A Gaming Diary
Archive for February, 2006
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
Six minutes. That’s how long he took to kill me.
I barely scratched the bastard.
I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it, either. His attacks are too powerful. If I play a purely defensive game without trying to hurt him I’d still die. He just throws more damage around than I can deal with.
So I guess that’s it. All this way and I’m not going to finish it. Sixty two hours or so and that’s it.
Really, what the fuck it the point of upping the difficulty so much at the end? It’s a long enough game as it is. It really, really doesn’t need to stretch itself out by getting you to level up for hours on end.
It’s Vagrant Story all over again. An object lesson in how to ruin a great game. Just make that last boss easier and I’d have had fond memories of a great game with the odd annoying bit in. Now I’m just going remember it with annoyance.
Okay, okay, because it’s been so long, I’ll try it one more time. Maybe the game will adjust the difficult or something now I’ve lost once…
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
HEY! WARNING! I’VE NOT GONE INTO SPECIFICS, BUT IF YOU’RE PLAYING THE GAME YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ THIS ENTRY, JUST IN CASE YOU THINK IT CONTAINS SPOILERS! OKAY?
You have been warned.
ARGH!!!!!!!!!
HOW MANY FUCKING BOSS FIGHTS ARE THERE AT THE END OF THIS GAME????????????
WHO THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE IN ANY FUCKING WAY ANY FUCKING FUN AT ALL????????????
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Again, I say it!
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bloody hell, really. This is just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
Okay, I’ve just checked a FAQ and I’m now at the final, real boss fight. Unfortunately, it’s apparently a much harder version of a battle I only just scraped through earlier. As I used items in that battle that I consequently no longer have, I’m not at all sure I actually sure I can win this battle, at least not without about many more hours levelling up. (I’ve been playing for about seven hours today and my main character has gone from level 38 to level 39. That’s how slowly levels come at this stage in the game.
After I got past the boss I was moaning about earlier the game got good again for a while. Why? Because it wasn’t just throwing stupidly powerful enemies at me to slow down my progress, that’s why.
Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh.
Right, okay, let’s try this boss…
If I can’t kill him after over sixty hours of playing this stupid bloody game I’m going to be even more bloody annoyed than I am now. Why? Why ruin a perfectly good game like this? It’s just difficulty for the sake of it. I don’t want to have to wander around places I’ve already been for twenty more hours building up experience and money. I don’t want to be at a complete disadvantage because I didn’t build my characters correctly right from the start, didn’t look up alchemy FAQs to get all the receipes for the best weapons, didn’t cheat the casino.
And, let’s face it, I’ve been doing fine. But why throw all these bosses at the end of the game? And that bloody test of how well you remember the story that came in the middle of them? Why? Why? Why?
Hmm, should probably go back to the top and add a spoiler warning.
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
Fifty-nine hours.
I’m really not enjoying it any more.
I’ve got to the last boss – well, so I assume – and I’ve not been able to kill him. I guess he’s got multiple forms, as these bosses generally do, but I hope he hasn’t because I’ve not been able to kill the first yet.
You know, I started today’s play with a boss fight. And if that had been the end of things then I’d have really enjoyed the game. But, no, the bastard developers decided to shove in an extra dungeon – a very long dungeon, which the boss is at the end of – and a difficulty spike.
I want to have fun and see what happens to everybody in the end. I don’t want some huge challenge, especially not at this point in the game. This should be the glorious finale, not a teeth-grinding annoyance that I’m only prepared to put up with because I’ve got this far.
Mind you, I left Vagrant Story at the last, impossibly difficult, boss, but I really, really want to finish this. I just don’t want to have to play this horrible fucking last bit in order to do so.
Gigawing Generations
Feb 15th
I don’t care what the big boys on the rllmuk forum say.
I just booted it up to make sure I wasn’t insane and, well, maybe I am, but I think it’s great fun.
Ugly as sin, yes, but great fun. And I got to the third level on one credit. Twice. Which means it must be easier than the majority of vertical shooters, which can only only be a good thing.
Anyway, I’d posted about it there, but it seems to be down. Again.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Feb 15th
I have just got off the phone with p’anther and we Crossed, too. Went to Teazcozy and then came back. When I got back Nintendo had sent me a lovely loveseat (no, that’s what it’s called) so we sat on it a while and then did fishing. I gave a Frobert a red snapper and he gave me something rubbish in return. Hmm. Now I am very tired and want sleep. So I shall go! Sleep.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Feb 13th
Two and half hours this evening. P’anther came online so I went to Teacozy for a bit and then she came back and we spent a lot of time in Venture. She seemed to bring Friga with her, because she didn’t live her when I left for Teacozy, but had moved in by the time I got back. Unfortunately, Anchovy didn’t do the reverse. P’anther likes him. I didn’t like Friga that much when she lived in Teacozy, but hopefully she’ll grow on me now we’ll be living in the same town.
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 13th
Fifty-four hours.
Things are coming closer to a close, I believe.
Not there yet, though.
I must say, the story is a lot more compelling and a lot more, well, more like a story than at the beginning of the game.
Only one boss this evening. He didn’t seem to difficult, but with a few more points of damage from him on a couple of occassions it could have been different. And it took a while, because he had a lot of hit points. I really didn’t make my early game choices too well, so things are more difficult for me than they should be, I think, but not enough to really annoy me. I think that generally the balancing in this game is really very, very good. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had some sort of adaptive difficulty built in. It would explain why the boss fight strategies I checked online didn’t work for me and why everything seems to be just hard enough. Either that or my play style – explore everywhere but don’t specifically stay anywhere to level up – is the expected method of going through the game.
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 12th
Got past that boss. Took a couple of attempts, but I got there. Totally ignored what the boss tips in the FAQ suggested, as the strategy put forward there just seems impossible. I don’t know how often the boss used the status-cancelling ice attack when they played, but it used it every other turn or so when I played, making psyching up impossible. I got there in the end, mind, though I did have to use some items I’d been hoping to save.
Ah, well, got there. And then it was straight off to a tough dungeon, with another boss at the end. So, yes, the boss I was having trouble with was a sort of start-of-dungeon boss. Insanity! Luckily, the end-of-dungeon was pretty simple, not having any annoying attacks.
After that, I was rather at a loss, so I wandered around the map for a while until going to get a hint from, er, the place you can go to get a hint. (I know I say this diary may contain spoilers, but I’ll avoid them where possible.) That pointed me in the right direction, so I went off where I’d been pointed, found some new, tougher enemies, realised it was ten o’clock and went back to a town to rest up and save.
Fifty-two and a half hours in now. There’s not a lot of the map I’ve not been to, as far as I can tell, so maybe I’m getting close to the end…
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 12th
Fifty hours now.
No, still not done. Not by a long way, I don’t think.
I got to a boss who slaughtered me in about six turns. Ouch. I assumed it was a battle I was meant to lose, you know, they happen in RPGs now and again. But it wasn’t. Somehow I was meant to win it. So I went back. And lasted quite a long time, but half of that was me hanging on hoping for a miracle while half my party lay dead.
So I decided to look on GameFAQs for boss tips. Before I got that far, though, the section headings made it obvious that I’d missed out a huge chunk of the game.
A-ha! That’ll give me an item I need to deal with this uber-boss!
That’s what I thought.
I was wrong. I checked the first sentence or two of the section I missed, which got me started, but I didn’t really get anything for doing it. Just a sub-quest, I suppose. I wonder if I’ve missed many of those?
I’ve gone up a level now, though, so maybe I’ll be able to cope with the boss now. Maybe. I don’t know, though. It had incredibly powerful attacks.
