Finished Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.

I finally completed Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance today, with all of the main endings (I had to look up a guide on how to get them, but meh..)

Its a pretty cool game once you get into it, but still its not as good as some of the other Castlevania titles. Even though its short (took me less than 8 hrs to beat) and very easy, it still had some features I quite liked.

So anyway...after I beat the game with the 3rd main ending, I turned the DS off, victorious at last. Then decided a bit later to turn it back on to have a look at boss rush mode. Turned it on to find I had no data. What the hell?

Yeah, somehow the data had vanished into nothingness just like Dracula's stupid ass castle. No error message, no "your data has been corrupted" message, no nothing. OMG...

I guess the one positive is that it happened after I beat the game and not during it or just beforehand. Still it pisses me off no end. I'm not usually too bothered about keeping backup saves but this is probably gonna change that. I would have smashed stuff in my room, or cried if this had happened on my 60 odd hr Odin Sphere save which is unfinished, but so close to the end.

*Backed up my PS2 saves just incase*

I guess the fact that I hadn't put that much time into the game either means it shouldn't be so hard to take...but I just wish hardware and game testers would pick up on these things. 

Its not my first experience with losing data, its happened before but a long time ago...it sucks. I'm gonna go listen to some angry music and vent some anger now. Arch Enemy sounds good.

Arch Enemy - My Apocalypse

Cradle of Filth - Tonight in Flames

Disarmonia Mundi - Celestial Furnace

Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction

Slayer - Angel of Death

Thats a bit better...metal has some awesome power! \m/

Odin Sphere, nearing the endgame now.

I played some more Odin Sphere in the past few days, I think I'm getting close to the end now. Well..."epilogue" in the last character's story (Fate) would suggest that I'm damn near the end.... -.< 

It's pretty difficult...I had to do fight 2 bosses at a time but strangely I got through that and I'm on the final area now. I tried a few stages and then went back to up my HP level as much as I could before I make my way through. The story in this game is really gripping at times...it steals hours of my day at a time. I really like the way the stories have overlapped and we see things from each character's perspective. They each have different motives, feelings and loyalties. Even though I am basically going through the same stages I have been through 4 or 5 times, it still keeps me interested as the story is different each time and the script is so well done. 

The game is so shiny and gorgeously drawn. The backgrounds are just amazing...actually everything about the game, the backgrounds, the characters, the enemies-graphically the game is incredible.

I'm about 55 or 60 hours into the game(I can't remember) and getting very close to completion. I might write more about it after I beat it, maybe a review or something. 

It makes me want to  get a hold of some other Vanillaware games, GrimGrimoire or Princess Crown perhaps.. I don't want Odin Sphere to end...I don't know if I could bring myself to play through it again though..even on the lowest difficulty its got me to throw the controller, attempting to snap the controller, punching things...frustrating, but an incredible game still! =D I don't think I'm good enough at fast action rpgs like this to play through on hard mode...I've got this far on normal, with some stages or bosses on easy when they served me too much hehe...

I'll most likely be getting Muramasa from what I've seen of it though!

This gorgeous image from the artbook (which I want) made me feel..colourful, so thats why the text is like that :p

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.

I started Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on the GBA the other day for something a bit different to the other games I was playing (and getting frustrated with.) 

So far it seems really easy compared to a few of the other GBA/DS titles, but I am still liking it. Juste Belmont (pictured) is a character with some really nice intricate character design even though there is not much character development yet or even personality, but I'm not far through the game yet. 

It seems a very short game, I'm already 68.2% through after 2 hours and 20 minutes of gameplay. Despite the shortness, it has loads of atmosphere and remains addictive. I love sinking time into exploring the castle and finding items, relics, spells, collectibles (furniture for some sort of sidequest lol.) Lots of Castlevania staples in there, but its all good stuff. 

The game seems very easy compared to other titles, I've only died a handful of times so far, with none of the bosses giving me any problems. I kind of wish I would get rewarded for killing bosses with relics/abilities straight after defeating them, they dont always seem to give rewards immediately, which left me kind of dissapointed. It feels satisfying defeating bosses, replenishing HP/MP and getting an interesting new ability at the same time. 

A few things aside, I really like the game, I would recommend it from what I've played so far. I'll probably talk some more about it as I progress through.

I got into playing it also because I had just made a music video for youtube, its embed below. Nothing spectacular, but I love the song and some of the images in there.

Here's some pretty cool Juste images and cosplays also, that hair is almost Sephiroth like at times!  :P

From http://www.cosplay.com/costume/178891/

 From http://www.cosplay.com/costume/187429/

Halo Final Fantasy. :D

I <3 the 80s.

Man, the 80s were an awesome time to grow up. Its funny looking back on those crazy fashions and trends (some of which have come back into fashion..dont ask me why) and thinking of how different life was back then. I still don't understand how sometimes people's hair just "looked" 70s or 80s even without being cut in one of those hilarious styles such as a mullet. 

Video games back in the 80s were a different beast to the ones we have now, we had crazily hard platformers, arcade and sci-fi influenced side scrollers, role playing games based on D&D style rules and premises and loads of other stuff.

Take a look at this link for some hilarity from the 80s and early 90s. Wow, there are some awesomely bad boxes in there and there is 4 pages of the stuff! Its crazy to think they would be thought of as anything close to well-made video game boxes at the time. I'm actually almost left speechless by some of those random geometric shapes, neon-pastel colours, hairstyles and other crap in there. Hilarious, read the link XD. Ninja scooter simulator, Skateboard Joust...man I only vaguely remember the 80s, but man was it fricken GNARLY!

Odin Sphere.

I've been playing quite a bit more of Odin Sphere today. I'm in the epilogue of Mercedes' story, Fairy Land. This game is really cool, but can be quite hard at times and some people criticise it as being repetitive, as you basically play through an overlapping timeline for each of the characters, fighting some of the bosses multiple times through the game. Its definitely worth a look though, I like it. At the moment, I'm around 40 hours through, and still have to do 2 character's storylines after this.

Also, thought I'd upload this video to youtube. I love the song!

Cat gun-engage!

Awesome. Do want cat gun.

Champions League football.

The 2nd legs of the Champions League semi finals have been and gone now. The Arsenal vs Manchester Utd game was kinda over by about the 8th minute I think it was. Arsenal played about a million miles an hour from the kickoff, thinking they could score, being positive and trying to get some goals. A few defensive mistakes later, and any belief was gone in the Arsenal camp. I would say it ended up being quite a good game to watch, even if it wasnt open for either side, there was some good football played. 

That ended up as Manchester Utd 3-1 Arsenal. (4 - 1 Agg)

Tonight though, there was even more drama. Chelsea looked like they were going through to the final to play Man Utd again (yawn) in the final, after a Michael Essien volley early on. They had kept Barca at bay for so long, even though the spanish side had so much possession, they hadnt translated it to many chances. In the end, the one they did get, it paid off and killed off Chelsea's dreams of being in the final. This took right up till the 93rd minute, where Iniesta struck an equally amazing shot right into the top corner of Cech's goal. Musta been so hard on the Chelsea fans, even more so when they saw that kind of refereeing from this Norwegian(I think) official. To be fair to him, a few of the "penalty" claims didnt look like penalties to me, like the first one, which was just in the box and looked a bit soft. There were a few which could've been given for handball, like the one where Anelka tried to take it around Pique, and it hit his hand. I thought that was ball to hand, as was the Ballack shot and handball, but others would surely disagree, and that coulda been given easily. The Drogba penalty claim was hilarious though, sure there was a shirt-pull in there, but when you act like he did when it wasn't given, you cant be taken seriously. I burst out laughing when I saw his reaction. 

Which was almost as ridiculous as Ballack's protests to the referee after his penalty claim, and even worse, after the game had finished, Drogba's protests to the officials and referee which got him a yellow card. He was complaining, accusing the referee of being a "fucking disgrace." What is definitely disgraceful is the way he acted. There is no place for that kind of behaviour in football, kids could be watching, seeing him as a role model, and thats not going to look good. When Drogba stops being so theatrical, going down looking for penalties and free-kicks and acting like this, he could be an excellent footballer, but as they said on Sky Sports, his reputation is always going to go before him, and right now that is not in his favour. I hope he sees a big suspension for his actions.

Chelsea will probably think they are hard done by, but they cant always blame this kind of result on decisions by referees that didnt go their way. They could have easily put the game away. They didnt play in the first leg, and got no away goals to show for it. They had lots of chances in this game and didnt take any either. They shouldnt rely so much on the officials.

Also, no matter how much it seems something doesnt go their way and how much it infuriates them, I don't like to see Chelsea fans throwing stuff like flags at officials or the Barca bench. You lost, deal with it. Football is harsh sometimes...

Chelsea 1 - 1 Barcelona (1 - 1 Agg) Barca go through as result of away goal.

Champions League Final: Manchester Utd vs Barcelona ~ May 27th, Sky Sports

Link

Link

Pokemon and Nostalgia.

1Up's RPG blog "The Grind" posted something recently about an upcoming Pokemon Gold/Silver remake project. I don't know if its definite yet, but that would be awesome news. Pokemon GS were really good games in my opinion because they added so much and allowed you to go back to the original world map (Kanto) to do more gyms and extra postgame stuff. Its a pretty good blog, check it out. Here's a link for the post.

Also, Nostalgia will be out in the US sometime September this year apparantely. The game has a really good staff behind it, and could be pretty good. Not much out on it at the moment, just a few screens, but keep an eye on this one if ds rpgs are your thing and/or if you like the steampunk setting. The graphics dont look amazing, but they could be good enough. 3D DS RPGs don't always look amazing, but they can be really good. I really liked FFIII, FFIV. Even simple stuff like Animal Crossing: WW looks really good in my opinion. Actually, the graphics in this game seem pretty good for a DS game.

some Nostalgia screenshots:

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/nds/windnost/screens/windnostss110408-1.html

http://uk.media.ds.ign.com/media/142/14265033/imgs_1.html

Gundam Unicorn series announced.

Some pretty cool news for Gundam fans hit not too long ago. They have got the go ahead for an anime series based on the Gundam Unicorn novels. I havent read the books, but I've seen gunpla of the Unicorn Gundam and it is awesome. They have a really good staff behind the show, so lets hope it is good. Source

 Stupid layout...I can still not figure out how to make a bunch of images sit well in a post. 

Xbox and the awesomeness of mangos

Went on Xbox Live for some free Halo 3 online as a result of the XTival this weekend. Still one more day, so check it out if you wanna get the privileges you would get with gold for free. It was kinda fun...but theres even more noobs on there than usual. I'm not saying that I'm amazing, but people were leaving games early, standing still, teamkilling, making stupid noises through the voice chat. I heard the pwned.nl thing being played so many times...I mean when those screams are boring into your soul through the headset...it gets pretty lame fast. I muted and submitted so many negative player reviews within a few hours, it meant that any appeal Halo usually has was lost...it just gets frustrating if people fuck around.

Gah..I'm starting to sound like the guy from that video... >< 

No more FPS for me.

Also, Mangos are a godly fruit. 

Turn A Gundam, and other stuff.

I hadn't watched any anime in a while, so decided to watch some of the mecha anime I have on my Hard Drive, cos I have tonnes of unwatched stuff, and since I'm working on some gunpla at the moment, I thought I'd watch a gundam series, Turn A Gundam. 

So far I've watched the first 4 episodes and even though the animation is dated and the mobile suits have very strange and different designs, I like it so far. Its political like most gundam series, but its not throwing a lot of complex factions and organisations at me yet.  I'll have to see how it unfolds as the series goes on. 

Some more info

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In terms of gunpla (gundam model kits,) I've been working on the HG 1/144 Kerberos BuCue Hound

Its the first HG kit I've done in ages, I've not done any gunpla in months, so I decided to put a lot of time and effort into this one, giving this one a better paint job than the last few I did, which were the smaller SD kits. I always liked the style of this mobile suit, and this kit has a lot of complicated pieces in there, little bits of wire for example which confused me at first. I'm quite new to gunpla, and I didn't know what length of wire to cut cos I've not seen it in any of the kits I've done so far. I'm not too far through yet, but hopefully it looks good once I'm finished it.

Here's the kit I'm talking about; http://www.gundamnation.com/

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Some video game stuff:

Final Fantasy Agito XIII (PSP)

Yeah, this is old, but I wanted to post it up here. Looks like a nice game! If they have some of what made Crisis Core good, they could be onto a winner here, Square Enix.

http://uk.psp.ign.com/dor/objects/826844/final-fantasy-agito-xiii/videos/ffxiii_agito_090415.html;jsessionid=dg2va5g562r8

Magna Carta 2 (Xbox 360)

Will be getting a US release, it has some bizarre looking characters and outfits, but some nice graphics overall. I've heard the original wasnt amazing, so here's hoping this one is better. It will be an Xbox 360 title. 

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2009/181.html

A few games I didn't expect to get PAL releases were announced at some point recently. Stuff like the innuendo heavy Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica for the PS2. I didn't think this would get a PAL release because of dwindling PS2 sales over here, but Koei Europe are releasing it here at some point. Its a good sign to see rpgs like this and Mana Khemia being released. I mean, even if they aren't the best games, its good to see companies bringing them out and getting more recognition. I'm tempted to get Mana Khemia on the PS2, but its still expensive and I got a few other games that would get bought before I got that.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Xbox 360) will be out here in June. I might have mentioned this, memory sucks...

http://na.square-enix.com/starocean/

old Japanese trailer from Square Enix;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czRZ0moKIu8

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (DS) has a Q3 release date for us PAL gamers, according to www.eurogamer.net

This one looks pretty good, take a look at Atlus' site for some more on it. Americans will get it on 23/06/2009. I might import it if it gets decent reviews. 

Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii) will be released in PAL territories sometime in November, apparantly. I cant remember if I found this out before, I knew it was coming to the US, but I wasnt sure if it would be seen here. Finally, another decent looking Wii game! My Wii is currently fossilised under layers of dust... I had meant to pick up No More Heroes, Okami and Baroque(I was very close to buying this one because it was about £7 in Game) but never got round to buying em. Too many games to play and not enough money was the main reason.

Anyway, there's been a trailer up for a while now for this game; 

Dark Spire (DS) looks pretty cool, I'm a big fan of old school games, and rpgs with class systems and influences from old games. Its not gonna be everyone's cup of tea, but it looks good to me. Link

Football, RPGs, Life

Not really updated recently because life hasn't exactly been too kind to me. I split up with my girlfriend recently, its hard to find a job and my applications to postgraduate degrees have been rejected...but enough moping, you dont wanna hear about my troubles.

I've been watching Champions League football this week and I wasn't too impressed. For semi-finals, I thought they would be more entertaining. Specifically the Chelsea vs Barcelona game. I was looking forward to that game, as I love the football Barca play, but only one team played any decent football in the 90 minutes, and that was the spanish side. I can understand the strategy that Hiddink's men were going for, defending for the away leg and trying not to concede. It worked, but it was a frustrating game to watch. I would have much preferred it if they had gone into the game looking for away goals, would have been a less negative, boring game in the end. 

The Man Utd vs Arsenal game was similar, it was pretty much all one way traffic, with Man Utd bringing the game to Arsenal. Maybe the return legs of these semis will be more interesting. 

I also don't exactly like the fact that the Champions league is so dominated by English teams nowadays...thats why I'm backing Barcelona this year, I don't want another all english final. Man Utd vs Barca could be good. I'm also wanting to watch some more UEFA cup, as I like seeing fresh European clubs in action.

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (PS2)

I've been playing quite a bit of Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga on the PS2 recently after beating DQIV. Its the first SMT game I've played (I'm keeping Persona 3 and 4 for later) and so far (I'm only about 8 hours in) I'm liking the visuals and character design, even if everything is very bleak and grey. Gives a really nice cyberpunk feel. Kinda odd that the characters are quite often so androgenous, but thats not too important, I like the cel-shaded way they are rendered. The turn based combat is quite interesting, I'm still getting used to aspects of the whole turn symbol thing, like exploiting enemies weaknesses, critical hits, misses, passing turns and how they affect the turn symbols. I picked the first one up for really cheap preowned (about £6) which might be because the box was a bit damaged, but I was still chuffed with that, I think its worth quite a bit more than that. So, just after starting this one, I ordered the second one in it's collectors edition cos I'm a sucker for limited ed stuff hehe. 

Got it for quite cheap (around £14ish) off Amazon.co.uk and it arrived much quicker than expected. I'll have to  play through the first one and then get on to this asap. I read that you can transfer your save data, which is a nice feature. Only a few minor things about the first game that I don't exactly like so far; the random encounter rate seems a bit unbalanced, slightly too high at times, which can be frustrating when you are running round the large dungeons. Even the first dungeon in the game took me a good while. Comes as quite a shock after playing a game like DQIV with simple dungeons. Some of the monster designs are strange and at first I didn't particularly like them, but they aren't that bad really. The mantra system is one thing I like, but at the same time think it could be tweaked ever so slightly. I like skill trees like that in Diablo 2, and this is similar, but with more to it from what I can tell. You select which mantra you want to follow and you basically gain points towards mastering that mantra. When you get close to mastering and/or do master it, you will gain the skills associated with the mantra. So its pretty cool, but it kinda bugs me when my characters have mastered their mantras and I can't get to a karma temple to assign a new one. So that means any Atma Points (AP) that they get from battle goes to waste until I equip new mantras (which can only be done at certain points in the game) Also, the mantras become increasingly expensive as they get more advanced, this could be a problem but I'm not sure. I'll have to wait and see how much currency I get as the game progresses. Money is rewarded on how quickly, or effectively you beat enemies from what I can tell. They could have easily made it so you can download new mantras through your status screens via the tag ring or whatever that thing is the characters have. Would have been easier. 

I knew I recognised Jinana's voice actress. I looked her up on wikipedia and she had done quite a bit of other stuff, including Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. The game as a whole has a really good voice cast, even though in some bits of the game the lines arent exactly put across amazingly...

Still, some good actors and actresses in the english track. Crispin Freeman (yay Alucard!), Yuri Lowenthal and many others;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Devil_Saga#Voice_Cast 

Other stuff I've found out; Dragon Age Origins will be getting Xbox 360 and PS3 releases! That bodes well for me who doesnt own a good enough PC to run it. I love Bioware, so I'm really looking forward to what has been described as a "spiritual Baldur's Gate 3." If its anywhere near as good as BGII, I'll be happy. I hadn't been keeping an eye on this title because I assumed it would be a PC only game, but this was good to find out! 

Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Xbox 360) has a PAL release date now, and it will be here on June 5th. I thought they would have got this one here quicker, but better late than never I guess. I know the game has had some criticism, but I still want to try it as visually it looks amazing and I've been looking forward to it for ages. Plus the battle system looks really fun. I'm gonna try and get ahold of the second game on the PSP and beat it and hopefully Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2) before I play this one. Yeah, I know this one is a prequel but might as well play them in the order they were released.

I'm also looking to get a hold of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, Riviera, Persona 4. But to be honest, I should really play through some of my backlog.

Too many games...RPGs take a lot of time to play, but hell I love em!