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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - - Posts by Rydain |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42  Posts: 182/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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Judging from some of the reviews posted on GameFAQs, I'd say you're not the only one.  We have it, but I've never played it nor really wanted to because I didn't think that it would be much fun to work around the odd restrictions that you're faced with (battle laws, various job classes only available to characters of a certain race). I give the game designers some credit for trying to be innovative, but the abovementioned restrictions just seem rather silly and arbitrary to me. The original FFT gave you the freedom to develop your characters and battle tactics any way you wanted to. |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 183/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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A while ago, I picked this up used because I'd liked the part of the demo that I'd gotten to play in the store at some point. I forgot we had it until yesterday, when we had a bunch of people over for Axis and Allies (I'm not particularly interested in hours-long strategy board games  ) and I was looking for something to play.This is one of the most interesting games I've ever experienced. You're trying to escape from an enormous ruined castle with Yorda, a mysterious ghostly girl that you just met. To do so, you must find your way around various obstacles and traps in said castle, helping Yorda get from point A to point B as well. (You're able to climb ropes, shin up pipes, and otherwise access areas that she can't get to, so you'll often need to create a path for her.) I absolutely loved the castle's design and presentation. Though you proceed through the castle in a relatively linear fashion, it is one very large, contiguous structure. When you're outside, you can see other parts of it, even if you're looking some distance away. Inside, the camera does a pretty good job at conveying the vastness of the rooms. There isn't much music in this game - you explore to silence interrupted only by various environmental sound effects, which I liked because it made the experience seem more immersive and realistic. There is enough variety to the environments that the castle never gets boring. I particularly liked the windmill courtyard and the rickety wooden Water Tower area. All in all, the castle is a fantastic and well-crafted setting that imparts the melancholy feeling of traveling through the remnants of a fallen dynasty. As I mentioned above, the castle itself is full of obstacles (and ways forward), which are also well-designed, fitting seamlessly into its environment. For example, you might hang from crumbling masonry to inch your way across a gap, or you might find your way blocked because a ledge or ladder has broken. An especially rickety pillar invites you to destroy it to knock something down and create a way forward. The one aspect of the gameplay that sometimes gets on my nerves is the appearance of the shadow monsters that try to take Yorda away. If one of them completely pulls her into the floor, it's game over, and you have to restart from the last save point. For the most part, they're not too bad and add some variety to the gameplay, but there are parts in the game where they're cheap and annoying as hell. Early on, you deal with shadow monsters in reasonable quantities...and then suddenly you're presented with an entire roomful of them. I didn't know that Yorda will eliminate all the shadow monsters in a room when you get to an idol door (which she uses her magic powers to open), so I kept trying to strategically kill them all, failing miserably, and getting more and more cranky. And intelligent enemy AI is OK, but playing unfair is not. Sometimes one of them will knock you down, leaving you useless for several seconds, while a winged one grabs Yorda and very quickly spirits her away to a "sink point" (the point where they start sucking her into the floor) that's literally impossible for you to reach in time, assuming that you even know where it is so you can run there. And no, you can't just hit them and free her while they're flying because you don't have any ranged weapons. These hosers will come after Yorda if you leave her alone in a different area for too long. At one point, I accidentally fell into a canal and down a very long waterfall, and I was damned lucky that I got back up and to Yorda in time. I knew the exact path and went as fast as I could, but she was almost fully sunken into the floor by the time I got there. Oh, and did I mention that Yorda is a complete idiot when it comes to fighting or even avoiding the damned monsters? Another point of contention is that I wish I wouldn't have played this with a bunch of people around. When you're immersed in the castle environment, exploring and trying to find the way forward, random unsolicited suggestions to try this door or go left get Very. Old. Very. Fast. (So do snarky comments from the peanut gallery when you're swearing at the shadow monsters. I am SO going to get Josh back for joking about remixing me into a "Terrible Ms. Kinney" mp3. For those of you who didn't get that, it's a reference to "The Terrible Mr. Grimshaw", which is a "song" that some guy made after recording his roommate getting awfully pissed off at CounterStrike.) If you're confused and asking for help, that's one thing, but I just hate having the immersion interrupted by some random voice from behind. |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 184/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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| Grey - Being that it's been over a decade since I last played SMB3 (let alone beat it without warping), I can't remember all that much about worlds 7 and 8. I just don't look back and remember them being a real pain in my ass, and that's the form that most of my memories of tough games and levels take. They probably were difficult when I first got to them, but that initial impression is way too old for me to recall. I just think that I amassed so many 1-Ups and random items that I was able to spaz my way (or fly) through levels that were giving me problems. Plus, I got so much practice at the game that I probably knew my way through just from that. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 185/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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| Here you go. |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 186/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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| No problem. *tries to steer conversation back on topic* I'm curious...what did you (or didn't you) like about Ico? It's always interesting to hear other people's opinions. |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 187/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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Jesper - Thanks for the fascinating links. I'd heard bits and pieces about Real's asshattery (and been irritated by the way it ate my file associations when I didn't know enough about Windows to figure out how to fix that), but I didn't know that they were quite that insidious.  Colleen - mplayer has a beta Windows build, and it will decode RealAudio and RealVideo if it can find the right codecs. |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 188/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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It's REALLY fun when you get the mace and can lay the smackdown on them in no time at all.  I didn't actually watch the intro because I wanted to get right into the gameplay and people were talking loudly anyway, and turning up the volume would have just added to the noise. I'll be sure to see it next time I play. |
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Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 190/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Ah, the (unintentional) wit and wisdom of Daravon. |
I never actually sat through any of his tutorials because I borrowed a strategy guide with good detailed instructions on playing the game (and I'd watched my friends play it, too), but I've seen some very amusing quotes of his online. Sailor Bacon had one about cutting off units in his GameFAQs board sig a while ago.Does anybody know if they re-translated Daravon for the Greatest Hits release of FFT? I've always been curious about that. (restricted) |
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 192/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Ours cost around $15-20 used. |
I thought that was a fair price for the game.There's only one side quest that I know of. It's in the section of the game with the giant waterfall, and it gets you a spiffy mace. Luckily, I'd read about this before I got there, so I was able to find the weapon and open a can of whoop-ass on any subsequent shadow demons that I ran into. The mace cuts like the sword, so you don't even need to put it down for rope-cutting puzzles. Where'd you read about the game designer being an architect? I never heard that, but it makes sense to me. Other than its location (as the story guide on GameFAQs points out, it would be extraordinarily difficult to build such a structure on a bunch of islands), the castle is a believable structure. (For the record, I don't see the location as a problem at all - if anything, it makes whatever built it seem even more powerful, which is cool.)
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 193/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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I heard about the RadialContext pie menu extension for Mozilla a while ago, gave it a shot, and have been hooked ever since. This extension replaces the normal right-click context menu with a pie menu. You can hold the mouse button down as you navigate the pie menus, which means that you're basically doing mouse gestures, but you can always see which option you're selecting, so it's easier to learn the gestures and more difficult to accidentally execute the wrong one. |
I like to mainly use the mouse when I surf. Quite a lot of my web browsing involves opening up and reading a buttload of links (Google results, message board subforums and threads, etc.), so the pie menus really speed things up. I middle-click links to open them in new tabs, flick the mouse to switch to the next tab, read, and then flick it again to close said tab. I can go forward or back, stop a page load, or refresh with a quick flick of the mouse as well. I never bothered to "graduate" to regular gestures because I already know the RadialContext setup, and it provides me with all the quick functionality I need.
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 194/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Considering that DHTML is just JavaScript used to manipulate page elements...last I checked, some (if not all) JavaScript is stripped from post layouts for security reasons. I'm unaware of any official policy on layout or profile JS that isn't being used for malicious purposes, but I personally wouldn't use it. What did you want to use it for, anyway? There might be a way to get the same effect without JavaScript. |
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 195/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Hair - Strawberry blonde |
Eyes - Blue-gray Height - 5'8-9" (I haven't measured myself in a while, but I'm tall) Weight - 145 pounds Build - For a woman, I'm muscular, and my bodyfat is definitely lower than average. I have a V-taper, some quad muscle definition, and a few visible forearm veins. Average mile time - ~9:45 (at least that's what I did on Monday, and it seemed to require the standard amount of effort that I expend while running a mile) Best/worst - no clue As far as lifts go, I'm not quite 100% at the moment. I had a bunch of imbalances and owies that were the result of a crapton of deep muscle knots, and I've had to back off on intensity. I'm working my way back up to pushing my limit strength again, but I'm not anywhere near my max capacity right now, so I'll just list my records. Best squat (narrow stance, butt to calves) - 140 Best deadlift (sumo stance) - 185 Best bench press - 105 Best chin-up ladder (read: multiple short sets) - 13 Currently, I can do a ladder of 7 chins, which really isn't bad for not being able to work hard at that exercise for about two months. (A lot of my chin-up progress came from simply practicing the exercise frequently without going to fKitten Yiffer, which improves your neural efficiency at said exercise.) My current squat and bench weights are pathetic, but like I said, I'm working up to being able to challenge myself again. Body was intended for - Beats me. I personally train for all-around athleticism. My lifting routine is designed to increase strength, while I do cardio for both speed and endurance. Sometimes I jog and sometimes I sprint, but the sprinting actually does help with the endurance as well because it's great for improving VO2 max. My lower body isn't as flexible as I'd like it to be (I'm nowhere near able to do a split), but I stretch daily, so hopefully that will improve over time. I occasionally cut back on my food intake in order to lose some bodyfat, and I plan to add a couple of pounds of muscle later this year, which means the opposite - more food. w00t. I know what I like to eat, and I like a lot of it. Favorite foods - Food from Mad Mex (a Mexican-ish restaurant) and Herwig's (an Austrian restaurant), pasta with pesto, eggs, cottage cheese, pancakes, vanilla/banana protein shakes, yogurt, Indian food, garlicky stir fry with lots of veggies, eggs, and tofu Favorite food group - I don't really have one.
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 196/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Yeah, the eggs (and veggies and tofu) are supposed to go with the stir-fry. Stupid commas... |
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 197/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Sports - I'm a klutz at most organized sports because I'm bad at judging the position and speed of a ball flying through the air. If it's rolling or bouncing along the ground, it's easier because I can use the ground as a point of reference. I did take martial arts (Tae Kwon Do and Isshinryu karate) at various points in my life, and for the most part, I enjoyed them. Currently, I work out for all-around athletic ability (limit strength along with some speed and endurance), alternating heavy weight training with cardio. |
Other stuff - I've been playing piano for over 20 years. Though I haven't had formal lessons since I was ten or so, I've gotten quite skilled at the instrument. I can learn complex arrangements by ear, and I compose my own. My technique could use some work, but I can do Tori Amos' music justice. I play electric guitar (rhythm guitar, i.e. chords and such - solos befuddle me), but I'm quite out of practice. I have perfect pitch (the ability to figure out what note a pitch is just by hearing it). I also sing. I'm an alto with a couple of extra low notes, and I prefer the deep end of my range.Two years ago, I decided to try my hand at cosplay, and it pretty much became an addiction. I started off just sewing stuff, but I'm getting into propmaking as well. I'm currently working on a sword that will be my first fiberglass lamination project. 
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 198/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Nightmare - Not necessarily...I just have more lat and bicep strength relative to my bodyweight. I can "make muscles", but I normally just look like a person who's in good shape. I won't be winning Ms. Olympia anytime soon... |
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 199/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Because I'm impatient and because we have access to the requisite technology, we just acquired an, uh, "unofficial try before you buy" copy of SH4. Reading all of the discussion on GameFAQs was making me extremely curious, but I didn't want to just go buy the game because, as I've mentioned, I was worried about what some of its new features might do to its playability. |
I'm happy to report that SH4 (at least the first half, which is what I'm on) is much more fun than I'd feared. I even started on Normal - a first for me. I decided that I want to get my survival horror feet a bit wetter, so why not do so in a game where you can heal for free up to a certain point? I can't write a full review because I'm only about 1/3 through the game, but I can at least give some impressions. The Good The quick dodge move = teh w00tness. Though the blocking in SH3 was well-intentioned, I didn't like it because you had to time it (which seemed bizarre to me - why couldn't Heather just hold her arms up for protection like people do in real life?) and it didn't work against all attacks (the dogs would bite right under your arms). Quick dodging is much more intuitive and useful. There are multiple holes back to your apartment in each level. When you go to the apartment and then return to the level, you start at the hole you left by, which does cut down on the backtracking I was worried about. This feature is also put to use in a certain puzzle - a nice touch. The Water Prison is the coolest board ever. The entire building is a puzzle, and it's fun to figure out. There aren't any ghosts here, either (at least the first time ).Thus far, the ghosts aren't really that much of a pain in the ass. You can beat on them to stop them for a few seconds and shove your way past them. Some of them can be easily run around. I heard this changes later...but at least there are items to pin them down as long as you wish. Hooray for the automagically healing room! This allows you to work your way through enemy-infested areas because the vast majority of monsters stay dead once you squish them (the only enemies I've seen regenerate are trivially pathetic ones like slugs), so you can bump off one or two, go heal, return, etc. Contrary to what some people claim, there is main character development. You just have to keep checking stuff in the apartment. As the game progresses, Henry will have different descriptions of items that reveal more about himself. The Bad I hated the fscking subway car maze. It was an unfriendly "puzzle" to put so early in the game. If there wasn't a ghost around, it would have been fine...but as it stood, the first time through, I got lost and was about to die because I couldn't get away from the damn ghost. It would have been helpful if Henry would actually mark the blocked spots of the train on the map he draws. As it stands, all you see are outlines of cars, which doesn't help you remember where you can and can't go. Ghosts can hurt you just by being close by, which I thought was rather cheap. You can be doing a great job avoiding the ghost's normal attacks and still lose health just because. Incidentally, this is what that stupid subway ghost was doing - not actually attacking but being close enough to drain my health. The Other Stuff Worth Mentioning This game really isn't that scary (so far, at least). It has some bloody/rusty environments and some creepy music, and the ghost static sounds like something out of The Ring, but it's more "spooky and interesting" than "nerve-sawingly wracking". I got freaked out after tangling with some new enemies and having my health brought down to the red and being unsure of how close I was to a hole back to the room, but that was just stress - I didn't want to die and have to redo the last 20 minutes of the game. Your room quits healing you halfway through, and it can also hurt you then as well. I'm concerned that this is going to ramp up the difficulty quite a bit, but people have said that you should be fine as long as you hoard healing supplies. There is a chaser enemy of sorts in this game who shows up during the second half. Evidently you can beat him up and knock him out for a while, so he shouldn't be that bad. The Verdict Eh, what the hell...I'm going to preorder it. Even if the second half irritates me that badly, the first half has been fun enough that I'll want to keep the game around. Plus, preordering gets you a free soundtrack CD. (edited by Rydain on 07-17-04 03:03 AM)
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 200/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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I have such fond memories of that Wiegraf battle. My personal style of FFT playing involved doing assloads of leveling so that story battles would be easy. (For those of you who haven't played FFT: this doesn't take the challenge out of the game. The random battle opponents level up along with you, and some random battles are excruciatingly difficult if not outright impossible - Meteor-enabled Chocobo army, anyone? I just thought it was fun to be able to blow through SOME things...) At any rate, I'd heard about this infamous battle long before I got to it, so I was well-prepared. I basically ran around staying out of attack range and using Yell to speed myself up until I got something like 3 turns for every single turn of Wiegraf's. Then I started throwing Accelerates in as well. After a while, I got bored, and thus it was time to kick ass. I was a fully-armed monk at the time, so I'd just stand an appropriate distance away and unleash an Earth Slash. |
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 201/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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According to this article, it's the full soundtrack, and it includes bonus tracks not found anywhere else. I'm pretty sure you'd still be able to buy it separately, but it would probably be a version without those extra tracks. The Japanese version comes with a small disc that, as far as I can tell, is a partial soundtrack. |
(I edited my post! Yaaaaaaaay!) Somebody on the GameFAQs SH4 board said that this game was harder than the others, so I asked for some clarification. They replied that for several reasons, the difficulty increases significantly in the second half of the game. Aaaarrrrgghhhh! Why, Konami, WHY?!  At least the good thing is that you can arrive at the second half with a full cache of supplies (as long as you don't use any of the expendable items that you pick up), so you can save right then and, at worst, only have to restart from there instead of having to redo the entire game. I'll certainly need to replay objectives multiple times so I can get through with minimal loss of supplies (and minimal damage to a certain NPC), but I'm hoping that I won't need to do this too much. I'm still psyched out, though, so I'm putting off picking the game back up again for a little while. I'm going to preorder tomorrow (me sleepy now). I must have that soundtrack. The Water Prison "music" is frickin' awesome. It's not really very musical (most Silent Hill music isn't ), but it's perfect for the area (it sounds desolate and rather creepy and has this cool part where a single note is held for a while and then slid down to another held note, and that part just somehow sounds...spiraling and round, just like the layout of the building). I had the slidey note stuck in my head earlier today.(edited by Rydain on 07-18-04 03:01 AM) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - - Posts by Rydain |
