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Post by Snarboo on Sept 18, 2012 20:22:47 GMT -5
I've now made my way through the Fortress of Goa having defeated all 4 evil servants. It was pretty tough, but thankfully you have your health and magic refilled after every boss battle. The mooks were honestly more annoying than the bosses given almost every enemy in the fortress casts a status effect of some kind.
Speaking of which, here's a quick tip: The Barrier spell protects you from all projectiles, even the ones that cast status effects!
I have no idea how far into the game I am right now, but I imagine I'm pretty close to the end. I have all four magic swords and their respective bracelets, as well as every spell in the game. Now I just need to figure out what to do next.
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Post by xerxes on Sept 20, 2012 14:41:41 GMT -5
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Post by muteKi on Sept 21, 2012 14:40:38 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 16:28:06 GMT -5
I've now made my way through the Fortress of Goa having defeated all 4 evil servants. It was pretty tough, but thankfully you have your health and magic refilled after every boss battle. The mooks were honestly more annoying than the bosses given almost every enemy in the fortress casts a status effect of some kind. One thing I've disliked about this game is the status effects. They really break up the action because you either have to have enough magic to heal it, or you have to have a very specific item to cure it (which takes up one of your precious item spaces). The Curse effect is seriously a bitch because you (as far as I know) can't use magic to cure it, just the item. I put the game down at the pyramid after learning that ;p. Hopefully I'll be able to finish the game by the podcast, but at the point I'm at it's not so much challenging as it is cheap and tedious - these enemies in the place behind the pyramid can curse you, and they take shitloads of damage (and are only vulnerable to the crappy wind sword). |
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Post by Feynman on Sept 21, 2012 18:43:12 GMT -5
The pyramid is right at the end of the game. After you finish it, you only have the final dungeon, which isn't even remotely difficult, just kind of tedious because the enemies have way too much health and you're forced to kill them.
Honestly, for the pyramid it's best to just not even fight. Just run past everything and fly over pits. Use the cave between the desert town and the pyramid area to reach level 16 so that you can do damage to the pyramid boss, though.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 20:50:58 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm gonna try to muscle through. I really enjoy the game overall but the endgame is pretty lame. One thing I don't like is how arbitrary or pointless it is to fight at the point I'm at in the game - like you said it's better to just run or fend off the enemies since there's a lot of damage sponges, and when you're at level 16 there's no point in fighting (unless you need the money, which is also sorta unlikely at this point).
I guess the same could be said for all Zelda-like games - once you've gotten all the money you need, there's almost no point in fighting the mooks aside from getting them out of your way. The problem is that in Crystalis, the mooks are taking four to ten hits to kill as opposed to one or two, which magnifies the annoyance presented by them and makes you want to run to get it over with.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2012 20:09:29 GMT -5
...and done. I agree with Feynman, there's no point in fighting the enemies in the pyramid (especially those stupid 4-armed guys that can curse you). Once you know where to go the pyramid isn't so bad, but it's pretty reflective of the overall horrible dungeon design - rather than being complex, they normally have lots of worthless paths that send you back to places you've already been to. I can't stress enough how much I loathe the dungeons in this game. They make the dungeons in Phantasy Star II seem as straightforward as a level in Final Fight. Overall, I liked about half of this game, but beyond that there were a lot of really terrible design issues and problems that prevent it from being a classic (to me, anyway). I was considering checking out the GBC one but to be honest I don't feel like playing this one for a while  . |
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Post by xerxes on Sept 22, 2012 21:03:37 GMT -5
I can't stress enough how much I loathe the dungeons in this game. They make the dungeons in Phantasy Star II seem as straightforward as a level in Final Fight. Glad to see someone came to the same conclusion I did, though I think PSII is still quite a bit worse. |
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Post by Feynman on Sept 23, 2012 1:39:09 GMT -5
I really like the level design! I vastly prefer labyrinths or puzzle-based dungeons to those that are mostly straightforward and uninteresting to navigate. If you're having a hard time keeping track of where you are in a dungeon, start making maps.
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Post by Scylla on Sept 23, 2012 2:22:10 GMT -5
The dungeon designs are a bajillion times worse in Phantasy Star II. I actually find the layouts in Crystalis quite manageable by NES standards. They seem overwhelming your first time when everything in the game is totally new to you, but I've found in my replays, despite that my memory has faded and I had to relearn the areas, I could memorize them pretty well. Considering how many NES adventure games I've had to map out, I can't complain about Crystalis at all. But even for the games that require map-making, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Going back to Phantasy Star II, that game is idiotic about the dungeon designs because even making maps doesn't make your life easier. The dungeons are so massive, the characters plod along so slowly, getting into nonstop random battles, and they're overloaded with warps and such that make mapmaking practically impossible. There's a reason why Phantasy Star II was packaged with maps of all the areas. Playing the game without those is total self-flagellation.
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Post by muteKi on Sept 23, 2012 17:53:19 GMT -5
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Post by xerxes on Sept 23, 2012 21:07:15 GMT -5
Considering how many NES adventure games I've had to map out, I can't complain about Crystalis at all. But even for the games that require map-making, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Me neither. In fact, I love mapping dungeons. The problem is Crystalis, unlike Zelda or Phantasy Star (1), has scrolling dungeons. And there's no in-game map showing you when you've moved into a new "screen" like in, say, Goonies II or Galious. There's no in-game map at all, right? And of course, a lot of screens are bifurcated, so even though your map would say go here to get there, you have to account for what side of a stream you're on or something. So yeah, a LOT more complicated. Rather than map Crystalis, just write yourself directions. "Take your first left after the bridge, then go down and take your next left..." etc. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2012 10:36:02 GMT -5
Yeah, I was exaggerating more than a bit when I mentioned PS2 - between the slow walking speed/frequent battle pauses, the jumps between levels, and those damn parallax foreground effects that looked like walls, it was a massive bitch. What was worse is that the used copy I picked up didn't have the map book...ugh. I know there's worse games, but that one took the cake when it came to dungeons. Mapping is something I take for granted in modern games. I don't have a super great sense of direction, so when you're operating in a game world and don't have the landmarks or sense of space that you do in real life it makes it ten times worse. Even when there are landmarks or a set scale it's tough for me at times (see my comments on the Snowfly Forest in the Vagrant Story thread). Kind of like spirasen mentioned, I have a harder time with games like Crystalis or Willow or whatever that have scrolling screens - I had no problem with stuff like Golgo 13 or Phantasy Star because you had a set distance for every step you took. As long as you kept track of where you were/where you were facing, once you made the map it was relatively easy. On the flipside, in Crystalis you can sketch up the paths you're taking, but I have a hard time setting a scale, etc. Here's a sketch of what my typical behavior was compared to "normal":  Aside from being stuck wandering forever in a couple of places because of unclear destinations (Mount Hydra, the Oasis Cave pre-Flight Spell, the Pyramid). Anyway, I managed to get through without consulting or making maps, so obviously the game's not too bad. I agree that if I were to play through it again next week or next year I'd remember the "right" path and blaze through the game. What bothered me overall was that if you're like me and love to scour each dungeon, you'll invariably end up wasting a lot of time thanks to the different doors/stairs that take you back to areas you've been to, or more specifically back to forks in the path you didn't take. These situations made me paranoid because they looked familiar (and were!), yet I wasn't sure if I'd been there before or it was just a similar-looking path. So anyway, I'd waste my time on things like that. While I should have learned my lesson the first couple of times it happened, I still kept going through the motions of exploring those areas in the vain hopes I'd find something cool like armor or whatever. However, my efforts more often than not got me a consumable item like a fruit of lime or whatever if I found an item at all. Of course, when your inventory's always maxed out like mine was, the only way to find out what it was is to use/drop an item (and I was always disappointed). I did this out of hopes of finding magic rings mostly (which I found on occasion). Anyway in the end it doesn't really matter - I think I had an easier time once I beat Goa because I was at level 16 and there's absolutely no reason to fight another enemy ever aside from the bosses or the robots in the tower. It made navigating the dungeons a lot quicker since I realized there was jack and shit left to find or care about. And that's a flaw in the game that I'm trying to find words to describe by the time of the podcast - once you get to that point in the game a lot of things stop mattering, which happens in a lot of games, but was really egregious to me in this one for some reason. |
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Post by lanceboyle94 on Sept 24, 2012 14:04:44 GMT -5
Appearances by Pokey are always entertaining.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2012 14:11:48 GMT -5
Thanks spirasen . That's Pokey Turtle, my alter ego when I need to say something inappropriate (that's his voice at the beginning of the GC9x Wonderboy episode as well). This was a follow-up to the bullshit map I did for Wonder Boy II www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=27507546. Anyway, I think with Crystalis I was my own worst enemy. Aside from getting pissy during the endgame I enjoyed the game. Graphics are nice and so was the music (I loved the song during the tower). You had some really cool boss battles. The swords were really groovy weapons, and it was awesome to see the waves of death that you progressively got a hold of as you got the orbs and bracelets. So in retrospect I think the fun and the good outweighed the bad things, but I need to figure out how to articulate that for the podcast without sounding like I'm whining or hating. BTW, how far has anyone gotten in the GBC game? I need to at least start the game up - someone was saying that they screw with the story. EDIT: Thanks Lance . |
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