[RKS Freudenstachel] „Gelb schmerzt.“

[Ashan]

Even better, just abolish the lives system because it's a vestigial mechanic carried over all the way from arcade games and in almost all platformers it serves no purpose other than to once in a while make you redo something you already know you can do.

I agree in a lot of cases, but Mega Man stages aren't long, and I think the challenge of the game is to prove you can get all the way through the stage without dying more than a few times. Although grinding lives can just defeat that idea, so it'd be better if the lives were just set at 3 and didn't start going down until you made it past a midpoint.

[Voltgloss]

Uncharged: Uses a big chunk of weapon energy to freeze time for a while. During this time, Tia is only able to fire Sichte's Emerald Daggers(Crystals?), and cannot use Seelegewehr. They seem to do the same damage as lemons, and have the same 3-shot screen limit.

I also do not believe you are able to pause the game to switch weapons to cancel out of this move, so plan carefully.

Yeah, this weapon is literally "Time Stopper except you can shoot lemons." It will burn through the entire weapon energy bar during a single use and can't be turned off once you activate it.

[Chirei]

Yeah, this weapon is literally "Time Stopper except you can shoot lemons." It will burn through the entire weapon energy bar during a single use and can't be turned off once you activate it.

Oh, it's the whole thing? I must be mixing it up with

Weißteufel

[Shard1697]

Even better, just abolish the lives system because it's a vestigial mechanic carried over all the way from arcade games and in almost all platformers it serves no purpose other than to once in a while make you redo something you already know you can do.

I agree in a lot of cases, but Mega Man stages aren't long, and I think the challenge of the game is to prove you can get all the way through the stage without dying more than a few times.

In that case, you can have a death counter. And you can tie it into a ranking system like some of the games have(although ideally not attached to getting EX skills...)

[Awoo]

Hehe... "Off-brand Sakuya"

Here's a gem from when I was learning German back in middleschool. I hope at least one of you enjoys it as much as I did back then:

[Picochilla]

Die Geplante Zukunft - The Planned Future

Uncharged: Uses weapon energy to freeze time for a while. During this time, Tia is only able to fire Sichte's Emerald Daggers(Crystals?), and cannot use Seelegewehr. They seem to do the same damage as lemons, and have the same 3-shot screen limit.

I also do not believe you are able to pause the game to switch weapons to cancel out of this move, so plan carefully.

Charged: This weapon has no charged version.

The last part i have to disagree that it doesnt have an "Charge" version. When holding down the Fire Button, you truly don't get a Charge but what it does is giving all Enemies on screen continually Damage.

[Chirei]

Since there was no game over this time, I decided to make my own for raocow sending poor Tia down the drain. Can you guess what game this is from?

The last part i have to disagree that it doesnt have an "Charge" version. When holding down the Fire Button, you truly don't get a Charge but what it does is giving all Enemies on screen continually Damage.

That's... very interesting. I guess raocow will have to test it out. This would definitely make it one of the more obscure charged weapons since it effectively only has one use.

[Awoo]

I don't know if you want us or raocow to guess, but I know where it's from!

Wario Ware!

[Chirei]

I don't know if you want us or raocow to guess, but I know where it's from!

Anyone is able to guess.

There might be more of these in the future.

[Voltgloss]

I am guardedly hopeful raocow gets a gameover in

Grolla's stage, because that one is inspired

[ano0maly]

Sichte has a key difference between first and second phases. During the early normal phase, she just walks towards you instead of using za warudo if you're close enough. In desperation mode, she stops time regardless of distance.

The last part i have to disagree that it doesnt have an "Charge" version. When holding down the Fire Button, you truly don't get a Charge but what it does is giving all Enemies on screen continually Damage.

...Are you sure? I tried it out and charging the timestop does nothing to enemies. The only one Die geplante Zukunft damages simply by stopping time is

Freudia, who is weak to it; it freezes her and gradually damages her, whether or not you shoot the emeralds

.

[Piesonscreations]

I'm reading this thread half asleep and things being in german every 5 words is tripping me out.

[Paragraph]

I'm reading this thread half asleep and things being in german every 5 words is tripping me out.

Ich can jedes second Wort make Deutsch instead, wenn that helfen you?


raocow, you did it, you pronounced the title correctly :). I'm so proud of you! Next step: Donaudampfschifffahrtsaktiengesellschaft.

[Picochilla]

Sichte has a key difference between first and second phases. During the early normal phase, she just walks towards you instead of using za warudo if you're close enough. In desperation mode, she stops time regardless of distance.

The last part i have to disagree that it doesnt have an "Charge" version. When holding down the Fire Button, you truly don't get a Charge but what it does is giving all Enemies on screen continually Damage.

...Are you sure? I tried it out and charging the timestop does nothing to enemies. The only one Die geplante Zukunft damages simply by stopping time is

Freudia, who is weak to it; it freezes her and gradually damages her, whether or not you shoot the emeralds

.

Truly? Might be because i actually didnt played the Game properly for quite some Time besides once when i bought it on Steam.

[Kilgamayan]

RE the video subtitle: This stage isn't the one meant as the starting stage. That one is the one immediately to the right of this one, that you're presumably going to get to today.

Most everyone likely knew it already, but Luste's Game Over screen is a reference to Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. Today's is another really obvious staple of Japanese nerd-dom, even if it wasn't originally a video game!

RKS04_JP.png (167.13 KiB) Viewed 4055 times

RKS04_EN.png (196.12 KiB) Viewed 4055 times

[Voltgloss]

RE the video subtitle: This stage isn't the one meant as the starting stage. That one is the one immediately to the right of this one, that you're presumably going to get to today.

I'm guessing raocow, not unreasonably, thought we were talking about the stage with its layout patterned after Toad Man's stage, rather than

the stage with Toad Man as its boss

.

[T-A-C]

Even better, just abolish the lives system because it's a vestigial mechanic carried over all the way from arcade games and in almost all platformers it serves no purpose other than to once in a while make you redo something you already know you can do.

I agree in a lot of cases, but Mega Man stages aren't long, and I think the challenge of the game is to prove you can get all the way through the stage without dying more than a few times. Although grinding lives can just defeat that idea, so it'd be better if the lives were just set at 3 and didn't start going down until you made it past a midpoint.

I mean, newer games like Shovel Knight and Azure Striker Gunvolt show it's possible to make a Mega Man type game without a lives system and still have a balanced skill curve, so

[Paragraph]

I mean, newer games like Shovel Knight and Azure Striker Gunvolt show it's possible to make a Mega Man type game without a lives system and still have a balanced skill curve, so

I agree with one thing when it comes to lives: just blindly excising them from games that have been so far built around them might not work 100% (though I personally think that it would STILL make the game more enjoyable for many people, including myself). However, Shovel Knight gets around that "problem" by having a Dark Souls-style "get your souls/loot back" death penalty. This can start out as a slap on the wrist (if you spend all your money before entering a stage) and would be similar to farming up lives or just starting off a fresh password/loaded game, and becomes more and more punishing as you progress through the level, because you earn more and more money. In Mega Man, it's simply a longer and longer TIME investment that is at stake, and every death makes your remaining life resources dwindle. So the pressure to not die anymore is always there.

Gunvolt is arguably MORE punishing than any Mega Man because dying once will tank your score completely and irrecoverably, and the game is ABOUT score. I think its core gameplay is simple enough that having lives would barely matter because you barely die - getting hit even ONCE is an issue, and dying kills an entire attempt immediately no matter how long you have progressed. So lives are both pointless and completely unneccessary as far as "motivation to not die" go.

The Zero games could have a perfect balance there, actually, because they're pretty damn tough even if you don't care about Rank, so whatever, just let me have all the boss attempts I need, game! But Rank is still a huge part of them, so again, dying even once on a high-Rank run means reloading the save anyway, so have functionally zero lives the entire time.


Other games just allow you to make the choice directly: infinite lives if you just want to go on and on without having to worry about it, or NO lives if you want the thrill (Hardcore mode in many RPGs). There are penalties for "normal" deaths in games like Diablo as well, but that's almost completely unnoticeable after, like, the first ten levels (it's repair costs for your equipment).


Overall: fuck lives, they are never necessary because so many smart alternatives that are functionally the same thing but leave the level of challenge up to the player have long been invented.

[Joseph Staleknight]

Poor Rapunzel. All she wanted to do was sit at home and watch Imperial Blossoms Weekly, but they just had to lock her up at the top of a skyscraper instead.

RKS-008: Liebea Palesch (/LEE-bey-uh pa-LESH/)

A pacifistic Magus (and the younger sister to RKS Intelligence agent Kahl [sic] Palesch) who was locked up at the top of a research tower when she tried to stop the rebellion herself. Despite her loathing of hurting anyone, she has major self-confidence issues which result in her often losing control of her powers over the weather. After Tia calms her down she gains her signature move, the Liebessturm (/LEE-bes-SHTOORM/). Said power calls forth an immense downpour of rain that harms anyone other than the user caught within its area.

"Why...was I given such power?"

GOOD POINT: A loving sister
BAD POINT: Low self-esteem
LIKES: Flowers
DISLIKES: Violence

Trivia:

• Her family namesake is Klaus Palesch, the mastermind of several card games from Germany.
• As mentioned before in the thread, her boss fight and stage are considered by many the easiest of the eight (aside from the prologue). Hence, there is a strong incentive to rescue her first before tackling the other bosses.

[tangy]

*Roundabout plays at max gain*

[Piesonscreations]

Ich can jedes second Wort make Deutsch instead, wenn that helfen you?

Well, google translate could handle that pretty well, so it works for me.

[Chirei]

The greatest fact has been divulged from this level, that somewhere in the world of RKS, there is a man with pink hair running around, and the bad guys have potentially kidnapped him. Are you a bad enough Tia to save him?

Liebessturm - Love's Storm

Uncharged: Instantly summons a massive downpour of rain that damages every enemy on-screen. This weapon is actually even better than Rain Flush because the rain appears immediately.

Charged: This weapon has no charged version. It already hits the whole screen, anyway.

[Kilgamayan]

I am probably in the minority on this opinion, but I see lives as simply another resource to manage, much like how weapon energy does not restore upon death. Certainly it can be frustrating to need to redo easier parts of a stage due to the harder parts presenting a challenge. but the intended challenge is the entire stage with the resources one is given, not just the hardest parts toward the end.

Yesterday's Game Over Screen, much like Sichte herself, are a reference to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure! There was likely some Sakuya influence on Sichte, but Sakuya herself was influenced heavily by Dio Brando, so.

There's only one Game Over screen for Liebea's stage, since there was no text to edit/translate. This one is more obscure than the last two, but is still pretty culturally important, given all of the stuff it inspired.

RKS05.png (210.58 KiB) Viewed 3852 times

[Mandew]

@above

Yeah. I honestly don't see how the lives system presents a problem here, personally. The stages are very short, and it seems that E-tanks would carry over between game overs. Someone who just wants to get through the game has the resources to make it easier on themselves.

Mega Man 4 has much longer stages than this game does, and Mega Man 4's bosses are no slouch either (except Toad Man once you figure out that you need to shoot him over and over).

[Voltgloss]

Is the Liebea game over screen a reference to Tower of Druaga? (Dredging up a very vague memory here)