Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Switch)

 

Definitively the definitive edition

After playing Age of Calamity I got the urge to continue with the original game, which I also got for the Switch but never finished until now... or finished or finished, I got the ending of the legends mode and finished adventure mode, not 100 %. I basically stopped playing right before the end when I got it for the Switch. Pretty much the Ganondorf stages and it's a pity I did since they had tacked on a couple of extra stages after beating the original game. So after banishing Ganon from Hyrule... again, another portal appears bringing the Wind Waker universe into the Hyrule Warriors one. Apparently Phantom Ganon is... I don't recall his plan, he possessed Cia and brought her back to life, got Helmaroc King to kidnap Tetra so you gotta save Tetra with the help of King of Red Lions and then you fight Phantom Ganon and bring Cia back to life. You get the new sub-weapon in the hammer and a couple of extra modes. There was also Linkle stages, but those are pretty much the old stages with different scenarios focused on being grinding levels for materials from tougher enemies.

I started up my old save on the Wii U that I haven't played in ages and I could see I got a bit into it. Got all skulltulas in legends mode and all heart pieces and such. Then I noticed that Cia and her stages didn't have any heart pieces or such. So they added that. Skulltula missions changed and they added boss keys and fairies you could pick up in Adventure mode to enhance your character. If they added that to the 3DS-version I don't know. The Wii U got all characters so that's noting new, together with costumes and such. Mostly just got it as DLC so no need to play to unlock it as here. You got Linkle, Twili Midna, Medli, Toon Zelda, Tetra, Toon Link, King of Red Lions, Ravio and Yuga. So even more a celebration of the Zelda-series. 

Playing through it again, it doesn't grab me as Age of Calamity. I don't like the big bosses since they can really mess with you since if your unlucky and they don't use the attack that enables you to stun them and get the special attack on them you just wait on them. In Age of Calamity it felt more dynamic with the dodge mechanic giving more skill to the player. But then after getting into it I plunged another 40 hours into it. The addition of quick switch between playable character made the game go faster and when I realised I just could use Link in mission where you allowed 2 playable characters I could use the other slot for the character that would be needed to get the A-treasure instead of playing with that character. What are you gonna do when Link is level 111 and Ravio is level 17? You could probably speed it up even more with another player. 

Although I noticed that the game seems to glitch out a lot which I didn't recall in the original. For example when opening chest or if the camera pans over an area it just goes haywire at times, not loading the right asset and a couple of times Link was just sitting in the air as Epona didn't load at the victory screen. It also crashed at one time.

A DnD Tale: Curse of Strahd - Enter the castle

Feels right at home

Continued with the plan. Before noon Immeral, Hope and Toby sneaks toward the burgomeister's mansion. They look into the kitchen window and Immeral shadow teleports in and open the window so the others can enter. They close the door and begins looking into the second floor. they find a library and a bedroom belonging to the son in the family, and then unlocks first a closet where they find a chained unconcious man, they immediatly back out and close the door. They open the next door and finds rows after rows with dolls looking like Ireena. They back out and close the doors. They lock both doors since now they are a bit freaked out. Not freaked out enough to get an idea. After looking through the mansion they will rescue the man in chain, and take him too Old Bone Grinder so that he can hide there, but in the meantime he can at least work the mill by making flour. When they defeat Strahd and hopefully gets Barovia back into their own dimension, they will use the mill to start exporting flout. They get the idea to join with the wizards of the wine to export wine as well. They have the capital, and not only the deed on the mill, but the property in the town of Barovia. The castle they can use as base and let Ismark become the new lord of the land and the children can help in the production of the flour. They also get the idea that they can find the deed to the ruins of Berez and set up some production there and also offers tourist guides to the Amber Temple. So that created the goal of establishing Hope & Immerals Emporium, a merchant empire from the mist of Barovia, to the valleys of Nerath, to the shores of the Forgotten Realms. 

So that derailed us for some minutes. After getting back into action they looked through the rest of the rooms and found a ladder to the attic where they noticed foot prints in the dust to a room where they could hear cats meowing and a boy casting some spells. They dispell the charm that was on the door with one of the saved spells in their ring and then Immeral shadow steps in and clubs him cold. They tie him up and make sure he can't cast a spell and grabs his spell book. They find a teleportation circle, and normally it's not working and is the reason the servants gone missing since they were killed when the son used them as guinea pigs, but I thought it would be more fun if they where teleported instead and they ended up in Castle Ravenloft.

They ended up in a room with a brazer with white flames and several coloured stones. There was also a rhyme mentioning that they could travel to different places with by throwing a coloured stone into the fire and then jump into it. They wanted to get out as quickly as possible, but I hinted that a lot of the stuff they look for is in the catacombs and that was just the stairway up and a corridor. Now, to make it easy I reasoned that they had seen the castle model in the Amber Temple and I gave them the map of castle Ravenloft from there as well, in the book it was destroyed, so I just flipped to the map of the castle that came with the book to make it easier for them to navigate (plus I had no skill in writing it all up). Sadly it showed the traps so they could avoid the trap door that would have thrown them down to the torture chamber filled with the water zombies. Instead they could block it after fighting just one crawling zombie. 

They enter the catacombs and lucky for them they don't have to look through all the crypts, but they make a line toward the side crypts, first finding Sergei von Stradovich tomb. They open it and find the sunsword and a +2 plate armour. They of course ask nicely if they can take magic artefacts to fight the evil before taking them. They then goes to the tomb of the King and Queen, Strahd's father and mother. They first have to get past a curtain of blue light, which they use their second stored dispel magic on. They find the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind on the Queens tomb and take it and tries to go back to the teleporter. But they get ambushed by four vampire spawn that jumps down from the bat covered ceiling. Being level 7 they handled it pretty well just being 3 people. Of course Hope doesn't have magical weapons and should only have done half damage, but we forgot that. The spawns are killed and they get to the brazzier and throw the violet orb in, teleporting them to Tsolenka Pass. They use the final dispel magic spell to get past the fire and then heads to Vallaki again, arriving around 18:00. They eat, gives the talisman to Cygnus as the only one being able to use it and goes to bed, ending the session.

Now, I believe I just make Katrina and Cygnus play through the Festival of the Blazing Sun event, with the release of Rictavio's tiger so that they rescue it, befriends Rictavio that gets the tiger out and leads them to van Richten's tower where they are attacked by the werewolves they are looking for. They only get XP and there is no magical artefacts. They will get the knowledge of the Werewolf's Den and the full Barovian map, but that ties in to their back-story much more than Hope and Immeral. Hopefully I can lead them to Argynvostholt which leads them back to the castle and the dinner with Strahd as well as another excuse to looking for the skull of the dragon. 

Batman Beyond

 

Criminals are a stupid, cowardly lot!

They plan and plot, but they always get caught!

I had to get the blu-ray for Batman Beyond (or Batman of the Future here in Europe).It was broadcasted in Sweden when I grew up, but I can't say I watched, it didn't look that good and the intro put me of with its sound and visuals. Which was a mistake from my side since it's clearly a decent show. The behind the scenes stuff is kinda funny with the idea that they tried to appeal to kids, but somehow got an even more dark show. The old one also had a lot about drug addiction, but here we have a take on parents that abandon their children, children getting hooked on VR or genetic manipulation, Corruption, greed and all that. Here the villains more often die, maybe not mentioned, but they are gone. The TV-person that sinks to the middle of the earth, the league of assassins that are killed by their own, and the ink lady that disintegrates in water. Not to mention Terry's father and his father's coworker. 

Story is that Bruce Wayne gave up the cape when a heart attack forced him to use a gun during his last mission, several years later Terry McGinnis stumbles upon Wayne manor while being chased by a gang of Jokerz (a gang styling itself on the Joker) and takes the latest bat-suit to figure out who killed his father. That turns out to be Derek Powers, the businessman who took over Wayne Enterprises and established Wayne-Powers. During the fight, the nerve gas they experimented on got out causing Powers to turn into the radioactive super-villain Blight. First season is pretty much Terry fighting Derek Powers so that Bruce Wayne can get control of Wayne-Powers. 

Second season focuses more on Terry's everyday life at school and at home, while the third and last season is some mix between them. There is some villains that show up again, like Bane, Mr Freeze and Ra's Al-Ghul, and some references to other character. As well as a 2-parter with the Justice League being a hidden pilot for the Justice League shows that would follow. There's also one movie, Return of the Joker. It's also the censured version so instead of Tim Drake shooting the Joker, we instead get the electrocution of him instead (how that is more child friendly I don't know). There's also the instant when the Joker kills a henchman, and instead of firing at him, gas him with laughing gas so that he lays spread on the table with this grotesce smile. Again, how that is more child friendly is beyond me. 

Overall good enough. Not the same pull like Batman the Animated Series. Still fine though. Hopefully we can get Superman and Justice Leauge in 2021 or 2022 so I can get all those good DC series.

A DnD Tale: Curse of Strahd - Back to Vallaki

Back in town

So finally we get out of the Amber Temple. We load up all the treasures we can carry upon the wagon, uses one of the patches we found on the fiend in the statue to summon a horse to drag it and then control the shield guardian to carry other parts of the treasures. We walk all the way back to the Old Bone Grinder and hides all the treasures that isn't worth carrying around on the upper floor and then leaves the shield guardian to guard the place. We head back to Vallaki in order to get our bearings straight and figure out the next step. They go through the card reading again and get that the three treasures they need to fight Strahd is all in the castle and they have to figure out away to get there as well. They also figures out that one of the few places they haven't been in is Argynvostholt, the mansion of the order of the dragon who fought Strahd long ago before he destroyed it. The cards pointed to an ally that could fight Strahd there. And they still haven't found the third emerald pine cone that was stolen from the wizards of the wine.

They also realise that they haven't explored Vallaki that much so they begin asking around. There is a festival happening in a couple of days, called the festival of the blazing sun, that the Wachter family hates the burgomeisters and that green light appears in the attic of the burgomeisters house and that two servants have gone missing. They check on the Wachter family first and gets to meet the lady of the house. I dropped the plot here, so instead of keeping the mystery of Strahd IX I just gave away all the plot points about him being a vampire and the cause being murdering his brother to get his fiancé. Not, other players might say that it gave the whole mystery away, and they be right, but my sisters believe they were supposed to learn this back in the beginning of the adventure, meaning the meandering is a fault upon themselves, so deflecting blame back to the players are always better.

They also get information on the book club and that they are free to join if they could get rid of the burgomeister security guard. And that the burgomeisters son drove Lady Wachter's  daughter insane. Hope and Immeral decides to leave and come back at night to try to sneak in under cover of darkness. They come back at night, sneak into the basement and triggers a trap that awakens several skeletons. Immeral has the best roll of this game and single handedly fells all but one of the skeletons using the ki points to deal away damage. Hope doesn't have that much luck and blames it on a bear trap that bit her leg during the travels from the Amber Temple. They find a hidden passage that leads to a book club meeting that they decide that they better leave alone since they are only two and Immeral used up most of the ki points. So they rest up for the night and visits the burgomeister the next day. There they learn that two servants gone missing and the burgomeister hires them to find the missing people. None of the other servant dare to speak with them as long as Izak the security guard is around them so they are able to get the chef and he tells them that the only strange thing being that he was given orders by the burgomeister's son to feed the cat so he bring a tray of food every day. Also, the burgomeister invites them to join the parade tomorrow so they enact  plan. While the town is busy with the parade Hope, Immeral and Toby sneaks into the burgomeister mansion. Cygnus and Katrina joins the burgomeister on the parade... damn sisters splitting the party.