MetalCaveman

God Eater 2 Rage Burst "what?... wait WHAT?!, I mean, WHAT!?!?!?!... WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!?" That was my reaction to the ending, in GE the power of friendship overcame mutations once thought to be irreversible, this time it's managed to overcome Which came out of nowhere, one of the things that happened was expected, no surprise there, but then and THAT was a surprise. This is one of those sequels that in part feels more like an expansion and also a regression, which may be caused by the original having had to re-releases, God Eater Burst and God Eater Resurrection, while this is the first time 2 has been re-released. Resurrection added predator styles, which allowed for different devour combinations and setups based on your weapons and playstyle, along with some weapon and weapon styles that are now also a part of 2. Meanwhile, 2 not only uses several of the same maps and weapons, even HQ is the same after a certain story event that takes you back to Fenrir's Far East Branch. All this while removing Predator Styles, instead opting to go with Blood Arts, which enhance melee attacks, Blood Bullets which can add specific effects to bullets (like friend or foe detection, gravity based damage, etc.), and its main new mechanic, Blood Rage, which to me ended up feeling like too much risk, too little reward. Basically you build up a gauge based on damage dealt and taken, when it reaches 100% you can activate Blood Rage, which then allows you to select and enemy and a series of pledges (conditions) to be fulfilled in order to activate it, this conditions range from Do X% of damage or hit X amount of times, all the way to having extremely low health or stamina, different conditions grant different damage bonus depending on the difficulty, the problem, and this is a problem with the entire game, is that the monsters here move so fast and so much that you can waste a full gauge just trying to keep up with the thing in order to fulfil the conditions, and once activated it only lasts for about a minute, of which you're likely to spend 30 seconds just chasing after your target. You can use traps or flash grenades to stun monsters for a bit, and AI teammates can be equipped with skills that help keep targets in place during Blood Rage, but even then it can be a pain depending on the monster in question, even more annoying when you're fighting multiple enemies. Having increased speed or something that could help close the distance faster would have been awesome. Other than that though, the rest of the game plays very much like GER, and there's plenty of missions here to keep you busy for a while lol, story missions, free missions, character missions, emergency missions, some more challenging that others, some unlocking more skills for certain characters, though I said it felt like an expansion of GER it sill has more than enough content to stand on its own. One thing that did disappoint me is that, in spite of the events of the previous game and the role your character had in it, this time around, when meeting or talking with returning characters, the most you get is "oh, you remind me of someone I used to know"... That's it... Kinda hurts. Even with the issue I had at the end, where multi-stage battles got pretty annoying, GE2RB is a fun game, one that I'd def recommend if you're interested in the series. \m/ \m/

Basically Monster Hunter Lite with a sci-fi setting.

Fucking hell, I'm really close to just shelving God Eater 2, everything was fine until the last couple of story chapters where the game gets a fucking hard-on for multi-stage missions. Normally annoying, as you can't go back and stock up on supplies, which means you have to carry as much as you possibly can which leads to inventory management being a pain in the ass mid-battle, the story missions go one step further by throwing a ton of really strong aragami your way, with a final one being a surprise one that you can't really prepare for beforehand. Add to it the weird controls (result of the game originally being made for PSP), bad teammate AI (I tell them to attack the other target and they still focus on the one I'm attacking), and poor mobility of your characters compared to aragami and these story missions quickly go from challenging but fun to a frustrating hell. The grind also feels worse in this game than in the first one, to the point where I've given up on crafting or upgrading certain weapons and just focus on the one set of sword/gun/shield I've been using for a while.

President: *Cancels new airport, meant to help with air traffic and provide a much needed update and upgrade that could work alongside the current one, arguing corruption issues without any proof and just generally accusing it of being a monument of neoliberalism" Also President: *Orders construction of HIS "new" airport built on top of an old military base, with no studies, no analysis, no research, no nothing, experts, national and international warn of issues with air traffic, and the possibility of serious accidents* Airlines: "Well, guess we won't be flying there then" President: "Well, guess I'll just make it so you HAVE to fly there by law" International airlines can just laugh this off, national ones have started offering way more flights to other cities in order to avoid Mexico City altogether, but we'll see how long they can hold. This thing is going to be another Linea 12 isn't it? Speaking of, DNV had their third report on the incident, which left 26 dead and almost a hundred wounded, ready to be presented, before they could do that however, Claudia Sheimbaum, head of government in Mexico City, and so far the most likely candidate for puppet president in 2024 for MORENA, launched a pre-emptive strike, accusing it of being "biased, fuelled by political motivations" etc. and so forth, the usual MORENA arsenal of "We hold the one and only truth, we are the light, we are righteousness personified, anyone who speaks against us is a liar, evil, ignorant, and wishes to harm the country", why this reaction? Because, according to parts of the report that were "leaked" one of the reasons the subway line collapsed was due to a lack of maintenance, that's right, not poor or inadequate maintenance, just an outright lack of it, when did this lack of maintenance happened? During Sheimbaum's administration of course. Of note, many of the other people involved in the shoddy construction, the poor quality of materials, and many other issues Line 12 had are now part of MORENA as well, these are untouchable of course, so they've gone for everyone else that hasn't sworn fealty to our glorious leader, many of those people now await trial for manslaughter. Linea 12 for reference: We also recently had to deal with the electoral reform, meant to grant the president and his party complete control of elections, one of the key points was the dissolution of the National Electoral Institute, to be replaced with the National Institute for Elections and Referendums, which would be composed of 7 council members, chosen by "popular" vote (though they'd have to be approved beforehand by the president so...), this was thankfully shot down, though the response was swift. The president and his cohorts then declared all those senators who voted against this reform "traitors" and even proposed that their pictures and names be exposed in public spaces with "TRAITOR" written under their name in the style of a most wanted poster. In June we have elections, governor elections, and it's oh so fun to see the main opposition candidate in my state already fucking up everything, like her PR team went and said "how can we make sure no one sees the actual policies and changes you bring and instead see you as an airhead completely disconnected from reality while at the same time handing over victory to MORENA on a silver platter?" the result is that, while her policies include: Bi-monthly economic support for women. Support for women, helping them find employment and/or starting their own businesses. Free healthcare for everyone, including vaccines, medicines and doctor appointments. Repair and modernization of roads in all rural areas. Community kitchens in all regions of the state. Environmental rescue for Tula, the area currently responsible for a fair chunk of pollution in the Valley of Mexico, mainly due to a refinery that the president loves. Among others. Her actual campaign is based on: Free phones and tablets for everyone! Which of course MORENA has used to present her as an evil neoliberal elite who hates poor people and doesn't understand them. So that's going to be fun... NOT lol Meant to post this last night, apparently forgot to click submit lol, anyway, another update, the director of Mexico City's metro system when Line 12 collapsed has now been given an honorary position in... Wait for it.... the External Committee of Evaluation, Center of Engineering and Industrial Development. lol

Haven't even started the first one yet, but don't want to go through that thing were it's sold out everywhere and the only people selling it want $250+ for it.

0:00-0:50: Is this really a Rotting Christ song? 0:52 onwards: Yes, yes it is a Rotting Christ song. Interesting to hear clean vocals that aren't their usual chant/prayer style thing, pretty neat.

Meanwhile, I'm on my fourth playthrough (250+ hours in). NG+ is super fast, since you only need 2 great runes to move forward, if you bought enough upgrade materials before starting it, it goes by even faster.

HELL YEAH!! \m/ \m/

There's also a physick that gives you infinite mana for a couple of seconds (don't know exactly how long it lasts though), super useful to keep laser beam of deth running for longer.

With the buffs to some incantations and colossal weapons I'm now running I'll also respec to move my points from arcane into intelligence, maybe the Ruins Greatsword will be better than my current setup.

IIRC, there's some weird translation shenanigans going on with that ending, seems like in Japanese it makes more sense and is closer to a "good" ending than the others... Well, as close to a good ending as you can get in this kind of game at least.

It does take a while to get some of them though, in preparation for that, before starting NG+ I bought about 60 of each stone, including somber ones, which was kinda excessive given you only need one of those per level.

Fair, I did use a notebook to keep track of particularly important things , but yeah, after seeing how they added NPC markers on the map, I'd be willing to trust FROM to implement something like that without it being too obtrusive/overwhelming.

Elden Ring Currently on NG+++. Easily the best game I've ever played, no question about it. There were however, some issues: Upgrade materials seem oddly scattered, this might just be due to the open world nature and how I played, but I had a bunch of upgrade stones 6, a ton of 7 and some 8 while 5 was nowhere to be found. Pop-up messages "A door has been unlocked" "Stonesword key lost with use", these things get in the way take too long to disappear and having to press a button to instantly dismiss them almost got me killed a couple of times. Being asked if you want to use a flask to re-summon your horse, this was extremely annoying and would be better off as just a tutorial once you get Torrent "Hey, if it dies, you can use a flask to call it once more!" Multiplayer co-op and pvp, but at this point it's kinda pointless to complain about it, FROM has their style and it's unlikely they'll change. Everything else though, pure awesomeness. The map felt like an actual map, not a glorified checklist of quests and NPCs I don't care about, opening it and being able to just mark a path to a place I wanted to go was awesome. Being able to look at a map and just see the map instead of getting anxiety from the trillion icons, npcs, quests and other pointless shit was a breath of fresh air and I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to other open world games. NPC quests are fun, and even the more simple ones either lead to secret areas, unlock merchants or have other cool rewards. The fact that there's no quest tracker makes it that much more fun to actually complete these quests IMO, found a lady who was like "You got any grapes?" and it turns out that I did because earlier I found a ghost dude next to a "grape" (it's actually an eye), asking for a maiden to take his grapes... Never saw that lady again even though I had collected a bunch of those things, and that was cool. On the other hand there were NPCs I had forgotten about until I ran into them while doing other stuff, this IMO, feels way more organic than just having map markers or quest logs that tell you exactly what everyone wants, where to find it and where to find them once you have their items. The gameplay, it's Souls, with improvements, some streamlining and new additions, the stealth mechanic was worrying to me because I didn't know how well it'd work, how necessary it would be or if it would lead to areas that could only be cleared by using it, thankfully, it works much better than expected, and was actually quite useful without feeling like if you didn't stealth you were screwed. Having a dedicated jump button is awesome and it's hard to explain how much it improves things compared to previous Souls games. Guard counters make shields feel more useful, spirit summons are awesome and a great way to get some support without the penalty of increased boss health when summoning other players, and IMO, the best new change is the Stakes of Marika which allow you to respawn much more close to boss gates or to certain areas with tough enemies instead of having to respawn at the last bonfire site or grace, this eliminates much of the tedium and annoyance of having to fight, or run all the way back to the boss. The story is a bit more straightforward this time, there's still a whole lot of "read item descriptions" and stuff, but NPCs and cutscenes also reveal a fair bit more than in other SoulsBorne games. My favourite part was just abandoning all weapons and instead carrying a huge shield, with a couple of talismans to reduce damage, this thing can tank through even the strongest of bosses, except for two, one which is just a pain, and the other... Kinda makes sense that trying to block wouldn't work on it. TL;DR: Love it, best game ever!!! lol

Got it as soon as it came back in stock! EXCELLENT \m/ \m/

Went on a bit of a shopping spree. Vol 1 was sold-out Soon as it was announced I knew I needed it. While browsing amiami, I also saw that they had these wall scrolls on pre-order, bunch of different designs, but these were the four I liked the most, really enjoy 23/Sela's work and been meaning to buy some merch so this was some nice timing. NSFW

Honestly, the ring trophy is the only one I'd need help with, thanks to the ever so annoying character tendency, however, I'm not sure I want to go for it. Played for a bit today, trying to get some of the other trophies I'm missing (spells, miracles and one of the endings) and honestly, the differences between DSR and Elden Ring are so big that I think Demon's Souls is better off in that category of "I remember it being fun". Demon's Souls did not age well, even compared to the Dark Souls series, Elden Ring just wiped the floor with it. The original Demon's Souls will keep its place as one of my favourite games, and so I think I'd rather just leave it as is, rather than force myself to go through with it. One thing I did like and wish Elden Ring had (iirc it's supposed to be coming "soon") is the usage of the PS5's controller, both haptics and the speaker, they really do make things better, but that's the only thing I'd bring over from DS to ER.

\m/ \m/ Went through it three times, could've done it in two runs, but for role-playing purposes I wanted to get a certain ending on my first playthrough and make that the canon one for my character, NG+ for the ending that locks you out of the other ones, and NG++ for the vanilla ending.

Even with that it still took a couple of tries, though I also learned that anything that has works well too, this includes

So it does, glad I upgraded it even though it wasn't part of my build.

Is a pain, not particularly hard in that moves are somewhat easy to avoid, but it has way too much health, and the camera acts as an extra enemy for this fight. This is NG+ btw.