Emptyeye

My second attempt to explore the tower mentioned in the previous entry got me no cool equipment, nor anything immediately useful. I did find a couple Trimates (Phantasy Star’s equivalent of Final Fantasy’s X-Potion…basically an item that restores a party member to full health), and the second floor of the tower did have a satellite control system that I have a feeling will be useful someday.

Now I’m in a fountain.

Let me explain…the next portion of the game actually features two villages. One is an Orakian village with the typical music. The second, however, had a much more tribal music, and something else: Layans.

Talking to the people in both villages, I found out that the Orakians are growing desperate, having repeatedly tried and failed to defeat the Layans. Other tidbits I picked up:

• A girl was carried into the Layans’ castle (At this point, I remembered “Oh yeah, I started this adventure when my bride-to-be was kidnapped…”)
• Monsters come out of the fountain in the Layans’ village (It turns out there is a dungeon in that fountain, hence “Now I’m in a fountain.”)
• Layans look like Orakians (I’m now more certain than ever that Lyle is probably Layan. Funny how he mentioned how we would take the ship to “his homeland”, but never specified what “his homeland” was.)
• Orakians eat people (This being the first I’ve heard of my cannibalistic tendencies, I’m fairly certain this is just Layan lies and propaganda.)

The other thing that the Layan village had was more cool weapons, especially the Ceramic Shot for Wren. Suffice to say that being able to hit entire rows of enemies is pretty nice.

I’m liking the game a lot more than I thought I would, although part of this may be that I’m trying to play the game like I warped back to 1991–making my own maps, not using a FAQ, etc. The side effect of making my own maps is that I tend to have to make multiple trips into the dungeons–which, for the most part, eliminates any outright “grinding” I may need to do.

-EE

Knowing what my next two objectives were (In order: Go to a western cave, then go to the tower to the east), I set out.

My mission in the cave was to find a cyborg so I could fix the weather control system in the eastern tower. One thing I’ve noticed is that the more “traditional” caves intimidate me a lot less than the more “futuristic” ones. This may be, paradoxically, because the traditional ones are more packed together. They may well have more twists, turns, and dead ends, but because I can see more of these at once, I don’t feel as though I have to map them out for fear of getting lost as I do the more PSII-like dungeons. In any event, I quickly made my way through the cave to the west and found Wren the cyborg, filling out the music in the overworld a bit more.

I did notice the difficulty beginning to scale up at this point–enemies were generally hitting harder, and there were more of them. Additionally, Wren began his jaunt in my party with basically no equipment, and at Level 1, whereas Rhys and Mieu were in the Level 13-to-14 range at that point (Unlike in Phantasy Star II, though, where all your characters start as total n00bs [Just look at their stats for Level 1!], Wren’s HP, at least, was comparable to that of the rest of the party, and he started with a selection of techniques as well).

After heading back to the cyborg town and restocking my party (And giving Wren some equipment, notably a “Hunting Shot” that basically does fixed damage to enemies, a la Rudo’s weapons in PSII), it was time to head to the tower to the east. Almost immediately, I came upon stairs to the second floor, the first time I had seen stairs to another floor (As opposed to simply outside) in one of these places. Thinking that was too easy, I wandered around, making a map…and came across a second staircase. Now this was what I expected in a Phantasy Star dungeon.

Yet further exploration of the first floor shattered my expectations once again. After coming across Lyle for a second time (And having him join my party, stating that he needed Wren’s help to fix the weather machine and save his homeland), I finished exploring the first floor…and came upon the weather machine we had to fix! Suffice to say that Phantasy Star II would not have made it that easy, especially five or six dungeons in–for reference, here’s and fifth and here’s the sixth dungeon in that game.

Some other interesting things–Lyle, like Wren, joins at Level 1, but is pretty clearly supposed to be the mage of the party. Also, given his advanced stats (A full set of equipment, albeit not as good as the other characters have, more HP and TP than anyone else to that point, and a lot of experience to go from level 1 to Level 2), I get the feeling he’s but a temporary party member (No spoilers please), whether because he’s going to die, or because he’s going to betray my party for some reason (My attempts to put him in the front of my party in a Layan Palace to see if that was his big secret met with no results). I couldn’t help but notice that the overworld music actually got more dissonant with Lyle in the party; I have no idea if that’s meant to be a clue, or if Sega’s composers just aren’t particularly good at their jobs.

I have to admit, I’m enjoying this game a lot more than I thought I would. I’m actually going to finish exploring the tower next, even if there’s nothing in there (Again, don’t spoil that please), because my mindset nowadays tends to be “explore as much as possible, ignore the plot until you absolutely have to follow it”. It should be fun!

-EE

Making my way to the other side of the second dungeon, I came upon a shipping village. There was a small problem: The village, as well as the entire region, was frozen over, making fishing difficult. Finding ruins of an Orakian Fortress, I crossed them and ended up in a large desert region. This had a village full of cyborgs, where I received some hints as to what I was to do next. There’s a cave to the west, and a tower to the east (Which I stumbled upon by accident).

I’ve mentioned before that I like the old-school, piece-together-what-to-do-next-from-villagers style, and this game certainly delivers there. Another thing the game delivers on is making you feel like an outsider in the world. I’ve come across easily six or seven Layan Palaces so far, and nothing but the ruins of one of Orakio’s Palaces, which I couldn’t even enter (In another old-school move, the passage I was looking for was a random, non-descript square of snow that was in an intersection of the two ruined buildings). It’s strange that I’ve come across so many Layan Palaces, but no Layans as of yet.

A couple Hunter’s Claws and a Sword for Mieu and Rhys, respectively, and we’re ready to rock the enemies in the desert. I also haven’t discussed how your spells, or “Techniques” in the Phantasy Star vernacular, power up. As you gain levels, you gain spots on a square. You then go into a shop and redistribute these squares among the squares in the family (“Heal”, for instance). The higher the power of a spell, the more effective it is, without costing any more Technique Points. It’s interesting, if bizarre.

Next time, I hopefully find that Western Cave!

-EE

First off, some stuff I missed from Part Two:

When I acquired Mieu, a part of the overworld background music “filled in”, giving me an additional instrument. Think of what happens as you get further into Yoshi’s Island, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Pretty cool.

Also, Mieu is actually more human than catgirl. I think it was the claw attack that confused me. Whoops!

Now then, onto part three.

After acquiring the Sapphire, my next task was to find the cave that the Sapphire would allow me access to. I knew from talking to people that the cave would be to the east. I found a cave somewhere southeast and…couldn’t get in. Everything I tried yielded nothing. Confused, I wandered around what I could, and found two Layan Palaces that I couldn’t really do anything with (Being aligned with the Orakians..see Part One for a brief plot synopsis up to the start of the game), then decided to use my handy-dandy Monitor to see where I was. Feeling stupid, I walked as far east as I could, then slightly north (Practically right by the first Layan Palace I went to), where I found my target. I walked in…

…and wondered what the hell people were talking about when they say this isn’t really a Phantasy Star game.

In this so-called “cave” were platforms held up by pipes, with more pipes in the background, just like an early Phantasy Star II dungeon. And this one was a good deal more complicated than the first one (Although fortunately, it seems to only be a single floor [Please don't spoil anything in the comments.].), to the point where I decided to make a line-map of it. The dungeon’s encounters were also a major step up in difficulty, to the point where my party actually got wiped out once. I have to say, I honestly liked this, being more old-school in my RPG sensibilities (This is why I volunteered to play Final Fantasy, albeit the much easier Dawn of Souls version, for a Speed Gamers community marathon).

Next time, more progress!

-EE

I’ve now acquired a character and gone through my first dungeon in Phantasy Star III. The experience has certainly been interesting, and unexpected.

It’s clear that Sega learned quite a bit from Phantasy Star II. While the encounter rate is as high as ever (My cousin noted that PSIII’s encounter rate makes PSII encounters seem like occasional distractions), the combat isn’t as brutally difficult as PSII’s early game (Although this may be because of my choice of a Short Sword as my initial weapon, plus my doing a bit of grinding to get a second Claw for Mieu), and it flows a lot faster too–the animations move much more quickly, perhaps as a result of not having your characters themselves graphically in the battle.

Plot-wise, I now realize that the connections to the rest of the series begin much earlier than I expected. Suffice to say that I already know who I’ll be fighting in the third generation. Additionally, the character of Mieu reminds me of the rest of the series too. Name-wise, the first thing I actually thought of was Myau, the cat-like character from the original Phantasy Star. Design-wise, though, she’s clearly meant to evoke memories of Nei from Phantasy Star II, from the claws, to the cat-like appearance. Here, though, instead of being half-human, half-Biomonster, Mieu is a cyborg.

The game has also managed to subvert my expectations at points. I knew I needed a Sapphire to enter a cave. I also knew that a man had stolen the Sapphire and was hiding in a cave somewhere. In terms of the dungeon itself, it was actually a simple, one-floor affair, a far cry from the first dungeon in PSII. Not only that, but the scoundrel who stole the Sapphire simply handed it over to me, and even expressed a wish to join my party (But ultimately didn’t, at least not yet). So it was refreshing to have all the signs that pointed to “Boss battle!” not actually lead there. The downside to this is that the lack of real conflict has done little to quicken up the slow pace of the game to this point.

Still, I’m intrigued, and will keep playing.

-EE

While I get closer to my goal of a Golgo-13: Top Secret Episode speedrun (I’m now under an hour from start of control to end of control, thus proving one SDA member wrong about what such a run would entail), I decided to begin another project off-stream. Yes, I’m going to try something I’ve started a couple times and gotten absolutely nowhere in each time: playing through Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom.

Phantasy Star III is probably the most interesting game in the series from a non-playing perspective. Whereas the first Phantasy Star brought a futuristic bent to the console RPG (And in the US, was actually the first of the “big three” console RPG franchises to come out, beating the first Dragon Warrior to market by about a year), Phantasy Star II continued the sci-fi bent and is considered the quintessential “old-school” console RPG in its sensibilities for better or worse (It has been incorrectly called “Teleporter Maze: The Game”. That’s technically wrong, but the game is brutally difficult..you absolutely needed the full strategy guide the game came with back in the day), and Phantasy Star IV is widely considered the best of the series, and a game that still holds up incredibly well even today, Phantasy Star III is…none of these things.

Phantasy Star III is widely panned today, basically for not being a Phantasy Star game (Without spoiling too much, the connection to the rest of the series is really only revealed in its ending). In terms of its setting, it simply looks much more “traditional fantasy” than the rest of the series (Particularly II). So I’m trying to play through it, trying not to think of it as “A Phantasy Star game”, and see how it holds up on its own.

I had forgotten about the little intro screen at the start of the game, detailing the story so far. Basically, Orakio and Laya, two warring, uh, warriors, destroyed each other and most of civilization a thousand years ago. It’s into this world that your character, Prince Rhys, is thrust. On his wedding day, his bride, Maia, is kidnapped by a dragon, one of the Layans. Rhys, incensed, swears to destroy the Layans…and is thrown into the dungeon by his father to “cool off” for a bit. It’s an intriguing start, although I have the feeling (Please don’t spoil anything for me) this is setting up for some “Fake King” shenanigans (SEE: Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger [Fake Chancellor, but same concept]). After escaping, I was off to the races.

The first thing I noticed is that the pace is slow. Five minutes in, I found myself wishing for a “run” button like in most newer RPGs (Or remakes of old Final Fantasy games, going back at least as far as FF Chronicles). The meandering pace applies somewhat to the story as well. While it’s intriguing, I’ve been to three towns and, while I’ve picked up some fragments of information (True to old-school RPG form, the game throws you bits and pieces, but never directly tells you what to do next–and this is something I like), I have yet to enter a proper cave or dungeon or anything like that.

Still, I will say that the game is ambitious, if nothing else. Various features were advertised (Travel to seven different planets, four different endings depending on the lineage you choose), and even in my short playtime, I can see the ambition in the fact that I’ve heard four different battle themes (There’s a “main” battle themes, and then at least three others that play when you actually begin combat; I think the chosen theme is supposed to represent who has the advantage in battle.). Whether this ambition comes together in the execution is something we’ll have to see.

Oh, and Rhys wears a cape. He clearly knows what’s up.

More as I play through and really get into the meat of the game.

-EE

For the first time in four years, I’m actually using this plug-in!

This is a poll relating to what I should stream once I get a run of Golgo-13: Top Secret Episode worthy of submission to SDA. You can pick up to two answers, though note that I won’t really be speedrunning any of these. The poll will be open until I actually get a run of G13 for submission.

Thanks everyone!

-EE

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Just a quick note that my friend Eric_Dude is in the middle of streaming his entire 721 game SNES collection to raise money for his wife’s Relay for Life team. Check it out here, and donate if you have some spare cash!

-EE

Since Awesome Games Done Quick 2012, I’ve taken to streaming stuff on Twitch TV. Yes, I know I previously said that I was done with streaming. The post title says everything.

Truthfully, most of Twitch.TV’s issues are still there, particularly the chat not loading at random points. But one of the big things that changed my mind was that Nate brought a bunch of Easycaps to AGDQ 2012. An Easycap is basically an easy-to-use capture device that, once Lee generously gave me the proper software for it, I was able to use it with XSplit to give my streaming setup a major upgrade. Suffice to say that using an old webcam to try and capture the game I was playing was, in romscout‘s words, “An interesting experience, to say the least.” Fortunately, I don’t have to do that anymore, and can instead devote the webcam to, you know, webcamming.

I also have to thank Mike Uyama for kindly sending me a third set of RCA cables, which allows me to stream my “old-school” NES and SNES games, opening up a whole new world of streaming, including actually being able to stream proper speedrun attempts for the first time.

And now that I have something resembling a proper streaming setup, actually doing streams is really exciting, to the point that I’m trying to get myself on a consistent streaming schedule. This also forces me to, you know, actually play games, which is something I’m excited about. After I work out a speedrun of Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode, I have all sorts of games I can play on stream, to the point of almost being paralyzed about what to play next. It’s a good feeling.

I stream here every Tuesday and Thursday evening (EST), and I try to throw a weekend stream in too at irregular times. Come check it out, and feel free to hit the “Follow” button on the page as well–I like watching the number next to the heart go up. Also, when I’m not streaming, check out the SDA Team Page for other cool people streaming. Especially give the people who don’t get hundreds of viewers regularly some love, they could use it.

-EE

As I mentioned in my last post, during MAGFest X, I played through 15 different Mega Man games in the span of 21 and a half hours to help raise money for the SDA Marathon and the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It’s been about a month, and I feel like I should really write a proper post-mortem about it, including my thoughts about what went well, what didn’t, and so on.

I guess I should start with what went well. During the marathon itself, Silver and I raised about $150 from people who were not me. This is actually not an insignificant figure, although I was hoping to raise quite a bit more. Luckily, Andy Goth (Who had donated to various SDA marathons in the past) stepped in after my final plea at Closing Ceremonies and donated a very generous $100, which combined with the spare change Silver and I had saved throughout the year, plus a few dollars raised from telling people about what I had done when striking up random conversation (“Hey, are the lines for panels always this bad?” “I don’t know, I haven’t been to a panel yet.” “Well why not?!” “Well, I spent 21 and a half hours Friday-into-Saturday playing Mega Man games for charity…”), brought the final total in our lockbox to $300.28. Like I said, I was actually hoping for more, but was reassured by Mike after the SDA marathon that I had actually done really well (As he put it, “We raised a grand total of $7 onsite at MAGFest 8!”).

Speaking of doing really well, the mere fact that I got through all of the games I had planned with 2 and a half hours to spare was amazing and gratifying to me. That included letting most of the endings play, and even taking a bathroom break in the middle of X5. I would’ve like to fill out the rest of the time by either playing some of the games a second time, or play the Mega Man fighting games (Yes, really) included on Mega Man Anniversary Collection, but Silver (Who gamely stayed by my side for pretty much the entire marathon, getting the much-less-fun task of manning the lock box, timing me, and generally keeping me sane when stuff wasn’t going so well) and I were completely wiped out. As I texted MercuryZelda later (Ignore what her site says as of this writing, she’s not currently taking commissions. But check out her awesome plushies anyway, so that when she does open up for commissions again, you will be ready to order!), “I’m making like Samuel L. Jackson and going the (*^$ to sleep.” Which I did.

I managed to set new personal bests in 5 of the 15 games I played. Mega Man 1, 2, and 3 weren’t a huge surprise, since those came right at the beginning of the marathon when I was fresh and enthusiastic. X3 and X5 were a bit more shocking when I got new personal bests on those, especially with the context of losing several minutes to my bladder in X5. I guess the fact that, relative to the SDA times, my times on those two games were the worst by far meant I didn’t have much choice other than to improve, but those games came at the end of the marathon (X4 was after most of the “classic” Mega Man games, and the second playthrough of X4 took place immediately after the first after people donated for it) when I was completely exhausted. I guess I also did pretty well in at least the rest of the NES games, as I had people watching me say that I was “crazy good” at the games. Which I’m really not, although luckily I was the main SDA presence at MAGFest this year, so I managed to fake it well enough.

It was also surprising to see just which games people liked and didn’t like. Being on SDA and “the internet”, you get an idea of the general public opinion on certain games, but even the games generally regarded as “bad” have their followers. The best example is Savannah staying with me for the entirety of Mega Man 8, generally regarded as one of the worst in the series (I enjoy it, but it does feel to me more like a vaguely Mega Man-like product than a proper Mega Man game per se). And my fellow Shizzies came by throughout the night, which was a big help, even if the way the game order fell meant I didn’t have to go through the nighttime “lull” while simultaneously playing games I didn’t like that much.

There was, of course, stuff that didn’t go so well, too. The main one occurred before the marathon even started, when I realized I would have to cut Mega Man X6 from the list of games due to it being a terrible, awful, no good, very bad game. There was a part of me that regarded the whole thing as a failure just due to that fact, as I really had wanted to do all the X games on the X Collection–the idea being people might donate to watch me play some of the less illustrious games in the series earlier rather than later. Instead, though, I did X4 with both characters, which was probably more entertaining to watch (Mike Uyama told me later that X6 was one of the worst-received games at AGDQ2012), as well as a lot more fun for me (I’m about the only person on the planet who actually likes playing X4 as X, if SDA’s opinions are reflective of the general public). There was also the fact that Adam, who ran console gaming this year, had a bunch of additional duties to attend to at MAGFest as well–and apparently didn’t relay what I had planned to any of the rest of console staff. The result of this was a scramble for the projector, then a scramble to locate a power cord for the projector, which ended in me starting a half hour later than I had planned.

If I’m being totally honest, there was a point around 3 or 4 hours in, when I had raised a total of $9 that wasn’t our own money, and the thought running through my mind was “The fact I have already paid significant money to go the end of the marathon/bonus streaming is the only thing stopping me from driving directly home in shame after MAGFest.” This was a thought that was only amplified as I would periodically check on the SDA marathon and see that they were raising mind-blowing amounts of money–the rate through the marathon was roughly $1000 an hour. Even my most optimistic goals would have been a drop in the bucket, but the fact that I had raised almost no money to that point…in the end, it worked out okay, and seeing how happy Silver was even with the money we ended up raising stopped me from complaining too much.

From a gameplay perspective, I generally showed I knew what I was doing throughout the series, but there were two games I wish could have gone different, and both were directly my fault. First, I forgot to buy E-Tanks before starting Wily’s castle in Mega Man 9. This resulted in me having to do basically the entire castle over again once I realized my mistake. The second, ironically, came in what I consider to be my best game, Mega Man X. After getting the early-E-Tank on Flame Mammoth for the first time in an actual run, I couldn’t switch back to the X-Buster for the Hadouken on Vile, and hit Start in my sleep-deprived state.

Anyone who is a top-tier player of Mega Man X just facepalmed on “hit Start”.

If you don’t know, I take advantage of a bug to get through text in a cutscene a lot quicker than you’re meant to. The one thing you absolutely do not want to do when you use this method is hit Start during the cutscene, because this can freeze the game. Sure enough, I crashed the game for the first time. Thinking quickly, I managed to load a previous save which meant all I had to re-do was getting the Hadouken, but that was enough to completely derail my momentum. I actually told Silver that I felt like crying through most of the rest of the run, because I did.

In all, though, it’s an experience that I’m glad I did, once. I don’t really know if I would do it again, because as you can probably tell, I went through a whole roller coaster of emotions during the whole thing, culminating in my being extremely happy and relieved when I finished with two and a half hours to spare. If I were to do it again, I would definitely advertise it this time. Because I was trying to keep the fact that I was going to AGDQ a secret, by default, it meant I couldn’t tell people what I was doing at MAGFest either–including most of MAGFest. Now that I’ve pulled off the secret attendance thing once, I won’t try it again, which will hopefully get more people aware of what I’m doing and thus, more donations. If I do do something like this again, I’ll also make sure to practice more than two months in advance (Which was when I found out I was approved to do this at MAGFest) too.

-EE