Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology [take 1]

After a long rest from playing PSP games, finally another game made into my complete (well, sorta) list. By this I mean completing the game in general, playing from start to finish without indulging too much with the sidequests. Since this is just Take 1, I'm planning to resume playing this game for a 2nd playthrough, this time in Very Hard Mode, maximizing most of other Tales characters, as well as exploring all those magic maps. I started playing this about 2 weeks ago, and after about 50 hours of playing time, I reached the final dungeon, Gilguim and face the final boss. Not a hard one for a final boss, really.

So far I've only explored 3 jobs offered in the game - Warrior as my initial job, (just until level 16 though) then Swordsman (until level 63) and then switch to Ninja (until level 61) to the end of the game.

Story: Tales of the World on Wikipedia
The different worlds are under the danger of mana (source of energy) depletion, and this include one of the world, Gilguim, dubbed as the "Devourer" which devour others to get thier mana. The main hero is the "Descender" which was born with specific purpose to save the world from destruction. And each world has their own Descender, including Gilguim. And the hero joined a local organisation called Ad Libitum with the mission to help the people, as well as the world in danger... Interestingly we can customize our hero from gender, face, hair, skin, voice etc. Well since the hero can be a male and female, hence don't expect a romance in this game though (there's this cute loli chick named Kannono which is considered as the heroine of this game, although she is non-playable). You create a male hero, then it's normal, but if its female hero then it's going to be yuri in my game :3
This game also featured various other Tales characters, in which some of them are playable. These includes Kratos, Llyod, Genis and Raine (Symphonia), Chester and Arche (Phantasia), Stahn, Rutee, Garr, Philia and Leon (Destiny) and Luke/Tear from my favorite Abyss.

Gameplay: Just as you guess from Tales series, the kickass Real Time Flex Range Linear Motion Battle System is applied again, just like Tales of the Abyss. As usual the game featured the likes of Base/Arcane/Mystic Artes which looks similar to many previous Tales series. On top of that, it also includes a feature called "Unison" which enable the assigned party member to use their skill on enemies exclusively, and this can only be done when the overlimit gauge is full. Quite a nice feature I'd say, as a goodly coordinated Unison can easily racks up thousands of damage to the enemies. But one thing that kinda annoyed me is the fact that you can't use Mystic Artes unless you master (ie use 50 times) each and every skills for your job. Yes, it really means EVERY single skills. Meaning your Swordsman won't be able to use it until level 58 (learns Sword Rain Demon) while Ninja need to wait until level 53 (learns Quasi Seal). Well can't complain much I guess, since you can go up to level 250 anyway. But still, 90% of the normal game can be completed within level 60, so it's kinda late only to be able to use Mystic Arte at that point.

As for character/jobs: as mentioned, I've only use 3 jobs so far: Warrior, Swordsman , Fighter and Ninja. Started with Warrior, this job somehow resembled Luke in many ways, especially with the fact that it inherit many of his Artes. But then I immediately change my job to Swordsman once it is available at certain point of the game. I'd label Swordman as an uber tanker. I mean come on, with Radiant equipment and Black Onyx, he can easily reach 700+ defense and 6000+ hp. Going 1v3 against those Tales challenges is a breeze, although it still annoyed the hell out of me because they kept on stunlocking me (well only for a measly 1-5 damages each hit). Skillwise, I like Swordsman skill better than Magic Knight, since I'm myself is not fond with magic in Tales series. The drawback I find in Swordsman is that they swing their swords super slowly, I mean it is quite noticeable when we compare it with Warrior. Then I switch to Fighter, as it is a pre-requisite to gain access to Ninja (as well as beating Senel). Not a bad job, I love their friggin fast attack punches. But still, my main aim is to get to Ninja asap. So I levelled up to level 40 , beat Senel and change job to Ninja. Ninja is a unique class, to some extent. When I first use this class, I somehow find it very weak in attack and defense department. But their skills are very cool, truly ninja-like. And they have probably THE most imbalanced skill in the game - Samadhi which made your hero invulnerable to staggering. Truly an AWESOME skill. This skill alone is enough to make Ninja the best character to go 1v3 against those annoying Tales character (though, constant heal is needed).

As for levelling, it doesn't take much effort to level up, although the system they use is weird and annoying. The amount of experience provided by the monster is inversely proportional with the character highest level. Meaning, the higher level you are, the lesser experience you get from the same monster. Annoying, isn't it? The first time visiting Foot of World Tree, the monster there can give from 45-90 experience, but when you return at level 40+, they give only 1 exp. Yes, 1 EXP. But still, as I said, levelling isn't that hard. Set your character in auto mode, go watch some football matches while your hand controlling the psp (to switch battle) and you can get several levels from a decent dungeon. Going and return from uni, playing this game in the bus and you get a couple more levels. Spending around 30 minutes each night before going to bed and you get several more levels :3

So as I stated before, I might continue playing this game once my exam is over (3 weeks from now). This time, I'm planning to play on hard mode, as well as exploring the magic dungeon. Good thing is, EVERYTHING from previous playthrough is carried over to the next one, including character levels, quests etc. The not-so-good thing is that there's no Grade Shop (AFAIK), which I really hope they do @.@

*all images credit to gamefaqs

[Saimoe 2008] The Conclusion

Main websites

Sorry, no introductory post. After almost half a year of qualification, preliminaries, groupstage and playoff matches, Japanese Anime Saimoe 2008 has finally ended yesterday with the final match featuring the Hiiragi sisters from Lucky Star. Unique feat, but overall not that enthralling to many people. First, the result of the final match:

Final
1位　1037票　柊かがみ＠らき☆すた(Hiiragi Kagami@Lucky*Star)
2位　976票　柊つかさ＠らき☆すた(Hiiragi Tsukasa@Lucky*Star)

Kagami should take the final match easily, considering she has every possible trait to make her superior than Tsukasa (tsundere, loli, twintail, what else you could ask :3). But the graph tells otherwise, as Tsukasa gave a tough day for Kagami until the end hour of voting.

Overall table for groupstage and playoff:
Groupstage
Playoff

This year has been one of the boringest Saimoe in my book, particularly past the group stage. Mainly because of the total domination of KyoAni's faction in the playoff. 5 out of 8 (Tomoyo, Nagisa, Fuuko, Tsukasa and Kagami) qualified, and "just as planned", the Hiiragi sisters made it to the finals to settle things up. While I'm not dislike KyoAni characters, this somehow took away the spice of Saimoe. Just look at the total amount of votes (not only in the final match, but most of playoff matches in the link given), it's way below average count of 1000+ votes as seen in previous year Saimoe. Seems like many people don;t give a damn about the the latter stage of this year Saimoe after seeing some of the top dog were eliminated early, like the unlucky Maria, the last year finalist Nagi and Rika, (HnG) and even Fate (Nanoha StrikerS), beaten by Fuko (Clannad) :3
As for me, I started to lose my interest in this year Saimoe since the loss of Horo against Tamaki in semi final group E match. Although, she compensate it by winning Korean Best Moe :D

Fall series rants [final]

Finally the last part has arrived, I guess I don't have much time to write (too lazy actually).

Shikabane Hime: Aka
MAL/official

Let's see....firstly I have to say that this is probably the only Fall show that have awesome songs in both OP and ED (beside Tales of Abyss, but then the OP is taken directly from the game, so that won't really count). I'm not quite familiar with Angela, but the OP "Beautiful Fighter" and ED "My Story" are just the type of songs that fit my taste. Animation style is okay, suit well with the dark theme, and sometimes it manage to give me the creep down my spine. Then, to the story. A fairly dark theme surrounding supernatural phenomenon called "Corpse/Shikabane" which arises from the dead (obviously...), and this is where the plot is revolved - the main female lead, Makina (a cool/cold chick wielding dual-machine gun) who is also a Corpse, went on various missions to exterminate the other arisen Corpse which can possibly endanger human. As far as episode 4 concerns, there is no clear connection between the main hero, Kagami with Makina, although he often gets caught whenever Makina is lurking for suspected Corpse.
But unfortunately, there's one aspect about this series that kept me from giving more credit to this series. I find the seiyuu for Makina (Nana Akiyama, the kamen rider girl) and Kagami fail miserably, almost as worse as Maka (Soul Eater). Seriously, what's with the monotonous scream by Makina whenever she was hurt? Same goes for Kagami, at some points he shouts for Makina, but then one might wonder, is he really shouting? It's just...terrible.

Tales of the Abyss
MAL/official

It's HEREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! I'm always a fan of the game, probably one of the best I've evr played since Valkyrie Profile Silmeria. The OP song, Karma by Bump of Chicken is taken directly from the game, and the ED song is nice too. Animation style remains unchanged compared to the anime sequence as seen in the game, which is a good thing although I wish they could make Tear a bit more sexier :3 Plot-wise, it followed faithfully with the game plot, although there's a slight changes here and there which does not really affect the whole understanding of the story. Luke remained a spoiled child with his unmannered behavior, and although he should be enlisted in a must-die character, at least there's something going on about him later as the story progress which made me forgive him, albeit his inferiority complex still annoyed me.
Giving the fact that this series runs for approximately 26 episodes, I believe the anime can packs most of the lengthy game plot, though it's likely they'll exclude some details. But what made me a little disappointed with the anime is that they took out many hilarious jokes from the game, (like Natalia-Tear-Luke's funny scenes when they arrive in Baticul in ep5) which is one of the main factor that made the game so awesome. At least they still keep Jade's sarcastic remark throughout the anime, which more or less make up for the lack of humor :3

To Aru Majutsu no Index
MAL/official

One of the better product from JC Staff this Fall, obviously I'm comparing this to Toradora. I love the OP song, "Psi-Missing" by Kawada Mami, which has similar style to her song "Hishoku no Sora" featured in Shakugan no Shana. The animation quality and special effects used by JC Staff is superb, especially during the fighting scenes. This somehow surprised me, considering how bad they made Toradora looked like. Nonetheless, just as many other manga adaptation, the story followed the original work for most of the parts, although I can't confirm this any further than the part when Index got healed by the summoning ritual. That's the last time I read the manga. The main hero, Touma is a gifted guy with the ability to negate any kind of spell, but aside from that, he really has no redeeming point in term of fighting skills. And he met with Index, a girl with insanely tremendous memorizing capabilities who was chased by an organization claimed to be evil, Necessarius. And that's it, their short, misery quest of survival...sorta.

Toradora!
MAL/official

Okay, another series from JC Staff. As previously mentioned, I dislike how the animated this series, I mean having read the manga and a fair bit of the novel, I expect the character to be designed just as how they looked like in the manga/novel, if not better. But they failed me, with Takasu was made to look like a badass guy with vicious eyes, but in my eyes it's just uncool. Same goes for Kitamura's oval-shaped spectacles. For first-timer of this series, this might not be an issue though. Not to mention the overall animation quality is below par.
Okay, then to the story. Not quite following the manga in some parts, but essentially most characters stick to their role. Episode 2 was uberly rushed that somehow made the manga/novel readers surprised. But the studio make up for it with a well-elaborated story in subsequent episodes. Taiga, being as close as Louise (Zero no Tsukaima) in term of overall attitude is now almost officially accepted into the trinity tsundere of Nagi, Shana and Louise. That makes it four now. Tsundere Quartet? :3 Takasu is just a normal guy with a vicious eyes. Kitamura is Hanai-like guy (School Rumble), although he is not as enthusiastic as Hanai especially in love department. Minorin is a non self-proclaimed airheaded. And Ami is a spoiled, foul-mouthed girl. And these makes up the 5-way love, romance and comedy story.

Yozakura Quartet
MAL/official

The last one for my Fall series rant. Harem youkai anyone? A story of a guy with special lineage power of exorcism (to put it pluntly) who was appointed as the chief in a Youkai town, and he is mainly assisted with 3 youkai chicks - Hime the superheroine, Ao the mindreader, and Kotoha the conjurer (Gate of babylon ftw). The main problem of the story has yet to be cleared to the reader, but looking back in episode 4, we can expect that this will mainly involve Akina and Hime's relationship with their old, possessed friend who is now seems to be the main bad guy of the story. The animation quality a bit plain and probably is not the better one by today's animation standard, but as some people say, it is at least still acceptable. One thing that about this anime that I find to be a major distinction of this series compared to many others is the use of different style of BGM in some of the scenes - the slow, rocking music which we rarely seen nowadays. Not the kind of bgm I'm used to, but still nicely done nonetheless.

finally done~

MYM PDL: Final Heroes Statistics

Previously we've seen how the heroes are ranked based on picks and bans in online Tournament MYM Prime Defending League, up to playday 7. Now that the PDL season 1 is officially over, after the Grand Final matches between MYM and SK, it's time to revise the ranking again and see how much things have changed since then, especially since the discovery of some first picks/bans material post-ESWC. This time, there are two aspects of the ranking to be looked into; 1) the total picks/bans and win/lose ratio, as well as 2) the score for each heroes based on their bans/picking order.

1. Statistic 1: http://www.mymym.com/en/coverage/498/3.html
2. Statistic 2: http://dota.pizdec9000.ru/

First, the ranking list created by Ruven in MyMYM. This ranking is solely based off the bans and picks regardless of picking order, and coupled with the result of the game, the win/lose ratio is calculated.


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Some facts I found to be interesting:

-The top 4 heroes: Warlock, Puck, Zeus and Beastmaster remain unchanged, albeit the order is slightly different. Their role remain significant in every games. One is massive babysitter/ pusher, one is awesome initiator/ganker, one is brutal spell spammer and one is a ridiculous map controller/initiator/ganker.

-Omniknight and Lich who ranked 5th and 6th respectively, have similar win/lose ratio, at 50% but the total opposite amount of ban/pick. Lich remains to be one of the best ward bitch in 6.52e and all he need to do in teamfight is cast Frost Nova/Chain Frost/Meka if applicable and then it doesn't matter if he died. Omni who was picked largely because of his Repel.

-Chen, Vengeful Spirit and Broodmother have a very high win/losr ratio, at more than 80%. In fact, VS has been one of the most successful heroes in recent days, rarely seen her losing any games. With stun, command aura and Swap, she fits with many kind sof lineup - push, ganking, and even one of the best hero to counter the frightening Turtling strat (hello Pit Lord).
Chen and Broodmother don't change much in their ranking since the previous one, but their win/lose ratio certainly is not something to be mislooked. The current Broodmother is a beast once she got her BKB and a little bit of high tier item, her Web forced enemy to buy sentry to counter her, and her Spiderling is useful in pushing. Chen is feared because of his jungling capabilities, and of course, ganking with his Creep army. And in crucial teamfights, his global heal can make the difference between winning and losing.

-Visage. This is probably the most noticable changes in the ranking. His position only rise a little in the list (rank 32 to 22), but his ban ratio increased significantly (1 to 19 bans). Yes, this is LARGELY because of ESWC, where many teams discover the potential of this heroes as pusher/map controller and dps/tanks. In ESWC, we've seen how SK made a huge comeback against KS in the group stage with the picks of Visage/TB, and in the other group, the champion Zenith beat MYM with the same strat. It is from that point that people start to realize how fearsome visage is, especially because he is one of the best counter to top-picked heroes like Lich and Luna.


The second statistics, automatically generated from parsed games (click to view).


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This ranking was based on point system, where banned heroes receive 7 points, and the picked heroes were given points based on their picking order (7 / 6 - 6 / 5 - 5 / 4 - 4 / 3 - 3 / 3) . In term of overall rank, there really is not much change for most heroes, especially the top 4 which is again dominated by the same heroes - Beastmaster, Warlock, Puck and Zeus. It was clear from the table that these heroes really are the best first pick material, judging how the amount of picks skewed toward the first few picks, and barely used as last pick (people will start bitching if they see Zeus last picked lol)

PDL Grand Final: MYM vs SK

Online Tournament MYM Prime Defending League has finally reach its final stage. Previously we have seen MeetYourMakers (MYM) and SK.Gaming (SK) met during the final day of the league as the top two team in the table, where the match was shoutcasted live via ESNationTV, superbly commentated by MYM captain Maelk and MYM|Aurora.
Then to the playoff, where MYM and SK meet once again in the winner bracker final, where MYM triumph 2-0 in a best-of-three format. SK who were knocked to the loser bracket, still ale to recover themselves and beat french team, SRS to go to the Grand Final, meeting their nemesis MYM. The Grand Final was in best-of-five format, with MYM had 1-0 advantage due to coming from winner bracket and hence need to win just two more games to win and the grand final.

The Grand Final matches were held just this morning. Yet again, the match was streamed live via ESNationTV, but unfortunately I was not able to watch the match due to certain reasons. Nevertheless I was still able to watch both replay, though I have to admit that there's not much talking points for both matches.

match details:
general match news/ESNationTV@MyMYM

matchticker@myMYM


game 1: MeetYourMakers vs Sk. Gaming

Bans (MYM First): | | | | | | |
Picks (MYM First): | | | | |

MYM, Sentinel

[puck] MYM|MaNia- (Top)
[vs] MYM|Maelk (Top)
[medusa] MYM|H4nn1- (Middle)
[spectre] MYM|Fear (Bottom)
[warlock] MYM|PusHer (Bottom)

SK, Scourge

[sven] SK.Loda (Top))
[zeus] SK.Hailo (Creep Puller)
[nevermore] SK.Akke (Middle)
[bane] SK.KwoM (Bottom)
[omni] SK.Tompa (Bottom)

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first, lets look at the pick order. MYM let go of Zeus and pick Spectre as their first pick. Nothing uncommon, plus zeus was immediately picked by SK next, together with omni. The tricky part comes in SK's 3rd and 4th pick (shadow fiend and sven). It was apparent that these two heroes are bkb-dependant. Coupled with the fact that SK had omni on their side, MYM knew they could not rely entirely on Spectre for diffusal carrier, especially early game where spectre possibly has yet to farm her Diffusal Blade. Puck isn't an effective Diffusal user, as Guinsoo is much better. Hence, they last pick Medusa for her purge, as well as semi-carry. SK's intention for picking Bane might be to reduce MYM's manpower in teamfight as much as possible (Nightmare), plus MYM only has VS as non-ultimate stunner.

To the match itself. In the first 20-30 minutes, SK generally dominate the 5v5 teamfights, with Akke's sf get a triple kill, while MYM was better at small teamfights, hence the score for both teams were fairly even at that point. Up to 40 minutes, SK had tower advantage by taking down all but MYM's base and bottom mid tower. But MYM still persist. Pusher's Puck manage to farm Guinsoo, Fear's Spectre got his diffusal in 30 minutes, and the Radiance in 50 minutes. Albeit regarded as trash hero, Medusa did well in the hand of Hanni, carrying MYM early-mid game with BoT/Mjolnir. And even VS had a Sange. In SK side, Bane still stuck at Ultimate Orb/Perseverance, and Loda's sven made some questionable item choice. He went for Linkens first, folowed by Armlet-Mask of Madness late game. At first it looks like a weird first item choice, but if we look carefully into the whole strategy, it is actually a smart choice of item. A Repelled Sven will be invulnerable to every spells except Purge. Hence only Purge works on Repelled heroes, and this is blocked by Linkens. Really smart. So the only way to counter this is by using a second Diffusal user, and in this case, Diffusal Blade on Spectre.
MYM gains total map control 50 minutes in, and proceed to win the game. GG. One more win, and the cash prize is theirs.


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match 2: Sk. Gaming vs MeetYourMakers

Bans (SK First): | | | | | | |
Picks (SK First): | | | | |

SK, Sentinel

[warlock] SK.Hailo (Top)
[weaver] SK.Akke (Top)
[tinker] SK.Loda (Middle)
[naix] SK.KwoM (Bottom)
[mirana] SK.Tompa (Bottom)

MYM, Scourge

[qop] MYM|Maelk (Top)
[beastmaster] MYM|PusHer (Jungle)
[nevermore] MYM|H4nn1- (Middle)
[puck] MYM|Fear (Bottom)
[tidehunter] MYM|MaNia- (Bottom)

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Game 2 is just a pubstomp, SK got rolled by MYM. 20 minutes in, MYM leads the kill score 10-0. The match does not even last 40 minutes. Weaver did fine, managing to farm a quick radiance but their team coordination seems too much off. IMO Loda's tinker played poorly, I mean he does not ultilize Tinker's rearm ability to its fullest when he push lanes. Constantly getting ganked and only get his BoT at 30th minute. But overall it seems like the whole SK lacks the motivation in this match, as their coordination often off. SK might want to try playing Asian-style Tinker (BoT/BKB abuse push strat) but MYM total domination halted their strategy. MYM won.

With this, MeetYourMakers won the very first season of MYM Prime Defending League, taking away $2000 cash prize money. Well played on their side throughout this tournament, I don't know what would be the outcome of this tournament if Mousesports manage to reach the playoff. GGWP.

Tournament outcome:

1. Meet Your Makers - $2,000
2. SK Gaming - $1,000
3. Serious Gaming - $500