Alright, it took me all week and too many hours of straight gameplay (my hand hurts), but I think I have my final team...ish. Here's a quick rundown:

Leading the team is Rattata, which I have equipped with an Everstone so that she doesn't evolve into Raticate. It'll ultimately mean she's going to be weaker compared to most endgame pokemon, but I have a personal goal to raise this purple cutie through the entire game. The good news is she's easy to level. Not only does she have a powerful attack against psychic pokemon, but she also has an attack called "U-Turn", which allows her to cause decent damage against an opponent while being switched out for another teammate at the same time. Meaning, I can pretty much keep her in the lead and she'll gain XP every battle.

Next up is my favorite pokemon, Growlithe. He's fire-type. Also can use "Dig", which other fire types are weak against. Meanwhile, those other fire pokemon are going to be stuck using fire attacks on him, which won't do much damage. Also, he can weaken an opponent's strength just by looking at them. No really, it's an always-active ability.

Then there's Nidorina. Along with being able to poison other pokemon just by them touching her, she's got "Double-Kick", which will be especially useful against rock-type pokemon. I'm also waiting to aquire a Moon Stone so I can evolve her into Nidoqueen and teach her "Surf", one of the better water attacks in the game.

Those are the classic pokemon. Leading the Gen-II half of my team is Togetic. She may not look it, but this girl is BEAST. She evolved from Togepi, and I already mentioned what they did with her in my previous post. She not only has a powerful psychic attack, but a good physical attack, as well. She also has an ability that drops an opponent's attack two levels, and most importantly, an attack that will almost always make the opponent fall asleep the next turn.

After that is Miltank. She's the pokemon equivelant of the white mage. 'Nuff said.

Lastly, there is Chinchou, which is a weird combination of water- and electric-type pokemon. This means he not only won't go down against electric attacks as easily as most water-types, but he'll also be able to zap his fellow water types. Also, he has "Confuse Ray", which is a confuse spell with 100% accuracy, and probably one of my favorite attacks in the game. At least when I'm the one using it. =P

Overall, I think I've got one well-balanced team, here. And more importantly, I'll be able to use every field skill with this team. No "HM slaves" for me. As for actual progress, I'm four badges down, twelve more to go.

Beat the main game of Yoshi's New Island over the course of the week and got 100% on it over the weekend. It was an okay game and I'll most likely sell it back. My on-the-go focus has switched back to Project DIVA and I'll consider that game complete after unlocking 100% of the costumes (since room items are all randomized I should get all of those in the process).

Put about 5 hours into Shadow Hearts yesterday (instead of recording, I know) and am starting to get into it more as the focus shifts from initial exposition and into character development and plot progression. One of the more macabre RPGs I've played though, including Parasite Eve.

How do you have time for all these games?

I usually have 1-2 hours during a regular weekday during my work commute and lunch hour. After work, depending on how full the evening is I may have up to 4 hours available then. Weekends are often pretty open, usually Sundays more than Saturdays.

As for actual progress this week, just finished 100%ing the original Project DIVA and put in more progress in Shadow Hearts, reaching the 2nd half of the game. Hoping to beat it with at least 1 of the endings by the end of this week.

I'm now at seven badges in Pokemon HeartGold. One more, and I'll be able to take on the Pokemon League Championship. But before they let me go after that last badge, the game is pretty much telling me that I gotta take down Team Rocket once and for all. First, I'm training my growlithe, because he seems to be a bit of a weak link on my team.

One of my pokemon learned a set of moves that I wasn't aware it could learn. It's basically a moveset that allows it to store up power, and then either use that power to heal, or to attack an opponent. But I don't have room for that moveset. Seeing that moveset makes me realize that having every member of my team learn HMs (attacks that double as field abilities, which are required to beat the game) restricts their potential for rather strategic movesets. Maybe I should've had an HM slave on my team, after all. Oh well, I'll be playing through these games again sometime, I'm sure.

I beat Super Mario Land 2 for the first time in my life! It was fun I lost 10 lives in Wario's castle, but I finally made it!

The best part was when I started to muscle-memorize the layout and timed my opening jumps perfectly, when back when I first started I'd have to pause and take it slow. I lost the bunny hood but managed to do the skull blocks without it, with a controller that had a sticky left button!

The game is one year older than I am. I feel accomplished.

Had a good week for gaming as I completed the first Shadow Hearts 100% with both endings on Wednesday (will likely play the prequel game before its direct sequel), jumped right into LEGO The Hobbit and beat its main story yesterday.

On the handheld front I started up Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars (which I jokingly call a Mario RPG sequel due to their similar secondary titles) and have only reached Chapter 2 on it. I'd likely be further if I played it instead of Project DIVA f while waiting in lines at Comic Con this weekend, but since I was cosplaying as Kaito and had to show a lot of people what Vocaloids are, that was the game of choice. Ended up clearing every song on Extreme and buying all of the remaining items

Just started playing Season 2 of The Walking Dead on XBox arcade and finished episode 1. Most satisfyingly, I find it even more emotionally investing than the first season, even though just like before most of the cast are argumentative self-preserving douchebags.

As a man who endeavors to play the protector in these kinds of games, it was my pleasure to see how I fared at protecting and being a good role model for the heroine, a little girl named Clementine. Now, as you can guess from the cover art of season 2 alone, I have the role of ensuring Clementine herself doesn't become a horrible-natured savage like human beings are unfortunately wont to become in so much apocalypse-survival fiction. But from the five ending scores I received at the end of episode 1, it seems so far I have thankfully made the right choice each time, with the last choice being a little foggy as to whether its results are good or bad ().

Finished obtaining the Platinum trophy for LEGO the Hobbit and quickly played through NES Remix 2 this week. Wanting to focus on one of my goal games starting this week but can't decide on which one.

On the handheld front I'm at Chapter 4 of Conception II and just about halfway through the game.

Picked a goal game: Valkyrie Profile. Already up to Chapter 4.

About to go to Thousand Cuts in Borderlands 2 for the first time ever.

(I'm level 43 btw. )

I played some more Lollipop Chainsaw. I beat Chapter 4 last night and I'll probably start on the final chapter tonight.

I beat Lollipop Chainsaw finally last night. It was a good game. I'm glad I beat it. I'll probably move to Shadows of the Damned or something now.

Started playing Star Wars: Republic Commando yesterday. This game is really awesome.

Had this last week off of work but was also sick all week and couldn't record, so I got a LOT of gaming in:

Finished NES Remix 2's main and Championship modes at the start of the week. Beat its "Super Luigi Bros" mode at the end.

Finished Valkyrie Profile with the B Ending on Normal. Will need to do a Hard mode run for the A ending (which will probably take twice as long).

Spent most of the weekend finishing up the Platinum trophy for Conception II, which ended up being a lot better than I expected. Also took the time to watch the Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days HD events since I never played through the actual game.

Picked up Child of Light, Kirby Triple Deluxe, Mario Golf World Tour, Picross e4 and Gunman Clive (which I've already beaten with all 3 characters as of posting) over the course of the week too. Definitely keeping busy.

Let's see...

Project X Zone: I thought I was about to finish it when I found out it's 41 chapters instead of 31. The battles are so ridiculously long! I think I'm somewhere around CH 28 or 29 but I'm going to stay there for a while

Scribblenauts Unlimited: Never thought I'd play that game XD It was fun while it lasted. I tried to solve as many problems as I could by using hobos. Their sacrifices were not in vain.

Trine 2: Beat the first boss. Decided to wait for my brother (since he got it) to try multiplayer, but I think Child of Light is still keeping him busy.

Super Mario 3D World: I decided to continue my golden flags/stamps/green stars hunt. I'm only missing 1 star from world Flower 2 which I can't get. My lack of sense of depth in this game is preventing me from getting the green coins,jumping off the tower half of the time, or walking around the coins on the spiked platforms. I'll try again when I have someone to play with me >_<

Imagine if you will, me along with Kajak, Myoky, and Fay. Taking on the daunting task of playing permadeath Path of Exile. It didn't go very well at first. I took a few early on deaths till I found my groove. But once I hit that groove, we did very well. So well, in fact, that the entire normal difficulty went off without a hitch. Well... minus losing Myoky. The synergy we had was really good, and losing him was a pretty big hit. But we compensated and went on to utterly destroy the final boss in normal.

But then came our quest to concur the hard difficulty setting. Now, chaos damage had an immediate 20% buff on us. It was a bit of a scramble getting all my elemental resistances up. But I was pretty confident with my build. She was a Scion. She had emphasis dex and ranged skills. Rain of Arrows was my main skill, and had it linked to Life Leech, Increased Area of Effect, and Projectile Speed. That, littered with Poison Arrow gave me a lot of crowd control. Specially using Taunt Totem to gather them all up. Frenzy would help get my attack rate up and just multiply the effect of all those skills. And along with the projectile weakness curse, things were going very well with this build. I didn't even use Mana Potions because I was running a tight mana regen build that would give me back my mana as fast as I could use it. And part of that regeneration when to my allies through the Clarity aura.

So here we are, in Cruel Act 2. The exact half way point between the beginning of normal and the end of Merciless, the hardest difficulty. We had just geared up and were getting ready to head out. Not really to even make storyline progress. Just to kill some mobs and get some levels. Things were going great. Kajak had just reached a point where he could effectively run two auras, along with my Clarity and Fay's Hatred, we had a LOT of buffing going between us. And having recently maxed out my elemental resistance and finally getting that negative chaos damage off me, I felt better about this run than ever before. I knew exactly where I was going in my passive tree as I had several levels already planned out. But fate had a different plan for me.

We ran into an invasion boss. In permadeath mode, there's a chance for a strong creature (usually from much later in the game) to spawn. They can be very strong and if you aren't paying attention, very deadly. We ran across the Guardian of the Mound. A goatman who uses a lot of fire based projectiles. And he REALLY spams them. That, and there was just a metric ton of mobs all over the place. I threw down my healing totem, and started casting Rain of Arrows. That animation I've become so used to over so many hours... those countless nights. But, as a group, we quickly decided we needed to leave, that it wasn't worth the risk of the sweet loot this invasion boss could drop. We would re-roll the map and just not worry about it. And that was fine. We were all close to the exit of the map.

Fay left, followed by Kajak. And I was not far behind. I ran to the door out and clicked. And... nothing happened. That sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach became physically noticeable. I stayed. I clicked furiously waiting for the comforting load screen to whisk me away from danger. Away from death. Away from permanent death. But that load screen never came. What DID happen though, was something unfamiliar. It was an animation I hadn't seen from my character before. It wasn't like the animation for Rain of Arrows. It wasn't like the animation for Poison Arrow either. It wasn't her curse animation, nor a totem animation, nor Vaal Burning Arrow, nor Frenzy. It was her falling over... within the arms of death, himself. The edges of the screen became dark, and that message appeared. The message that no hardcore player wishes to see scrawled across the screen. The message that signifies that I am no longer alive and I'm kicked out of the hardcore game.

Never more will my Scion feel the embrace of Kajak and Fay's auras. Never more will she be able to run the ledge, hand in hand, getting loot. Venturing into Vaal Ruins and giving advice to better further our cause is now lost. All that is left, is standard mode. By herself. With nothing more than her gear and her thoughts... just wondering how well her friends will do without her.

Godspeed.



Level 46 ranged Scion in Invasion in Act 2...



Ironically posted in Random Gaming Progress.

I did actually play and beat Shadows of the Damned about a week ago. It was a fine, fine game. The gunplay was pretty satisfying and the story was traditional Suda51, which means it was weird and hell and I liked it all the way.

I have started The Wonderful 101 recently. This is also a generally fun game, except it is a flawed one. Often, the objectives aren't clear so you could spend a while before you figure out what you're doing. For instance, there was a boss that allowed me to hit its face and it would flash red, which as gamers know, means you're doing something right. WRONG. I had to destroy the lights on his hands first. And I never actually had to touch his face in the fight. I spend about 5 minutes smashing his face until I realized something was wrong with this picture. That said, I did beat him but that was annoying. I do like the plot and character interactions, which are the best part about the game.

Did well this week, mostly on the 3DS:

Downloaded and completed Picross e4 over the course of the week, leaving Grinsia for the latter half of the week and have put a few hours in on that.

Also dove into Mario Golf World Tour, beating that tonight, and Kirby: Triple Deluxe, clearing Worlds 1 and 2.

Main console focus will be Atelier Rorona. My aim is to platinum the game before the remake is released at the end of next month. That'll require at least two playthroughs but the first will be without a guide, just to see how well I do on the time management in the game.

As planned I started Atelier Rorona and got very hooked very quickly, despite having one bad start. Currently in Year 2, Month 10 so just shy of 2/3 of the way through the game, but the final year will likely go by much more quickly.

Also beat the main story of Kirby:Triple Deluxe, which has the Best. Kirby. Final. Boss. Fight. EVER! Time for the Extra modes.

Started Banjo-Tooie two days ago, got about half done with Mayahan and mostly finished on GlitterGulch Mine. Plan on doing some of the Circus tonight, possibly going to whatever the fourth level was as well.

Planning on continuing Final Fantasy VII sometime this weekend, whenever Dyne is free. Wanting to at reach hit Cosmo Canyon if not just run through the entire second continent.