SON OF A BITCH. It’s been awhile.

So apparently the new fad in vidcons journalism is to be “witty” by saying things like “look at those graphics god damn”. Except people aren’t being sarcastic about this shit they are actually looking at Gears 2 and going “look at those graphics god damn” which is pretty fucking stupid because Gears’ pinnacle of art direction is a dinosaur with rocket launchers strapped to it. I mean that’s awesome but shit. Remember when graphics were measured by art direction, not number of polygons used to normal map guns and tits? I do, and I was like 4 years old for fuck sake.

In other news, Persona 4 is awesome, or that’s what I’m telling myself anyways. I haven’t actually played it all that much (15 hours or so) because playing it really made me want to play SMT Nocturne again so I am.

Also I’ve been distracted by Dissidia: Final Fantasy. It’s like Smash Bros. but with good gameplay and FF characters and you can level up and get equipment and shit even though it’s a fighting game which is sort of weird but also cool I guess. But Terra is blond and Bartz looks openly gay. It doesn’t make much sense. But damn, having Jecht beat the shit out of Sephiroth and Kuja and all the other girly men (most of the characters) is pretty sweet.

Hey fuck you Emerald Dragon, I don’t feel like screenshotting you right now. I feel like explaining why the Tales of Vesperia demo is total trash, and why the game will be shit, and why even though the “Tales of” series sucks shit anyway they still fucked it up even worse than usual for this one.

Okay so first of all let’s start with the least offensive/most boring aspect. The music. Actually, let’s not, because I can’t remember any of it (for those of you who are too stupid to understand what this means, it means the music sucks, but it’s not “ugh this is shit” sucks, it’s “there was music? when?” sucks). Also I could never hear the battle music because my fucktards wouldn’t stop shouting corny phrases. For all I know it rules. Fuck off.

Okay next up on the list is the art direction. It’s anime- WITH A TWIST. The twist is that the characters don’t appear to have necks in-game and that the art for the heroine (Estelle) shows her with blond hair, while in the game her hair is pink. Not even pinkish-blond. I mean fucking pastel pink. Japants. (There’s also a loli character that everyone and their mother faps to, but fuck if I know why. The art is so atrocious I can’t see how they can even look at it. Plus, she’s the biggest “no-neck” offender.) I guess the areas were sort of pretty, though they used bloom way too much (in other words, they used bloom). The pastel colors, at least, were somewhat pleasing.

As long as we’re on the topic of graphical issues, let’s talk the camera. It’s fixed. This is preferred for a cinematic JRPG. Of course, it’s also preferred that I can actually see where the shit I’m s’posed to be going, but I guess you guys forgot about that part. Oh well. There’s always DLC, huh?

So hey I got into a battle MAYBE THE GAME WILL GET FUN NOW. Lemme spoil this shit for you: it doesn’t. See, Yuri (that’s the main character, the one you control by default) is a smug douchebag prick shit-for-brains.

WHAT YOU SAY.

Yeah, y’see, every time you hit B- wait, before I forget, let me get this out first. In the previous “Tales of” games, what button was used for attacking? That’s right, the confirm button. What button is used now? The cancel button. GOLLY GEE, WAY TO GO NAMCOT. So anyways. Every time you hit B, Yuri slashes with his sword, right? Yeah, okay. But he does something else, too. He switches the hand he’s slashing with every time. Why? Fuck if I know. What I do know is that at the end of every combo he has to TOSS HIS SWORD BACK TO HIS OTHER HAND. I couldn’t make shit like this up. And guess what happens as he does this? He gets hit. Repeatedly. And he doesn’t care, because he’s just so sugoi.

So, okay, I try and link my combos together with my Artes, but it only works 1/3 of the time.

I’m gonna steal a line from Destructoid here. 66% of the time you hit the button, nothing happens.

I’ve played this series before. I know how the timing works. I know the order you have to link Artes in. But it doesn’t fucking work.

There’s also the issue with the hit detection. The issue is that it sucks goat balls. I am swinging my sword DOWNWARD. Why should it matter if the enemy is low to the ground? My sword’s graphic cut straight through that thing. WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T IT DO ANY DAMAGE. I punched it in the face with my Arte and NOTHING HAPPENED. Oh okay only the body can take damage OH WAIT NO I ALREADY CUT THE SHIT OUT OF THE BODY STILL NOTHING.

Okay so I finally kill those low fuckers and now I’m fighting other shit and jesus christ this takes forever better use a bunch of Artes OH WAIT MY TP IS TOTALLY GONE FROM A SINGLE BATTLE. Well okay fighting without Artes is a slow process but let’s try it and oh fuck it I’ll just use a goddamned TP recovery item. Then I notice that EVERYONE IS OUT OF TP AND I USE UP ALL MY ITEMS ON THEM. FROM ONE BATTLE. WHO DECIDED THIS WAS OKAY????????????

Oh hey someone died now and my party member wants to use an item to revive them. Whoa, the AI uses items now? Awesome! Wait, uh… what. If I hit LB, they stop using the item. But there’s no button to say “YES JUST USE IT IMMEDIATELY OH GOD”. So… someone just died and they wait 15 seconds after asking and getting no reply to decide “ohhhhhhhhh fuck all I’ll just use it”. ffffffffffffffffffff

Okay so I go into my menu because there’s no way enemies should take this long and maybe I’ve got some equipment it doesn’t equip me with automatically. But it doesn’t let me go into the equip menu. Alright, fair enough. The battles take too fucking long but fair enough. So I go into this so-called ‘Skills’ menu. Everyone’s already got skills equipped so I’m like “oh cool let’s see what they do”.

Increase Attack Power by 5%. Five percent. Five percent of 100 is 5, which adds up to 105, which adds up to MAYBE LIKE 1 POINT OF DAMAGE. My base attack is like 260 something. My improved attack is 270 something. GREAT. The only seemingly useful skill was Yuri’s skills that added a hit to his combo. Too bad his regular combo does shit damage huh?

Okay so that’s total bullshit. So I press on and get somewhere through all the monotonous shit gameplay and I fight a boss and whatthefuck everyone but me is dead oh dear Jesus use a revive bottle for Christ’s sake FUCK I’M DEAD. This is actually the best point of the game, though, because past the frustration I realized something.

“That’s it. I’m done. I never have to play this garbage again.”

Now, I haven’t even touched on the awfully unresponsive controls (to be fair, the 360 controller is complete garbage and I think it’s what’s mostly at fault there) and the fact that, instead of keeping Radiant Mythology’s control scheme, which rules (analog for Free Run, D-pad for side-scrolling movement), it uses D-pad for useless strategy commands and to Free Run you have to hold LT. If anything, Free Run should be default… is what I would say if Yuri could attack normally while Free Running. Which he can’t. No, he has to be a jackass and do a weak, sweeping attack that is completely useless.

There’s also the shit voice acting, shit dialogue, shit character development, and shit everything else story-related that I can tell from a demo. Though in this case I assume it’s at least partly better in the full game. Actually, that’s more of a wish for the poor souls (well, japfag retards) who will play this game than an assumption.

In the game’s defense, one of your party members is a dog that smokes a pipe.

P.S. Please feel free to leave nasty comments about how I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND SUCH A MASTERPIECE. (God, I love Eegra.)

EDIT: Thanks for the massive (well massive for a small site like mine, anyway) amount of hits, tales.namco.com forums. I appreciate it! Glad to hear you’re all as pissed off as I’d intended. Oh, and the idiotic comments about me and my article are a nice touch. I mean hey, all publicity is good publicity.

I just beat a 20 hour RPG in two sittings yesterday. Would have been one, but my headphones kill my poor little ears. :[

The game I beat was Emerald Dragon. I love the voiceover on the title screen. I’ll take a picture of the ending later, when I work up the energy to kill the final boss again. Right now, I’m going to go sleep, because staying up for 24 hours straight is, get this: not fun.

EMERAUDO DRAKON

P.S. I fucking hate you, Triad. I hate you and your fucking assholes who won’t seed Lord of Lords like good otakus.

And Sunset is one cool cat.

As if I didn’t already think that ponchos were the coolest things ever.

I have this really weird urge to watch The Good, The Bad and The Ugly now too. Hm.

CHARLESBAKELY (6:00:20 PM): sunset rules because he is the only american main character
xxDanagxx (6:00:50 PM): SUNSET
xxDanagxx (6:00:53 PM): is he an indian

I recently came to what some would say is a rather radical conclusion. I’d say it’s more like coming to my senses.

Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation is “heavily influenced” by Dragon Warrior for the NES, arguably to the point of ripping it off.

You see, MGS starts off very similarly to Dragon Warrior, and continues to contain these similarities through the entire game. The first similarity? Neither games use a “1″ in their title. This is only a foreshadowing of what’s to come, however. In MGS, Colonel Roy Campbell (King Lorik of Tantegel) tells Solid Snake (the descendant of Erdrick) that he needs to destroy Metal Gear REX (Dragonlord’s first form) and kill Liquid Snake (Dragonlord’s second form) who is now leader of the terrorist organization FOXHOUND (has stolen the Ball of Light). Solid Snake starts the game without a weapon, just as the descendant of Erdrick does, but soon gains a SOCOM pistol (Bamboo stick). Speaking of Erdrick, his role is filled in Metal Gear Solid by Big Boss. So anyways, you infiltrate Shadow Moses Island (whatever the hell world Dragon Warrior takes place in), gaining guns (swords), items (spells), and sneaking past (or killing) guards (running away from or fighting battles with monsters). You rescue Meryl, the Colonel’s niece (Princess Gwaelin of Tantegel), and fight many members of FOXHOUND (boss monsters). Eventually you get to the hangar that Metal Gear REX is in (Charlock) and destruct it with your Stinger missile launcher (Erdrick’s Sword) and then you fight Liquid Snake (Dragonlord reveals his true form) and then you beat the game and you’re like “hell yeah” and you get the girl (unless you’re a stupid retard at a certain point in the game and then it turns out Solid Snake is gay (go figure)) and then you realize you just wasted 10 hours of your life and like 4 of those hours were spent watching cutscenes and listening to codec calls and trying to figure out just what the hell is going on (grinding and trying to figure out why you’re playing this game anyways).

And what about the storyline? Solid Snake being a clone of Big Boss? Just where the hell did that come from? Well, there is one rather obvious conclusion to be drawn here.

Hideo Kojima is a clone of Koichi Nakamura.

Spread the word.

Semper games.

i hate my eyes they are terrorist eyes and i am feeding data to al qaeda unconsciously and it fucking hurts and it is goddamned 7:45 am and my parents are at the casino what the shit is wrong with them they are ridiculous dickfaces

So hey, I just beat Revelations: The Demon Slayer by ATLUS for the Game Boy. Thing is, when you beat it, you get four super-awesome monsters and have no real place to use them. At that point, you’re far more powerful than anything the game could throw at you, and as far as I can tell there’s no way to get a rematch with Lucifer (Satan is the final and hardest boss shit yeah bitch*).

Yes, those are the real numbers. For reference, Allex/Ryoue are level 71 and Rena is level 60. The non-overpowered enemies are only in my party because I used them to kill Lucifer and don’t have the heart to get rid of them. Except Rakshum, I just keep it around because when I first made it (I was around level 25) it was the strongest demon and I had and, again, I don’t have the heart to get rid of such a (previously) helpful companion. Even if it is a demon that wouldn’t hesitate to stab me in the throat and eat my liver out. You know, given the opportunity. Which it wouldn’t have, because I could kill it in a hit or two.

Sadly, the overpowered boss demons are still demons, so they still can’t equip things. So their attack power still sucks goat balls. And I still lose if my three human characters die. So they’re really not that useful anyways. Not that they need to be. I can already lay waste to everything in the game, with or without them.

*This isn’t a spoiler because honestly if you didn’t see Lucifer being the final boss coming you probably don’t pay attention to ATLUS games and don’t care about this anyways.