The Pod Plays

Final Fantasy II begins at page 1
Gravity Rush begins at page 1. It ends on page 4.
Persona 4 Golden begins at page 1. It ends on page 3.
Sonic Colours begins at page 3.
Super Mario Bros. begins at page 4.
Batman: Arkham Asylum begins at page 4.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012
As I speak, my iPod is installing Final Fantasy II. I've only played IV and VI before this, so I'm still kinda new to the franchise.

I've created this thread as a sort of journal of my progress through this game. Every time I turn the game on, I will make a post, commenting on any interesting events that occur in the game.

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22 minutes in. Toured through the opening town of Altair.

The prologue to the game is pretty sad - bunch of teens(?) lose their entire home to a devilish tyrant, and one of their crew has been captured. But the whole prologue is just text with a few second-long scenes thrown in. Kind of rushed, really. Still good overall.

So the more you do something (attack, get hit, use magic), the more the corresponding stat goes up. Sounds aight.

Monday, June 25, 2012: Entry 1, 54 minutes - Fynn and HOLY SHIT WEREWOLVES
Plot:

Spoiler:

Gameplay:
Kind of lost, although I can access a map now (cool).
Had a WTF moment. For the record, monsters so far have been pretty weak. A few hit points, me taking a coupl'a points of damage at a time, no big deal. Then one time I'm just minding my own business in the overworld when suddenly two werewolves pop up. I have no idea when I'm getting into, when all of a sudden 300 POINTS OF DAMAGE CHARACTER IS DEAD BAM!! OH FUCK ATTACK ATTACK WHATDOYOUMEAN 0 DAMAGE?!!! OH SHIT OH FUCKFUCKFUCK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGH!! Dead. Shit.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012: Entry 2, 1:11 hours - Lost
Don't know where I'm going; it's beginning to piss me off. I can't do anything else in Fynn.
Although I've made an important discovery. There are invisible borders everywhere defining areas by difficulty. Once you cross it, you go from one-hit goblins to FUCKING WEREWOLVES. Makes it frustrating to travel, since not only do I not know where I'm going, I'm being punished for not knowing where I'm going.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012: Entry 3, 2;28 hours - Minecrap
So the plot's progressing.

Spoiler:

I'm in a new place, and the enemies are finally getting tougher. It's occurred to me that with the characters having different skill bars for each type of weapon, I'm gonna want to specialize aren't I. I'm gonna make Firion a swordsman, and Guy an axeman. I also started training Maria's black magic.

Thursday, July 19, 2012: Entry 4, 4:11 hours - Dread not
I'd like to mention that the regular battle music is the best out of the three games (II, IV an VI) I've played. Very bombastic.

Spoiler:

I've started considering the benefits of making one of my warriors dual-wielders (maybe Guy). It started when I was buying mythril weapons and noticed that there was no mythril axe for Guy. It occurred to me that this kind of scenario might happen again. Also, there's the obvious extra damage dealt every turn.

There's this random cave at about the same latitude a Salamand. It seems to be KeyTerm-based. There's a portal that seems to open up a different dungeon for whatever KeyTerm you give it, and there's a guy who tells you what kind of fortune each KeyTerm holds for each party member (whether it will be good for you or not). Huh.

Saturday, July 21, 2012: Entry 5, 5:08 hours - The long road

Spoiler:

So I have a new party member, and Guy is dual-wielding now (with a staff-type weapon [mythril mace]).

Monday, July 23, 2012: Entry 6, 7:36 hours - Ice and fire

Spoiler:

So stuff's happening now. Getting pumped. I lost my new party member, but got a new new party member. They're not that useful, really.

oh yay it's back. I should do one.

mass effect?

Well I'm already through the intro and a bit of it. I was actually thinking of making a thread where I rate and shortly review games, it would be cool if we all did one actually.

Yea, I would like to do that.

Final Fantasy II: Entry 7, 8:07 hours - Have no dread! Wild Rose ahead!
Didn't do too much today.

Spoiler:

A frequent enemy here keeps using Blind IV. I've run out of eye drops. I'm getting back into the swing of this game.

yes. Undead rape in that game.

Sauxuas wrote:yes. Undead rape in that game.

Is it necrophilia if it's the dead guy doing it?

^ i lost...


in the wrong thread

hhahahaha that's good shit

Gravity Rush: Entry 1, about half an hour - Are they speaking French?
As of today, this thread will hold journals for all future games. I'm starting with Gravity Rush.

Didn't know much about this game upon buying it, just that it involves
screwing with gravity
a high metacritic score
and a world falling apart. Sounds good.

The plot begins with a girl...who has amnesia. Ohhhhh nnnnoooooo. A man's house, with his son inside gets ripped out and sucked into a storm in the sky. Her skills are called upon by the man, except she doesn't know about these skills. Fortunately the funny-looking cat by her side does, and before you know it she's zippin' around the skies like the hype for PAX.

So she saves the boy. Sadly the man's house falls off a high wall and is presumably destroyed. And the man has the gall to bitch at her about it just after she saved his kid's life. No paraphrasing:

Man wrote:I asked you to save my son's life, not destroy my house!

What, an asshole.

The story is presented through both regular cutscenes and mangaesque pages. The people are speaking this...language. I don't know, sounds kinda French. But I don't think it's French.

I like the idea of shifting gravity. I feel like it's gonna go a long way.

Gravity Rush: Entry 2, 2:56.54 hours - Lots of people
From all of yesterday. Plot will now be in spoilers from now on.

Spoiler:

This game is great. In my latest mission, I got a new superawesome powerup, and fought my first boss. And the soundtrack is beautifully orchestrated. I need to give it a listen on its own sometime.

Going into this, I had expected a lot more isolated experience. But there is lots of people. Okay.

From last Friday.

Gravity Rush: Entry 3, 5:59 hours - What's your Alias?

Spoiler:

There was this one boss fight with a giant Nevi in Pleajeune that I absolutely loved. The one from last entry was alright, but this one was way more intense. I can't say too much without spoiling.

I have a new superawesome attack, where I throw rocks. It's cool. I also figured out how to Gravity Slide. Some on TVTropes say it's not that good. I think it's fun.

The fight with Alias was the first time I found myself dying multiple times in one mission. Kind of frustrating and hard to hit.

From Thursday.

Gravity Rush: Entry 4, DunnoHowMany hours - Getting to the Bottom of this.

Spoiler:

I'm stuck (due to plot) in this area apart from the regular map. I wonder how long I will be.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 1, 3:30 hours - Welcome to the Velvet Room

Spoiler:

Welcome to Persona 4. And what a welcome? Did you see that opening? Probably not, but it's trippy.

There wasn't actually loads of combat or, hell, movement, in the first 3.5 hours. Relatively speaking. There was at least one hour of dialogue and scripted events. I've actually only seen one real dungeon so far. I played enough to get told about fusing personas together. That sounds fun.

Have I mentioned that Yosuke is YURI LOWENTHAL?! It's so cool. Not that I've looked it up, but it's so damn obvious. Also, I think Pag's uncle's assistant is Johnny Young Bosch.

Igor's talking; what can I say. I can't take a single sentence seriously. The inflection is just all wrong. But, it's like, one step beyond. It's not just typical anime-dubbing; Teddie is typical anime-dubbing. Igor is like, they went out of their way to ruin him. Am I missing something? Is he supposed to sound this bad?

Anyway, this was a nice way to spend the day.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 2, 5:30 hours - Go find a hot stud

Spoiler:

I fused some personas! I took three low-level cards and made a more appropriately powerful one. I'm having a barrel of fun just exploring the system.

I'm getting more freedom. I can choose how much time to spend before saving Yukiko, so long as it doesn't get foggy. Apparently I can join a sport's club now, and the game is telling me to check my calendar regularly to look out for important dates.

This is more like it.

I should probably mention the calendar system this game has. The story started on April 11. The passage of time is a central game element, and events are made to both occur on certain days and pass the time appropriately. So far, I'm in the middle of May.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 3, 10:29 hours - Strange?!

Spoiler:

I'm really getting in to this game. I can visit the (one) dungeon(s) I've already played through to train my party (which I believe to be at full capacity now). I'm doing a lot of socializing (which is very useful in the fusion of personas). So much, in fact, that I've, on at least one occasion, had a scheduling conflict with two friends.

I probably should be complaining about how I've done more interacting with characters than fighting with monsters, but there's just too much to the system to not have fun. It helps that it all ties in to the battling in the end.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 4, 18:29 hours - More

Spoiler:

This game has been so much fun for the weekend. I have five party members now. Whenever I rescue a party member, they're a few levels above the others, which makes me feel like I'm underleveled. For the record, I'm playing the normal difficulty (3rd out of 5). Doesn't take too long to balance things out, though.

I'm gonna have to cut back during the school week, aren't I?

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 5, 20:29 hours - Shadow of doubt

Spoiler:

So I've been just going through the latest dungeon. Everything was going well, but the boss at the end is super powerful. I don't know what to do.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 6, 23 hours - Anti-Nihil Hand

Spoiler:

The boss I fought today was incredible. Nothing fancy, just straight-up powerful. I really felt a sense of danger, but at the same time could deal reasonable damage to find the boss hopeless. It was a long battle, and I loved every moment.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 7, 27:06 hours - Your killer's in another castle

Spoiler:

And I thought the boss in entry six was hard! This thing I'm against feels impossible. I'm considering shifting my party a bit, try something new.

The dungeon I've been exploring is retro-gaming-themed. The boss even uses a command menu to attack. Wazzupwithat?

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 8, 29:29 hours - I kick ASS!!!

Spoiler:

So for the entirety of the game, I've been using the first four characters I got. I've just never thought of changing them up. However, this boss was giving me the hardest time ever, so I replaced one with my newest character. It helped like none.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 9, 37:27 hours - Party over here

Spoiler:

I have eight characters now. There's my four main ones, one that can't fight but can pop in for support, two underleveled ones, and the one I just rescued. I have a feeling those two underlevelds are gonna get left behind. I need to focus on building the solid party I already have.

The Persona my main character uses, Lamia, has stopped learning new spells, so I should stop using it. But dungeon crawling has netted me so many Magic-Stat-boosting cards that Lamia has much higher Magic than any Persona I could create at the moment. I don't know what to do.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 10, 42:43 hours - You've gotta believe this

Spoiler:

I gave up Lamia. My remaining Personas don't have as high Magic, but they'll get better spells.

Abdel said that the person who designed the boss I'm currently fighting must have been high at the time. I can see why he'd think that.

Persona 4 Golden: Entry 11, --:-- hours - -------
Still stuck on last entry's boss. It's real hard, but I'm making progress. Before I'd barely get to 75% of its health, now I'm at 25%. It's making me fight more smart. I like this game.