Star Ocean 4: So bad, yet so good

Back then when I used to play so many xbox 360 games, I've finished Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope TWICE, including beating both Gabriel Celeste and Ethereal Queen during my first playthrough. My second playthrough was to clean up most other trophies/quests/items I missed during my first play, unfortunately a game freeze glitch occurred when I was 6+ hours into my first Wandering Dungeon run in my second playthrough totally put me into total frustration, and since then I've never touched the 360 version : (

Well almost 1 year after, I finally decided to play the game again, this time for PS3 - Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope International. I know that someday I would replay the game again, hence I've pick the game together when I bought my PS3 early last year. And it was not until recent weeks that I started playing (after platinuming Dragon Age, then stopped midway to play Resonance of Fate).

Title: Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope International
Developers: Tri-Ace
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Genre: role-playing games
Release date: Feb 2010

The PS3 version, in short is just the slightly enhanced port of the 360 version, with few changes that made the game slightly harder. Among the notable changes include: Japanese and English voice option; Multi language text option; option to pick classic or modern interface; option to mute character/enemy's voice (god I LOVE this feature); and several in-game changes. These includes contents and element locks of some chests, addition of new treasure chests, and changes to some item creation recipe. I cant believe the simple Sacred Spear now required Crystall Skull to create -__- And lastly, the change to some Trophies, namely the Trophies for Battle Trophies. In 360 version, we're given a Trophy for each 10% of acquired BTs, but in the PS3 version, it's one every 15%, making the total Trophies for BTs collection to 7 (15%, 30%...90%, 100%) rather than 10 (10%, 20%...90%, 100%) in the 360 version.

One notable post-game change is that now Arumat's ultimate skill, Dragon Roar is now locked in a FLAME chest rather than Light in case of all other character's ultimate skill. Which means we now must travel all the way down to Gabriel Celeste's room to get the Water Ring before we can use it... I guess Tri-Ace knew how insanely strong this skills is that they decided to change the chest to flame so that players wont use cheap tactic of spamming Dragon Roar to clear the 7SD. Well didn't matter much to me, since I was mainly using Edge, Meracle and Sarah to run through 7SD, with the 4th interchangeable between Arumat and Reimi, and Bacchus in case of farming exp/fol against the Metal Scumbag, and Myuria in case of farming magical clay.

I'm using the Japanese voice throughout my run so far, and although they sound slightly better than the English version, some of the character's voice still annoyed the heck out of me. The option to mute character's battle voice certainly helped a lot to ease my annoyance toward the voice used. Guess who did I mute? Lyme, Sarah (For god's sake her character alone is quite annoying, luckily she was very dependable healer in battle) and Edge. I find Meracle pretty annoying in the English version too, but her Japanese voice isn't that bad, especially because she sounds a lot like one of my favorite seiyuu, Kitamura Eri (although it looked like she was voiced by different person with similar voice). I just wish we could also mute Welch's voice, OH AND MAYBE ALSO BRING SO3'S WELCH.

So Bad, Yet So Good

Yes, the game is that bad. A giant ball of cliche story, terrible plot twist that comes out of nowhere (hello Alternate Earth), lousy character and voice acting (hello Lymle and Sarah), awful dialogues that made me facepalm in every cutcenes. And yet here I am, still playing it and now sunk about 120 hours total into the game. Star Ocean 3 was terribad in in the 2nd half of the game, but Star Ocean 4 was 10 times worse - the character, the voice, the story. Yet the gameplay was so addicting that it somehow managed to make up for the catastrophic story/characters. The gameplay is just THAT good, probably one of the best JRPG battle system in recent years, maybe second only to Tales's (eg Tales of Vesperia) gameplay. The quests was massive, the item creation and equipment customisation were endless, and the extra dungeons were massive, added with some of the most difficult boss battles. I definitely had a lot of fun playing the game, I mean the gameplay. I guess Tri-Ace is just not good with developing good story but rather excels with gameplay (much like eg. Valkyrie Profile, Infinite Undiscovery and Radiata Stories), which alone warrant a reason to play SO4.

There's one scene/quest in this game that really touched me, made me sad comparable to the sadness of watching some of the sad scenes in NieR: the very last normal quest of the game, when we're asked to deliver a letter from someone in Nox Obscurus to his wife in EnII...really touch me that it almost made me cry to be honest.

Platinum Difficulty: 9.5/10

And the Platinum...well all I can say is getting Platinum is virtually impossible for me to get. Not because it was overly difficult- it's just that it will take extremely long amount of time to get Platinum - 400-500 total hours minimum simply because of the BT Trophies.

2 most broken skill in the game: Arumat's Dragon Roar and Reimi's Savage Sparrow, closely followed by X-Claw. Edge's Raging Strike is ridiculously powerful allowing you to deal max damage easily, but as it was a 1-hit skill, the damage is always capped at 99999 no matter how strong you are. Dragon Roar meanwhile can easily go over 200k damage in total, much eclipsing Raging Strike's damage output. So did Savage Sparrow too, which was even better considering the skill homes at almost all enemies in battles. And the most stupid ultimate skill: I'd say Lymle's Trinity Blaze and Bacchus's Godslayer.

p/s: Tri-Ace made awesome job selecting voice cast for Resonance of Fate (Both English and Japanese voices), I wonder if different people were in charge to select VAs for this game and RoF.

BT proress: Edge 78%, Reimi 78%, Faize 57%, Lymle 57%, Bacchus 69%, Meracle 72%, Sarah 66%, Myuria 67%, Arumat 61%. Total 605 BTs, 67% completion.
Quite a bit before I could reach the next BT trophies at 75%, aka 675 BTs.

Related Link:
Star Ocean 4 for xbox 360

The Platinum Series: [6] Resonance of Fate

For some reason I had a strong urge to replay Resonance of Fate since coming back to M’sia, although I’ve already finished the 360 version (albeit not getting 1000G). Earlier this year I had planned to borrow the PS3 version from Reppu_Kiri (in exchange for me lending him Valkyria Chronicles), but it was not until early this month that we had a chance to meet, which somehow turned into an informal gath for the gforumer peeps at Tenshi no Cafe at e@Curve, Damansara. Some Maid Café, insane food.

Anyway, I finally got to borrow the game, and immediately played it. My aim for this game is simple: getting a Platinum. I’ve played the 360 version and had the rough estimation on the difficulty of getting the Platinum. And after roughly one week (or 90 hours), I finally managed to complete it.

Title: Resonance of Fate
Developers: Tri-Ace
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360
Genre: role-playing
Release date: Jan 28 (JP); March 16 (NA); March 26 (EU) 2010

Platinum Difficulty: 6/10

Back then in the 360 I only failed (or too lazy) to get one trophy: Stardust Hunter which required me to achieve a Star in every single Arena rank, and that totaled to 500 battles which I must gone through. Easy strategy wise, but a very boring and tedious task because we need to repeat each rank 10 times to get a Star (total 50 ranks). Now for the PS3 version, I was determined to endure it, and after spending almost the whole day entirely at Arena, I finally managed to get it…well I guess this is nothing compared to getting 30,000 kills BT for Edge/Arumat in Star Ocean 4, which I would likely never try to attempt.

I like the score/statistic board for thisgame. Recording almost every single detail about the game. Oh, and that chapter stats were for the second playthrough, hence the 90+ hours for all of them.

Aside of Stardust Hunter, the rest of the trophy was relatively easy to do. I mean, it’s easy as long as you’re accustomed to the mechanic/gameplay of Resonance of Fate. Because mastering the gameplay itself is not easy because just like Tri-Ace’s phenomenal series Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, the game employs something entirely different than the usual turn-based or real-time combat that you found in most jrpgs. Mastering the combat mechanic takes time, but once you know how it worked, marching through the game is a breeze. Well, maybe except another Trophy: Kings of Neverland, which require you to clear the ultimate secret dungeon in the game, Neverland. This dungeon was pretty much like Tri-Ace’s Seraphic Gate or Wandering Dungeon, except that it was much more merciless. Even at level 200+ (max level is level 300), there’s no guarantee that you can pass the dungeon without casualties, because the enemies are THAT strong. Good thing the final bosses in Neverland were not that intimidating. It’s kinda funny because in my fight, I focused on R****a first by chaining max charged MG (Machinegun) and a few charged HG (Handgun) continuously, and that leave her completely stunned to her death. The other boss, S******n only employ physical melee attack, which cause 500-1000 damage (out of 13k-15k hp on my party at level 260+) at most thanks to the imbalanced Neversuit and Hi-Polymer Padding.

The definition of overlevelled. Vashyron almost had a leet hp lol

Since I’ve written almost everything on my mind about the game on many of my old posts when I played the 360 version, I guess there’s not much things for me to say about the game anymore. The ps3 version was pretty much the same as the 360 version. If anything, I’d say that the story remained elusive as ever. I still like the way the story was presented, but I certainly hope Tri-Ace could release something that could explain everything about the story (much like how Grimoire Nier book was released to explain much of the game’s backstory).

On a side note, I love Leanne :3

The Resonating Fate (first impression)

The Neverending Fate [Part 1]

The Neverending Fate [Part 2]

[Review] Resonance of Fate

RD Replay of the Month - Back to action

It’s been awhile since I post anything about Dota, not since the conclusion of SGNDT 2010. Partly because since coming back from Australia, I had to wait till February for my PC to get shipped, and in the mean time, using a worn-out 5 years old laptop which didn’t have WC3 installed. 2 months without dota is a nightmare I tell you.

Anyway, that still didn’t prevent me from following the competitive scenes. Since the start of the year, much changed had happened, and by now I’ve almost completely only follow Chinese/Asian scene. Not that the European scene was uninteresting or something, it’s just that I simply lost my passion to follow their scene. Back to the Asian scene, there was quite a good number of games that catch my eyes, unfortunately some of the games didn’t have any replay available for download (so far). I’m referring to Chinese’s Lunar Cup which was featured some exciting games in the final between LGD and Nirvana.cn. The game was still available for view on youku, but I’m not sure if the replay was ever released.

One game that caught my attention recently was an ADC game of Scythe.sg vs AEON.MUFC.

Events: Asian Dota Championship (ADC) IV
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.71b, version 1.24E
GameMode: -cm
Length: 80:48 minutes

replay download: [gosugamers]

rating: 7.5/10

It actually wasn't that long, since about 10 minutes of the total 80 mins were used for -cm drafting. Although it was not that epic compared to the classic LGD-EHOME encounter we've seen throughout last year, the game was still rather tense and interesting, especially the final 20 minutes. A close game.

From the picking phase, we've seen a clear intention of AEON to win by sheer carrying power of Medusa, supported by Invoker and Puck. Scythe had other idea though, as their final pick of Antimage provided the trump card against a farmed up Medusa. And Yamateh's Antimage did just that, also thanks to great combination with Hyhy's Tinker.

Medusa did the best he could, maxing her inventory real fast - Linken, Manta, Skadi, Butterfly; and by that point she was almost unkillable, but then made one mistake that cost them the game: buying a Divine Rapier (as a classic Medusa always did) and lost it very soon after. Not having a BKB against Tinker with Guinsoo and Antimage on the opposite side proved to be suicidal. She did have money for buyback, but recent changes with the addition of cooldown to Buyback means she couldn't afford to die a second time, which she did later when Scythe pushed to AEON's base, and hence unable to buyback, leaving their base open to demolition.
Scythe then went on to win the semi-final against LGD, and the grand final against Nirvana.my to lift the ADC season IV title.

On a side note, Lich as solo was... kinda good. Depend on situation I guess, but Sharky did a nice job playing a semi-carry Lich. In the end, he even had a rapier lol. Oh, and a bad invoker play.

The Platinum Series: [5] Dragon Age Origins

Dragon Age Origin was one of the few games I brought with me since returning from Aussie. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of a western rpg games like this, but nevertheless, I try to enjoy the game as much as possible. And as weeks went by, I find myself finishing 2 full playthrough2 of the game, one as a Mage and another as a Warrior. That surprisingly left me with just 1 Trophy left to Platinum: reaching level 20 as the third class, Rogue.

Title: Dragon Age: Origin
Developers: Bioware
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360, Windows, Mac
Genre: role-playing
Release date: November 2009


Platinum difficulty: 4/10.

Overall, I don't think any of the trophy in Dragon Age Origin was difficult to obtain.The slightly challenging one is probably the "Heavy Hitter" Trophy which require you to deal at least 250 damage with your character (we normally deals ~50-100 damage on regular attack/spells). Fortunately each class had certain skills that made this possible, such as Mana Clash for Mage and Arrow of Slaying for Rogue. Heck, we could even use the tome dupe glitch/exploit to pump our character's stats and easily deal the required damage with a simple normal attack. The Platinum was indeed relatively easy, but it still took quite some time to complete because it can took up to 3 playthrough (each for the 3 classes to reach level 20, which can range from 20-30 hours ), plus the 3 additional mini origin trophies (which took about 2 hours each) to achieve the platinum. Or, if you're simply want to rush, get the Awakening extension pack and easily get the level 20 Trophy in a matter of less than an hour, hence making the full Platinum requirement to just 1 playthrough.

Anyway, it took me two and a half playthrough to platinum this. My first playthrough was a mage, and although I didn't follow any proper walkthrough, I'm surprised that I coincidentally followed the recommended path to recruit the allies: Mage, Redcliff, the Elves and lastly Dwarf. But it was a so screwed up playthrough because I didn't know and missed so many things about the game. Missed Leliana at the Lothering, killed Wyne at the Circle Tower, not knowing that she was recruitable; missed getting Blood Mage specialization in my only chance as a mage, and more importantly, my skills and talents distribution was all over the place. My second playthrough as a warrior was better though, since I properly follow the walkthrough, and thanks to this, I managed a clean sweep at most of the trophies I missed in my first playthrough (including save and reload trick to side with both factions in each recruited allies, as well as the multiple endings). And to be honest, although at this point I only got 1 trophy left to Platinum, somehow I can't bring myself to play another playthrough as a rogue....until like a few weeks ago, when I finally decided to just speedrun the game, my final ever playthrough of Dragon Age Origin. Skip most cutscenes, did the Circle Mage and Redcliffe part. By then I was about level 10, but it was all that needed to reach level 20 on my rogue, thanks to the imbalanced gold glitch, which took me no less than 1 hour to jump from level 10 to 20, the Rogue Level 20 Trophy, as well as the Platinum. Well, at least for the main game, since it didn't count the DLC trophies.

Other thoughts

Throughout the game I played mostly on either Casual or Normal difficulty (don't want to hurt my brain by playing on something like Nightmare). To be honest, there was a huge gap between these 2 difficulty, almost as if the Normal was geared slightly toward Hard mode while the Casual mode was an utter joke where it's almost impossible for you to die. I sure hope Bioware could at least balanced the game a bit.

One more thing, the game is glitchy as &^%@#$. It doesn't happened often, but when it did, it really annoyed me. I remember one very common glitch point that happened to me so many times , and that really pissed me off: the locked hall in Human Noble origin story, after the battle scene. On another note, the game also has a "good" kind of glitch - the gold and item dupe glitch, which allowed you to have infinite gold, and infinite tomes. And yes, I did (ab)use them for the lulz, in my third playthrough.


Final thoughts
My final impression toward the game pretty much remained unchanged since I last made my first impression post: amazing story and great length of choices/options for players to choose, but as a whole, it definitely is not the type of games I'd thoroughly enjoy since my interest lies heavily toward jrpgs. Relatively easy Platinum though.