Dragon Quest Builders

Build Build Build All Day Long!

I've never played Minecraft. I looked at it through PeanutButterGamers hardcore series and can see the appeal, but since I haven't had a decent computer or a stable internet it haven't been that appealing. And then SquareEnix releases a minecraft clone with Dragon Quest-skin and story mode? I've gotta play it. And play it I did. All four story chapters and a bit of the free all mode. And it was a nice little time. The story mode is about the Builder, the player avatar that is awakened by Rubiss, one of the main gods in Dragon Quest (I think, I haven't played the original 3 games). Rubiss tasks you to rebuild the lands in the wait for the hero to defeat the Dragon Lord. So you aren't technically the hero (like in Dragon Quest V), but you lay the foundation for the hero. And I get that the land is named after regions from the original three games or it might even be the original map. They reference Erdrick, the main hero from the trilogy and so on. Each special battle has the battle music and the spiraling graphics from the RPG at the start. And each enemy looks like the ones in the main series. And why I was probably more interested than in Minecraft, it looks nice.

The story mode continues in that you place a banner that crates a 30*30 square that you can build a small town in which level up with better materials or building certain rooms. A number of villagers appear (I think between 5-9 depending on the chapter) and you get quest like build them certain rooms, get certain materials or something else. That is really fun for someone like me that want a reason for what I do. Helping people works really great. In between there is some battles where you fight of the enemies that attacks your base. The first chapter is building up Caitlin (which I got is an important city in the main series). The second is a swamp where you try to fight of the Hades Condor that have poisoned the lands. The third one is beginning in a desert and learn special engineer things like cannons and a car. Which leads into the fourth chapter where you first need holy water to heal the land and then search for the banner of hope taken by the monsters to rebuild Tantegral Castle. And then gather the three sages in order to create the item that can take you to fight the Dragonlord. And of course getting the best armour and weapons so that you can take the beating. 

And that is the story mode. There is another mode, Terra Incognita, where the main thing is gathering the materials, build whatever you like and show it off for other people in some online mode. And that might be fun... for people with imagination. I played like 5 minutes and realised without the limitation to build a town within the 30*30 square and the villagers to do quest for, my interest dropped. But they have announced a sequel so I might look into that. And it apparently will have multiplayer. 

Now, I might play it again, but it was a bit lacking after the end of the story. But it was fun building the town... or more like fort and fight the boss. I think I got 3-4 levels at the most, but you really have to think to keep the wall secure and get everything in order within that. A problem though when you get exploding bombs in the fourth chapter that can completely destroy your inner rooms, even though the walls is made of obsidian, the toughest material in game (and they can take the blast, but the force goes right through it). Also irritating there isn't a fifth chapter that allows you to make everything you learned in all previous one. For example I can only build roofs in the second chapter and the engineer stuff in chapter 3. Basically chapter 1 and 4 are pretty similar. And the bosses are fun, although you really need to fail once to get how you are supposed to fight them. For example the Hades Condor needs to build ballistas. Well, since he only showed up at the front before the battles I built them there. Guess what, you were supposed to build them pointing backwards in the boss fight. A co-worker told me he actually build a ballista tower in the middle of the town over the flag. I had to destroy the roof of my hospital (which I was very proud of). Still, I had fun.

Resident Evil 5 (co-op)

This game again

So some year ago I finished of Resident Evil 5 and commented on the co-op, now, I played the whole game in co-op-mode together with my younger sister. And it was fun. Especially since we had access to unlimited ammo and all that for shotgun, machine guns and pistols (and unlocked it for a rifle on the way) meaning we just threw out all ammo and blasted at our hearts content. I put us on the normal difficulty and it was easier as two players since it was full control of the characters and not caring about the safety of the other in the same way as one person play. The game still has some bullshit gameplay I've come to realise during a second play-through. First the damn truck in the beginning that kills you more than once as you try to shoot the driver. Hate it. Second the run sequences avoiding the Ouroboros and the rolling stone. Quick-time event insta-death.

And now to the most annoying thing about the local co-op. The split screen is horrendous before you adjust to it. The screen is split in two, but since the widescreen would mess up they shrink each screen and place it diagonally of each others. Now, since we played it at my parents place we used their TV. And it isn't small, but goddammit, it was still hard for us to see. And no way to adjust after your own liking. 

So all in all, it has diminished somewhat, but playing with a partner makes it enjoyable on a completely different level. Maybe we should try hard mode with the acquired gatling gun. And I would gladly play it on Switch  together with Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3, Code:Veronica and 4. Maybe 6 if they give me local co-op.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

The sequel... that is the third game in the series?

144 hours. It took me 144 to finish the main story. I could have done it some 10 hours earlier, but the game threw me for a loop when I was at level 77 and the last boss at 70. So since he killed me at full health with one attack I grinded to level 86... and got my ass handed to me again. So I looked it up and it is of course a puzzle boss where you have to use the special chain attack. Which I got the hang of around hour 100, thank god for that, otherwise this fight would have been horrible. But other than that, it was good.

So story is that you play as Rex, a kid salvager that gets hired by this group of drivers to get a ship in the cloud sea. A driver is someone controlling a blade which enhances attacks and is personified weapon pretty much. While on the ship you find a sealed blade which turns out to be the aegis, a legendary blade that came from the top of the world tree that the great hero Addam used 500 years ago to defeat Malos the evil blade bent on world destruction. The battle destroyed two of the great titans which is what the people of the worlds live on. Rex opens the seal and is killed by Jin, one of his employers and apparently they are Torna, a terrorist organisation that hunts for blades, named after one of the fallen titans. As he died Rex appears at a place called Elysium together with a red-haired girl named Pyra, the same girl that was the aegis. She will bring him back to life if he promises to take her to Elysium in the real world, since this seems to be a dream state from her memories. He comes to life, save Pyra from Torna and escapes on his "grandfather" titan together with the gormotti girl Nia and her blade Dromarch who couldn't stand Tornas bloodshed and defected. They end up on Gormott which is occupied by the Mor Ardainian empire that looks for land due to their titan slowly dying, which causes frictions with the kingdom of Uraya. Meanwhile Indol, a Vatican like organisation, tries to balance them. In Gormott they are hunted by the imperial soldiers and the Grand Inquisitor Morag, older sister to the boy emperor, who later joins them together with the nopon inventor Tora that created the artificial blade Poppi. The last member is Zeke, prince of Tantal, an isoloationist nation. Their goal is to reach Elysium through the World Tree.

Look at the view!

Now, the gameplay is pretty much the same as the other Xenoblades, but with the blades system. Blades have different weapons that you can switch around mostly like you want. Most blades are the same different rotaation of character models, but there are unique once you can get, either by random chance or through story/side-quest. Good and bad, I like when it happens and in theory can make every playthrough uniqe depending on which blades you get since you mostly will use the special once if you can since it's more important to level them up. And that's the problem since certain quest you need the right amount of skills that only the special blades have, and it gets annoying when you need to grind for them to get them. Especially when the bonding scene takes forever (until they apparently patch it away in a week, which is to late for me). Good music when you get them as well. Most music is rather good, and I got the soundtrack with the special edition.

Love the package, but it's huge!

Now, the story is basically get to the finish line. At a point near the end I actually didn't know who the bad guy was. Not that there were candidates, but I understood all their decisions. Torna is led by Jin and Malos, Jin being a flesh eater (cannibal blade) who ate his driver as the last act as she was dying to not be returned to the core crystal and loose the memory of her as Torna was being destroyed by Indol led by Amalthus. Malos is the aegis Amalthus stole from the architect that is the god of this universe and share Amalthus lust to destroy the world, but the reason Amalthus believes that is because his mother was killed as she protected him from slavers (?). So Malos isn't really responsible for his actions since he is influenced by Amalthus. I feel sorry for them. You get to see the other Torna members as outcast since they are flesh eaters and shuned by society and even though they instigate conflicts and destruction, I can't fault them. The world is shitty. And don't get me started on the political subtext. Indol houses a refugee camp from the conflicts around Alrest (mostly between Mor Ardain and Uraya that is getting closer to war), but at the same time Indol is the ones supplying core crystals to the nations and registers every owner perpetuating the cycle of conflict. And therefore easies their conscious with providing the camp, but complaining that it defiles the square they set up. Was someone saying the refugee crisis of 2015 and onward? It's f***ing brilliant! It's clearly the western world taking in the refugees and still selling weapons to the waring nations of the world and it furthers conflict between those living near the refugees camp in the western world. Now, it's a bit more complicated in the real world, but a short summery it works brilliantly.

This tipped me of he wasn't the nicest pope

In the end you fall below the cloud sea and sees the destroyed landscape of a modern city and climbs the world tree which is really a space elevator to a satellite in space which explains the aegis ability to conjure laser blast from up high. And here was probably the most interesting twist I ever encountered. And it's because it's the same twist as from the first game. Not the kind, but the same exact twist. We get a flashback to the war that destroyed the world below the cloud sea up in the satellite that tries to be the last line of defence, but two scientist argues over some artefact. It's Klaus and Galeia, the people that became the two titans in the first game. The twist is that this is a post-apocalyptic earth, but Xenoblade 1 took place in a splintered timeline which is connected through a black hole that eats half of the Architects body, the architect being Klaus, the bad guy from the first game that feels the end of his evil side as Shulk and the others at this very moment have arrived to kill him, killing both, and he accept this due to the remorse of causing all this. My mind is blown. It doesn't make a lick of sense for someone that haven't played the first game, but for me and other that played it's huge. And he isn't even a boss, the final boss is Malos in a giant mech that is about to destroy all of Alrest. You blew him up and then of course the satellite is falling apart. Rex and the others escape with an escape pod, but Pyra tricked them to it since she had to stay behind to destroy the world tree so it doesn't crush all of Alrest. But of course she returns at the end like some magical Disney movie. And I'm alright with that.

I don't know why, but I actually prefer X over this. And I felt more invested in the story for a longer time in the original. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game and when the shit hits the fan at the end it's really good, but it felt like it took to long to turn from a run of the mill good vs evil story. The Torna bits should have come long before I feel. Well, better wait for the DLC story content.

A DnD Tale: Keep on Shadowfell - The Return

Finally, after a 2 year hiatus

So after 2 years we're back in action. First a recap, the Dragonborn Paladin Sphinx, half-elven bard Kiera, the rouge tiefling Despair and the warlock high-elf Namiel all ended up in Fallcrest where Despair stole some artefacts that was stolen yet again by some Tiamat cult that have taken it to Winterhaven. Kiera is also asked to find Douven Stahl, an adventurer that found the artefacts during his travels and have gone missing. Sphinx follows the advice of the local Bahamut temple to find a statue they lost and to seek the seer in Winterhaven.  They fought of an invasion of goblins in the Harken Woods together with a local elvish army by disguising Sphinx as the fallen Paladin Wren that disrupts trade to the northwest. And before heading for Winterhaven they looked after Marcie of the Peanut-gang in the catacombs under Fallcrest picking up some magic items to make it an easier experience and they reached level 3. And that is where we left of... then 5th edition happened.

As that felt like a pilot episode, we retooled the characters for 5th edition and starting over from level 1, but they kept the sweet loot. Hopefully negating some of the problems of being newcomers and I believe not really appropriate challenges for level 1 5e. So it starts of on the caravan with 5 wagons on the way north. The gang gets to know 3 people. Murgeddin, the dwarf sergeant that is set up as the guard captain with 5 soldiers from Fallcrest, Selarund Halfmoon, the halfling merchant and Parle Cranewing, informal caravan leader and adventurer that are looking for some kind of keep around Winterhaven. But when they are around less than a day away the leading wagon falls into a hole in the ground and breaks the wheel and stopping the whole caravan since there is no way around it. The gang is sent onward to get help from Winterhaven, but some halfway between they get ambushed by kobolds. The battle goes descent I will say, Sphinx and Tyrell (my personal half-elven bard character) only gets knocked unconscious once. Helps that the kobolds suffer from light sensitivity and have disadvantage or no advantage here or there in using there pack tactics. Not so good for Argent (my other personal drow ranger  character) that suffers the same fate. But he at least got advantage using a bow and both my characters are level 3 to both show better as well as need to babysit the weaker characters. And it works. 

After the battle they enter Winterhaven and tell the guards about what happened so they send out a small militia force to help get the caravan to the village. Meanwhile our heroes enter the inn, arrange some rooms and starts to search for information. It's market day so they find some different shops and people, but they have been pointed by the guards to the elf selling flower who they finds next to the blind beggar elf (which they instantly recognises as the seer, fantasy branding 101). They ask around about the keep and such and are pointed north. Speaking with the seer they ask for the whereabout of Douven Stahl and learns that he is somewhere on a hill of bones where an ancient dragon lies and that they should be aware of a traitor. Asking about the Black Lady (which I substituted the campaigns "real" villain and changed it from a Orcus cult to a Tiamat cult) the seer have an interesting vision:

"I see a black hole, a hole formed by a snake... no, several snakes. They circle each other, five of them, there heads outside the hole. The snakes surround me. The hole... it fills with blood. All that is left is a black gap. It's an eye. It stares at me. The pupil pulls me in... a white light. A white horse with burning hoofs... no, a horned horse, a unicorn with wild starring eyes and flaming mane."

After that she lets out a scream and time seems to stop around them as they are enveloped by darkness. Her voice changes to the sound of thousand voices and they get a warning from an unknown entity about the lords of chaos that are at works and to seek the light and undo the mistakes of the past. They have been chosen as the champions of light and then the voice fades away and everything seems to go back to the ordinary state. They give some coins to the beggar and heads back to the inn to get more information. They find 3 guests at the inn that the innkeeper points toward. The magician Valthrun that Sphinx and Argent talk to (or Sphinx does, Argent isn't much for words) and ask about Douven Stahl that frequently talked to Valthrun about a dragon burial site. He doesn't have much information to give other than local heresies, but when they ask about the keep to the north he tells them what little he knows and writes them a map, but that they have peeked his curiosity and tells them that he will look into it himself. As they bring up the Tiamat cult he just laughs them off. 

Meanwhile Kiera and Despair talks to the other man, Eilian the Old who entered like Norm in Cheers and bribes him with a mug of bear that also points them to the dragon burial site and even write a map for them as well. They sit a bit longer and listens to his drunk ramblings while Tyrell and Namiel  got a pitcher of wine to try to get some information from an elven lady in a third corner. She didn't want to see them so Namiels player rolls a natural 20 on her intimidation rolls, slams the pitcher on the table spilling out the wine and says that, yes, we do want to sit down. Tyrell just grabs his hair in horror. Ninaran the elven hunter tries to dodge most of their questions, but as they begins asking about the Tiamat cult she begins to open up by telling them her suspicion of the town since none wants to talk about the cult and she mentions that she seen horrific displays out in the woods and she even followed to their hideout in the waterfall so she writes them a map as well. 

With all that information they get together and share information and compile the maps all to one large map. Meanwhile guests are streaming in, most from the newly arrived caravan. They find their friends again, but Parle has hurt his leg when he stumbled upon the slain kobolds after the groups fight and buys himself a flask of fine wine and goes to bed. Sphinx talks with the other two about the journey and such and later finds Lord Paidrig, the lord of the village, that hearing about their resourcefulness offers them a job to rid the village of the kobold infestation. Sphinx tells him he must first talk with his fellow travellers but they will tell him in the morning and then he heads to bed. Kiera pays for the rooms by entertaining the crowd while Namiel and Despair on their ends try to hear anything interesting before going to bed.

The next day they discuss the offer from the lord, accept it, goes and tell him and are on they way out when Despair spots some golden candle sticks and tries to pickpocket it, but gets caught by the lord and lady of the house. With a warning he lets her go, but any complaint could land her in the stocks outside. Getting the hint they go shopping. Sphinx sells of his old flail since he got a magic one instead and gets to know the dwarf smithy Thaig Coalstriker. They then head for the shop to pick up some healing potions, being 50 gold each and only four in stock they start haggling. Kiera pulls a fast one on Barwin the shopkeeper and gets all for 25 gold (I need to get back on them for this). After that they leave town and heads for the waterfall and the kobold lair. But walking on the road they once again gets attacked by a kobold patrol, but now we end on a cliffhanger.

They seemed to have a good time. One sister thinks the battles takes to long before they got to do things, but since there is 6 PC and somewhere between 1-15 enemies it can at times take a bit longer. Luckily I put up every encounter in an excel spreadsheet and pre-rolled all my characters initiative and given them the speed, AC and hit points as well as book and page for easy referencing this goes much faster than the last time. Question is when next time is, but we will see about that.