Going Digital! Digimon World Dawn Part 3

Going Digital! Digimon World Dawn Part 3

Progress has been made, Digivolutions have been had and plots have been developed!  Let’s get going!

Our quest for information continues as we are told to head to the Palette Amazon.  When we arrive, we see Gideon speaking to a bunch of our fellow Light Fangs, announcing that we don’t want to fight any Night Crow members should we run into them.  The two shit heads who run off at the start of the game make jokes and promptly get told to shove it.  Gideon seems to have his head on straight though and knows something isn’t right about all this...don’t like his idea of keeping all the information amongst ourselves before consulting with Glare but whatever.

After everyone else leaves, Gideon talks to use that he thinks something is up with Ophanimon and Glare and that we should be careful.  Duly noted!  Anyway, Palette Amazon is...really boring honestly, not challenging and doesn’t really have a selection of digimon that I am particularly fond of.

When we arrive at the end, we are greeted by a Spinomon that has been apparently kicking our seniors asses.  He’s also revealed that he is accomplices with Waruseadramon so he’s already A-Ok in my book.  Doesn’t stop my team from kicking his ass though : p

Anyway, a little while later, we get called back into our office by Litton, who’s second in command along with Anubismon (who has a nifty design). He reveals to use that the chief and Ophanimon have gone missing and has designated us to go to Thriller Ruins and investigate.  

This...is where I pulled a little bit of a dumb.  I brought along my...C team, assuming that would be good enough since I had been cruising through the game since Loop Swamp. Anyway, we arrive in the back of the area to see some symbol pop up before 4 Tsukiamon ambush us.  We handle them easy enough but then Gaiomon pop’s up, asking if we are the tamer that has been interfering with his plan.  Of course it wasn’t us! *shifty eyes*

Except then Waruseadramon shows up and totally calls us out...fair enough.  Spinomon shows up and it appears like we are going to be triple teamed before Sayo shows up and...mocks us?  Yet Gaiomon get’s pissed and sends the minion after her?  Okay...guessing a translation error here but we’ll roll with it.

Anyway, Gaiomon is reasonably tough and because I brought a weak team, I lost the first time (Despite a strong effort from my PIximon) so we come back with the A team and demolish him.  Unfortunatley, this all proves to be for naught as we can no substantial information from this.

Eventually, our group get’s tired of waiting around and we call a group meeting at my place to try to get to the bottom of this.  Eventually, we decide to invite Sayo over to see if she’s heard anything in Darkmoon City.  She shows up almost immediatley and reveals that everyone is acting weird and she pretty much hasn’t been back to town because of it.

She gives us the password to Access Glacier and we head off to scout it out.  apparently, it leads to Macro Sea through some Mario esque pipes and then back again.  We eventually running into Sayo confronting a Grimmmon, who we fought early in the game in Limit Valley.  In the background, we can see several of our guilds members, including Glare and Ophanimon who have fallen under the effects of the brainwashing.

Sayo attempts to stand up to him but is put under the same spell.  We rush in to save the day...only to fall into the same trap.  But what’s this?  It doesn’t effect us for some reason!  Grimmmon is exasperated but decides to flee and let someone else do the dirty work, resulting in us having to fight a brainwashed Ophanimon.

She is actually surprisingly tough, dishing out decent damage and taking very little from our own offense.  Still, we eventually prevail and she, Sayo and Glare snap out of it and the others are taken to be treated.

When we return to base, Glare thanks of for being one of the few that can actually get shit done.  He then entrusts us to take care of Sayo while her city isn’t safe and that is where we leave off!

You know the drill, Current mons under the read more

Current Squad

Divermon: L1 Jijimon: L1 Flymon: L29 Impmon: L22 Kotemon: L11 Lopmon: L24

Island Digimon

Cyberdramon: L42 Quilnmon: L42 Dorugreymon: L41 Guardramon: L 25 Flaremon: L41 Tortomon: L38 Extyrannomon: L22 Garudamon: L12 Triceramon: L9 Grizzmon: L36 Datamon: L10

The Valkyria Chronicles...Chronicle! Part 3

Hello again everybody and welcome back.  Today's installment may be a bit longer, seeing as Chapter 10 of this game has 2 different missions, and neither of them are particularly short like chapter 8's was.

So our squad has gotten it's next assignment, liberate Fouzen and take out their massive battle train!  Wasn't aware battle trains are a thing but hell I'm not going to complain about that.  Before we can actually do that though, we need to sneak into some mine/concentration camp where our contact is waiting for us.  This leads us into a mission where we need to sneak by a bunch of lights and enemies in poor visibility to reach our destination.

This mission...took 2 attempts for me to get done and gave me several mini heart attacks throughout and my language may have gotten a bit...colorful at times while I was playing.  First thing I should mention, there is a little transportation cart you can have one of your units take that will put them right behind a bunch of enemy snipers so you can hopefully pick them off one by one.  Unfortunately, this was also a source of great frustration.

On my first go through, I sent one of my scouts (Fresia) along that path, not realizing it was a one way trip and I wouldn't be able to send back up.  She did alright for a while but along the halfway point she got shot down so I had to frantically rush my other scouts to her position in order to save her.  That mission ended when a tank and two lancers about out of the void at the end of a bridge near the end of the level and killed my main character.

The second go around I thought I was smart. "Fresia can't take hits, so let's send someone more sturdy along that path!" So I ended up sending a shock trooper, Lynn.  Unfortunately, her movement points ran out right as she got to the back path, which meant she was a sitting duck and got shot down on the very first turn.

As I mentioned before, you have 3 turns to get to a fallen team member before they are gone for good.  This pretty much meant sending the rest of my team forward in a mad dash into danger to save her, dodging enemies and mortars in the process. Granted, most the time I just had my tank sit in the middle of the mortar range and shake the hits off, so that was fun.  Eventually, Alicia was barely able to reach her on the last turn possible so all was well.

The rest of the mission was fairly easy, the tank can just kind of breeze through the rest of the mission until the magically appearing tank and lancers at the end, which I was prepared for this time and handled appropriately (I may or may not have allowed the phrase "fuck your shit, jackass" to work its way into my vocabulary at this point : p).

SO YAY, MISSION COMPLETE!

Anyway, we then meet Zaka, our contact and he reveals he has a bomb that he will plant on the bridge that the battle train is on and then we detonate it and then it dies.  At this point, we have some character development take place and while I won't go into specifics, the characters really are starting to grow on me.  They're kind of the normal quirky you would expect from a JRPG, they are presented more like actual people instead of more "HAHA LOOK HOW DIFFERENT AND QUIRKY OUR CHARACTERS ARE" kind of way.  The developments in the characters have been good so far too so I'm interested in seeing if that continues.

Anyway, mission 2 of this chapter is a longgggg one.  Have to make our way up one side of the map to shoot out a bridge to stop reinforcements from piling up, which allows Zaka to plant the bomb and then we have to make our way all the way across the other side of the map and shoot the detonator to blow up the bridge so the battle train plummets to a watery demise. Blurble blurble.

OH, and did I mention that said battle train is firing mortars and other assorted cannons at us the entire time while it meanders lazily back and forth across the bridge?  Well it's doing that.

Surprisingly, I actually found this mission pretty easy.  I did fail it the first time (Left my tanks battery open and it got one shot by another tank) but really it's not that bad.  It's a slog but the battle train really isn't that fierce unless you blatantly try to run from it when it's in range, then it seems like it's cannons just have an endless amount of bullets that they will fire after you and will chase you into hell itself.  

I mean yeah, five or six of my squad mates got shot down at some point but I was able to get to all of them so...no issues : p

When all is said and done, the battle train meets a glorious demise at the bottom of the river!  Can't celebrate too long since unfortunate plot things happen afterward but yeah...that's chapter 10!  Oh and Zaka joins.

So yeah, you know the drill by now maybe, possibly.  Party after the read more.

NEXT TIME:  BEACH PARTTTTTTYYYYYY

Tanks (NOW A CATEGORY) Welkin Zaka

Scouts (GOTTA GO FAST) Level 9 Alicia Ted (Replaces Hermes) Nancy Susie Fresia

Stormtroopers (BAM BAM) Level 9 Rosie Lynn (Replaces Alex) Salinas Dorothy Jane Nina

Lancers (FUCK TANKS) Level 9 Largo Yoko Elysse Nils (Replaces Walter)

Engineers (FIX TANKS) Level 10 Karl Nadine

Snipers (EAGLE EYES) Level 9 Cezary Marina Catherine

Deceased

Wavy (Chapter 8)

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!? Gladius Part 1

Alright, so the trip to the beach in Valkyria Chronicles is proving to be a bit more hazardous then expected so I’m going to be focusing on Gladius for now until I have more time to focus on Skirmishes and upgrading my tank and stuff.

So Gladius, turn based Gladiator RPG and it’s pretty enjoyable so far.  Battle system is pretty standard turn based stuff with the exception of time button presses to do maximum damage.  Basically, you run a gladiator “School” (Well, your brother does but your the main character so screw him) and you recruit new members and go around to different arenas to earn certificates of worthiness so you can compete in the big time games.

Oh and some witches are stalking you and talking about dark gods, but I’m sure that’s not important.  Feel like I should reiterate, playing as Ursula, barbarian lady with magical powers.

So nothing to exciting in my progress yet, traveling to different arenas and earning certificates in battle. Sometimes the battles are different then standard battles though, like point battles (however much damage you do is how many points you get) and king of the hill (HOLD THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN) for instance.  Also fought a big ass wolf, so that was fun.

But yeah, recruitment!  Every arena has a section for this where you can buy gladiators either temporarily (one battle) or permanently add them to your school.  Apparently, animals are quite intelligent in this universe and are capable of  negotiating fees for gladiators to pay for their services.  Naturally I added Zod the bear to the roster and I love him and I will never let him go and he will be my right hand bear and murder everything.

So yeah, that’s the notable progress at the moment.  Currently at the ice arena place so I think I’ll be hanging around there for a while.  Bye bye everyone!

Digital Transformers! Storm Finishes Watching Digimon Xros Wars!

Yup, after putting it off for long enough, I have finally completed the sixth season of Digimon!  You know the drill, probably some spoilers in this write up so...you’ve been warned.

So the third part of Xros Wars is...different.  I wouldn’t call it bad necessarily, but it is a step down from the first two parts.  It’s very episodic in nature and doesn’t really develop a plot for a large part of the episodes.  The plot and development was interesting when it happened, but there was too few of them on the whole.

Some of the more stand alone episodes were...iffy at best.  One that immediatly comes to mind is the Betsumon episode, which my beef with can be summed up very simply by this paraphrasing of the plot.

Tagiru: Gumdramon!  Fight for your friend! Gumdramon: He abandoned me and doesn’t even remember me, how about no? Tagiru: NO! *Punches in face repeatedly* FRIENDSHIP!

Speaking of Tagiru, him as a protagonist was...alright.  I actually didn’t mind him as much as I thought I would and Gumdramon was a nice partner for him as well.  I’m sure there were a quite a few people dissapointed in Taiki taking a bit of a back seat in this arc but I actually kind of liked getting to see him in more of a mentor/advisory position.  

Also Shoutmon’s desgin upgrade for this season was awesome.

Something I haven’t talked about throughout these post’s but I really probably should is the music.  I pretty much love all the insert songs that get played for each digixros/digivolution and some of the themes are absolutely great for getting you pumped for the epic moments.

So where would I rank Xros Wars out of all the Digimon seasons?  Pretty favorably actually!  I would probably have to put it in sort of an interchangeable depending on the day tie for second with Savers and 02 (And without the third season, it may be second by itself) with Tamers still my all time favorite.  Really glad I finally got myself to watch the series and I enjoyed the experience!

The Valkyria Chronicles...Chronicle!  Part 1

Hey everyone, for now think I'm gonna use this blog to share my experiences playing games and other stuff, because let's face it, it can be fun to read about someone's first experience with something!  So regardless if you have no idea what I'm playing, have mastered it, or are just looking for something entertaining to read, hopefully you can find something to enjoy here.

So yeah, as you may have been able to guess from the title, I am currently playing Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3.  Valkyria Chronicles is a turn based strategy RPG with perma death features similar to Fire Emblem, though it's a little more forgiving on that note.  Your characters die if you can't get another character to them in three rounds or before an enemy unit approaches them. As a note, I will try to keep spoilers to a relative minimum or at least not go into details much, but I can't promise there won't be ANY so...just be aware of that I guess.

I'm already on Chapter 8 of the game so I'm gonna do kind of a quick TLDR for what's happened so far in the game to kind of catch you up or at least give you a bit of a gist as to what's happening.

YOU LIVE IN GALLIA TINY COUNTRY ATTACKED BY BIG COUNTRY WAR TIME, JOIN MILITIA MAGICALLY BECOME LEADER OF YOUR OWN UNIT FIND ENEMY COMMANDER AND BRAWL WITH HIM GET SEPARATED FROM REST OF YOUR SQUAD

And that's the important stuff : p So anyway, the start of Chapter 8 has you as the main two characters (Welkin and Alicia) trying to sneak past enemy grounds at night to get to safety.  The gimmick here, is that Alicia has a bum ankle and the enemy is firing Mortar shots at you every turn while you try to work your way through.  There are also search lights that if you run into will cause a mortar to be targeted toward your current location.

So this level I actually game overed on several times before finally succeeding.  The mission doesn't seem that hard overall and most of the game overs were stupidity on my part (Leaving Alicia in range of the Mortar without even thinking for one) and since you only have two main characters, either of them dying is a game over.  Biggest hurdle was a section with a scout (Speedsters) and a Shocktrooper (Heavy Hitter) and I tried to face them outright instead of dashing right by to the pathway by them (Didn't see it at first).  The first time I did that I completed the level so...failure by making things overly complicated : p

Following that, a couple of cutscenes happen, including Welkin and Alicia backstory, seeing how the rest of the team you are separated from is doing and a encounter with the opposing army.  After all of that, it's time for the second part of the chapter, which you start on the opposite side of the map from your team and have to make your way back to the tank and operate it while the rest of your team defends it until you get there.

So you want to talk stupidity, that was how I lost this mission about 3 different times.  There are a bunch of mines in the path of Welkin and Alicia as they make their way to the rest of the group and I was apparently blind and ran into pretty much every single one.

The mission becomes pretty simply once you get into the tank and can begin to really mount a counter offensive.  That being said, I unfortunately did lose my first party member before that could happen by the name of Wavy.  Put him up at a little outlook thing and I thought he was safe up there.  He was not and got knocked down from there right next to an enemy sniper, who quickly ran over to him and assured my first casualty of the run.

But yeah, tanks.  Bam bam, your dead.  That was pretty much the rest of the mission.

So yeah, this was a fun little first edition of this.  Hope you enjoyed reading this, I will probably keep doing it as long as I find it enjoyable. I'll put the current party and stats under a read more.

NEXT TIME: MEETING THE PRINCESS! I BET THINGS GO WRONG

Current team and levels

Scouts (GOTTA GO FAST) Level 8 Alicia Hermes Nancy Susie Fresia

Shocktroopers (BAM BAM) Level 7 Rosie Alex Salinas Nina Dorothy Jane

Lancers (FUCK TANKS) Level 7 Largo Walter Yoko Elysse

Engineers (FIX TANKS) Level 8 Karl Nadine

Snipers (EAGLE EYES) Level 8 Cezary Marina Catherine

Digital Transformers!  Storm watches Digimon Xros Wars

Hey everyone, felt like it had been a little bit so I figured I should post something.  Still playing Digimon World Dawn but I’m pretty much just grinding to be prepared for the end game so no major updates to report there.  I have however been watching the one season I hadn’t seen of Digimon, Xros Wars though and thought I would give some thoughts.

I’ll be honest, I expected to find this season pretty meh at best, and it definitely started that way to me.  The action wasn’t really interesting and the writing and motivations seemed...contradicting to me at times (Syoakmon stopping to shoot the bombs cause it missed once so Shoutmon has to throw his body at every single one from then on, Dorulumon not being interested in others after proclaiming to the group to leave his Cutemon alone, etc).  

That being said, it really started to catch my interest after that little Dorulumon arc and it really took a step up in quality to me.  I just finished episode 30 and am pumped to see where the series continues to go from there.  It’s definitely very different in a lot of ways from past seasons and largely get’s rid of some of the familiarly mechanics, but if you can get by that, I think it has some pretty good strengths.

For one, there is a lot more variety in the supporting cast then most seasons I would say and it feels like even the minor members of team Xros Heart get at least a couple of chances to shine.  I would also say that the human characters are deceptively interesting in this season as well.  Taiki is probably my second favorite goggle head (behind Takato) and Kiriha and Nene have both had my interest as well.  Zenjiro and Akari I was less thrilled with for a while but they have both taken some decent steps forward with their character development.

Also this seasons version of Greymon is badass.

So yeah, enjoying the season so far, though still plenty more episodes to go for things to turn sour.  Hoping that won’t be the case though and so far I would recommend it to any Digimon fan who may have missed/skipped this season.  It’s certainly at least worth a test watch in my opinion.