Restoring the Thieves Guild to its former glory one loading screen at a time

To my surprise, I returned the Thieves Guild to its former glory last night, a task I assumed would take a lot longer, seeing as you have to first do a number of miscellaneous tasks for both Vex and Delvin before getting the chance to do a more important quest to gain the loyalty of someone who will then set up shop in the Ratway, thus making it a better base. It’s a lot of back and forth, and it seems like there’s randomness involved in that you have to do at least five tasks within a specific city to get the loyalty missions to trigger; I just did what I got assigned and soldiered on. Anyways, it is done; check it out in Achievement form:

One with the Shadows (30G): Returned the Thieves Guild to its former glory

Right. Go me. Having just finished up the Dark Brotherhood questline, I can definitely say that the Thieves Guild offered the most quests to do, and you can take that as you will. Granted, in a game like Skyrim, you shouldn’t be lacking for things to do, but this guild questline did seem the most fleshed out and sporting a better base, one you personally invest in and see grow. As a reward for restoring the guild to its heyday reputation, I was made the Guild Master and given a pretty sweet set of armor.

This has been something I’ve been working on for over a year. Granted, not every day, but whenever I’d load up my save and begin running around the world, I’d always keep both Vex and Delvin’s quests in mind, trying to at least do both before returning to Riften to turn them in and pick up the next two. The main reason this task takes so long, at least for me on the ol’ Xbox 360, is due to load screens, which stretch the gap between the beginning of the universe and the end of everything. Vex says to go to Solitude and do this–loading screen. Delvin wants you tooling around over in Dawnstar–loading screen. Fast travel back to Riften to enter the Thieves Guild hideout–loading screen. Enter the actual hideout–loading screen. Enter the Ratway–loading screen. Pick up two more quests from Vex and Delvin, but sit through two more loading screens before you can even get outside to fast travel and experience yet another loading screen. Sure, the easy answers are “play on PC” or “don’t use fast travel” but those responses don’t really work for me. I play how I play, and it’s built around slowness.

Okay, my new Skyrim to-do list, which is mostly based on as-yet-unlocked Achievements, and all of this will hopefully be crossed off before I dig into Dawnguard or Dragonborn:

• Get married
• Hit level 50 (I’m halfway to 48 currently, have to really work on magic and one-handed combat, maybe even more smithing)
• Collect 15 Daedric artifacts (feel like I’ve gotten four or five so far)
• Learn 20 shouts
• Do more quests than acquire more quests

I don’t know if it is possible for me to get a bounty of 1,000 gold in each hold with my current character as he’s too nice of a fellow, despite his deep association with the shadier guilds. Chances are high I’ll never make a second character or play differently, but maybe after I’ve done every single thing I ever want to do and know that Fallout 4 is coming out soon I’ll just go apeshit and put each hold to the torch–figuratively, that is. More or less, Lohgahn will fill every civilian and solider with arrows. Maybe even summon a dragon. But only then, at the end, when I will play no more. Because that’s a one-way street.

Until then.

The Night Mother thanks you for saving the Dark Brotherhood

Well, with LEGO Lord of the Rings now completed to 100% and Borderlands 2 a real grind unless playing online with friends and farming for sweet loot, I’m digging back into Skyrim. Even without the Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLC packs–which I will get eventually–there’s still plenty for me to do despite having now logged over 110 hours on my single character of Lohgahn, the stealthy Imperial that shoots from afar with an enchanted bow first and asks questions later. Such as finally finishing up the last of the faction questlines after having become the Arch-Mage, the master of the Thieves Guild, the leader of the Companions, and general greatest hero ever to set foot in the snowy, Norse-themed realm.

I am to believe that the Dark Brotherhood quests were the most enjoyable experiences in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I remember starting that questline and eventually joining the shady circle of assassins and shifty souls, but never really getting any further than that, so I can’t say for sure. What I can say confidently is that the Dark Brotherhood quests in Skyrim have elements of fun and the potential to be darkly delightful–but are not. They play out just like every other quest in the game, and everything is over sooner than you’d expect. Yeah, you get some cool loot along the way–and a horse!–but I wasn’t in it for the loot this time. I wanted to be dark and cruel and set up these crazy puzzle-like scenarios for someone to accidentally die from. That didn’t happen. Let me present an example.

[Spoilers for the quest “To Kill an Empire” to follow…]

Posing as a famous chef known only as the Gourmet, you gain access to Castle Dour in Solitude in hopes of poisoning the Emperor. That sounds really great. You meet with another cook called Gianna, who will help you prepare a special meal for the Emperor and his friends upstairs. This is all done via dialogue options. You are making some French-named potato stew, and Gianna asks you what goes in it, ingredient by ingredient. At the end, you tell her there is one more ingredient, the Jarrin root, and in it goes. Then you follow her upstairs, watch the Emperor eat, slump over dead, and then escape the tower. Your involvement in the quest is disappointingly minimal. It could have been so much more, with you having to drop in the poison root while distracting Gianna…or something like that. Make it more puzzle-based or use a skill like persuasion. As the Dark Brotherhood member fulfilling the contract, let me fulfill the contract. That Emperor turned out to be a fake, and killing the real one is even less imaginative.

That said, the story has some nice twists to it and fantastic dialogue from creepy characters like the Night Mother, Babette, Cicero, and Astrid, but other than that–it’s a big letdown. You assassinate contracts. Sometimes you talk to them before you do that, but the end result is always the same. Overall, I guess the Thieves Guild is the most fun questline Skyrim has to offer, with a range of mission types and a really useful base full of useful merchants.

So yeah, that was that. I am somewhat interested in sprucing up the Dawnguard Sanctuary with some new furniture and features, but with a house in Whiterun and those three houses I built from the Hearthfire DLC, I don’t really need another place to stash my stuff. Just curious to see what it looks like and then move on elsewhere.

Okay, new goals for continuing through Skyrim include getting married, finding more Shout walls, and finishing up the quests I’ve acquired before picking up new ones. Yeah, I know; that last one is just wishful thinking. So wish me luck.

Roll dice to read text in Crimson Shroud

The obvious truth is I play a lot of games, but not all for an extensive time. I actually end up trying more games than you could probably guess, but only just that–for a dabble. An hour at most, or just seeing if it runs on my computer and messing around with it for a few minutes. I thought about maybe doing a roundup post, where I could talk a bit about each game I’ve dabbled in recently, but to constantly have a stream of content here on Grinding Down, I’ll just continue to give them a post each until I run out of things to say. For those curious, here are a few games I’ve played at varying lengths over the last couple weeks: Darksiders, Offspring Fling, Torchlight 2, Snapshot, Titan Quest, Vessel, and Wario Land 4. Sure there’s more, but can’t seem to remember any at the moment, a problem you get when you only try a game out briefly and then move on.

Now, I have been playing one game I bought back in late December a little more, and that lucky prize is called Crimson Shroud. It’s for the Nintendo 3DS and was the last part of the Guild 01 collection, a project from Level-5 that collected four very different games under one heading. I didn’t pick up the other titles, as they didn’t interest me, but bringing pen-and-paper dungeon-crawling to the portable system sounded like a fine idea. I mean, for one thing, I never have to worry about dice rolling off the table or doing any math to make sure I added them up correctly. That, my friends, is well worth the entry fee.

So, plot-wise, Crimson Shroud takes place in a realm where magic was discovered during the Dark Ages after war broke out, which changed lives dramatically. Giauque and his band of Chasers–people who hunt down gods and deities–are searching for a relic that will bestow upon them “The Original Gift”, which is said to be inside the Sun-Gilt Palace of the Rahab. Now, truth be told, I got all that from looking up a description online; I’m positive this is conveyed within the game’s text at some point(s), but it’s rather hard to see the forest for the trees. Text is presented in huge chunks over top of your characters on the top screen, as well as told in second person, much like a DM might do, with all the dramatic flair you would expect. That said, a lot of it is boring to read, and really bogs down the pacing. It also doesn’t help that the characters are literally game figurines, meaning they don’t move or emote in any way, other than you being told that they do. I rushed through most exposition, as it is more exciting to battle and explore the ruined castle than listen to someone describe how old those walls look or the screechy sounds heard on the other side.

To me, the plot is this: explore dungeon floors, kill goblins, gain loot, and move on. Which is enough. Like I said, it’s more fun battling than reading the somewhat unclear narrative, even if the battle system appears a bit basic at first. There are many ways you can customize your three characters–Giauque, Frea, and Lippi–with different gear or special abilities, and you can also add to attacks or effects by rolling combinations of 20-sided, 10-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, and 4-sided die. It’s surprisingly more fun than it sounds, rolling die on your 3DS. You can attack with your weapon, use magic, use a special skill gained from gear, or use an item, and depending on how well you did, you gain some MP to spend next turn or continue saving up. In the end, you are given a list of gear to pick from, but you only have so many Barter Points to spend, so you have to select carefully. Characters don’t gain levels, so getting better gear is vital to surviving tougher fights.

Just finished off the Zombie Minotaur last night and looking forward to what the next floor holds. Not in terms of story, but rather encounters and lootable treasure chests. Frea needs some kind of offensive magic spell like woah.

A return to where it all began in Mass Effect

With 2012 coming to a close, there’s naturally a whole bunch of “game of the year” talk, with Mass Effect 3 popping up in various ways and categories. Some are for it, some are against it, some loathe its very existence, and some, like me, still haven’t even played it. More on that topic later this month. Regardless, the third entry in the franchise–and the Shepard trilogy–certainly created a response. Loyal fans were disappointed, new players felt confused, some players were pleased nonetheless, a cut devoted themselves to the multiplayer only, some grew angry, some took anti-depressants, some began to eat more junk food, and so on.

So, what am I doing to get in on all of this hot discussion? Playing through the original Mass Effect for a second time…duh.

Earlier this year, I finally took a Big Boy step forward and experienced Mass Effect 2, which was long overdue. Overall, I was not wowed with Shepard’s second adventure, finding the recruiting of crew members to be more akin to checking off a list, but still enjoying all the lore and dialogue and even the scanning mechanic. But I felt a disconnect, probably because it had been so long since I played the original game, as well as that I was unhappy in a number of choices I had previously made. Sure, I could’ve just started fresh in Mass Effect 2, selecting a bunch of choices then and there, but that didn’t feel genuine. And with all the talk about where Shepard started and where Shepard ended, I’ve been itching to go back and remember.

Now, according to my Achievements list, I first completed Mass Effect in May 2009. I dipped back into it some seven months later, continuing on a second playthrough with my first created Shepard with hopes of, I guess, seeing more and hitting that magical Level 60. Think I upped the difficulty level, too, which really built up a wall between me and progress. However, I really wanted to start fresh, and so I constructed my first female Shepard, gave her some pretty red hair, a mean scowl, a whatever background story, and labeled her as an Infiltrator to mix things up. So far, the class has been a little tough to learn, especially since using sniper rifles is extremely difficult from the get-go, with instability a key factor in my missing many headshots. It’s a weapon I’d like to get really good at sooner than later, letting my teammates (Garrus and Wrex) move in with assault rifles and shotguns and special abilities while I hang back and pick off the stragglers.

I’m playing Mass Effect for a second time slowly, mostly because I missed a ton of content my first time through. Think I was just rushing overall. I know this because I didn’t unlock any of the Achievements for experiencing most of the game with X and Y, as well as the one for just seeing a majority of the game. I know for a fact I skipped nearly all the missions on the Citadel, more excited to get out in space and visit alien planets. This time, I’ve spent a majority of my playthrough on the Citadel, running around and solving problems for quest givers. Can’t seem to find two Keepers though. Only just became a Spectre and started exploring the galaxy; I’m staying away from the main storyline planets for now, taking the uncontrollable Mako around on undiscovered planets for side missions and such.

Part of the “playing it slow” tactic has also earned me a new Achievement, one I initially missed on my first playthrough. See here:

Scholar (25G): Find all primary Alien: Council Races, Extinct Races and Non-Council Races codex entries

To end for now, Mass Effect has some of the greatest music and most infuriating music this side of the biz. The title screen and galaxy map tunes are beautifully calming, and the chomping, dark-as-space riff that plays when you die is just adding salt to your open wounds. I’ve already heard it three or four times, and I never want to hear it again, but know that I will continue to. Technically, it’s pretty rough, hitching up constantly on the Xbox 360 and with lots of mid-level loading and sketchy framerates. That’s still all pretty excusable when you get to have a fantastically written conversation with someone, playing both the good and evil side of things, and learning everything you can in one big gulp.

I’ll be back if any more thoughts come to mind for Mass Effect, and you can probably expect me to play Mass Effect 3 some time in 2013.

Master Architect says a house is a machine for living in

Actually, Le Corbusier said that, but what does he know–he didn’t spend countless hours fast-traveling and staring at the same ol’ loading screens in Skyrim‘s Hearthfire DLC to gather the numerous and welcome-to-encumbrance building materials, such as clay, quarried stone, and iron ingots, to build three houses that are void of character and personality and truly, without a doubt, not worth all the effort. Really–don’t bother building your own house, especially if you’re already pretty far into the game, wherein you likely already own a home in one of the many cities, such as Breezehome in Whiterun or Honeyside in Riften. Those cost the same base price as your own plot of land, but require a whole lot less work, giving you more time to kill that bandit leader in Cave X or find your twentieth Jazbay Grapes.

Housing in Bethesda’s games has always been a pesky business. For Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, you had a few options to call home, but they were not very exciting. In the former game, I shacked up in Megaton, covering my bed in teddy bears and the shelves with rare trinkets–if I could figure out how to properly move and place an item via an Xb0x 360 controller. Your only other choice was staying in Tenpenny Tower, which came with some neat themes, but required going through a lot of load screens to simply access. Too much waiting, not enough storing of loot, if you asked me. For New Vegas, pickings got even slimmer. Some hotels offered a permanent room, and if you felt like going through a lot more loading screens, you could keep your prizes in the Lucky 38 presidential suite. Strangely, your best place to call home is at The Sink, a futuristic homebase brimming with goodies. Oblivion had a few homes that you could earn through quest completion as well, but I never really used them as once you joined a guild, that became my place to store stuff and rest comfortably.

You could always find places to…let’s call it…squat. Abandoned houses or shacks that seemed ready to be yours, but at an invisible risk. See, while they might have containers or places to store you treasured treasure, there was no was to know if that container was safe or would respawn its contents in a few day, thus erasing yours completely. Unless you used the Internet, of course, but that’s never fun. I’d rather sell off items than lose them to a coding abyss.

So, unfortunately, while the three houses in Hearthfire look pretty cool once totally complete–that’s Lakeview Manor, Windstad Manor, and Heljarchen Hall–they are not fun to build and require, at least for me, a ton of back and forth, as I’m not the sort of character who just carries around 100 iron ingots at a time. You spend a lot of time looking at menus or watching your character mine for quarried stone, which is as exciting as it sounds. And after all that, you really have little input over how your house turns out. Sure, you can place tables and chairs and barrels and weapon racks, but they go where the game designer decided they should go. All you are doing to spending your materials to place it there. Your house is not your vision. And that’s a big bummer. I was hoping to be able to have a trophy room that was filled with my kind of trophies, like a thousand scattered troll skulls, presented in my way. Instead, no. It is a model home, and nothing more. Again, you might as well purchase a house in one of the cities, which is a model house too, but cheaper and easier to fill in.

You can also hire a bard for your house, as well as make any follower a steward. The steward helps a lot in ordering building materials for you which go directly to the chest by the workbench, but only to that chest. If you need that clay for your other house, you best make room in your inventory. The steward can also bring in animals or furnish your rooms completely for a small fee. It’s okay, but came across as very robotic, especially when one is ordering piles of wood after piles of wood after piles of wood.

In short, I wasn’t expecting Minecraft, but definitely some more flexibility for creativity. I mean, I couldn’t even pick the place to build my house, ruining my dream of shacking up right next to the Thieves Guild.

But yeah. This is one Achievement definitely earned with stubbornness and patience, backed by a numbing soundtrack of clinking hammers and thumping hammers:

Master Architect (10G): Build three houses

Here’s hoping that player housing changes quite dramatically in Fallout 4 and whatever the next Elder Scrolls ends up being. Here’s hoping…

This little Sticker Star is gonna go far

My Nintendo 3DS is getting a lot of love as of late, and I blame all these big name games coming out at once. Mostly Pokemon White 2, Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Scribblenauts Unlimited, Crashmo, and Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Y’know…to name a few. Today’s post will be about that last one mentioned, but I am sure to be talking about that bizarre and totally unneeded horseback chase scene from the newest Layton adventure, as well as the overall creepy 3D models. Because somebody needs to tell that world that Luke looks like he’s tripping balls, and I guess it’ll be me.

Anyways, Sticker Star. It’s a game I’ve been really excited for since it was first revealed to be coming to the 3DS. I think back then, when we knew very little about it, many thought it was just a remake of one of the older titles from the franchise, but it turned out to be its own being. Maybe a remake is still on its way though. Who really knows. Nintendo doesn’t like to give us too much information, and one can only look to the missing North American release date for Animal Crossing: New Leaf to confirm this. Regardless, it’s here, and while I waited for it to get here, I picked up and played an hour or two of Super Paper Mario for the Nintendo Wii a month or so back, which has a great look, an interesting, Fez-like mechanic that distorts the way you see a screen, but is horribly paced and far too hand-holdy. I meant to play more before Sticker Star dropped, but alas, that never happened.

Despite how bad I am in real life at peeling stickers off books or DVD cases, I’m really enjoying Sticker Star so far. A seemingly unanimous complaint about the game is that it is a much more simplified RPG, and that since battles don’t grant you much other than coins, you’re better off avoiding than fighting and “wasting” your depletable sticker collection. I haven’t felt that way yet, though there has been a few occasions where I have just jumped over an enemy instead of on it to initiate a fight. Fights consist of using a sticker for every action, and so they disappear fast, but also reappear twice as fast, as they are everywhere. You really can’t walk more than a few steps before finding one behind a bush, stuck to a wall, or within a question block. If you’re really good at timing pressing a button when you attack or block–think Costume Quest‘s battle attacks but without the prompt–you’ll save on stickers and wheel in more coins. I’m liking it all, even the inventory management aspect, which is constantly changing as a new sticker comes in or a larger sticker gets used to free up space.

The story is a story. There’s a Sticker Festival held in the Mushroom Kingdom, but then Bowser shows up and ruins it all by breaking apart the Sticker Comet, which is now scattered across various parts of the map. A magical floating crown called Kersti deems that only Mario can…blah, blah, blah. You know it from there. It exists to serve the gameplay, and that’s all–at least from what I’ve seen. However, the writing of each individual character you come across is fun and light-hearted, with a lot of wink wink and puns, so there’s potential for great story beats, but time will tell on that. Regardless, it gets you out into the world map, collecting stickers, defeating Bowser’s endless army of goons.

Whereas I found Super Paper Mario too hand-holdy from the start, the exact opposite can be said about Sticker Star, and that seems to be where a lot of gamers got frustrated. The lack of button prompts on attacks and defense stances is fine, as it teaches you how to use those stickers correctly, but a lot of sticker/puzzle solutions are hidden in the world, and to find them, you really need to experiment. The game will not tell you what to do, and if you get a hint, it is paper-thin (hey-o!). For example, there’s a part in World 1 where you need to stop water from flowing into a fountain to collect a special item. When you approach the faucet’s knob, there is no button prompt, and previous puzzles like this required the use of a specific item, such as a fan or pair of scissors. I tried paperizing the world to no effect. Then, out of ideas, I jumped on the faucet, totally just trying to hop down to the bottom part of the level, and by jumping on it, the knob turned, slowly shutting off the water. That’s not the best example, as maybe it highlights my slowness more, but it does show that not everything is spelled out for the player, harking back to an age when trial and error was how things got unstuck (hey-o x2!).

Okay, back to it tonight. I’m currently at the fortress in World 1 and trying to figure out how to stop those fans from blowing so much wind and knocking Mario off ledges. I’ll give it everything I got, and if I end up spending more than an hour trying to solve that level–well, I’ll give in and look up an answer online. If one exists, that is. The fun for me in Sticker Star really is in exploring as the colorful, diorama-esque visuals get my eyes dilating every time, but to do that one must constantly be moving forward.

Searching for the Dark Brotherhood in a realm of distractions

I’m back into Skyrim for a bit, and my landlord is to blame. See, during Hurricane Sandy, we spent some time at his place since he and his wife had a generator, which meant heat and lights and entertainment to distract us all from the unknown. While we lingered away the night, he pulled up his level 75 character and floored me with just how much he’s seen and done in the game. I also think he slew a Frost Dragon in like…three sword swipes. My level 45 Lohgahn paled in comparison. The only thing I could hold above it all was that he was playing on the PS3, and I’m on the Xbox 360, and I think we all know which of those two consoles at least has working DLC for it. So, uh, yeah–take that.

But yeah. I did a wee bit of smithing–I still find that process really, really dull, no matter the rewards in the end–shot a fleeing deer in the butt with a sick killcam to boot, sold some skill books I already read, took one look at the house I bought at Lakeview Manor and realized I didn’t want to build a house, and then did some creeping through some caves.

Also, I decided that I had better just take the plunge and try and find the Dark Brotherhood with my “good” character, as I’m most likely never going to reroll a new one. And so, not knowing exactly how to do that–and I didn’t want to just start randomly assassinating nice people–I looked up a wiki to get me started. Boo, hiss–I know. However, without it, I’d have gone on another 100 hours without ever finding this one character to get the blood-covered boulder rolling. I’m thankful that the first person to be assassinated for the Dark Brotherhood is a mean, old bat. Makes the whole thing that much more easy to swallow. After that business, I got a mysterious note from a courier, and now I’m not sure what’s to happen next. Still haven’t found the Dark Brotherhood to be exact…

Oh, and I think I glitched this Achievement into popping:

Standing Stones (30G): Find 13 Standing Stones

See, I was looking for something to complete from my long list of quests, and picked one at a place I had not yet discovered. At this point, I don’t remember exactly which one it was–they all blur together in the end–but it had something to do with a wolf or wolf ghost wind thing. Mmmhmm. I’m really good with the fact. Anyways, the closest marker was a Standing Stone I’d already found, and so I figured I’d go there and take a walk. Upon fast traveling there, I unlocked this Achievement, which I don’t believe to be right, as I can surely say I found maybe six or seven at most. Oh well.

I wonder how long this spurt of playing will last, especially now that we know when the next bit of DLC will hit: Dragonborn, on December 4. And this one looks more up my alley than Dawnguard did, with strange, exotic locations that evoke the weirdness that is Morrowind. I’d still really love to see Lohgahn cross that level 50 mark, but it is just harder and harder to level up, especially now that all his main skills are capped. Regardless, stay tuned to find out if I’m worthy of being a dark assassin.

Borderlands 2’s True Vault Hunter Mode is truly challenging

I beat Borderlands 2 a couple weeks back, finished up a few other sidequests I left hanging before taking on the Warrior,  and then even started over with a new character. I boosted Gaige the Mechromancer up to Level 5, just enough to see her robot in action. She seems like fun, but I couldn’t simply forget about my Siren. Not after all we’d been through. Not after I finally figured out how to spec her skill tree to my style of playing, which is based around stealing large amounts of health back and keeping enemies at bay with Phaselock to suffer from corrosive, burn, and slag damage.

And so I selected her to journey once more across Pandora in what the Gearbox folks have dubbed True Vault Hunter Mode. Basically, it’s New Game+ with some alterations. Most of those ramp up the difficulty, but with great challenges comes great rewards. Unfortunately, sometimes three Super Badass Maniacs stand in the way, and for the solo player, that’s just death–over and over and over again. You start the game over completely, but get to keep your level, weapons, equipment, skins, and Badass ranks. Enemies are scaled to your level the first time you enter  an area, which means I was taking on Bullymongs ranging from LV 35 to 37 right from the start, and all it takes is one leap-hit from them to deplete a shield. Yeah, I was mostly getting by on Second Winds for those first few encounters.

The original Borderlands had this feature as well, and it was great for speeding up the leveling process. My Soldier got to Level 61 speedily thanks to playing storyline missions a second time on a raised difficulty, but I really don’t remember them being nearly impossible to do. Tough, sure. But not like what Borderlands 2 has been throwing at my Level 35 Siren now. Well, except for some missions in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC. Those Badass Crimson Lance Shock Troopers were tough buggers.

So, in short, it’s tough. Really tough, especially for solo players. And from some over-read Internet grumbling, I am not looking forward to running into any of the following by myself: Rabid Stalkers, Blood Varkids, Badass Wormhole Threshers, and Badass Constructors. This might be a case of where I swap between playthrough 1 and 2 to level up though that’s a much slower way to advance. And besides, all the best gear is in playthrough 2, especially as you creep closer to the current level cap of 50. Though the first DLC for Borderlands 2 looks somewhat uninteresting story-wise and mission-wise, it might be just what I need to level up a few levels quickly. We’ll see. But either way, all Vault Hunters should take this post as a healthy dose of warning: playthrough 2 is no joke. If you’d like to help me get through it, I’ll be crawling along the ground, fighting for my life, a Super Badass Maniac standing over me. Approach at your own discretion…

What I loved about Chrono Trigger

A long, long time ago–well, back in March 2012 really–I beat Chrono Trigger. It was both a great and grueling experience, and I put down some notes on the things I disliked about the RPG legend that is legendary among RPG fans. And people reacted. Think the post even made it on Reddit. Yeeeeeah. It was like I called their sweet little grandmother a raging prostitute that was the reason STDs spread or kicked their dog into the middle of traffic on a busy highway. It’s either the depression in me or my strengthening pessimistic outlook on life that I can’t see anything as perfect. Videogames can be great, can be a lot of fun, really enjoyable–but never utopian.

Okay, that’s enough intro. I could really go on about all the little things I dislike in games I adore, but my point is just that both exist, and sometimes they co-exist, and other times one is the predator stalking the prey. For now, let’s use the  dual tech Slurp Kiss (Ayla and Frog!) and get into the love.

mighty music

Surprise, surprise–it’s amazing. Here, let me name a few tracks: Corridors of Time, the hauntingly Secret of the Forest, an overworld theme that is both whimsical and foreboding, Zeal Palace, or that battle theme that really gets you into the fight and will thankfully never leave my body. And there’s plenty more. Basically every soundbite, whether it is a song or sound effect (Robo has some great ones!), is highly memorable. Both for its quality and charm.

Chrono Trigger was scored by Yasunori Mitsuda and Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. Mitsuda spent many nights sleeping in the office, which led to many songs feeling dream-inspired. I totally hear that. He also later suffered from stomach ulcers, and so Uematsu was brought in to finish up about ten songs. Either way, the music from Chrono Trigger is universally loved–and deservedly. I still listen to more tunes from Chrono Cross, but that has to do with a more orchestral feel to them than anything else.

The Millennial Fair

When it happens, it’s downright magical. You’re on trial, accused of trying to kidnap Princess Nadia and take over Guardia Castle. You even get called a terrorist. And you, the player, know none of this is true, and are ready to defend yourself against your accusers. But then the Chancellor begins bringing up actions you took–or didn’t take–at the Millennial Fair, where you first met the princess. Seemingly normal encounters are now twisted and distorted to make it appear like you are one shifty soul, even if you’re definitely not. Like, if you grabbed the dropped pendant before checking on the princess, you are labeled greedy and after the throne. Small things mattered. But you don’t learn this until it is too late, and so it doesn’t matter how many silver points you earned playing games at the fair: you are a criminal. And you’re put in a cell for your alleged mistreatment of the princess, which really gets the ball rolling plot-wise. It all felt so natural as it unfolded, too.

Visible enemies

My distaste for random encounters continues to grow as I get older. I find it way more annoying now, and so when a game gives me enemies on screen, leaving it up to me to fight or flee or sneak by, I am overjoyed. Granted, this phenomenon seems to be more of a later trend, making it a nice surprise when I could watch Blue Imps and Goblins wander in the grass in Chrono Trigger before taking them on. Not only do you see enemies before you fight them, the battle itself takes place right there. The UI switches to reflect this, but other than that, you are fighting where you are standing, and it’s all very quick, a definite upgrade from slower turn-based RPGs.

The jet bike race

It’s random. Really random. But I guess someone wanted to put the SNES’s Mode 7 graphics to use. The jet bike race is found in 2300 A.D., during and after Beyond the Ruins. It allows you to take a shortcut across the ruins, avoiding a couple of screens of monsters to fight. That is, if you win. Which is not as simple of just gunning it all the way. You’re racing against Johnny, a half-tricycle automaton, and he has this way of constantly inching his way in front of you. Rubber-banding, I believe it’s called. It’s tough, but at the time a great change of pace, and you can come back to race Johnny later for various prices, like a Power Tab and Ethers. Once you get the Epoch, you can skip the race entirely as it is avoidable. I’m saddened that this element never spawned a tie-in: Super Crono Kart.

That evil laugh

There is only so much a sprite character can do to evoke emotions. Usually, they hop around and squirt drops of water off their heads if excited or run back in forth in place to express various levels of excitement. My favorite little animated moment is one I discovered purely from curiosity. Games like Animal Crossing: Wild World and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion taught me that sitting in chairs is something one can do in videogames. It’s just as exciting of an action in digital life as it is in real life. And so, when in the Giant’s Claw, I took my lead character at the time–always Crono, yo–and plopped him down in Azala’s chair. He changed. He laughed with mirth and evilness, and he looked right at me as he did it. And then he rejoined his party members to continue the hunt for  Lavos. It’s a really small, random occurrence, but I love these little additions. They show a sort of shared consciousness between the player and those that made the game, that they realized someone would try to sit here, and for that that did, here’s a bonus animation.

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Right. Those are the things I loved. I hope this clears up any non-obviousness over how I feel about Chrono Trigger. It’s a fantastic game. It has some problems, but the great outweighs the bad unarguably. I played it fully once now and am glad I did. Given my gaming habits and time schedule, I doubt I’ll ever play it again, whether via New Game+ or starting all over, but other than different endings, I saw a really good chunk of the whole experience. And just like Chrono Cross, I’ll revisit the soundtrack when the mood strikes me, so it’ll always be there, the legend that is legendary.

Hacking and slashing goes ever on in Lord of the Rings: War in the North

I pretty much lean very close to all things related to Lord of the Rings, but the real reason I picked up War in the North was because I wanted more hack-n-slash action after the disappointing Aragorn’s Quest and knew exactly where to get it. See, I had previously bought War in the North for a single buck way back in the day when OnLive was having some kind of crazy sale. I played it for a little bit, only to quickly realize that playing streamed videogames over a shaky wireless connection was not ideal, especially when timing attacks and rolling away from enemies is vital to digital breathing. And so I never went back, but I also never forgot. Cut to scene of me picking up a used copy for the Xbox 360 for relatively cheap.

Like other videogames set in a popular, fictionalized world heavily licensed and thus restricted on various elements–think Game of Thrones: The Game, Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, Jurassic Park: The Game–you are there, but not as the main characters. Or characters you even know. Chances are high you’ll see the real stars as you journey along, but you will be secondary to the end. For War in the North, you control one from a trio of familiar looking characters: Eradan, a ranger from the North; Andriel, an Elven loremaster from Rivendell; and Farin, a Dwarven warrior from the halls of Erebor. They are basically Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, respectively, and yes, I find it amusing that the effeminate Orlando Bloom got a gender swap. Their own journey takes them across Middle-earth, and their actions and results thereof help the Fellowship–you know, the real heroes–without ever getting in their way. Sauron is commanding his minion Agandaur to conquer the North for the Dark Lord. It is up to the magical trio, and some helpful, colorful allies, to put an end to all that, so that Frodo and company can do what really needs to get done.

So, you do all this by hacking and slashing your way across large levels broken into small sections, defeating a lot of Orcs, Uruk-hai, and spiders, as well as minibosses and bosses alike, restocking on health potions back at town and picking up side missions, looting chests and skag piles of bones, and strengthening your character’s skills as your level increases. It’s a fairly typical action RPG, with bonus limb severing and buckets of spilled brown-red blood to liven things up. Action skills are assigned to the face buttons, there’s a roll mechanic, and you can chain attacks together, increasing the damage you do and the amount of XP you earned. If you’ve played games like Champions of Norrath, Daggerdale, or DeathSpank, this adventure won’t surprise you too much in the mechanics department.

I played the whole campaign as Farin, the Dwarf. He’s a tough little bugger, which is to be expected, but it felt great rolling right into the thick of things, sweeping around in a full circle with a shiny, sharp axe, and then finishing off each fallen enemy with a cinematic stab to the throat. That said, he’s slow everywhere else, and his ranged attacks, from a crossbow oddly enough, something a true Dwarf would never use, are rather useless, even if you spend points on upgrading abilities there. His main ability is War Cry, which strengthens you and your allies for a limited time. I used it a lot to good effect, especially when going against two trolls. Something I will always love: loot you pick up changes your appearance. Hopefully long gone are the days you get a sick magical set of armor, and it barely looks like you changed shirts.

The story, which granted does come from the actual source material, is a bit dull. It’s of this ilk: see bad guy, chase bad guy, fight swarms of disposable grunts, just miss the bad guy, chase bad guy, and repeat until you get to the final level, and the bad guy is out of running options. Strangely, most of the regular fights against dozens of little enemies proved much easier than any of the boss fights. Oh well. My favorite story moments involved talking animals, like Beleram the Great Eagle and making a deal with a dangerous dragon. Everything else just kind of stretched on or screamed of sidequest-ness, and I will openly admit that towards the end I was just mashing the “skip dialogue” button because I can read a whole lot faster than I can listen. The voice acting is decent, though weakened by the fact that character models of Elrond, Arwyn, Frodo, Aragorn, and so on look like their movie counterparts, but are obviously not voiced by them. At least Aragorn’s Quest had the real Samwise Gamgee in it.

Once you beat the game on Normal difficulty, you can play again in a New Game+ mode on a higher difficulty called Heroic. Normally, I skip New Game+s–that’s a longer post down the road–but I still needed to ping a few different Achievements and thought this was a fine way to get them. I played as both the Elf and ranger for a bit, getting up to a level that has you guarding a door from attack. The door has a life bar–or maybe the Elven brothers protecting it do–and so it can only sustain so much damage. This part was no problem on Normal difficulty, but Heroic proved undoable, no matter who I controlled. Attempted four or five times. Seemed like if one enemy slipped by me, they’d break that door down in a matter of seconds. And so ends my attempt to beat the game on Heroic difficulty. Honestly, no big deal.

Finished the game with 40 of 46 Achievements unlocked, which is a much higher  rating than other games I finish. Not sure if that’s do to skill or if the game just gives them out like candy, but here are a few I’m proud of:

Keen-eyed Marksman (20G): Kill 50 enemies with headshots in a single playthrough.

Victorious in Battle (25G): Complete a playthrough on at least Normal difficulty.

In the Dragon’s Den (20G): Meet a dragon and survive.

Sudden Fury (10G): Perform 3 critical hits within 10 seconds.

As we loom closer to the release of LEGO Lord of the Rings and part one of forty-seven for The Hobbit, I’m really jonesing for some more LOTR videogames. Yes, even more. Told you I lean real close to it all. I got a few in my collection. Don’t be surprised if I bust out The Third Age again and begin blathering about it here. Also, don’t be surprised if I don’t. My gaming whims fluctuate by the minute, and words are wind.