ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!?!? Gladius FINALE

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!?!? Gladius FINALE

You read correctly folks, this overlooked gem has been conquered!

Finally on the world map again, we make our way into Roanor, where we are once again greeted by Ludo.  Valens and he exchange some words before we throw down for the last time.  What proceeds is a pretty easy battle where our main four outnumber Ludo and his two lackeys.  Despite Valens getting triple teamed to start and quickly defeated, we down the former friend with ease.

Following this, we finally meet Muutis face to face.  He brags about how he will control the dragon and doesn’t care about what happened last time before facing us in battle.  Despite him having us outnumbered, his team falls quickly, treating us to a cutscene of him struggling to his feet while Nephellia (WITCH LADY) approaches from behind.

BAM, STABBED IN THE BACK!  Muutis cries out before going limp and Nephellia thanks us for playing our parts before a warp tunnel opens up below him and the Dark God emer-JESUS WHAT IS THAT?

Okay, it may be worth looking up the dragon from Gladius because it looks insane.  It’s basically a three layered beast with a bunch of soldiers sticking out of the bottom, four faces in the middle with some weird six armed lady above them and then the Dragon on top of that.

So yeah, needless to say it is quite the sight : p

The first stage of the battle we have to use Ursula and Valens along with three members of our choosing.  Obviously I roll with Zod, Eiji and Langston.  This however...does not go well.  There are eight soldiers to beat and the dragon is breathing an area of effect fire attack that will hit anyone who isn’t right underneath it.  The soldiers can also counter attack and hit both spots infront of them with a knockback effect.

The first time, everyone died except Ursula, who has regen when she get’s to critical and the soldiers couldn’t do enough to finish her.  However, the thought of losing Zod and Langston did not sit well for me so I decided to restart with a much better plan.

Instead of lumping everyone together, I spread everyone out (and subbed Urlan for Langston) so that the fire wouldn’t hit a large member of party members.  Each of the four melee units would pick a side and focus on two soldiers at a time while Eiji would hang back for as long as she could avoid the fire and provide support.

This was going better, Valens still got knocked out quickly but Urlan was able to handle his wall with Eiji’s help and Ursula was doing fine.  Zod was hanging in but struggling.

GUESS WHO FINALLY REMEMBERED HE CAN HEAL HIMSELF?!?!?!?

So yeah, using Hibernate I was able to keep Zod alive and get him to finish off his wall before he and Ursula teamed up to finish off the wall Valens failed miserably at handling.

Once the soldiers fall, we are treated to a cutscene of the dragon beginning to sink into the ground, putting the four faces into the firing range.  After a brief chance to change equipment and purchase abilities, we are ready for round 2!

Round 2 was much easier, the face’s themselves don’t attack but summon hell cats to go after you.  They must have gotten the memo that Zod was the danger beast as they triple teamed him right away.  The faces have poor defense though so they were quickly demolished with no one going down this time.

After another cutscene, the Dragon is all that’s left.  The team assembles and we charge into what is...a laughably easy final battle.  The dragon has no defenses and seems to be unable to stand any hits (Eiji’s long shot doing 250 to him).  His attack animation was pretty neat though, where he basically ate Urlan and took about 200 HP from him.  After 2 rounds, Eiji strikes the final blow, sealing our victory!

As the dragon fades back into hell or whatever, Nephellia...does a twirl before disappearing...alright.  Ursula begins to float into the sky as Valens cries out for her, revealing that for peace to be established, a sacrifice must be made.  So she floats into heaven or something while also putting the other Valkyrie spirits at rest.

This then cuts to Ludo and Nephellia plotting their next move and making out...not the most rewarding note to go out on but whatever.

So yeah...that was Gladius!  It was a fun game and I’m glad I was able to pick it up!  I may play Valens story at some point but I think I’m done with this game for now.  Got to finish up Digimon Dawn and then we’ll see what I play next from there!

Digital Transformers!  Storm watches Digimon Xros Wars

Hey everyone, felt like it had been a little bit so I figured I should post something.  Still playing Digimon World Dawn but I’m pretty much just grinding to be prepared for the end game so no major updates to report there.  I have however been watching the one season I hadn’t seen of Digimon, Xros Wars though and thought I would give some thoughts.

I’ll be honest, I expected to find this season pretty meh at best, and it definitely started that way to me.  The action wasn’t really interesting and the writing and motivations seemed...contradicting to me at times (Syoakmon stopping to shoot the bombs cause it missed once so Shoutmon has to throw his body at every single one from then on, Dorulumon not being interested in others after proclaiming to the group to leave his Cutemon alone, etc).  

That being said, it really started to catch my interest after that little Dorulumon arc and it really took a step up in quality to me.  I just finished episode 30 and am pumped to see where the series continues to go from there.  It’s definitely very different in a lot of ways from past seasons and largely get’s rid of some of the familiarly mechanics, but if you can get by that, I think it has some pretty good strengths.

For one, there is a lot more variety in the supporting cast then most seasons I would say and it feels like even the minor members of team Xros Heart get at least a couple of chances to shine.  I would also say that the human characters are deceptively interesting in this season as well.  Taiki is probably my second favorite goggle head (behind Takato) and Kiriha and Nene have both had my interest as well.  Zenjiro and Akari I was less thrilled with for a while but they have both taken some decent steps forward with their character development.

Also this seasons version of Greymon is badass.

So yeah, enjoying the season so far, though still plenty more episodes to go for things to turn sour.  Hoping that won’t be the case though and so far I would recommend it to any Digimon fan who may have missed/skipped this season.  It’s certainly at least worth a test watch in my opinion.

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!

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!

Going Digital!  Digimon World Dawn Finale!

After many hours of grinding, work, grinding, heartbreak, grinding, grinding and more grinding, this game has been defeated!

I had surprisingly taken care of more plot then I expected in the previous update so there are really only two plot missions for this update.  One was to go to Proxy Island to meet up with...whoever the leader of Kowloon Co was (the leader of Waruseadramons group).  This leads us into an area that is disappointing in pretty much every single category.  Not fun to navigate, not many interesting digimon and not a good exp spread either...love you too Proxy Island.

After stumbling around for a while, we eventually sneak up on Waruseadramon...singing...about how he’s not such a bad guy...did I mention that I love him?  Anyway, he takes us to his leader and we fight Gaiomon again...who is no match for us obviously at this point.  And honestly...I forget if we had to fight there leader or if he just agrees to help up.  After forking over 100k bits, he agrees to have his company work on a bridge to help us get across to Darkmoon city so we can end this!

Which leads to the intensive hours of grinding in order to get my ideal team for the finale!  However, tiredness of grinding, lack of good Holy exp areas and just general bullshit caused me to shuffle the team around a bit, finally leaving me with this final team.

ImperialdramonBK Eaglemon Gryphonmon Saberleomon Jijimon Dorugoramon

We go talk to our leader and he reveals that All the Night Crow members are crowding at the edge of the bridge looking to come in after us.  Glare tells Waruseadramon to come up with a lock to keep them out while we sneak in.  Spinomon successfully does this while Sayo and Waruseadramon have some very stealth adventures together.  And by very stealthy, I mean not stealthy at all, leading them to entrust us with the task of sneaking in and saving everyone!

I WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN WARUSEADRAMON!

Anyway, once in Darkmoon City we need to defeat three different tamers in order to get a master ID to get into the admin room or whatever.  This is where I may have overgrinded just a tad, as it took just one round of attacks from my team to defeat each of the three tamers.

We head into Night Crow’s lair before being thrust into a fight against a possessed Chaos Gallantmon, who predictably falls easily.  However, now that we’ve injured him, that means Chaosgallantmon can break out from his spell...apparently I don’t freaking know. This leads the little floating core thing that possesed him to float off into the final dungeon.

After being thanked by the leaders of the opposing team and them admitting I’m the only one who can save all their sorry asses, I head into the final dungeon!  Again, pretty easy, a little confusing but certainly not the worst area in the game as far as that’s concerned.

Oh look, it’s Grimmon again...woooooo.  Anyway, he get’s possesed and turns into...some thing and the final boss fight begins!  And this is where I DEFINITELY realized I overgrinded when his hits are doing about 20 damage each...Thanks for overpreparing me, every other Digimon game ever...

Anyway, he falls and then digivolves and tries to put us under some kind of spell.  Of course, this is where THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP BAILS US OUT!  Luckily, the last boss is at least a little challenging, being able to wrack up over 100 damage per hit and put our team to sleep so i got at least a little resistance.  Nonetheless, he falls and we are victorious and are treated to credits that lasted longer then both phases of the final boss fight combined!

So yeah, That was Digimon World Dawn!  A pretty fun game, if a bit on the easy side.  Then again, I suppose one of the Digimon games had to be easy eventually : p

Have a couple ideas for what I’m going to play next, neither of which are RPG’s!