’s apparently an economic thing somehow...so whatever.

As our group makes it’s way through the camp nearby, we are introduced to a cocky archer lady by the name of Eiji who overhears us lamenting our lack of archer.  She pulls off some fancy arrow tricks with three apples and wins her way onto the team.  She’s kind of portrayed as a trickster so not sure how permenant her addition to the team is, but she’s useful enough for the moment and she helps us earn our symbol to compete in the region and gives intel about the other arenas.

Oh, and Ursula and Valen’s relationship is getting shoved down our throats some more.  Also Urlan still distrusts everyone because he can.

Anyway, that’s all for the major updates. Character section below will only discuss those who are either new or have some important updates that I feel like touching on.  Thanks for reading!

Current squad is all between levels 10-11 at the moment, so let’s get into some specifics.

Zod (11) Zod will also have a place here as long as he continues to be my favorite : p. While admitiedly, he is beginning to lose a bit of his offensive luster, he can still take hits like nobodies business.  Also has Hibernate now, which allows him to recover HP...assuming i ever remember he can do that.

Goff (10)) The Mongrel is very much a glass cannon.  Very quick and has some nasty combo’s to mess people up but falls very quickly in battle.

Langston (11) MINOTAUR!  Slow, bulky, can’t take hits quite as well as I would have imagined.  That being said, hits EXTREMELY hard and has a four hit combo which will one shot damn near anything.  Has proven to be a very nice trump card for missions I fail the first time without his assistance.

Eiji (10) Our new archer friend took me a little bit to figure out how to properly use but I feel like i’m getting the hang of her.  While he melee attacks are (understandably) weak, she can move and attack from a range and has some more powerful longer range attacks.  Also has some status moves but I haven’t really messed around with those yet.

Ekaterina (10) A plains cat who is kind of like a mix of Zod and Bestia (wolf).  Is very fast like Bestia but hits a bit harder.  Unfortunately, seems to be less durable then her and has a smaller pool of moves, for the moment.

Also just recruited a level 11 Ogre (whose name I forget) and haven’t used them yet.  A heavy class so expecting them to be fairly similar to Langston but I’ll let you know when I actually get to use them.

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!