Lurker > Dark Silvergun

So quiet here.

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Posts!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Thanks Tom. Even now, a week later, there's still areas with lingering power issues. The count was down to around 14000 in the state yesterday.

Maniac, I'm sorry to hear about your situation, not having any form of electrical or phone service, and being cut off definitely makes life difficult. I wish you luck in your clean up efforts, and hope things improve there soon.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Over the course of the last few days, things have been uneven. At the largest estimate, just a little under 800,000 customers were left without power in the state. The other day, that number was under half, with things slowly improving by the day.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

The storm hit. Not much rain, but the wind was crazy at times. Plenty of cleanup tomorrow, tree branches aplenty all over the place.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Getting ready for an encounter with the tropical storm Isaias predicted to hit here sometime tomorrow.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

To think July is already on the way out. This year is blowing right by.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Played some PS3 today. The new hard drive is working just fine.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Hot today, forecast for 99 degrees! Oof!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Hot and humid weather incoming tomorrow, the *joys* of summer.....

Oh well, indoors will be the best choice then.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

SOA: #35 Ramirez. I had to re-fight this battle, since there's no saving past the point of no return. I was better prepared, so I finished this battle off a lot quicker than the previous time.

#36 Zelos. Once I reached the same point as the previous game over, I ran into a snag, breaking through the Great Moon Ray & Judgement phase was a bit tricky. Once my health was adequate enough so blows could be traded without being battered to zero health, the final phase proves to a downgrade for the boss. It suffers the loss of both the Great Moon Ray & Judgement attack, and it is replaced with a weaker attack known as Moon Lament. The only downside came in the form of the weakening Driln magic being constantly thrown at the Delphinus almost every turn. By that point though, I wasn't taking chances and backed off, going for the safest attack pattern to minimize damage taken. Once I was satisfied the boss's HP was low enough to charge in for the kill, and I went with the heavier damage option of going with the Moon Stone cannon finish. What's a final ship battle without using the big gun, right?

#37 Ramirez-Zelos. Now, the absolute final battle begins here. Unlike #35, the two signature skills that I mentioned in the earlier comment are now gone. Instead, a replacement skill used in it's place is kind of a mixed bag. The skill forces one of your characters to randomly use a special against the party. If the target is Vyse, that's probably the worst of the scenarios, since his will typically do significant damage to enemies, so the same is true for any party member that becomes the victim. When the target becomes another character, sometimes the resulting damage is negligible instead. There is one other skill that has a fairly long animation, and yet, the damage isn't anything you shouldn't be able to handle at this point, and it only hits one target. Everything else this boss does is copy and paste, but, it took a while to win, and patience was key for victory. Oh, and lastly, the boss's regeneration ability is gone too.

After the fight is over, it was time for the ending, credits, and a list of short synopses for each character still alive at the end of the game. This title has no new game plus option, so once the whole ending sequence is complete, the game cycles right back to the title screen.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Ah, that quote, now I know which one you are referring too.

As for completing the game, I did, however, I'll leave that one for tomorrow.

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I must of either glazed over that one, or something else regarding the impossible line Maniac.

It's good Drachma was fit back into the storyline, because, there could of been the possibility that his character could of just been left forgotten after the event of his ship going up in flames. The developers could of chose to save time and give some explanation where the crew questions if he ever survived and left it at that, but fortunately, that was not the case.

Also, linking Glacia, the Arcwhale and the Crystal into a finishing arc worked out well.

And just for the record, I chose Drachma for the end game dungeon.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Keeping with theme of Spoilers at this point, after Galcian's defeat the following events happen...

Galcian refuses defeat, and goes back into the bridge of his ship, which has an emergency release to allow it to act as an escape pod, as he attempts to flee back to Soltis. However, another Valuan General still alive at this point, Belleza, the general fought all the way back at the Temple of Pyrynn portion of the game, won't let him survive on his way back to safety. She crashes her own ship into the escaping bridge of the Hydra, and they both fall into the sky in a massive explosion.

Ramirez is angry and shocked at what just happened, and vows to annihilate a world without Galcian as it's ruler. Upon trying to activate the rains from all six moons, the Elders at the Silver Shrine descend on it down from above, shutting down Zelos's attempt, and destroying the Dome of Light at the cost of their own lives and existence as well. This sets the stage for the final dungeon and battles to finish the game.

SOA: #34 Soltis. This final dungeon actually doesn't take all of that long. Also, before advancing, there is one ship battle before you enter. This one seems to be in the spirit of the Star Wars Death Star tunnel run at the end of Episode IV. The target here is the Gadianos, a sentry type ship that attacks every turn. The kicker here is the one turn cycle limit. This battle is all or nothing, and if you fail to destroy it, you miss out on the most powerful piece of ship armor the game has: The Sparkling Deck. So, pound this enemy with everything you have, and don't bother to heal at all. It even has an attack to match that description too: the Jeda Beam.

As for the dungeon itself, it has three primary sections. The first is Shrine Island. All encounters are removed here, but an extra Cham is found along the pathway down.

Secondly is a circular section with three sections of inner paths, with broken sections to force the player to snake all around it to emerge through the other side. I looked around, and found no item chests. The enemies are mixed bag, with one standalone enemy that's got significant health, and other smaller enemies that take more than 1-2 hits max.

The last main section has a broken up path with teleporters. It's all guessing unless you have a written out map in front of you. Needless to say, I went the correct path on the first try.

Once past all of that, there's a couple of no enemy straight line paths to the center and a final save point. Beyond the last door is the final series of bosses, the effective no point of return.

#35 Ramirez. This battle gave me some issues. He has death spells, a recovery spell that regenerates 600 HP per turn, two signature skills: one all attack, and another single target strike, Drilnos stat draining spell, and a buff canceling attack that also deals a bit of damage on it's own too. It became a war of attrition, and characters being randomly killed/revived left and right, and, at the very last moment, I decided to just go for it as the boss's health sat at a sliver remaining.

#36 Zelos. The game's very last ship battle. Also, this enemy boasts a health total greater than Galcian's Sky Fortress, somewhere to the neighborhood of 240,000. Things started out okay, as the attacks were mostly magic strikes followed by one of the boss's S.Cannon type attacks known as Moon Ray. After that phase is over, you effectively get a free turn cycle to do pretty much whatever you want, this where things got brutal.

The boss dropped it's initial S.Cannon in favor of two new ones: Great Moon Ray & Judgement. Great Moon Ray was slightly stronger than the original, and Judgement packs a wallop in terms of damage. Let's just say the worst of it came when the boss struck my ship with Driln, which allowed my ship to get pounded so much at one point, I wasn't able to even survive the next turn cycle guarded. Yup, I actually died here, and I had to call it quits for now.

A Game Over screen, and to be continued...

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

SOA: Storyline wise, a lot happens in the Dangral Island section of the game. Getting Fina's ship allows Vyse and co. to reach the Great Silver Shrine, and the purpose of this visit is to return the Moon Crystals so they can never used again, however the real truth becomes clear. From here is major spoilers though, so, I will include them, but, put a spoiler tag if you don't want to read this section.

Once Ramirez, a general of the Armada that Galcian truly trusts more than anyone else, finds out about the base that Vyse is on, as a patrol ship spots it, he then attacks the island once Vyse and his crew found all of the Moon Crystals. He reveals to them that Galcian is the only one he can trust to unite the world, since Galcian is not interested in petty desires of citizens of the world. And to do that, is bring the six moon crystals to a fallen continent in the deep sky known as Soltis, and resurrect the ancient Gigas known as Zelos.

Fina finds out she's essentially been lied to about her mission to collect the crystals by her Elders at the Silver Shrine, which is her home. The party goes to the shrine to find out more, confirming the purpose of Zelos, which commands a weapon called the Rains of Destruction, a power that causes the worlds moons to drop moonstones across the land and wipe out existence itself.

Ramirez and Galcian don't have the sixth crystal until Ramirez attacks and kills one of the Elders, as all the shrine's citizens have a piece of the crystal in their body, and death is the only way to release it. While Fina has her own ship to reach the shrine above the planet, Ramirez has one too, since he is of the same descent as Fina.

When you return to Dangral Island, an elevator shaft is now complete, which connects the island to Soltis. When you arrive, Galcian and Ramirez are already inside of Soltis, and in the process of reactivating Zelos. Your party is too late, and are left only with the option to retreat out, or risk not surviving, as the continent of Soltis rises up and reassembles in mid sky.

After fleeing Dangral Island, Soltis's defense system puts up massive barrier called the Dome of Light denying entry, and Galcian uses the rains to wipe out Valua.

#32 Valuan Gunship, Galcian's Elite & The Hydra. Time to attack one of the Armada's most powerful Generals, Galcian, but first, there's two ship battles that occur before it. The first is a generic Valuan Gunship. This is no more powerful than the version faced in Disc 1 of the game, and it has barely any attack power whatsoever, very low HP and mediocre defense against the Delphinus. Why this ship battle is even here is a head scratcher, and if you lose to this one, then you seriously have no hope at finishing this game. Really, it's that hilarious of a battle.

Next up is the Galcian's Elite. The most dangerous aspect of this ship battle is it's Serpent Cannon, this one should not be taken lightly, as it can pound your ship for 10,000+ damage on it's own, and if it supplements it's Rapid Cannon on top of it, it can get up to 13,000+ in one attack.

This ship doesn't let up too often, so if your not careful, the damage can pile up pretty fast. You don't get many S.Cannon chances, so if one becomes available, take advantage of it providing it's not too much of a risk. Galcian's Elite has around 50,000 HP, so it will take a bit of time to down it.

Lastly is The Hydra. It's not quite a ship, it's instead Galcian's giant Sky Fortress, and this is one battle where you need a good chunk of time to complete it, as it's got somewhere around 200,000 HP. Any time you've got the S.Cannon opportunity, the Hydra will always guard, reducing damage to half.

The Hydra has it's own S.Cannon, called simply the Hydra Cannon, but it doesn't get used till about the fifth turn, since at the end of the fourth, the Hydra releases it's lower hull to reveal the cannon itself. Despite the impressive animation for the cannon, it's not really that powerful, capping at about 12,000 if unguarded, but since it is an S.Cannon, it does have the unblockable attribute.

The Hydra has a host other weapons, and it will heal itself at regular intervals for 8000 HP each time, but it strangely lacks a torpedo type attack. One strategy I used, was to guard on the Hydra Cannon turn, while hitting the Hydra with torpedoes, as the Hydra can't use the guard command at the same time as it's S.Cannon. There was one moment where I thought I almost screwed up, but healed enough of the Delphinus's HP back to survive.

#33 Boarding the Hydra. For once after a ship battle, defeating the Hydra doesn't send it to it's destructive end, as this thing keeps flying even after sustaining a massive pounding from the Delphinus, so, it's time to go after Galcian by invading his ship. The layout isn't too complicated, and you even the the opportunity to heal the party's HP & MP by talking to Enrique right at the opening save point. Convenient!

Perhaps the only real problem I ran into while searching through the ship was one random encounter where one of the magic users casted Eternes, and I was very unlucky, having 3 of my 4 characters in the party instantly killed. Painful. There was an Assassin in the enemy party too, but thankfully, he did not use Death Strike. That would of, well you know, been a Game Over if that occurred. Very close call there.

Once you reach Galcian, you naturally fight him. The fight can be a mixed bag of really powerful attacks, or ones that simply don't damage all that much. He used a lot of his lower end attacks for some reason, but there were moments with the Eternes/Eternum death spells too. One of his attacks was pretty much a waste against me, since I would really only attack with specials, is Devolver. It was a counter attack skill only for normal attacks, so, the worst of it was halving my damage. I only dealt with his signature attack only about twice though, and that is Terminal, dealing about 3,000 to a single target when unguarded.

The flow of this battle didn't require me to heal all that much, I spent most of the time reviving fallen characters from the death spells. Eternes actually failed to be a significant problem, with the death rate being 1 or 0 party members, very much in contrast to the earlier random encounter.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

SOA: #27 Dangral Island. One of the few storyline locations in the world's lower sky. Anyways, this is a Valuan military type installation that has a pretty straightforward trek to reach ship docking bay and snag a deep sky engine schematic. One area of it is completely optional and has six rooms with enemies or chests if you desire to check it out too. No boss here, just the usual Valuan soldiers and machines as random encounters.

#28 Deep Sky. Once your ship is fitted with the new engine, it's time to travel through the vortex swirling near Dangral Island. This area has it's own unique map using a sonar mini game. The layout never changes on different playthroughs, so if you remember what squares on the map are what, you can save yourself time, and jump right to the correct points. Only 3 squares on it are points of interest. 2 of them have a piece of material called Velorium, used for creating Vyse's ultimate weapon, and the other is to retrieve Fina's ship to advance the story. Of course, in doing so, brings the return of a ship from earlier in the game, the Chameleon once more.

This ship battle is broken up in two halves, where the first is to damage the Chameleon to at least half health or less to get to the main phase of it. You get nothing for the first half unless you happen to knock the Chameleon's health completely to zero. I got lucky enough to do this, so you gain the same experience points, gold & items as the second half. It is kind of luck to do this though, I first took off about 12000, [boss HP is about 30000], and then fired three weapons at once, hoping everything would connect. The first opportunity actually failed, but since all three weapons missed [2 torpedoes and a main cannon], I had another chance, and on that second try, it worked perfectly. Nice.

The second half is to just straight wipe it out. This battle was actually a bit more difficult then the first. As the HP on the enemy ship dropped lower, the battle actually got a bit worse, where the Delphinus got hit with Drilnos one turn and Sylenus the next. Drilnos drops attack power and defense, while Sylenus stops magic usage. While the battle isn't too hard, the battle does take longer, since hit percentage is a lot lower than usual, and the boss kept using healing spells periodically to counteract the damage dealt. After this battle, the Chameleon is no more.

#29 Baltor's Blackbeard Pirate Ship, again. Yup, he tries to take you on again. But, despite having some decent firepower, his ship is lacking in one department: HP. It doesn't take much damage to put him down, and now dealing with the Delphinus, it is quite the mismatch of a battle for sure!

#30 Great Silver Shrine. You get here after fighting one battle you must win at your base, a set of Assassins that have a death strike ability. There isn't too much to say about this battle other than it's a mandatory one. As for the Silver Shrine itself, there's no enemies here, just a lengthy maze of pathways, with a couple of chests along the way. Reach the end for a storyline segment, and then you're on your way out, back to your base.

When back at the base, this is an opportunity to make use of that Velorium material, but even if you do, there won't be any way to get Vyse's ultimate weapon just yet.

#31 Dangral Island Part 2. Following the path down to an elevator puts you into a battle with Vigoro again. This time, he has a portable cannon weapon which has a few different attacks. He's not as easy as the first time, but manageable with the usual patience, healing and special attacks. His normal attack can hit a character with confusion, so that can be a minor annoyance. Once he's taken care of, all that's left to do, is to reach the end of the remaining path, and an upgraded version of the early on Sentinel boss follows. This battle is almost exactly the same except for the addition of a stone effect attack. Other than using Curia to remove the stone effect, the same tactics apply. Easy.

Also, once back at the base, Vyse's ultimate weapon, the Vorlik Blade, is available to pick up if all of the conditions for it's creation were met. The main thing about the weapon is it's ridiculously high hit stat of 200. A normal attack should almost never miss with a stat like that!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Welcome back Tom!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

As for grinding in SOA, that's the one thing I like about it, there's very few times in the game where you really have to level up to make it anywhere. The only real exceptions are probably doing a bit on Shrine Island way in the beginning, maybe gaining a few extra levels prior to taking on the Executioner in the Valua Colosseum, or the moment Fina joins, since she starts at Level 1 with zero experience. Other than that, the game is paced quite well when it comes to your level versus the area in game.

In a previous save from many years ago, I have reached level 99 before, and that gives you ridiculous spirit points. Each character on your team has something around 20/25 spirit points, and all four characters come to 80/99 at the start of a battle. Your entire party can cast Eternum, a spell that costs 15 Spirit points, and still have 20 Spirit points left. And in a ship battle, your spirit starts at 84/119, crazy. [Even though the game displays max spirit at 99, the overflow value of the extra 20 points that the Delphinus has does get added on for 99+20.]

This current save puts character spirit at 3 points per character. My characters are right around level 40ish at the moment. While I can't remember the exact value, the party spirit totals out to somewhere around 12/54. Being able to use Aika's Special Omega Cyclone [which uses 12 spirit] helps tremendously at expediting battles of weaker mobs of enemies, sometimes ending the battle outright by killing every enemy available. Before this, I was making use of Lambda Burst, since my starting spirit matched the 8 points necessary for a quite a while. Hitting the 12 points just happened. Fina was the last character to get her third point of spirit, which I believe occurred right around Level 38.

No, I haven't fought the giant looper yet.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

The whole exploration of the world really adds to the game, there really isn't another game like it when it comes to the openness of the world map. Sad to see Skies of Arcadia not receive a sequel. I do believe there was a plan for one early on, but it was ultimately scrapped.

SOA: #25 Side quest completion galore. Yes, believe or not, all 64 discoveries are complete, the crew list is done, and even another side quest involving a mother/daughter connection that nets one of the three Abirik Chams in the game. The other two of these are pretty simple to get. The only remaining side quest is for Vyse's final weapon, but, that seems to be storyline blocked at the moment.

#26 Maw of Tartas. The seal above earlier in the game is a no go, but a fissure underneath Valua connects to an alternate route. This route is quite a slow slog through lots of random encounters in the form of a ship dungeon. Very simple path, with two correct paths, and two paths that lead to an item at the end. Not much else to say here.

Then, there's the boss, the Yellow Gigas Yeligar. Ship battle time. But for this one, it's the one Gigas that's a complete pushover. Most of it's attacks deal unremarkable damage, and the Delphinus can punch massive holes through it. Sure, it's got a sizable health pool, but, with two sets of attacks from the Delphinus in a row, I dealt a whopping 90,000+ damage! It wasn't long before this thing was toast!

The Yellow Moon Crystal is snatched up quite easily, and with that, the Crystal hunt is complete on the land of Arcadia.

[And even though I didn't say it, the Purple Moon Crystal is found at the end of Glacia, but there's no ship battle here, storyline events pretty much net this crystal automatically.]

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

When you think about how the game world's technology hadn't progressed far enough for sailors to go through standard Sky Rifts, Stone Reefs, and with even the most experienced of sailors getting either eaten alive, or barely escaping with their lives trying to tackle the Dark Rift, it all locks down that acceptance of a flat world in Arcadia.

Also, with tech that allows for travel beyond the familiar Mid Sky not available, where all of Disc 1 takes place [Exceptions being a few locations visited in the Yafutoma region, and the Temple in Rixis], and the early portion of Disc 2 reinforces that idea. Plus, the world builds on that by the location of certain discoveries, eluding to the ship wrecks that tell the player of the previous generations struggles with trying to conquer seemingly impossible barriers.

Although, it's now pretty funny when the Delphinus can fly right over the mountain range in Valua, ignore the Grand Fortress completely, and explore the world map variant of the Valuan Empire. Your ship can only land in Lower Valua City however.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

SOA: #23 Return to Deserted Island AKA Cresent Isle. Fly east to get there. Apparently, the game's lore is built around the fact that inhabitants of the land do not believe the world is round, and, by traveling east proves a round world. Still, there's NPC's that call you crazy when you talk to them about it.

#24 The Land of Ice, and the abandoned city of Glacia. Once you reach the southern point of the world map, Glacia is a city encased inside ice, but thanks to a modified hull of your ship, you can *land* into it, and get inside. The first half is a series of questions to answer relating to purple moon stones. The correct answers are 2, Will & Spirit, Ice. If you haven't played the game, the 2 answer is probably the one that won't make much sense, but, it refers to the order the purple moon stone is in. You can see this when casting a purple spell. The design of the purple emblem underneath a target has 2 circles at the outer ring. The number of circles can also be seen on all other types of magics. Green is 1, Blue is 3, Red is 4, Yellow is 5, and Silver is 6.

Anyways, after answering these correctly, entrance to the main dungeon itself starts. Even though the area looks huge, very little of it is actually accessible, and before long, you're at the first boss of Disc 2. The boss's name is Veltarn, and the best way to describe it is a giant magical machine I guess? But anyways, the game finally throws a boss at you that's not a pushover. It's got some pretty heavy hitting attacks, and a bit of a nasty death laser attack. The death laser actually does very minimal damage on it's own, but if it connects correctly, the damage it deals is ignored and your character dies, otherwise, if it only deals the base damage, then you got lucky. Painful. Plus, it's main attack hits in a line and can dish out 1500-1700 range for all targets in it's path. I used plenty of revive spells to get through this one.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Dark Souls II had some really great stuff in it's OST.

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It looks like a messed up a bit with my numbering.

It should of been: #20 Tenkou Island, #21 For the Armada section, and #22 The Disc switching event.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

SOA: #18 Tenkou Spellship ship battle.+ Jao & Mao boss battle. Both of these happen without a chance to save, so be ready for a standard battle to immediately follow. As for the ship battle, this one is a bit harder to land hits on, and your S.Cannon chance is virtually none, so, resorting to torpedoes is the most efficient option, as even cannons tend to miss more than usual. Jao & Mao have fairly strong special attacks, but, they don't have much health, so Increm + Vyse's special will put either of them down in about two attacks each.

#19 Mount Kazai. The main dungeon of the eastern lands, known as Yafutoma, and it's fairly long too. It's broken up in two halves. The first is flooding a passage so you can go down it safely. To do this, there's 4 primary switches that fill the middle with water, as each one pressed raises the water level by so much each time. The first switch is right in front of you, and the other three have their own path and challenge to complete. The second half is more straightforward, and there is the option to take the upper or lower path. The upper path skips a 4x battle with a set of stone guardians. The upper path comes with the normal random encounters, so, take your pick on which you prefer.

As for the end boss, Tortigar, it's not really that tough, and it tries to trick you into thinking it's going to be a very long battle. Why you ask? Because about 4 or 5 turns in the battle, it casts Sacrulen, a spell that recovers full HP. Even though this does happen, I'm convinced the boss is only programmed to use the spell that one time, and then carry on with all of the rest of it's attacks for the remainder of the battle. It's not really all that threatening of a boss either, but it does have one thing that makes the battle drag a bit, and it's use of Steelskin, a skill that reduces all damage to zero. If the boss uses that skill, it's unable to do anything else for the rest of the turn.

Fortunately, once the artifact your after, the Blue Moon Crystal, is recovered, your party is automatically brought back to the entrance of the dungeon, so, there's no need to backtrack out.

#19 Tenkou Island. A very short section with a sets of Tenkou warriors. Rather easy to take these guys out.

#20 Taking back your ship captured by the Armada, and dealing with two traitors from Yafutoma: Muraji & Kangan. Yeah, this is quite the sequence. First, getting back your ship means fighting through a set of guards before reaching Muraji. This boss battle is actually kind of a joke. Muraji most of the time does pretty much nothing, and the three guards with him do most of the damage. Eventually, Muraji will call in more guards, but once the total hits 7, he can't call anymore in, and even then, he still sometimes does it repeatedly. So with no guards alive, Muraji sometimes stands there defenseless turn after turn, waiting for you to pound him. Easy.

And then comes the real part of this, the ship battles. First, Vigoro makes a return, but this time, his ship can hit hard. His main weapon is the Draco Cannon, the effective S.Cannon on his ship, so it's unblockable, although, it can be guarded for half damage at the very least. And what makes it dangerous, is he uses every turn cycle of the battle, and it will either be the first or third attack of the turn cycle. Despite this, there is an upside, because of the very direct nature of the battle, you can use your S.Cannon on any turn cycle, but the danger is the S.Cannons chances for both ships fall on the same turns, so, you have to choose between danger and safety for the entirety of the battle.

Right after this, is a second ship battle that indirectly involves Kangan, as he resurrects the Blue Gigas Bluheim with the Blue Moon Crystal. However, with the Delphinus in your possession, the Gigas is now truly defeatable, unlike the previous two, where you could only survive or knock it down. This is a long battle, because Bluheim has got a hefty amount of HP: 100,000, the first ship type battle where the damage required to win breaks six figures. Despite being long, Bluheim's attacks have some weird damage ranges. Especially his so called *strongest attack*, which, while it blows your ship off course for a heavier round of attacks, the attack itself does rather limited damage. Following the usual tactics of guarding, healing, and keeping your SP up for either a heavy assault or S.Cannon chance will get you through this one if you weather it out cautiously enough.

#21 Disc 1 Ends! Yup, I've reached that point in the game!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Thanks for the info Maniac64!

SOA: #16 City of Esperanza. The task is to reach the lands of the East, and to do that, there is one sky rift different from the rest, known as the Dark Rift. Asking everyone here, and you'll basically get the same thing: It's impossible to pass through. Of course, being an RPG, this is where you'd prove all of the NPC's wrong, but first, you've got a problem, the Valuan Armada halts your progress, and it's ship battle time. The reason? Enrique is choosing to not return, so, the battle commences, against his effective *uncle* as he calls him, or General Gregorio.

This ship battle is a set of three battles, two smaller class ships, and then Gregorio's own ship called the Auriga. The first battle can actually be won with a single blast from your S.Cannon. It was over on the second turn cycle. The second ship fared slightly better, as it's health was down to almost nothing after one S.Cannon shot, picking it off with a standard cannon blast. The Auriga just took a lot longer, but, the battle wasn't really difficult. Most of the time, Auriga was stuck in moments where it couldn't hit my ship. This when a weapon, when used, displays the word *Lost*, meaning that whether a weapon is fired or not, there would be no way for it to hit it's target because of ship vs. ship placement. The only real unique thing about this fight is how his ship has a S.Cannon of sorts, but instead of a gun placement, it's the ability for his ship to completely ram into yours for direct damage. This is avoidable however, if you use a speed spell like Quika to avoid taking the hit.

#17 Dark Rift. One of the few ship dungeons. Random encounters still apply, and items are found in the various scattered ship wrecks. The thing to watch out for are false paths that lead right back to the beginning. But there is a way to avoid those, simply look at the spinning vortex, and avoid ones that have a reddish hue, and you'll know you're going the right way. At the end is another ship battle, against a creature in the final vortex. Really, there's not much to worry about, as it's attack power is fairly underwhelming, and using the usual tactics will be enough.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Skies of Arcadia

I second that notion!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Once you get that ship, it's a satisfying moment!

The island base too!

The Discoveries were an interesting mix. Some were obvious, as they might sit on a small island all by itself, and others that might be in a tricky spot to locate. And then, there are those that you can see it, but you have no way to reach it, because you are just not far enough into the game yet. [An example would be one that is behind a sky rift, and you can't travel through the sky rifts to reach it early in the game.]

Skies of Arcadia really deserves a re-release. I'm not sure why Sega hasn't decided to do it yet, not much really needs to be changed. I guess what needs to be done is make it with the extras that were included in the Gamecube version, and have it retain the superior OST version, as the Dreamcast version doesn't have the compressed audio. The graphics seem fine to me, maybe just fix the draw distance so you can see further out perhaps? But, that bit of mystery on the world map might of added to the experience, so this one could be debatable to change.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

My discovery total is around 30, I reached a point where I just started exploring around for them.

From those 30, Vyse = 26, Domingo = 4.

Some of them almost seemed like luck because of positioning. The Balloon Flower is kind of just in the middle of nowhere for example. [It did net 8400 Gold.]

More on the game's progress:

SOA: #14 Returning to the Port City Nasrad gets you captured, and it's right back to Valua, this time, the Grand Fortress, a giant fortress wall covered in cannons on it's offensive side, and your in the middle of it inside it's jails.

As a result, your team is split up. You start with Vyse and Gilder, and on the upper floor, Aika is locked up in the upper cell, and Fina is being held in another portion of the Grand Fortress. As for the area layout, it's almost impossible to get lost, since the pathway is as linear as it can get. There's only 2 chests in the entire area, and searching for them takes no time at all.

Saving Aika isn't all that tough, since the boss you fight, while being one of the Valuan Generals, Vigoro, has very little in the way of threatening attacks. Sure, he has Panic type of attack that he throws at Aika almost every other turn, but it does little damage, and the Panic status usually wears off in one or two turns.

Saving Fina isn't difficult either, as the guards are pretty much almost the same ones fought on the railcar from the previous time. As for the final boss of the area, the Dralkor Tank [I had to look up the name, since I didn't remember how to spell it!], this thing is tough. Just about every other turn, it uses it's signature attack called Wheel Blast. It's an area of effect attack that does rather painful damage, and any time the boss uses a normal attack, it's a sigh of relief. Because of the high damage, it's best to just to cast the spell Increm to minimize the damage as much as possible, guard a lot, and heal quite often while using Vyse's or Gilder's special attacks as much as possible.

The end portion gets you a ship called the Delphinus, your official endgame ship. The interesting thing about the game, was that during the early stages of development, Sega tinkered with the idea of allowing the player to buy and sell ships throughout the game. But that idea was ultimately scrapped as the development of the game progressed, so here we are.

This ship's S.Cannon is probably the highlight of the ship, a weapon called the MoonStone Cannon, a giant laser that is hidden inside the ship, where the front of the ship opens up to reveal this ridiculously awesome weapon. It deals massive damage when used as well. For the purpose of getting the ship, you have to contend with a ship battle where you in effect fight the Grand Fortress itself. By using any of the normal cannons on the structure will result in 0 damage. All you need to do is build up enough spirit points to blast the wall with your S.Cannon.

Also, at the conclusion of this, the Prince of Valua, Enrique, becomes a new party member, and Gilder's brief appearance in your party ends.

#15 Return to the Deserted Island and pay up 100,000 Gold to have your ship upgraded [so it can go through sky rifts, basically walls of wind on the world map, which were previously impassable in the earlier portions of the game], and so the Deserted Island can be turned into your base. Paying up is a requirement, so do whatever you can to rake in the gold. [From the Daccat Island portion, you can go to Nasrad, and at the Discoveries info buying and selling shop, you have the option to sell Daccat's Coin for 20,000 Gold if you wish.]

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

More SOA progress, but, it's late, and I'll type it up another day.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Continuing on...

SOA: #12 This part of the game is a turning point. One character is out of the party for story line reasons, and the rest of your crew is split up in two different areas. The main character finds himself on a deserted island, and the other two are in a port city. At the deserted island, your tasked with defeating a bunch of enemies for food, and gathering items on the ground during each segment. As for the port city section, finding and talking with the right people will advance the story. Eventually, both parties will arrive at a small island to the north.

#13 Daccat's Island. Each party takes on half of the dungeon, with actions that will unlock doors and paths. There are *switching points* scattered around to swap between the two parties as you progress. Reaching the end reunites both parties as one, and the game doesn't let you progress further without *surprise surprise*, a boss battle. This one has two enemies, each one using fire or ice properties. But, the kicker is an attack called Death Waltz, hefty damage to the whole party. This has a 2 turn setup, where the boss uses the Engage command on the previous turn before executing the attack. However, kill one of them, and the Death Waltz attack is no more, and the battle becomes rather simple to finish.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

SOA: #8 That last part is very straight forward, and the boss of the area is a reskin of Antonio, the very first boss, aptly named Antonio 2. Yeah, it has the exact same attacks with more attack power. Fairly easy.

#9 Lost City of Rixis. Even if you find Rixis on the map, the entrance is sealed until finding two discoveries on the world map, each baring a key item. Rixis itself has a bunch of twisting pathways and partially destroyed structures to navigate through. Most of the enemies are easily dealt with, except for the Sloth like monster, which can use a Quake spell. The boss at the end, a giant bird, spends most of it's time using status attacks in addition to normal attacks.

#10 The Chameleon [again] and Grendel the Green Gigas. Two ship battles in a row. The Chameleon hits a bit harder since it's super weapon is a bit stronger than the previous time, and Grendel is actually less powerful than you would expect. While the same sort of tactics apply, Grendel justs has to be hit with your S. Cannon at the right event point, as the damage done will be no where near to depleting all of his health to achieve victory.

#11 Maw of Tartas. Except for the storyline events, this is quick in terms of gameplay, a single battle with some Valuan Troops, and a rather standard ship battle against a Valuan Gunship.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

SOA: #6 The South Ocean on the world map. Normally, I'm not going to say much about the world map travel, but the South Ocean is a bit different. Your airship moves very slowly as the heavy winds push back at your vessel. As a result, the length of the distance piles on the random encounters as you traverse through the area. One of the enemies has a chance of hitting your characters with a single target death spell called Eterni. Fortunately, the enemy AI triggered the attack only once, so, RNG mostly favored good luck. The spell has a 50% chance of inflicting death, so it's a rather dangerous spell.

#7 Ship battle vs. the Chameleon. Shortly after visiting the village Horteka, this is one of the first storyline battles you'll encounter. Nothing truly threatening as long as you guard against the enemy ship's stronger attacks, and every few turns, the game throws you the chance at a S. Cannon opportunity. The heaviest damage is the Chameleon's Flame Cannon, but it's still not too overwhelming. [5600 vs. 2800 approx. damage based on no guard vs. guarding] Keeping HP up, and SP up makes this manageable in a several turns. Two S. Cannons should win this, unless some lingering damage needs to be dealt to finish the battle off.

#8 Moon Stone Mountain. A dungeon that is more confusing than it is difficult, There's plenty of traps that you throw in the wrong direction, so paying attention to surroundings will help avoid going down the wrong paths. Switching to the first person view and looking below the see through metal paths will determine if a drop zone is the correct path or not. Seeing a mine cart directly below you at a trap door signifies a false pathway, and those send you right back to the beginning. I have progressed to the end half of the dungeon.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Mass Effect: Actually, it didn't take me all that long to get through this game. Only about 16 hours before completion. I imported my save to Mass Effect 2, and played for about 1 hour thus far.

Importing a save wasn't possible by itself in the Trilogy version release until a patch download was completed. Once that was completed [a 27 MB download, so not that big of a deal], I had the selectable option under new game.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Right now it's a split three way playthrough for me.

Dreamcast: Skies of Arcadia
PS2: Okami
PS3: Mass Effect [this is my first time playing this, I actually bought the Mass Effect Trilogy years ago, started playing it for only about 2 hours, then went on to something else. Since it was so long of a gap, I opted to start over, as I didn't remember what I played in those two hours.]

I'll be jumping around between these three titles, which ever one I feel gets my attention on a daily basis. It's been mostly Mass Effect over the last couple of days. Mass Effect has a really slow start to it, until the Galaxy Travel Map is opened up, removing the linear feel of the first few hours. While there a lot of planets listed, there's still quite a few that are either locked or unavailable to visit. I'm assuming some are story locked till later, or, maybe never visitable at all? To early to tell yet. Chose a Soldier path, which amounts to mainly normal weapons and heavy armor types.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Happy July 4th!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Oh my! In Okami, eventually, the game will have you drawing circles for some of the brush techniques as well!

Okami: After running through most of the primary world restoration tasks, along with a fishing mini game [since the mini game is required to be completed, it's difficulty is low], the first full dungeon of the game opens up. It's not a particularly long dungeon, but it doesn't feel too short either. I'm currently at the end portion of it.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Okami: i felt like revisiting this title once more. Firstly, it's the PS2 variant of the game. One hour in, the game doesn't give you a real lot to do, as story elements dominate the game with small bursts of gameplay with plenty of *tutorial stops*, as the game explains every button action to you during this early stage of the game.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Got my PS3 back online with a new hard drive. Nice to be able to turn it on, and it comes on without having to need a corrupt file system restore every single time!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Yeah, Pony Life is definitely not the same as the main show, but, I think I'll give one more chance when episodes 5-8 release on this Sunday.

In regards to the remainder of FiM, I'd say the final 7 episodes [S9E20 - S9E26] that are left on your list are very solid except for S9E22, which I feel is the weakest of the bunch. It's not a bad episode, it just feels like it could of fit in an earlier season in my opinion. The Season Finale [S9E24&25] I thought was great stuff, and even the Epilogue Episode [S9E26] was good too.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Speaking of MLP, Hasbro has moved on to what would be called *Generation 4.5*, it's a mixed bag for sure, but at least the original Voice Actors are still on board. It's called Pony Life, and it takes a *mileage may vary* direction.

As opposed to the one episode 22 minute format of FiM, it's a series of four 5ish minute episodes that total the 20+ minutes.

From the link, go to the comments section, and select "Sort by Best", and by selecting that, it will be listed in the first comment for the episode links if you're interested in giving it a go:
https://www.equestriadaily.com/2020/06/my-little-pony-pony-life-episode-1-2.html

Anyways...

SOA: #5 Temple of Pyrynn. A giant pyramid in the desert with a reasonable dungeon length. It's got it's share of things going on, first as always, enemy encounters, trapped chests [each one opened has an item, but a battle is fought everytime], and a few rolling stone cylinder puzzles [at least with these, the developers decided to shut off random encounters in these rooms, so you could focus solely on completing the puzzle].

What follows is essentially 2.5 bosses in a row. First, there's the Rock Worm boss, that uses various fire attacks, so, as one could expect, ice type attacks or magic pound this boss pretty hard. It's got a few tricks up it's sleeve, such as a petrification attack, and another that can strike your whole party. But, if you leveled enough, he's not too difficult.

Next is the first of two ship battles, and this first battle describes the *half* of 2.5, since this battle can not actually be won. All you can do, is weather it out to reach the real boss battle. Even your attacks deal pitiful damage against it, including an S. Cannon strike. The main event is against a rather tough ship battle, even for this point in the game. It boils down to being extremely defensive, otherwise, lots of damage can accumulate quickly, and that can lead to a game over here if your not careful.


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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Skies of Arcadia is a pretty interesting game. Sad to see it not make enough of a splash to warrant a sequel of any sort. Strange that Sega hasn't decided to re-release the game on one of the current sets of systems or even a PC version. Maybe they will decide to do that in the future? As for now, Dreamcast and Gamecube are the only releases. There actually was a PS2 consideration at one point, but Sega opted to cancel that one.

As for more progress on my run:

SOA: #4 Continuing from where I left off, the end half has a very linear set of objectives. Run across a speeding rail car [what RPG doesn't have one of these sequences, right?] while fighting a couple of fixed encounters with a boss at the end. Here, you fight two elite guards, and, the main difficulty is actually killing them more than worrying about dying. Their attack power is not really all that robust, it's the constant healing back and forth between the two of them that prolongs this fight. As for the final segment, this involves a Ship Battle versus a Valuan Cruiser. The fight is over as soon as you are able to fire your ship's newly acquired Special Cannon, which obliterates all of it's health in one shot. This ship battle might as well be labeled a S. Cannon tutorial fight!

As for enemies in these first 4 sections, not too much stands out, a few of them have the occasional *power attack*, but if you do a bit of routine leveling, things will go smoothly here.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Oh yeah, and on the subject of Dreamcast, I've been playing through Skies of Arcadia [I'll shorten that to SOA].

SOA: Over the last few days is when I began. So far, the following objectives are complete at 5 hours in:

#1 Opening mini dungeon on the Imperial Airship and defeating the boss Antonio the War Beast. A very basic and straight forward area, and the boss is very limited in it's danger to your party, but, like most RPG's, the opening section is rarely difficult.

#2 Shrine Island Dungeon and defeating the boss Sentinel. The first proper dungeon in the game. The length feels just about right without dragging on for too long. The boss has one powerful attack, but it's delay really weakens it, since every other turn, it performs a *Target Search*, which for all intents and purposes amounts to a free turn without worry of taking damage.

#3 First ship battle against Baltor the Black Pirate's Blackbeard Airship. Since this is the first one, it's extremely basic, and only a few cannon blasts puts this down, so, it only lasted three turn cycles before achieving victory. I didn't even have to repair the ship once before winning.

#4 The Valua Empire. This is a fairly long set piece with multiple bosses. So far, I'm passed the main dungeon along with the two bosses that are almost back to back. You have the option to go back and recover before moving on to the second boss thankfully. The first boss, which I don't remember the name of, is a giant blob like creature that can potentially poison your party. Despite numerous poison attacks, I somehow avoided the poison status here. RNG favored me for some reason, making things easier. The second boss is a tough one, perhaps maybe the hardest boss for quite a long time in the game, the Executioner. It has a special that can hit in a line [meaning mulitple targets], and it dishes out massive damage for this point in the game. RNG comes into play here, as the boss can either spam it, or use one of it's lesser attacks. This is a boss you will die to if you are not careful. It doesn't help that two accompanying Spell Wardens can attack and ultimately buff the main boss for extra damage. Painful.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

So, interestingly enough, I was at GameXchange today looking for a Sega Dreamcast VMU [Virtual Memory Unit for save files], and the guy working there mentioned they had new ones, since there is a company that makes reproductions of the VMU's. They were only $12.99, so I took a chance on one. From what I can tell, it works perfectly fine. The one available had a clear green casing, and it was packaged the exact same way as a new from 20 years ago, in the box with the instruction page and the set of two CR2032 batteries inside the unit.

Since I have another of the original clear one's, comparing the two, they look identical, and you can barely tell it's a reproduction model. The batteries inside aren't necessary unless you intend to run one of the mini games directly on the VMU, so I just took them out, otherwise, the VMU will drain those batteries on it's own.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Hot out today. Right around 94F. Doesn't make you want to do much.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Well, I got a confirmation as to when my hard drive is arriving, and it looks like it got delayed all the way to June 29. Oh well.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

So, the shipment info on my Hard Drive is a confusing one, it's been switching between delayed and shipped out all in the same day. Maybe it will be arriving soon? Either way, it's coming "eventually". The COVID stuff has really caused some strange stuff to happen.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Thanks Tom!

I ordered the Hard Drive the other day, and I should get it about Tuesday~ish, considering that the COVID-19 situation has caused shipping times to fluctuate wildly, so what is expected delivery can fall off track without notice. Until then, we shall see.

As for getting the hard drive out of the system, it wasn't all that hard to do. I have a PS3 Slim model, and after removing all of the power/video cords, the removal process was this:

#1 Flip the console upside down.
#2 Near the front of the console, there is a small access panel in the middle, popping that open reveals a single screw, removing that screw allows for the removal of a small panel located underneath the disc drive slot in the front of the console.
#3 Inside that enclosure, there is a metal caddy that has a metal fold down handle, and with that, the caddy holding the hard drive can be slid right out.
#4 After that, there's 4 small screws that have to be removed, and this allows for the hard drive to be separated from the drive holder caddy.

Before this though, I went ahead and backed up all of my save data that I could. I even backed up my *copy protected* files by getting a short term subscription to the Playstation Plus*. This seems to be the only way to back up those type of files.

*I've never used PS+ before, but the backup system gave me 1024 MB of space for save files. When I was finished, the total save data on my PS3 totaled right around 700 MB.

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I shall be replacing my hard drive in my PS3, since the original one is almost dead.

Right now, my PS3 can't really do anything, since the hard drive freezes, crashes, and loads abysmally slow.

It lasted 10 years. A decade is actually a reasonable lifespan for 1 hard drive. The actual PS3 hardware outside of the hard drive is actually in great shape otherwise.

On the plus side, I'm getting one that's double the size of the original. The original installed one had a capacity of 250 GB, and the new one will have 500 GB, and with my experience, the extra +250 GB will be more than enough extra space to work with.

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.

Episode 19 was a bit of an odd one.

Episode 20 is a fun one though. Starlight and Trixie antics incoming!

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Tagged!

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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.