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.