All the S@nics - the end

[KobaBeach]

For example, where raocow goes up two cliffs via springs here, if he had jumped back down toward the camera, he would fall a while to the base of each cliff. But instead he jumps off the back, and it just instantly plops him on the road in the background as if depth doesn't exist anymore.

oh yeah no these maps are just designed poorly

[KobaBeach]

Okay, I am playing Chronicles on my 3DS rn, and I'm having an easier time doing Sonic's Axe Kick than I did with my Intuos, truly the magic of the stylus? And to think raocow's using a mouse of all things. Tell Lost Melody I'm sorry for memeing on her game. I don't really detect lag though, I feel like it's just the lack of proper response wrt a cursor. Gaining some levels and amassing items to pass the time.

[helucard]

I find it hilarious that for a fair few chapters, the game is like "your job is over that way, but have fun going all over the place" and then suddenly slaps down a point of no return, you deal with eggman's city and the world's smallest replica of angel island, and now we're in the astral railroad of "your choices are none and your opinion doesn't matter," like, It's pretty funny when you look at it from a distance, I mean this is bioware, the guys that made dragon age, for them to scrap the choices here and just have everything conveniently go on this single path feels like... I dunno. Unbioware.

Or it could just have been rushed so bad that they didn't even have anyone proofreading, but what are the odds of-



... I'd say the odds are bery high, actually.

[KobaBeach]

I mean this is bioware, the guys that made dragon age, for them to scrap the choices here and just have everything conveniently go on this single path feels like... I dunno. Unbioware.

it's foreshadowing for mass effect 3

[Bean]

I find it hilarious that for a fair few chapters, the game is like "your job is over that way, but have fun going all over the place" and then suddenly slaps down a point of no return, you deal with eggman's city and the world's smallest replica of angel island, and now we're in the astral railroad of "your choices are none and your opinion doesn't matter," like, It's pretty funny when you look at it from a distance, I mean this is bioware, the guys that made dragon age, for them to scrap the choices here and just have everything conveniently go on this single path feels like... I dunno. Unbioware.

Seems very familiar to FFXV in design where the first two-thirds of the game are go wherever but your goal is x, only to wind up going super linear after that. But they somehow stuck the landing with that one.

Anyway, it's clear it was meant to be more, but the game had to get rushed out the door fast. and Sega's already notorious for having that issue with their games anyway. Wouldn't be surprised if it was yet another casualty of the rush to retail sweepstakes.

[helucard]

Real weird that we didn't have a N'rrgal boss fight, but you know what, I'm not one to snub irregularly generous mercy when it's given. Speaking of which, I love how the leech blade missed all three times despite not hitting any of the prompts, that was genuinely amazing.

it's foreshadowing for mass effect 3

ah, of course, this suddenly makes perfect sense.

Seems very familiar to FFXV in design where the first two-thirds of the game are go wherever but your goal is x, only to wind up going super linear after that. But they somehow stuck the landing with that one.

Anyway, it's clear it was meant to be more, but the game had to get rushed out the door fast. and Sega's already notorious for having that issue with their games anyway. Wouldn't be surprised if it was yet another casualty of the rush to retail sweepstakes.

Thinking about it, X-2 had a quite nonlinear progression despite being segmented into definitive chapters with their own primary objectives and such; It was just that going all over the place regardless of objective was possible - and ideal, given that it'd play out a heck of a lot of substories...
... Shame that after the years passed, I don't really care for that game anymore :/ Lotta stuff I never really picked up on as a kid that I look back at and think "ugh, never touching that again..."

[KobaBeach]

But they somehow stuck the landing with [FFXV].

did they though? i haven't played it yet but

[Catabo]

In today's (well, the today of five days past; vacation set me back) episode of Sonic Drowns in Tonic Water, Miranda sends Commander Shepard on a quest to obtain and give Reaper tech to Cerberus, which the player immediately identifies as a spectacularly bad idea but accepts the quest anyway because what can you do?

I love the Kron's linguistic tic and hint at culture with their wishing you solid ground. The writer may not have had a perfect handle on writing the actual Sonic characters and the Nocturnus are boring omnipotent techno-ninjas, but these guys are great.

[helucard]

So we're on 5 emeralds now, yeah?
I forget, is this a sonic 1 situation with 6 emeralds, or an every other sonic situation with 7? We only got 1 space rock left on the map, right?

[EllenHouraisan]

Inb4 it's a Sonic the Fighters situation with 8 emeralds.

[SAJewers]

also raocow you coward that title was totally intentional /s

[helucard]

This implies that the N'rrgal... harvest their own combustible sweat to sell to people...
... Eugh...

[BobisOnlyBob]

This implies that the N'rrgal... harvest their own combustible sweat to sell to people...
... Eugh...

If human sweat was combustible, you better believe "sweatshops" would be literalized!

Bioware's actual comfort zone clearly apparent with all these quirky alien races. Honestly, I thought the Twilight Cage onwards would be awful, but frankly it's been an improvement.

[TiKi]

gamer girl bath water

[KobaBeach]

that was a gamer not a person

[helucard]

wow, the empowered effect is THAT good? ... I agree with the notion of using items instead of bringing Cream to every encounter.

[helucard]

Oh my gosh, THE BIG ARMS' THEME...
...
raocow, a moment before this butchery played, we had a cutscene with ridiculously grating sound effects and your response was:

The sound is disgusting, and I hate it. Might be an emulation issue, I dunno.

... I can't seriously believe it's an emulation issue.

[Catabo]

So what's the song that r'rrcow recognised? Is it from Sonic Battle/Advance 3? If i had the know-how, i'd love to make a patch for this game that overhauls all the overworld music to sound non-terrible, but not only would it not be worth it, it would be a slippery slope of me wanting to also change the gameplay to make it less of a chore, right down to removing the features that make the game distinctive by doing things like giving everyone the Ferox effect by default. And fixing the graphics to get rid of the JPEG-like dithering all over the images. And replacing all the bizarre and bad-sounding sfx. And... you get it. All for a weird aberration of a game that no one wants to play in the first place.

More pressingly, does Amy calling Sonic her boyfriend count as a Bioware romance scene?

(shout-out to "run in there, spines flashing" being a fun replacement for "run in there, guns blazing")

[helucard]

So what's the song that r'rrcow recognised? Is it from Sonic Battle/Advance 3?

Big Arms, sonic 3.
Here's the track:

For comparison, the theme of Nocturne:

[Blivsey]

it's really impressive how the song, which is awful right from the start, somehow manages to get worse and worse as it goes

not to mention that it passes through the original loop three times and every loop is different and bad in a different way

[helucard]

... So I got curious about their evading midfight, and I looked into it.
Dodging for a turn restores PP, right? So I thought "What if enemies evade to restore lost PP? That'd be a reasonable feature to balance the battle system, keeping enemies even with players, outside of them using items."

So I went to take a look at enemy stats to see what the PP situation was.
Here's the stats of those Decurions - spoilered for obvious reasons...

... They don't actually have PP... Evade is an ability similar to Leech Blade.
... They're effectively using a POW move to become invincible, but have no limit to doing so.
So they do, in fact, just dodge for dodging's sake, and are capable of continuing to do so ad infinitum... That's disappointing.

You know, at least this isn't the uhh... rather infamous

Mot

fight in Shin Megami Tensei 3

in which it uses Beast Eye to give itself more moves with which to attack you, heal itself, cure its debuffs, or debuff you, but it has no limit to that other than MP, of which it has 3,000 points. Beast Eye costs 1mp... This means that this thing can effectively give itself as many turns as it needs to just decimate you, and there's nothing you can do about it except prepare a team to try to void its attacks so that when it fails to hurt them, it expends those turns at greater cost. That strategy is flawed in that it can cast Megidolaon, of which you aren't getting ANYONE that's remotely resistant to it...

[Donut]

To be fair in regards to that SMT spoiler,

in my experience Mot has never been that unfair. It's more about what it can do, rather than what's likely to happen. In practice you can kill it pretty fast once you figure out its weakness and it will probably not use beast eye more than two times per turn. I'd argue Aciel's Sol Niger + attack Demi-Fiend is a far worse offender, since it's basically a 25% chance of an instant game over.

But yeah, this evade nonsense adds absolutely nothing to the game, and I cannot fathom why they thought it was a good idea, let alone something to give to half the enemies in the endgame.

[Catabo]

for you and me.png (116.42 KiB) Viewed 1215 times

Sonic, you fool! You can't defeat the giant spear man underwater!

Big Arms, sonic 3.
Here's the track:

... Oh. Oh wow. Now i can't unhear it and how pathetic the whole affair is.

[GenesisJames]

Looking forward to what might be the finale tomorrow. Honestly, it can go either way, because one aspect of the final boss kinda hones in on what raocow struggled with throughout the game. I honestly wouldn't blame him if he used savestates between phases. Good luck!!

I'll definitely give it to raocow that this is much more of a niche style of RPG than I think many would like. I honestly do like these super involved mechanics where you have to do these action commands to get attacks to work best; it's why I love the Mario & Luigi series and older Paper Mario games. A lot of your casual turn-based RPGs are kinda boring to me because they really just boil down to menu simulators in my mind, so having something to actually do in order to execute attacks properly is right up my alley. I definitely see his point that using Sonic as a vessel for a niche RPG is kind of not the best idea, but hey, Sonic's not exactly a stranger to being in weird and unorthodox games!!

[VGjoe]

the big ol' copypasta of sonicles ring count

Green Hill - CRASHED

Green Hill - 107

Green Hill - 0
Central City - 8

Central City - 61

Central City - 36

Central City - 0
Green Hill - 44

Central City - 0
Mystic Ruins - 33

Central City - 0
Green Hill - 0
Central City - 0

Central City - 0
Green Hill - 0

Central City - 0
Mystic Ruins - 23

Green Hill - 0
Central City - 0
Green Hill - 0

Central City - 0
Blue Ridge - 63

Blue Ridge - 13
Central City - 0
Green Hill - 35

Blue Ridge - 5
Metropolis - 0

Metropolis - 0

Metropolis - 31

Metropolis - 33

Metropolis - 21

Metropolis - 3
Angel Island - 6

Angel Island - 43

Metropolis - 0
Angel Island - 0

Metropolis Ground Zero - 41

Metropolis Ground Zero - 3
Twilight Cage - 0

Kron Colony - 41

Kron Colony - 22

Kron Colony - 16

Kron Colony - 0
N'rrgal Colony - 22

Zoah Colony - 50

Zoah Colony - 1

N'rrgal Colony - 0
Kron Colony - 0
Zoah Colony - 0
Voxai Colony Beta - 45

Voxai Colony Beta - 0
Voxai Colony Alpha - 26

Voxai Colony Alpha - 0
Voxai Colony Beta - 0
Kron Colony - 0

N'rrgal Colony - 18
Kron Colony - 1
N'rrgal Colony - 3

Nocturne - 57

Nocturne - 32

Nocturne - 24

Nocturne - 0

Total Rings collected in Sonic Chronicles: the Dark Brotherhood: 966