Tales of the Abyss and King Abaddon stuff

So I recently beat Tales of the Abyss. I ended up with something like 2300 Grade at the end of it. The one I didn't care for was how much back-tracking there was. It got pretty out of hand in the latter half of the game but it was pretty enjoyable overall.

I'm nearing the end of Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon. Currently at Chapter 5. I've been doing mostly side stuff. I haven't found the will to play it some more lately. The combat is an improvement for sure but I don't really like the MAG system and how reliant it is on you hitting weaknesses. If you can't hit a weakness then your MAG runs out pretty quickly and no MAG means no healing or elemental attacks which makes fights harder than they need to be. Luckily almost every boss/enemy has a weakness. It's just a matter of randomly picking except for some obvious ones like Jack Frost and Pyro Jack. They removed the elemental bullets from the last game. Keeping them would've been a reliable way to gain MAG without having to use skills to get some back.But at least you have infinite bullets.

The presentation is kind of lacking compared to Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army; the previous Devil Summoner game I mentioned just before. There's these neat style of cutscenes in Soulless Army that are in-engine which have plenty of character. I didn't really think much about it when I first played through it but when I started playing King Abaddon their absence stuck out to me. One thing that I really don't like is how much music it reuses. I mean I'm not expecting a brand new soundtrack but it seems a bit excessive with how much is re-used. Some themes like for the Nameless Shrine, Detective agency are ok. But they did really need to reuse the final dungeon theme from the last game for alot of the dungeons? Or reusing the same title theme? I didn't care for the remix of the town theme. Some of the things they removed or added seem kind of strange.

In Soulless Army you could fuse a demon with your sword which would power it up and let you gain resistance to one of several types of damage (Physical, Fire, Ice, Wind , Electric, Death, Mind). And a stat boost. It was a nice way to get rid of a demon you didn't really want without outright getting rid of it. But now you have to get materials and pay money. The materials you get from demons (Pyro Steel, Bronze, Silver, etc) or side quests. There's 3 "kinds" of swords. Axe, Lance and Blade. Demons have some unique skills that'll require one of three types. It seems more complicated than it needs to be. You can do a special attack with them and each type is unique. Blades just hit everything around you, Axes make you leap into the air and slam the ground with the Axe or just stab rapidly with the Lance Unfortunately using these eats up MAG so you can't really use them too much. There's this weird thing with the Lance types where if you hit the button to the special attack once it'll eat up MAG so you have to rapidly press it for the full animation. There's also the lack of sacrificial fusion which is weird (Lances' special attack is the weakest too which is lame)  

Case Files are now just side quests whereas they just let you have a brief summary of the previous episode. Alot of them require you to deliver items but some of those require you to go out of your way to do things like take a photo of something or get something that you can only get in a certain place (as opposed to just happening to having the item on you by the time the case and clearing it there.)The other kind just require you to go to some place and typically fight a demon. These are pretty unique usually. Getting Case Files usually requires you to go out of your way to get them in other words talking to everyone. Even demons. You can get some nice stuff from clearing Case Files but they're just sort of there. It's a way to add extra hours to the game I guess.

 The last odd thing is the inclusion of alignments. The is the first Devil Summoner game to have them and they're generally stuck in the mainline series. It's not really annoying or good or anything. It's just...there. You know when you're asked an alignment question whenever the control vibrates a little.

 So King Abaddon is a good game but I like the previous Devil Summoner game more even though the combat is more clunky

No fancy pictures for you. Bye!

August stuff and progress on games

So I finally beat Digital Devil Saga 2 after being occupied with Shin Megami Tensei IV which I beat before going back to DDS2 (got the neutral ending!). I wanted to beat the last bonus boss that I could before moving on to other games which in this case was Seth.

The biggest dangers were Pain since that has a pretty high critical chance and when he takes someone out of the party. He seems to have pretty good agility since I could barely hit him with no agility buffs/debuffs. Like several bosses he likes to remove them if you go to the max buff/debuff limit.

I proceeded to pretty much wreck the final boss. He hit the party for a rather underwhelming amount of damage so it wasn't too bad. The final boss in the first DDS game was more of a threat. But the second game ended on a happy note so it's all well and good.

So now what MegaTen game I have next to do is Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon. The sequel to the first Raidou game; vs The Soulless Army.

I recently finished the first chapter (it took me awhile to get through that. Pretty lengthy for a first chapter I thought.) and just started the second chapter. The combat is an improvement for sure but I'm not really sure I care for MAG being the resource all the special moves as opposed to all the demons just having MP. Still pretty fun regardless.

I got back into the first Etrian Odyssey and I previously decided to ditch my Protector for a Dark Hunter to mix things up from a usual party set-up. Took awhile to get the dark hunter to get up to speed. I used the protector to help speed things along and the protector wound up gaining some levels out of the deal.

I've made some progress on Tales of the Abyss. Probably somewhat close to that half way mark? Resident Evil Revelations has also seen some progress. I think I'm near the end of it and the last couple of chapters sort of zoomed right by. I've haven't been plating New Leaf much though. I've kinda lost interest with it but I still play it for an hour or two every other day or so.

Later!

Recent things

Hey guys. Thought I'd drop in after a fairly long absence. Shin Megami Tensei IV has been eating my life as it is. That game is pretty good stuff. Though I get the feeling I have quite a ways yet to go still.

I made some progress in Digital Devil Saga 2. Namely I beat some of the optional bosses.

Vishnu was a tricky fight. It's a shame there isn't a skill like Pierce like there was in Nocturne which would let me get around the physical absorb affinity of both Vishnu and Shiva so Seraph was just for support for both fights. Shiva was more simple once you figure you he doesn't like buffs or debuffs too much and you need immunity to bind on everyone. It sure went faster than the Vishnu fight.

In order to fight both Shiva and Vishnu you need special items from rare enemies called Parvati and Narasimha. Narasimha was kind enough to give me to the item to fight Vishnu pretty early on while just exploring the Sun normally. Parvati wasn't quite the same. It took quite alot more effort to get what I needed for  the Shiva battle and I gained alot of levels as a result. Everyone advanced quite in bit in the mantra grid as a result. Espesically with Cielo and Gale. 

I've made some progress in other games in Tales of the Abyss but it hasn't been too much. I pretty much made it rich in the stalk market in Animal Crossing new leaf so I was able to max out my house without much issue. Villagers haven't been giving me too many project ideas though and since i got the gold watering can my play sessions have waned quite a bit. 

Ya got me

Until next time