Vagrant Story (2000)

[beat down three knights templar, with the last doing a rosary and begging God to save his soul from the horrific, eternal torment inevitably awaiting him because he had the bad luck to die in this accursed city]

[the camera pans up]

Why does this game do this, it never fails to demolish the mood set by something that happens within the space of five minutes before or after it

Sunk another two-ish hours into this today, the story continues to be intriguing (even if I'm predicting that Ashley killed his family and that's going to be the big reveal), but the combat is leaving me fairly mixed. I don't really get the point of Risk other than to kill the flow when it's already a fairly slow-paced game, and it makes certain encounters already much more annoying than they could've been without it. The fight against the golem is already going to be slow with the chip damage you deal, why drag it out by lowering your hit rate until you use an item and watch a ten-second animation?

Also, the score screen is the most insanely jarring thing in existence and is completely at odds with the rest of the game's tone and its incredible transitions between cutscene and gameplay. I don't get why that exists either.

This is almost-immediately followed up with this, and that's SUPER jarring.

Still absolutely incredible-looking and the story keeps giving me enough breadcrumbs to go along with it, though!

Vagrant Story - First Impressions

What's with gen 5 and repetitious block puzzles in their design? It's not interesting, why does it feel the need to pad it out like that. Honestly the game kind of reeks of extending the game too long with combat encounters so far. I wouldn't be so frustrated with that if the story and writing that's been shown to me so far wasn't so excellently done. The way the political drama is set up and the ye olde knight dialogue that's thrown at you is really good, and as a combination gives a very nice charm to it. But the combat conversely is so boring, a timing rhythm test with continuous weapon swapping through a 20 second menu (seriously, MGS3 eat your heart out with the menuing) makes a lot of what I've gone through so far so repetitive.

Risk isn't a cool mechanic either, making the cost of being too good at the rhythm game running about and waiting for the cd to go back up so you don't miss attacks and healing if you end up fudging the timed block moves is some really old design I'm glad hasn't been worked upon again.

Honestly it's like... budget Parasite Eve combat, with a really interesting story that's keeping me going right now. I'll have it finished before the month ends and hopefully it'll have improved by then.

Came to a realization that I don't even want to put myself through the chore of finishing certain games, so I looked up youtube videos of the endings. These games are super tedious, and not fun to play! Badly designed! Too hard! I know I haven't earned the right to watch these endings, but I need closure. >.>

Goodbye, list of mildly entertaining games that I never want to replay again, and will no longer be compelled to beat. The list includes-

Lagoon, Brain Lord, Dragon Seeds, Monster Seed, Robotrek, Etrian Odyssey, Vagrant Story, What Did I Do To Deserve This My Lord? 2, Demon's Souls, Mass Effect.

I kinda regret not finishing Vagrant Story... The ending is really really good. But it is such a punishing game! None of my weapons do damage to anyone!

Going to go through my list of games and just prune everything I'm realizing I will seriously never get around to cause I don't have enough interest to. New Shelf : I Give Up