Stream - Page 4
Mary Skelter Journal start!
Starting from today to play Mary Skelter 2 after so many years since when I played the original (that I technically played twice, once in PSVita and once on Switch). You can read my review of the original at this URL https://blog.emptyblue.it/impression/mary-skelter-classic-dungeon-crawling-with-an-unexpected-storyline )
As far as I know the story is linked and intertwined with the original to the point that one of the endings of the original is only unlocked if you complete the story of the second one.
It's going to be interesting where it goes, I remember the first game was quite final and revealed most of the secrets in the world. But maybe there's more to discover considering there's even another game after this one.
The OP movie seems to put a lot more emphasis on Hamelin compared to how marginal she was in the original game. Plus there's some new heroine too...
Castti Ch.2 Winterbloom - Plukk was an hard boss!
I thought I finished the second chapter in my previous post, but it was a two part which seems common in this new game (there weren't in the first one). I've just done the Winterbloom part of the chapter 2 of Castti too and it gives a lot more info about her past.
Seems like there is a guy named Trousseau that lived Winterbloom that was an apprentice healer and met Castti at the residence where Melia and Rosa lived. This guy is key because he was in the flashback Sai route of the second chapter too.
Could he be the hooded guy who caused the purple rain to fall down on that village? Seems like the third chapter brings us to that village and...I guess the truth.
There's no doubt that Castti is good, but what caused that hooded guy to do that and destroy the reputation of Eir's Apothecaries? Also how did Castti lose her memories? Questions questions...
By the way the boss fight was a Plukk was a pain to win. The henchman when left alone used some supermove that annihilated my party...
Castti Ch.2 - Who was that hooded figure?
Just finished the second chapter of Castti in Octopath Travelers 2 and the mystery only deepens to be honest. The story itself was a standard one for this kind of character, war between two countries and doctors working both sides to save as many lives as possible.
The real interesting part comes from the inquiry you do to two characters to learn more about Castti past as she lost all her memories. Seems like there was a rumor going around that Eir's Apothecaries (the group Castti was part of) being involved into a village destruction through some purple rain.
Castti get a flashback though and it shows her trying to stop a hooded guy who activated this rain. Issue is that this hooded guy calls Castti "leader" and is actually a follower of the same group. Just what's going on with the Eir's Apothecaries? How did Castti lose her memories?
Victor what are you doing?! Don't give out info!
Oh, this is interesting. Victor seemingly was the one that gave info to Iron Mask about the Zoma (Artificial demon) 6 months before the beginning of the story. Zoma is an experiment made by humans to create a soul from nothing, it usually start very weak and absorb other demons to become stronger. Apparently Zenon wasn't that strong when Victor first saw it and was incomplete.
Victor speculate that it's because it changed it so that it could power up based on the covenant too (and it has 3 of them now). Something happened that allowed Iron Mask to complete it and make it that invincible. The battle against him was a one-sided scripted loss for the player.
Seems like we have a lead at least. Zoma are weak when the new moon is out...so it's time to wait until the next new moon before fighting. Assuming Iron Mask gives us that much time...
First confrontation with Iron Mask
Just continuing on the story of Soul Hackers 2 a bit and we get to the fight direct confrontation against Iron Mask while trying to find Mangetsu. Milady was, as usual, pretty aggressive and tried to attack him, but no real result as this is supposedly the boss of the boss.
Seemingly the enemies have all, but one covenant so they're almost ready to end the world as we know it. How is Ringo going to solve this situation?
Last few game sessions, I was distracted going through the soul-levels for the various characters and doing merges of demon. It can get quite addictive to be honest to try and "get them all" by merging the right demons and farming cash to summon more.
Wow transmogrification costs explained
I just checked out the new cost for transmogrification in World of Wacraft latest patch after the hotfix they did and it's honestly quite cheap compared to the previous system. You just buy slots directly and once set up those slot are preserved regardless if you change your gear and you can switch through your slots freely without any cost at all allowing you to just play with the style that you want to go with that day.
The cost of the outfit slots (those I checked at least are):
1st slot : Free
2nd slot : Free
3rd slot: 100g
4th slot: 200G
5th slot: 350G
6th slot: 600G
7th slot: 1000G
8th slot: 2000G
These slot are warband so you unlock them once for all your characters. This is a massive win that I love because I usually avoided transmogrification completely until now due to the huge cost sink, but now I can actually get into making like 10 slots worth of outfits for all my characters and just switch among them depending on mood!
Huge Panda in my factories
In order to get more space to produce more factories I decided to get the Park settlement too and whoa, we have the same type of animal guys here too. He does look very...interesting. I guess it's the same of the original Arknights where girls are more human like with small animal traits and males are...pretty animal.
I'm starting the seed planting factories lines and honestly the main problem I have so far is the limited number of ports that are available in the PAC and the depots to connect to. I unlocked the splitter, but then I need to rebuild my lines to make use of it which will take me out even some more time.
I need to check if there are other useful tools in the tech tree because rebuilding everything from scratch every time a new tool drops in can be quite exhausting.
Factory building is quite addictive to be honest
I've been spending the last few hours going through to make a few production lines, but I also need to increase my exploration because I haven't unlocked nearly enough blueprints for building all the materials I need in my factories.
This kind of gameplay seems complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it, it starts to go smoothly and you get a lot of fun out of it. Maybe it's just my OCD though as I love seeing well organized things.
I'm at rank 25 in the game so I have another story chapter unlocked that I should go through soon, but I'll probably spend a few more hours tinkering with this before. The story can wait, need to produce more!
Event clearing in ZZZ, what about the new area?
Somehow I always end up delaying the event completion in ZZZ until the very last moment aside from time sensitive ones (like the wish bottle one). It's not even that I don't like them, but just...time management is a pain when you have many gacha games to play. Now trying to rush them to avoid having to do it at the very last day.
With this patch closing up (2 weeks to go), we're going to go away from the 2.x setting and back into our more urban world I hope. Patch 2.6 of ZZZ will finally see the idols in action and I'm really excited to see what they can do. I saw a few leaks about them doing coordinated dance in their idle animation so the hype is quite big!
I honestly loved the game back when it was set up in Sixth street and even today I still couldn't fit in the new "magic" setting that they added.
Genshin Impact Shutterflash event
I have to say that the Shutterflash event in Genshin Impact has been the highest level of difficulty that I experienced in this game since it released. Not even joking, I struggled so much trying to find the right combination of angle to reach near 100% for all the photos.
Genshin Impact has been usually an easy fare when it come to event, but sometimes they underestimate how clumsy their player can be with these.
Now that the event is done, I'll go back to my cave waiting for the next patch even though my mind goes back to Sandrone and her revival that will happen in so many months. It's going to be harsh to wait so long for her to be back, but please at least make it an amazing patch that one. I want to see Sandrone x Columbina ingame!
World of Warcraft Midnight Expansion Anticipation
Only one month separates us from the release of the new World of Warcraft Expansion titled Midnight. I'm a rather old player (played it back in Vanilla), but only returned recently in The War Within to play regularly thanks to a friend. I'm excited because Midnight is going to be the first expansion in more than a decade that I will experience from the first day.
What will Xal'atath do with her newfound power? Who will the bosses that we will fight in the expansion? I really can't wait!
Girls Frontline 2 free limited costume ticket!
Girls Frontline 2 is from today offering a free ticket for a limited skin of your choosing if you login in the game. I decided to pick up the Suomi swimsuit outfit that was released at the beginning of the game as I still love so much her design (she's the only unit that I ringed).
The game itself is still quite enjoyable as an SRPG even though I'm not really a heavy player and I just chill out doing events and standard quests from time to time. Plus the girls are ultra cute!
Yvonne outfit from behind is...hot!
Yvonne’s outfit is really something, damn. Especially when you see it from behind like in that picture. The tight, low-waist jeans fit her design surprisingly well and give her a much more modern, almost casual vibe compared to what I was expecting. After listening to her voice a bit more, she also comes off as leaning pretty hard into the gal side of things, at least in the JP voice version.
Now it looks like she’s going to guide us deeper into the facility, and honestly? I guess I’ll just follow her and see where this goes. Apparently Laevatain’s event story unlocks after this section is done, which has me pretty curious. I want to see what kind of rewards they’re offering and, more importantly, how the event system in this game actually works in practice.
Yvonne waiting room for her release
Finally Yvonne shows in the story. Her character design is downright stunning, I can't wait for her to be released in the gacha in 34 days. Story keeps being very generic so far, but it's good enough that I don't get bored of it.
I just heard the stories about the Paypal issues that people had for the first few hours since the game was released. Apparently it was so bad that they had to refund all and leave the currency. This feels unfair to other players if they don't give enough compensation.
Who exactly is Nefarith?
So looks like the villain we faced in the first chapter (Nefarith) is actually someone who was part of the Endfield group and defected. Or at least involved with them during the GLOOM project, this smells like someone who could possibly become playable in the future with the right twisting of the story
Endmin amnesia is a convenient plot device and honestly I'm not 100% sure that all the characters around us are being fully honest about our past. Especially Perlica that seems to be overly keen in making us continue the colonization of this world.
Overall so far, the setting of this series seems to be quite leaning on the dark side, but I wonder how far will they go there.
Tutorial hell is real
The sheer amount of tutorials in this game is insane, but I understand the reasoning behind it. I can already see people saying that the factory building part is "too complicated" online. It's fun though, I'm probably going to get addicted to try and get a good lineup of production with very well defined geometries.
It's not like I have a choice anyway, need to get to level 15 to unlock the next main story and this feels like the best way to raise levels...
I'm somehow hoping they add a skip functionality somehow down the line as I don't want to go ahead through them to get the "special reward" for doing the extra objectives in the few where I decided to skip over.
Laevatain Gacha Victory - Both character and weapon
Completed the chapters needed to complete the tutorial and now I have a good grasp of the main gameplay loop. I also got Laevatain and her weapon from the gacha as well. I'm enjoying the game enough to accept paying for battle pass and the monthly packs like I do for Hoyoverse games. Now we start saving for the upcoming units and start exploring the game, but before doing that I'll write up a post on the main blog about it.
I need to sneak search what are the upcoming units...
Factorio gameplay basic explanation
They finally explained how the Factorio gameplay works in Arknights Endfield. You basically build your own production line and link the various elements together from the "provide materials to factory piece from the storage" to the "bring back the manufactured item back into the storage".
In this case I attached as a screenshot I linked a refinery to the main building so that it gets the materials and send back the refined items back to the warehouse. That's quite nifty, need to go and do the same for the other facilities I built elsewhere after I'm done here.
Eventually it'll become a matter of adjusting the various elements to fit in the limited space they give you and make the most efficient production lines to limit the time in transit.
Story has been quite mild so far...
Going through the story, but so far it's mostly very mild standard story of helping locals and learning about the various mechanics in the game like building outposts and positioning material gathering etc...
So far so good, but I wonder if there is a global way to easily gather all materials from all the facilities because otherwise it may become quite a hassle if you need to do a chase around your buildings every day for the dailies. But well maybe they'll teach me that in a future tutorial.
Arknights Endfield Journal start!
I started playing Arknights Endfield just a hour ago and it's honestly extremely polished, it works on smartphones and on my PC smooth as butter. I still don't have a strong opinion on the story itself right now as it's still very early, but gameplay wise it's enjoyable even the factory building content. I'll make a post on it once I get enough of a view on story and content. Probably later today. I'll keep using this page to talk about the series as a whole.
