Hero-of-Time

Who are the five? You, Hazel, Dcubed, Julius and Sam?

Sweet. Finally nabbed Diddy Kong from the Mario collection. Also picked up the Xenoblade set.

Amazing!

Crazy thing is I bought it for dirt cheap back when it was first released and I've yet to play it. That's weird, I also started playing it last week. I took a photo for when I was finished and ready to talk about it. I'm halfway through at the moment but clearly you and I are having different experiences with it. I don't think it's enjoyable at all.

The credits have rolled and my adventure is over. As you can see, there's still a stupid amount to do if I want the platinum, which I probably wont go for. It would take another 3 runs through the story and this is because of the amount of extra characters you can team up with. Your team can only hold 4 extras and so thats where the multiple playthroughs come in. Apart from the difficulty spike, as well as the lack of fast travel, I really enjoyed playing through this. It's about time I finally dipped my toe into this franchise and it was fitting that I started with this one. It goes to show how bloated games have become. This game offered around 20-25 hours of play time and it just flew by. There were no pointless fetch quests or countless cutscenes that waffled on for ages but said very little. The game was straight forward and to the point, just like a lot of games that were made back then. The SP system is very interesting when you start delving into it. There are an abundance of options at your disposal. Sure, you can break the game but it also allows you to play the game how you want. It's also one of the best ways to get the best gear. Kinda reminds me of Dragon Quest and the melding pot. Very happy to have experienced this and I'm now set to pick up the next game when the time is right.

Odama probably didn't but Mario Baseball is more sought after, what with it being a Mario game and all. This will no doubt increase the resale price.

Mario Superstar Baseball was pretty hard to find back when it was first released. I can't imagine there being many copies printed. It was a late release as well, wasn't it?

Is the Steam Deck available from retailers now? Geniune question. I know it wasn't when it launched. If not, then I fail to see how it will have a mass market reach.

That's the thing, you still have to build a PC. Then there's issues like different graphics card and making sure things are up to spec. The general population don't want to faff on with things like that. With a console you just buy it knowing that once you unpack it then you are good to go, without having to do any reseach. For me, the incentive for continuing buying consoles over a PC is simply because of the reason above. Until there's a standard box that will run every game without upgrading or faffing on then I will never touch PC gaming. Plus, as a huge supporter of physical media, PC ain't the platform for that.

That's good to hear. It's a baffling decision not to have such a system in this game, especially when there were many JRPGs that came before it that had things like airships and fast travel. I'm quite surprised they didn't add it to this updated version.

I continue to play Star Ocean First Departure R. I'm now in the late game area and it's ridiculous just how much back tracking is needed to continue the story. What's worse is that there is no fast travel system or airship available. The best you get is the ability to travel around via a few select ship ports. It's made things very, very tedious.

So, I hit a massive difficulty spike earlier this afternoon. I figured I must have wandered off the correct path but that wasn't the case at all. A quick search on the internet and this was indeed the correct way and it was a difficulty spike that many players before me encountered. Simple level grinding wasn't going to cut it and so I decided to learn all about the SP skills that @Glen-i mentioned when playing the second game. Once I got to grips with these skills I completely broke the game. There's a skill that allows you to make exp cards that give you double experience points after a battle. There's then a skill that gives you the ability to replicate items, these cards included. Next, there's an ability that allows you to improve/create your own weapons. Finally, another ability is available that gives you the opportunity to fight a super boss at any point in the game. Linking all of these things together gave me some fantastic results. I created two of the best swords in the game. These deal critical hits and also cause the enemy to be dazed. Having these on 2 characters was the first step. Next, I created the experience boosting cards and replicated a whole bunch of them. This took a while as its down to RNG and so a bit of reloading of the game was required but totally worth it. After that, I summoned the super boss, used a card and then proceeded to beat the Hell out of it with my new weapons. The amount of experience I get from the fights in the area I'm in usually give around 1000-1500. This gave me... It took around 3 hours of prep to get everything in order but the results have been worth it. I jumped from level 37 to 80+ in the space of half an hour of battling. I got an exp farm on tap. Love it. With Glen doing something similar in the sequel, it must be a common thing in this series.

No idea. @Julius is the man to ask.

Added another party member to the team. Dude clearly wanted to join us. I mean, just look at what happened to him when he ventured off on his own... I'm happy to have him on board though. It's about time I had someone who can heal on my team.

Put some more time into Star Ocean this morning. Found this area in my current location. It's a statue that heals everyone with unlimited uses. This means for the next hour I'll be walking around in a circle, getting into random battles and farming XP. I started at level 21 (currently level 24) and will probably stick around until everyone is level 30. I picked up my first extra character. Dude is called Ashlay and he seems decent enough. High attack power and high HP...my kinda team member. I love the character expression when they get hit during battle. They are hilarious. They give the game a bit of personality. Speaking of the battles, the enemy AI is quite clever. Despite being overlevelled, things can still go south for me quite quickly if the enemy manages to surround me/get me in a pincer attack. I always have to keep an eye on my positioning.