I haven't posted anything for somewhat
of a long time and while I have been meaning to do so, I've had
certain real life issues preventing me from doing much that was
really worth writing about. However, now that I'm here and I'm in a
fairly good mindset to start writing again I'll start off with a few
small notes as usual.
The Prince of Demacia
Today after playing a few games with
Sion mostly in Dominion and only one in the Classic mode with the
goal of farming Influence Points to buy Nocturne and try him out, and
also to get the limited edition Halloween “harrowing” skin, if I
like playing him anyways but back onto the main topic; I decided I
felt like trying one of the new champions in this week's rotation,
and that ended up being Jarvan IV since many of the other free
champions don't appeal to me that much. Honestly, I haven't really
heard that many good things about Jarvan IV either, nor have I seen
him perform that well in games, it is my understanding that he was
apparently very strong but he went through a series of patch changes
that brought his power level down quite a bit. So, while I won't be
able to experience the popular Jarvan IV, I still can see how he
plays currently. I've only done one game with him, deciding to skip
Coop mode practice again to see how off-put I would be on a PvP
Dominion match without knowing anything at all, and it turns the
answer is “quite a bit”. I currently haven't played him enough to
make any true statements about him yet, however I do know that one of
his main CC combos which involves throwing his standard down and then
charging to it, which in the process, knocks up all enemies that are
in the way, is somewhat difficult to pull off, moreso than most
champions with a skill shot that I've played, mainly because it is
very difficult to get more than one champion in path before charging,
although I somewhat wonder if I'm overestimating what my role is in a
fight, and I should just go for knocking up one champion.
In any case I will be writing more
about Jarvan IV possibly in a more indepth post about how he performs
in dominion specifically and possibly in the classic mode too since
both modes seem to be rather Jarvanless.
Yggdra Union
In other news, I've also been playing a
Playstation Portable game called Yggdra Union which is a turn based
strategy game designed by Sting. It has a very animeish art style to
it, and it's graphics aren't amazing, although I haven't really
played many PSP games at all and I don't really know if there's a
standard for “amazing” graphics on any hand held system. It is
also a port from a GBA game but from my research it has a few
improvements such as replacing the old music with more “modern”
sounding themes although make no mistake, while I haven't played the
GBA version myself, I have compared the PSP and GBA soundtracks for a
few of the scores in the game, and they do carry basically the same
tone and even rhythm, but the PSP does things like changing the
instruments used or even slightly changing the tune in a few of the
tracks. It also has added a few characters, and tactics cards which
kind of goes onto what I wanted to say next in a way, the actual
gameplay.
The game play is a combination of a
standard turn based strategy game like Fire Emblem as well as adding
cards to it. The cards are called tactics cards and they determine
how much damage you do to the enemy, how many spaces you can move for
your entire team, what abilities you are able to execute, and what
type of weapon a unit has to have to be able to use that ability.
This all is a lot of information for just seemingly one aspect of the
game, but the tactics cards are pretty much the only drastic
difference from most similar games. You still take turns with your
enemy, you move units one by one but unlike most games and as kind of
mentioned slightly before, your units share movement spaces and the
total number of movement spaces is determined by the card rather than
the type of unit itself, this also limits battlefield mobility
severely. Other than that however, there's also a weapon triangle a
lot like in Fire Emblem except that it adds magic rods and bows into
the triangle, and there are various landmarks on the battlefield that
you can take advantage of such as visiting villages or simply a fort
that when you fight on it, it gives you positional advantages. One
last thing that I'll mention that it does add that I've never seen a
game do before is the use of formations which lead into unions; these
are essential that you learn early in the game which require units to
be in certain positions from each other when initiating an attack, or
defending from an engagement. There are only two formations even
though I'm sure the developers wanted to go for something crazier
than that, but in any case, the two formations are diagonal and
cross, and the unit that is one who is first attacked or attacks is
how the two formations are chosen from. From then on if an allied
unit is either across or diagonal from the main unit, they will join
that unit in combat, utilizing this is important for two reasons :
one, that you can only attack one per turn, period, not once per unit
like most games. The other reason is that if a unit is forced to take
another round in battle due to one side having more units in their
union than the other, that specific unit enters the battle at less
strength, this allows you to weaken the enemy in a way.
So, while that sounds like a lot of
things for one game, it isn't too hard to get into the swing of
things. The real deterrence of the game is that it allows for almost
no mistakes or else it will punish you in some form, in fact I have
literally not gotten everything on a single level while at the same
time knowing full well of everything that is on the level. The game
also rarely forces you to choose between rewards to take in that
fashion either, it simply presents the opportunities at times that
unless you've played the map a considerable amount of times, or have
leveled your units in a way in previous maps, you simply will miss
it. Another way to put it is that the game is very
anti-perfectionist, and even if you retry maps constantly, the game
handles things in a somewhat random fashion where it won't be
possible to have a guaranteed shot at everything even with the most
perfect planning.
None of that is to say the game isn't
fun however, I really enjoy the story although it seems remarkably
close to the story of Fire Emblem : The Scared Stones, on the other
hand I like the characters much more than most of the characters in
the game, but I also liked characters in the previous Fire Emblem
(The Blazing Sword) more than The Scared Stones as well. I will be
talking more about the story in a later post, and probably more about
the game as I go through it, but as of now I'm about 14 hours played,
and uncountable times retried because of my perfectionist mindset
which I want to get rid of.
Conclusion
That's about it for today's post, I
will be trying to post more often as I do more things that are
actually worth posting about hopefully, and I apologize for the lack
of posts recently.
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