A DnD tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The Oracle (Part 2)

 

"Granddaughter, it's a foreign mirror

Taken from the jungle by crime!"

The adventure continues. After two of my sisters mentioned that they thought the adventure should be shorter I had to counter that with more setting up the game. So I spent a whole Sunday rolling dice to simulate the first 27 days for them to reach Orolonga and let me tell you, I haven't rolled that bad in ages. Several days where lost for my rolling of a 1 on the navigation skill forcing them to crash the boats in the rivers getting stuck, getting lost in the jungle and actually causing a tropical storm. And then I found out that I've mixed up Nangalore with Orulonga so I had to backtrack and guess how the travels would have gone. AND I missed that you are supposed to roll for morning, midday and night for encounters. So they only got attacked one night by ghouls. Which they handled with ease with a fireball and some use of the light sword. 

Anyway, they reach Orulonga and has to figure out the secret of the ziggurat. They won't even climb the first stairs. They look for footprints and since they haven't meet Artus Cimber and Dragonbait so I have them being with the naga, so they of course have gone trough the trails. And since Freja have talk with plants, they find out they took the black and purple orchids without meeting the Chwinga. So they do the same, to the flowers great terror, and clears the first trail. The second trail they actually begin doing things the book have foreseen, like Immeral first trying to bypass it by running up the stairs, followed by a shadow step. Both fail. And now they look around and find the second Chwinga that have the red feather so they go back and search around to find them and then run up the second pair of stairs, clearing the second trail.

This time they encounters the POISONOUS snakes that block the path. After trying to charm them to no avail, they look for another Chwinga, find the one that eats the snake and crawls past the other snakes. And then they have reached the top and enters the shrine to speak to the guardian naga inside. Artus and Dragonbait is already here asking about Mezro, the lost city and they get the answer that it will only appear again if Ras Nsi, the general of ancient time is gone and his wherabout is in Omu. Then it's our heroes turn and they are told that the rod piece they are looking for is in Omu and where that it. They also get the location for the crashed airship the Star Goddess. Since it's fairly close they decide to continue towards it. It takes them 10 days to reach it after some time getting lost in the jungle and as they approach they are called by the captain of the airship for help. Below the crashed airship a couple of ghouls are lurking so Destinova throws a fireball while Artus and Freya shots arrows on the two lasting ghouls. Freja, Dragonbait, Artus, Hope and Immeral climbs up to help the survivors down, but the trees begin rumbling and three girallon zombies comes rushing through the jungle on the path to fight our heroes. Hope rushes first and uses her sun sword to burn the first girallon. And then it makes it's five attacks, which she wasn't prepared for. Then Artus just takes off his glove and uses a cone of cold on all three, killing the first one and badly injuring the other two. Dragonbait follows with an attack with his sword, killing the other one with two strikes. Then Immeral attacks the final one until it falls down and die.

After rescuing the crew of the ship they start fixing the ship up. And for two days straight they have a tropical storm so they mend the blimp during that, after 4 days the crew have regained their strength after being without of food for several days and they fix it up and 10 days later sails back to Port Nyanzaru to fix the last bits, bunker up with more rations and bug salves. And here we ended the session. Next time they either get to Omu or get drifted out to other areas of interest. Someone mentioned the ideas of fighting the red dragon near the Dwarven area, the Terrorfolk home at Firefinger and obviously the gargoyles attack around Omu. Need to find some damn rules about aerial combat though. 

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion (Switch)

To the promised land

So as of writing everyone else is playing and talking about Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth which made me get some cravings to return to that world, but since I don't have a Playstation 5 or a decent computer I had to go to the only option left without replaying the original game, and that is playing the remake of the PSP prequel that I have had on a shelf for 2 years. 

So that's what I did. It starts like the original Final Fantasy VII, on a train inbound to a Mako reactor and a soldier jumping of at the station fighting Shrinra soldiers. In this game you play as Zack Fair, the guy Cloud impersonated in the original game and Aeriths boyfriend to be. It's a simulation of a Wutai attack where they have taken uniforms from Shinra and you are supposed to stop them before they blow up the reactor. Here you meet your instructor Angeal. The training is cut short when Zack gets beaten up by Sephiroth. Then it's off to Wutai as the war is still going on and you encounter Yuffie before fighting the boss, but afterwards Angeal disappears. And then you are sent out to look into his hometown with the Turk leader Tseng that Sephiroth kills in the temple with the black materia. There it is revealed that Angeal and another of the super SOLDIERS Genesis came from the same village and that Genesis have, for some reason sprouted wings like Sephiroth in his final form.

After that it gets to stop several attacks by Genesis that works with a scientist called Hollander that wants revenge when Hojo took his promotion so to speak. It culminates with Zack killing Angeal and capturing Hollander, who is rescued by what it seems to be the director of SOLDIER that have been financing Hollander. For revenge it is stated, but revenge for what isn't really stated I get, unless I missed it by not playing through all missions (I stopped at around 50%). Meanwhile Zack met Aerith and Cloud and after giving Aerith the idea to sell flowers Cload and Zack heds for Nibelheim and pretty much reenacts that parts of the Final Fantasy VII story, but without Cloud being centre stage. Sephiroth goes insane, burns down the village and Cloud is the one that finally offs him from the reactor. Zack and Cloud gets captured by Hojo that experiments on them, Zack escapes and brings Cloud with them, They get help from one of Zacks friends in the Turks, a girl I haven't seen before. After a run around Zack faces of Genesis in the bombed out village Angeal and him came from so defeating him it pretty much returns to what I known before. They reach the outskirts of Midgar, but the Shinra army catches up with them. Zack makes a last stand killing them all, but dies from his wounds, giving the buster sword to Cloud. And it ends with Aerith selling her flowers and a train pulling up near the Mako reactor with Cloud atop it. The game bookending it self and straight up tells us that the story continues in Final Fantasy VII.

Gameplay wise it's more of an action RPG. You equip up to three accessories and six materia that gives you different attacks and enhances stats or effects. Like the original the materia levels up, but I assume it's random like the normal level ups. You have a three wheeled spinner that constantly spin and if you get 777 you get a level up, I think 444 is materia level up. At times you can get three characters and it will give you a special attack and might trigger a summon that also have to align on the wheel. Sceptical in the beginning, but as soon I learned that the level ups isn't completely random (the more monster you kills, the higher a hidden EXP value goes and the possibility for a guaranteed 777 goes up). Feels a lot better than a certain game that also talked about randomness in their level ups.

Overall, I found it enjoyable. The music when they hint at the original songs are great, it's fun seeing locals and people you recognise from the original game, but I quickly realised that people I didn't recognised would probably die. Imagine my surprise that the girl Turk seemed to survive. When I got used to the gameplay it was rather ok. Would have preferred more JRPG elements to be honest, and I expected at least one more materia slot. Never got the idea around materia combining so never bothered. Only took me something like 30 hours and the game ends on a new game+ save so I can replay it with levels and most equipment intact. I guess I have to redo all the missions, but since I was level 50 and with some mastered materia it would be a piece of cake to get back, if a bit tiresome at some enemies. Got craving to play the remakes of Final Fantasy VII, hopefully they release them for the Switch 2 or something (unless it's a freaking cloud version).

Update 2025-04-28: And my prayer's were answered, but the monkey's paw curled its finger with the invention of Game Key Cards. At least it isn't a cloud version, right?

Princess Peach: Showtime! (Switch)

 

All the worlds a stage!

Newest Princess Peach game and a short game at that. My niece got it as well when she turned 8 and seemed to like it. At that time I still hadn't picked up my copy which I did the day after. Got to play it a week after when I finished up the Dragon Quest Monster game.

So the story is that Peach wanted to go to the theater, but after arriving a body-less "sorceress" named Madam Grape and the Sour bunch seals of the the theater with Peach and a lot of locals called Sparklas (I think). So she has to go through each play to get 10 different costumes that allows her to master different vocations like some bakery chef, a kung fu master, swordsman (or woman in this case), ninja, detective, superhero like Iron Man, a cowgirl, master thief, figure skater and a mermaid... maybe not a vocation, but still?

There's three stages per costume, first you begin with Peach and something like half-way through you get the costume and learns the rope. The second stage you are dressed from the start and the third stage is rescuing the one that the costume was based on. There's 5 floors and a basement and 5 bosses to beat. In every stage there is Sparkle gems to collect and a costume for Peach and her friend for the adventure, Stella. After beating the game you can find hide and seek ninjas in every stage and refight the bosses and try getting sparkle gems from the bosses by clearing some conditions, like take no damage, use minimal of resources and such. Each floor also has a rehearsal stage that allows you to do certain costume segments to get a high score, like Swordsman and Kung Fu Master beating up enemies without taking damage, the master thief gliding and collect jewels during an obstacle course and the superhero rescuing civilians from aliens. 

I did most things and it took something like 24 hours. Only thing left is getting the sparkle gems from the bosses. Two cleared in full, one with one condition left and two where I got to get everything. The gems is then used to buy decorating stuff in the theater. Only one thing left. Final boss is interesting since you "get" a new costume called Radiant Peach which turns the battle into a shoot'em'up. I also get that the joke is that Peach is radiant like a star since she's the star of the game (and in universe the plays). 

You would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love her and despair!

Now, I found it rather enjoyable the time I played it. There where some issues like that the nature of the stages dragged a bit if you replayed them a lot to get everything. You can't skip in-game cutscenes so it drags a bit, the movie like scenes you can skip and you can watch them whenever you like. Wished you could jump around the stages a bit easier. The game also took a long time loading the stages for some reason. And the final nitpick is that the dress costumes you can buy and get. Most of them look the damn same, in that they are white and pink for the most of it. They have different designs, but more colors wouldn't be bad. Really, the most interesting dresses are the bosses since then you get a different color. And the detective costume since it alone is brown to suit the Sherlock Holmes look. 

I heard some people compare it to Balan Wonderworld that have the same costume idea, but I guess it's much less costumes here and it only affects the stages they are in. In Balan I got the impression you choose which costumes to use and that differentiated the game play. Of course I haven't played Balan and with the reviews I will probably never do it. I thought going in that this game would be get the costumes and choose what to use and such. 

Overall, fun game. Feels like it could be in the Paper Mario Universe with the stage feeling and such. Will I play it again? Maybe not, I'm not that interested in playing the bosses until I master the game and there is no reward what I could see for doing it. I wonder if they use this to test certain ideas for games. The super hero one gave me vibes of Wonderful 101 and I would have liked more Kung Fu Master, Master Thief and Detective. I can skip Mermaid and Skater.

The last thing I saw before playing this was that the director is actually the same director who made Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for the Nintendo 64 and you know I like that game. The ninja stages made me think of that and still wait for the Mystical Ninja collection Konami has to be working on.

Dragon Quest Monster: The Dark Prince (Switch)

 

Missed opportunity to not have the one-eyed monster behind the age rating.

Continued with the Dragon Quest games and it was part of the Dragon Quest Monster spin-off series. I haven't played the other games in this particular series. It's a side-story for the 4th game in the main series and chronicles the story of Psaro the Manslayer, the main bad guy from that game. It starts with him as a kid as the second son to Randolfo the Tyrant and his human mother dying. He gets too Nadiria to get help to his mother, but Randolfo instead curses him to not be able to hurt monsters, but Psaro is saved by the Zenithian dragon that tells him that his mother has died. Psaro returns to the world and is told by dwarfs how to wrangle monsters so that they can help him fight other monsters since he himself couldn't do it. After entering a tournament he meets Rose, the elven girl who cries ruby tears and saves her from the slavers. And together they set out to be the very best, like no ones ever known.

They travel across the lands of Nadiria and meet Toilen Trouble, a human pickpocket that joins you. You also gets help from an unknown master that push you on. The different circles lead to different stories, like the fire circle tells the story of the Brimstone Boys as they are trying to resurrect a fire bird god from the volcano that you gotta stop, the futuresque city tells of Sir Percival that stood guard outside Rose's tower that you first beat up and then help depose of the mad king sitting at the top. And at times we shift back to the main story of the main game. You watch the destruction of the Chosen's village at the hands of Dolph the Destroyer, your older brother, the kidnapping of Rose and the awakening of Estark. The kidnapping shows the bad ending where you plays out the original ending of the main game where the Chosen cuts of your every limb and you become more and more gruesome. It is undone by Toilen having stolen the Sands of Time and brings you back to the moment where the choice was finding the real Rose after the kidnapping. It also tells us that the master behind you, Aamon was the one behind the kidnapping and this tells the story from the main game when Aamon lured Psaro into the war with humankind... and incidentally become the main bad guy in the post-game content for the DS version of the game. 

With all that Psaro challenges his father after the Chosen helped defeating Dolph. An intense battle as my main team fell one by one, except my trusty Dark Slime Boomph which I had dumped a lot of seeds on. Using my healing herbs I held him alive until he did the final strike and felled Randolfo the Tyrant. Psaro don't take the throne and leaves. The gang is picked up by the Zenithian Dragon that returns them home. Credits roll. The game continues in the post-game with the third Estark demon that hides in Whisper Wood so you go there with the youngest brother Ludo. I didn't beat him so I quit the game for now.

Overall a fun game. It's basically Pokemon, but you gotta breed them to better and better versions. I don't like the amount of choices you had and it was just flukes that made me realize that the Dark Slimes breath attack actually hurts (and kills) Liquid Metal Slimes in one attack so I began farming that to keep my main team somewhere around 40-70, wish I had upgraded the healer slime I used to get Omniheal a lot sooner. So basically brute forced my way through it. I got that a higher grade meant better monsters, and a bred monster is better than a caught one due to getting more skill points. But hey, it's finished. Small nitpicks is like why can't I sort the bestiary after new entries? It annoys me that they show there is, but you have to manually look through the damn book over and over since the red dot can meld into the monsters.

Dragon Quest Treasure (Switch)

 

We're gonna have a land of our own, Plutonia!

While writing this it's Monday after the news broke that Akira Toriyama had passed away so I obviously went into some kind of Dragon Quest mode. I thought of replaying XI again, but in 2D the whole way, but I didn't feel for putting in another 100 hours. I got Dragon Quest Monster for the Switch, but then I recalled I had Dragon Quest Treasure which I started when I got it back in 2022, but dropped off after something like 17 hours into the game. So 5 hours later I was finished with the main quest and could call it quits.

Story is a prequel to XI where Erik (the thief from XI) and his sister Mia as kids rescues some strange animals the pirate vikings captured, a flying pig and a flying cat. They show them an island where two daggers exist, the siblings take one dagger each and with it they can understand the creatures that wants the siblings help in order to find the 7 stones so that they can be un-cursed by the gods and return to heaven.

So you begin by finding an abandoned train station that you fix and with the train it take you to the railway headquarters in the middle between the floating islands. You name your island and I chose Plutonia like the song from Albert Bouchards album Imaginos II. Then it's off finding treasures, fight monster, recruit monsters, restore more train stations and find more islands to travel to in search of the seven treasures of the old dragons. There's gangs of treasure hunters fighting you at every turn, big monsters, deep dungeons and an evil pirate captain that stand in your ways. And the treasure you find is all connected to the history of Dragon Quest, either items from the games, characters from the game or things like playing cards from our world. 

It was a fun game really, more hack'n'slash than an rpg, but it works. Still, after getting 4 of the main treasures I just tuned out. The grind got to me. Going place to place wouldn't be so bad if you didn't constantly got a warning after a set amount of time about another rival gang that you either have to fight off or get back to the base so that you can dump your treasures into the vault. But that still isn't enough since then your base can be attacked so you have to fight off the invaders. I just want to explore the islands and take my time! So I probably got a bit burned out. So two years later I just went straight for the final quests to get the 3 remaining treasures and then fought off the pirate captain and watched the credits and then started up the post game and just saved before calling it quits.

It was kinda sad seeing the credits since not only had Toriyama passed away, but this was apparently the last game that the composer Koichi Sugiyama worked on as well. No in memory off in the credits if I didn't miss it. Maybe that is saved for Dragon Quest XII or the remake of Dragon Quest III. A fun distraction and only took me 22 hours as a whole to finish, not 100 %, but I can't be bothered with that. Other games to play.

Finding Paradise (Switch)

Flying high again!

So finally played the sequel to the game "To the Moon". I got more emotional responses out of this one, maybe due to the story resonating more with me than the first game. Same set up as the last one, Eve and Neil is on another mission for the Sigmund Foundation to fulfil a contract. This time it's a Colin Reeds, an aviator that seemed to live happily with wife and kid that you gotta improve his life right before death.

You enter his mind, but instead of linear backtracking you spiral from the most recent memories to the oldest and continuing to the middle of them. You see how his wife kinda is against the idea, but he still insist on getting this service and as you get the oldest memories you see the girl Faye he seems to be friends with. Or rather his only friend. They go to school, they practice instruments in the forrest and she pushes him to go and get flying lessons so he can become a pilot. Meanwhile, after a certain point she disappears. So it seems to open up for that she died or something, but the twist is actually that she is just a part of his imagination that disappeared some time after he meet his wife.

Now, Faye seems to take control of the simulation as she tries to get rid of the scientist in order to preserve herself as well as Colins memories. So after a large episode of fighting Faye in different events Neil, once again, actually comes up with the solution in letting Faye take control and just add a meeting with them again at the end of his life, everything else equal. 

Outside of this you get more about Neil's strange behaviour. It still flashes red at times, but it's explained he takes some pills for some strange reason. He also have tinkered with the mind reading machine and is actually causing some of the problems. He is also discovered by another technician and her and her companion joins him in the end as he work on some secret project that hints that he saved Faye inside the machine and is gonna use her for some reason.

Overall, the story is great. But there is bugs that irritates me to no end. I've had to restart at several times just to get out of soft-locked things and I even had to go into handheld mode in order to get out of certain areas for some reason. It got irritating, lucky the autosave and such allowed me to continue without losing any progress. Almost 5 hours of gameplay so perfect for a lazy Sunday. Apparently I learnt that there is two side stories to this, one is referenced here and the other something like a sequel. Both games isn't on console (and the referenced one came out back in 2024 so it might never be, especially how they say that some stories aren't mean to be told). 

Nier: Automata - The End of YoRHa Edition (Ending A) (Switch)

 

Does Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Picked up Nier: Automata at a sale at the beginning of 2024 and started to play through it. Only heard good things about it and it is made by Platinum Games that made Wonderful 101 and the Bayonetta-series and published by Square Enix. I gathered it's a sequel to a game that is a spinoff to another series, but I've never played any of them. Oh yeah and of course I know the main character 2B from all the p... you know what, maybe I've written too much?

Anyway, the game begins by telling us that mankind have been driven from earth by aliens that built robots attacking them. Mankind have settled on the moon and uses androids to fight their battles to reclaim the earth. The opening begin with our hero 2B on an inflight mission to fight a goliath with several other androids in shells (like in Xenoblade Chronicles X, still want a port and continuation of that game [this of course was written long before they announced the port to Switch]), but one by one they get offed by the robots. She is the only one that survives the raid and as she begins fighting the goliath she is supported by 9S, a scout android compared to her battle android. They defeat the goliath but three more appears so they use their black boxes to create an explosion that take them all out, including 9S and 2B. 

And here they show a bit about the gameplay. If you die, you are generated back into a new body (the same as the old one), and we're back in the bunker. So in story, the androids loses their self and return constantly missing information (technically only when the story demands is since I very much remember what happens until the death) and relearning their bonds with their peers. In this case 2B and 9S. Anyway, they are sent back to recon and help the resistance on earth. They explore and fights robots, in the desert they see a robot... orgy is probably the closest word I can use for what I saw as I lie here in a fetal position. There the robots create a robot that looks like an android that names himself Adam. You fight him, but has to retreat since he is too strong.

Then you fight a robot at an amusement park that looks like an opera singer that captured several YoRHa members. You defeat it and then are helped by a robot named Pascal that leads a village where robots have decoupled from the network that rule the robots. From here I got a feeling it was go here, do that until you are supposed to protect a missile convoy that allows you to again fly in shell, you fight it but has to use one of the cannons to destroy a Godzilla like monster, 9S disappears after the battle so you look for him and find a replica city where you confront Adam again (you already meet again while investigating an alien ship below ground that resurfaced where the aliens where dead, apparently killed by Adam and his brother Eve) that have kidnapped 9S and put him on a cross. You kill Adam and return 9S to the bunker. You are tasked by command to investigate strange behaviour from the robots and joins Pascal as she is on her way to colony of robots in the factory. There the robots seemed to have form a cult and you are taken to their leader that seems to have died so the robots begin killing themselves and tries to take you out as well. You escape with the help of 9S that hacked into the network from the bunker.

Back outside you head to the resistance camp where the robots have gone berserk and began eating the androids. Afterwards a huge boss appears outside the camp which you fight and 9S joins you by crashing a shell into it and then Eve appears from it completely deranged after the loss of his brother. You thwart an attack on Pascal's village and then take the fight to Eve where 9S hack into the network again to severe Eve's connection to the network. After he is killed 9S reveal that he is infected so 2B has to strangle him to stop the corruption from being uploaded to the Bunker. She is about to destroy every single robot, but all the heads of the robots begin activating, a giant robot comes up from the ground and it is 9S who was saved in the robot network. The end?

Well, the credits roll at least. The game afterwards shows a message from the PR team that this is one ending of several and recommended to continue playing. Don't know what to think about it really. I played it on normal and the difficulty was rather descent. The harder modes where you had no lock-in function and could only take one hit seemed a bit too hard for me. Although, I felt at times I was just pushing buttons and 2B dodged hits here and there and the pods did the most damage (which makes the loss of Lock-on targeting seem like a very bad thing to lose). The chip-upgrade function I never learned so used automatic for all three (balanced, attack and defence) and used mostly Attack and Defence depending if the extra health or attack was important. The game crashed on me once, 16 hours in and after stopping the attack on Pascal's village so I had to redo the Eve fight before that since I saved just before going out to that fight (thank god for that). I might think not closing the software for that amount might have been the thing that did me in.

That was the gameplay part. It's fun playing it, but I find the environments rather boring, abandoned factory and a desert being the first part and then pretty much city ruins. Not until the forest area we get some colours back. And then the game get to the end game with the missile convoy. Also, there is basically only 4-5 enemies types as well that just gets stronger. Music's fine and it is rather interesting themes like what makes one human. Sometimes the robots seems more human than the androids even though they are supposed to be made by the aliens. Cause there is some unanswered questions in ending A. You have A2, an android deserter from YoRHa that killed the forest king of the robots and just bailed which seems to have a history with the resistance leader. Also, are the androids really made by mankind? I mean, the robots like Emil sounds like they where humans first so maybe it's that the Aliens used humans for their robots, but that has to be another playthrough I guess. And the YoRHA motto of "Glory to Mankind"? Sounds awfully facist if you ask me, so what does this mean? Is there humans or are they as dead as the aliens? Are we gonna go for a Xenoblade Chronicles X twist that the androids are the actual humans? The more I think about it, the more I feel like they are similar in so many ways, that the differences are irritating, and then X is the winner in better gameplay. For example, if I see the mountain, I could climb it in X, I just needed to find the right angle. In Nier, it is hard to know if I can jump to that platform since I'm invisible walled off from reaching it. But sometimes I'm supposed to do so since it's of the map... I really like X alright!