Yakuza Second Run

After finshing Okami, i need a brutally violent action game to wash away the overly-sweet aftertaste of the game. Yakuza fits the bill quite nicely, i replayed the first game rather quickly and just started on the second game. I'm surprised at how much further the SEGA team is able to push the aging hardware, they seem to have further optimised the game engine, cutting the loading time at every corner and thus, allowing the game to run even smoother. The game looks remarkably good for something that was originally released almost two years ago, shame some of the cutscenes look a little compressed. Looks like my PS3 is going to take a break for awhile...

Number of completed sub-scenerios - 16
Percentage of moves acquired - 78%
Number of defeated enemies - 816 KOs
Percentage of coin lockers opened - 10%
Number of retries - 9 times
Number of saves - 35 times
Play time - 14:59

Okami Play Scores

For a guy with a short attention span, i don't really enjoy long-winded movies or games for that matter. Okami has tested my patience on so many levels that sometimes i wonder if i would ever finish the game if it was not for my fanboyism love for hideki kamiya games. As good as Kamiya is at crafting out action games, i must admit most if not all of his games lacks a strong finish. It could be due to his inability to stick to schedule and finish a game ontime, thus leading to the game getting rushed as it reaches the end of production that's something i will never know for sure.

Devil May Cry was a short but very sweet game, a nice length for an action game but yet somehow kamiya still managed to ruin it by plugging in an on-the-rails shooting/flying segment with the final boss. Viewtiful Joe was far worse, upon beating the final boss you are treated to an ending that revealed that it's not quite the end of Viewtiful Joe and co yet. I don't exactly remember much of the last level as i thought the game sort of fizzle out after the big boss fight with Fire Leo, probably because i had to cheat my way through the rest of the way. Okami? Plain awful final boss and a rather abrupt ending similar to the first Viewtiful Joe, i wonder if it would have felt more fulfilling had ReadyatDawn left the original credit sequence in there?

Play time - 56hr 29min 53sec
Days passed - 88
Saves - 98
Deaths - 0
Enemies defeated - 450
Money gained - 2429823 yen
Demon fangs found - 96
Praise earned - 4190

There you go, i have finally finished the game. Man, i feel like i deserved a medal for this!

If You Wanna Rock, You Gotta Roll...

Being a Capcom fanboy, i'm little ashamed to admit that i have only played a handful of Megaman games. Sure my very first Capcom game happens to be Megaman: Dr Wily Revenge on the Gameboy (a remake or compilation of sorts of the first two Megaman NES games) but since then, i have had very little contact with the blue wonder. Like a double-edged sword, Megaman's wild success which led to an insane number of sequels and spin-off has sort of made it incomprehendable to the average gamer. At least that's why i have shy away from the franchise since and perhaps Capcom themselves have recognised this and decided to return to their roots by releasing Megaman 9, the first sequel to the main installment in ten years not withcounting the various spin-offs and other sequels.

If you happened to follow my blog you would know i have a tendency to replay old games in anticipation of new ones and in an effort to prepare for the new Megaman 9, i picked up the Megaman Anniversary Collection to replay the first eight Megaman installments. I have been contemplating which versions to get but since i found the Gamecube version at a nice bargain price i decided to go with that. Its exclusive content also happens to be far more enticing, now i'll just have to see if i got the skills to make it past all eight games as Megaman is notorious for its difficulty.

Dawn of a New Order

It seems that Play has wise up to their customers scheming ways. In the past, they would do partial shipment whenever the other items in your order is already in-stock but not without giving you the full discount on your initial invoice. That way, if you were to cancel your remaining order before it's shipped, you would have earned the full discount on only a partial shipment.

I have unintentionally exploit this to my advantage when i ordered Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow along with another game back when supply of the game was begining to become scarce and rumour started to persist about the low print run. Play partial shipped out the other game in the order which i believe was Sprung, discounted down to USD14.90 after the full USD5 discount. However they took a bit too long in securing new supply of Dawn of Sorrow and during the wait, i managed to buy the game at a local game store as i simply didn't want to take the risk. So i ended up canceling the remaining order with Play and in the process, earned the full USD5 discount on only a partial order USD19.90.

Things seem to have changed as Play have not partial ship my order for the upcoming Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia even though some of the items are already in-stock. Perhaps it has something to do with me using a bigger discount of USD10 off this time?

Unspeakable Secret

Ever had something you wish you could blog about but couldn't because of the possible people who might end up reading it? It's horrible it's even worse than not having anything to blog about, i'll tell you that.

I apologise for the long hiatus, everything is fine and well gaming-wise and otherwise. Got some great stuff to you guys in the coming days so just hang in there.

Order of the Day

I don't usually pre-order games aside from limited edition, the last being metal gear portable ops. However playing symphony of the night has got me all worked up that i decided to pre-order Order of Ecclesia from Play-Asia. After all, Castlevania games are notorious for having a low print run and tend to disppear off the shelf pretty quickly upon release.

I haven't decided yet whether i will play it as soon as i get it, seeing that i have yet to play Portrait of Ruins.

Bittersweet Symphony

Being an avid castlevania, Symphony of the night was a game that i have yet to play despite its huge accolades. Acquiring the PSOne really late when the system was on its way out, all i was left with were huge system sellers re-released on budget labels and some other late releases like Dino Crisis 2. Symphony of the Night was such an obscure little hit that it was very difficult to acquire it from game stores.

Having finished Jeanne D'arc recently , i thought of playing Symphony of the Night on the Dracula X Chronicles so as to drum up some hype for the upcoming Order of the Ecclesia released on the DS next month. I missed the sound of UMD spinning in the disc drive and it's always a good time to give it a good spin after running on the memory stick for so long. I always thought that the Dracula X Chronicles was a really good value for money as you are essentially getting three games for the price of one. I would probably have spent more time on it had it not been for the language barrier on the japan import, it's certain not impossible to play given Rondo of Blood distinctly old school lack of menu and text.

But Symphony was a slightly newer game with a little more emphasis on RPG so there was always that worry there. I'm going to try to play it on the import version and if it really does prove too difficult, there always the US version recently discounted on Play-asia. When i initially boot up Symphony, the graphics took a little getting used to as it was from an era of Castlevania that i was not entirely familiar with. Widely regarded as the pinnacle of the series, this should keep me busy for some time to come.

Once a Thief

I finally finished Jeanne D'arc today and i did so without relying too much on my only tank, Rufus. The unlikely hero turned out to be another character i rarely used, the french thief Colet. You see, early on i assembled a team of mostly archers, magicians and spear users as they are able to score easy multiple enemy hits without sustaining too much counter attacks. So somehow the thief Colet just got left out as i couldn't stand his bad english and poor dagger. However i had to use him for some of the free play mission and found out he happens to be really good at evading and wasn't as weak as i initially thought. So my final assemble consists of jeanne, roger, richard, giles, cuisses, colet and rufus, i had to drop marcel my favourite archer as i realised i had little use for him against the lass boss. The sneaky colet proved to be pretty useful for the last mission as he is very mobile, quick to evade attacks and is able to pull off two to three hits in a row if you happened to have the right orbs.

All in all i took about 40 hours to finish the game, leveling up most of my characters to about 60+ level and a pretty good accomplishment for someone who doesn't indulge in RPG like myself.

Now i'm ready to tackle Rogue Galaxy !

Stranglehold Second Play-through

My second play-through Stranglehold was thoroughly more enjoyable than the first, marred only by some occasional skipping of the action on my Playstation 3. The freezing was less apparent on my first run, maybe it has something to do with me turning up the difficulty a notch from casual to normal? Anyway the game froze on two occasion causing me to reluctantly force-shut down the machine and later downloading the patch for the game. i wonder if the patch actually did any good apart from adding a new hard boiled difficulty mode?

I also took the time to do some shopping at Woo bar stand and watch all the development footage and sketches, not bad i especially liked the how to make a paper crane demonstrated by a origami master. I don't think i ever replay a game immediately after finishing it before but Stranglehold was an incredibly short game i just had to experience it again. Judging from my scores, i really didn't improve much from my first go, i doubt i'll be able to survive hard boiled mode.

Enemies defeated - 1234
Highest style combo - 33
Style point earned - 2884
Paper cranes found - 96
Damage to world - $ 153,664,459

Overall ranking - C

Think Tank

It has happened again, years ago when i first played FFX i got all the way to the final sin and was unable to proceed because i didn't level up my characters properly. Now i just got to stage 35 of Jeanne D'arc and i faced the same dilemma only this time, the solution is less clear cut. I relied too much on my archers and magicians early on, leveling them up quite a fair bit only to reach the end and come to the startling realisation that they aren't very useful against big bosses. I neglected my brawlers (or some FAQers refer to as tanks) and have to now level them up evenly if i were to stand any chance against the big bad boss.

So close yet so far, i had a friend who spent more than 60 hours on this game alone, i wonder if all that time was spent leveling up?