Life events prevented LP recording over the weekend but I was able to make good gaming progress.

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva f- I bought, I downloaded, I Platinum'd in four days. It's that good.
Bravely Default- Reached Chapter 4.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow- Chapter IX, expect to beat the main game and likely the DLC chapters this week.

I played the heck out of Lords of Shadow a month or two ago when I got it on sale. I made it to the last part of the last DLC chapter, then I got distracted with Skyrim (also on sale) and then RPG Maker VX Ace (you guessed it - on sale.) I think I would be a happier person overall if I just went back and finished all the games that I've been hung up on, like 95% complete.

~Rosser

Been a good week.

Lords of Shadow - Beat both the main game and the DLC chapters. I'll likely go back and Platinum it in the near future.
Bravely Default - Got the "normal" ending and have reached Chapter 7 on the True end path. Sidequest battles have gotten really fun again. Will likely finish this game 100% this week and move on to Danganronpa.
Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA - Bought the first 3 games in the series on PSP and played through all the songs on Normal to beat this one over the weekend. It'll be good for when I want to play something quick.
Shadow Hearts - Next console game on my 2014 gaming goal list. Hopefully starting that tonight.

My focus had been still Guild Wars 2...
But on the side, I have been playing some Super Mario 3D World. I finished world.. flower? And thought I was done with it until I read there's actually more if I get all starts, golden flags and stamps. So far worlds 1-5 are complete.

Still playing Quest 64. At this point I'm sitting in front of King Beigis's castle, with all four elemental stones. If they had put any effort into the story, things would probably be getting pretty epic at this point.

Also, I notice they didn't put much effort in the dungeons, either. Almost all of them are just long treks of "go from point A to point B". This game was Final Hallway before FF13. Seriously, most of your dungeon crawling is through narrow passages with very little in the way of branching paths.

Oh well, at least this game has towns. =P

Recently played through Alan Wake and the DLC for it, American Nightmare. I know I'm really late jumping on this game, but every time there was a Steam sale, that game was mad cheap. So I bit.

I am really surprised I haven't heard a lot more about this game. It's one of the best survival horror games I've played in years. The story gets really complicated, but not stupidly so. I kind of wish it explained more and didn't leave things so open ended and for personal interpretation. But it sure as hell is a lot better than something like Bioshock Infinite. The DLC wasn't as good as the main game as it was more kind of open world and felt a bit more arcade-y. But it was interesting as it kind of had a Endless Summer theme kind of going from Haruhi Suzumyia. It doesn't clear anything up from the main game though. Which kind of sucks, but I can deal with open ended endings vs trying to make sense out of everything and it sounding awful.

Constants... and variables.



Other than that, I've been playing a little Loadout and a lot of Path of Exile. Specially since The Sacrifice of the Vaal update dropped. Been playing that with Kajak, Fay, and Myoky and am having a blast. We are all playing on the hard core setting. So if any of us die, that's it. It's been really thrilling with the close calls that we've had. We're currently in the final chapter of the game. But then there's the cruel difficulty... assuming we can get that far.

As of the past few months, I've played Mario 3D World, Sonic: Lost World, Wonderful 101, LoZ: A Link Between Worlds, Bayonetta, DKC:TF, Thief, and Alice: Madness Returns. Currently doing a non-violent run in Thief, and progressing through Alice slowly.

Quest 64's ending was not satisfying.

Not at all. It just... ends.

Yet another reason why it's so reviled.

Bravely Default - Completed with the True ending and defeating the boss of the bonus dungeon. Will turn it on now and then to fight Spotpass bosses.
Shadow Hearts - Got started but it hasn't fully grabbed me yet.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - Got started and it really grabbed me. I meant for it to be my "on the go" game while going to/from work but I'll probably beat the Story Mode over the weekend.

Try to keep the double posting to a minimum. Both of those could have been in the same post.

Super Mario 3D World: I got all starts stamps and gold flags up to World 6

Final Fantasy X: I am pretty much at the beginning. Just landed on Kilika.

You know, playing an RPG after so long makes me want to go back to work on my RPGM project. dun Dun DUN!

Congratulations, you're only halfway to completion. =P

I got NBA 2k14 recently on Steam and have played a little of it. Finally getting the hang of it and can actually hit some threes without being terrible. It's pretty fun and it's faster than football games.

Sportsball.

I've been playing Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, thanks to Lantis for letting me use his copy.

I played the game when it first came out, and absolutely hated it, quitting after only maybe an hour or two of playing it, as most others did. But I'm trying to approach it with an open mind and a better understanding of the gameplay mechanics this time.

I feel like I'm beginning to understand the SOL system a little better. For those unaware, in Dragon Quarter, if you get a game over, instead of going back to the title screen or loading a previous save, you are presented with three options. You can return to the title screen as normal, and load your previous save, or you can use SOL Restart or SOL Restore.

The game really doesn't provide a great explanation for the differences between these two options, but after doing some reading of the manual and online, I understand it a lot more.

Essentially, in terms of player progress, they both do the same thing. They allow you to save your game before returning to the title screen, so that when you load your save, you retain some (if you got a gameover from dying in combat or the D-counter reached 100%) or all (if you chose the "Give Up" option in the menu) of your money and experience, as well as any equipment, and items that you have in storage.

The difference between them lies in where you load the game from. If you choose SOL Restore, you resume play from where you last saved before the restore, so essentially you are just reloading your previous save, but get to keep new equipment, skills and experience.

SOL Restart on the other hand does exactly what it sounds like it does. You start the game over from the beginning, but with all of your equipment, skills, and that extra experience and money to help make it easier.

The incentives for using the SOL Restart option are that this is the only way to raise your D-Ratio which goes up after specific events and by doing special actions but only becomes active after restarting. A higher D-Ratio unlocks certain locked doors and grants you access to some cool stuff. Along with this, new, or extended cutscenes are shown at certain points that you wouldn't see if you didn't restart.

With all of that understood, I'll say this. This game puts me on edge like no other. The dungeons are very dark, and the draw distance is fairly short. Combine that with the fact that the battles are fairly difficult, and sometimes require some planning beforehand and you get one hell of situation where you are running down a hallway and you suddenly see a giant monster charge towards you out of nowhere. The only thing I can compare it to is Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, where you are constantly on edge, wondering what monstrosity is going to be around the next corner.

Maybe this game deserves a second chance.
Thanks for explaining those SOL (pun?) differences.

Finished Danganronpa with the Platinum trophy for another game crossed off my Gaming Goal list for this year. The next on-the-go focus title will probably be Yoshi's New Island.

Still need to get further in Shadow Hearts and hoping to do that tomorrow after an LP recording session.

Also slowly working on unlocking 100% of the Modules in the original Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA. Took time today to clear all of the songs on Hard but there's still a lot to do.

So I finally got Pokemon: HeartGold Version, less than two months before Nintendo shuts down its online trading/battling functionality. After Black & White 1, HeartGold & SoulSilver are probably the difinitive editions of Pokemon to play. Partly because of nostalgia; the games are remakes Gold & Silver on the Game Boy Color. They put a lot of effort into the original releases, and it looks like they put even more effort into this here.

I'll probably divulge more info on that next time we record Magcast, but I will say that one pokemon you're given early on was given a seriously needed buff: Togepi. In the original, Togepi doesn't know any attacks when you recieve it. But now it starts with a psychic attack that's basically twice as powerful as any of my other teammates' attacks. Well, at least it was once she gained a few levels.

Now, there is still a sense of "I've done this already", but that's mainly because HeartGold & SoulSilver use the Diamond & Pearl graphics, and I got too bored to finish them. The nostalgia of using older monsters is helpful, though I am disappointed to learn I can't catch my favorite two until a few towns in.

As far as progress goes, I've already gotten the first gym badge, as well as unlocked the Unown Ruins. I've caught a couple Unown so far, but I'll worry about the rest of them later. Currently I'm sitting in front of Slowpoke Well, where Team Rocket makes their return.

Most importantly, I've already caught a bunch of pokemon. Some of them I don't care about, but there's so many that I do want to train, I don't have space on my team. And while I could just keep swapping in and out teammates, I already know from playing the original that this game gets pretty difficult, and spreading XP between too many monsters will undoutedly cause me to fall behind. Still, I might consider training all of them I want, at the cost of having to go through some grinding sessions here and there.

Current team: Togepi, Hoothoot, Mareep, Chikorita, Rattata, Sandshrew
Extras I wanna train: Onyx, Zubat, and maybe Sentret
My favorite two that I haven't caught yet but will certainly train: Growlithe & Nidoran♀

Finished Brothers: Tale of Two Sons. Man, that ending...