Breath of Fire: Right in the Feels

 Progression is slow going in Breath of Fire, but the storytelling is pretty brilliant. It takes round-about routes to get to certain points, but there's quite a bit of payoff once it happens.

I piddled about Tantar and Tuntar until I finally thought to talk to the chief again, d'oye. And he was like "Ryu, we need a proper wedding ring thingy, so go get it while we prep for the interspecies wedding"

Ok.

So he opened up a trap door, as usual, and I got...yes...another key. So I go back north to the cave by my big robot friend and find on the inside that the water level has been lowered because of the damn being broken. So I traverse this dungeon like all the rest with little incident and receive the ring.

 The fact that this chest kinda resembles a Boss Key chest from Zelda became slightly foreboding to me.

Went back to town and found that they had arranged the wedding *gasp* just in time for me to bring the ring!

Don't mind me, ladies, errand boy coming through.

And we commenced with the inappropriate marriage of dog and woman. No offense, Bo.

So we were thanked and let go. I took a nap at the inn and proceeded to leave. We were supposedly gonna take the robot over the river...but...

That dickbag had better ideas I guess. And like a classic cartoon villain he had it perfectly timed. So while we were all in this town celebrating a wedding...

The neighboring town went 'splodey. But before the General could do the same to us, the Robot inexplicably shuts down...weird right? So we go in to stop the bad guy.

I thought this was gonna be an easy fight, but was I ever wrong, wow!

Ok, who fed the General after midnight?

He turned into a Gremlin and proceeded to pound me to a pulp. In order to win this fight I had to have Nina casting Atk Up on Ryu and Bo as well as Fort to keep Bo's shitty defenses up. After that, essentially, Nina was healing on every round while Bo and Ryu slowly chipped away at this dude's health. Once he was at a sliver of health, he did the boss thing and became tougher. Every turn he was blowing fire worth 15-20 damage at the whole team. Nina had to keep on her toes and heal the lowest health dude for like a millenia before Bo finally shot him down.

After this, the Robot moved:

We got to the southern part where the broken bridge was. Then the saddest thing in the world happened. I was too sad to take a screenshot, but essentially, GAR hopped into the volcano and died so that he wouldn't hurt anyone ever again.

This was me

With the GAR's noble sacrifice came the eruption of the volcano which filled the southern river and hardened into stone so we could cross.

 From here on I will fight for GAR and everything he stood for...

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Adventures of GIANT ASS ROBOT

 I'm getting to that point where I'm addicted to playing this game now. And I have to give it props that despite its lack of subtle hints, it still give you things to look forward to. For a while now I've been waiting to do something with this GIANT ASS ROBOT. It was confusing me because I thought my E.Key would activate it for some reason. I dunno...Earth Key....giant stone robot....requires a key....can you see my line of reasoning?

Regardless. I now made the trek up to see my friend the GAR (an acronym, but as bonus knowledge, Gar is also the name of a character in Breath of Fire 3).

 I'm gonna be in you.

So I wound my way around the littler desert patch or whatever and entered via it's foot. Up the leg I go, seeign all the creepy wires and stuff, then found its heart.

 It's HEART is being ATTACKED! FOR REAL!

I couldn't let this injustice stand, so I went after the madman and his flunkies. They went down like bowling pins with my recently power-leveled heroes letting loose into them.

So after taking down the General AGAIN, we activated the robot with the new key we got from
Bruce Springsteen and then it started to walk.

 It walked all the way to the giant damn and then:

 BZZZZAAAPKABLOOEY! (That's a technical term)

 And then the damn was loose and our giant friend stood proudly beside the free flowing river. Thinking that my job was done I wanted to head south but then discovered again that my road was blocked. A bridge was broken. Frustrated I went BACK to the twin towns, who now seemed very happy, and heard why I couldn't progress from this guy:

Ask the NPCs: The Reckoning

So looks like I gotta solve some more stuff around here before I go. Maybe I can solve this guy's mental health problem....

Keep on gaming, Gamers.

-ME0

Breath of Fire: Tale of Two Thirsty Towns

 So I'm in town for the weekend and decided to scratch my RPG itch. So here are the results. I didn't get too far, but some nifty stuff happened and I wanted to show ya.

After picking up the controller I just went to playing. While in Wyndia I checked out the shops to make sure all my equipment was up to date and took off to the south. Wrong move, ME0. I was supposed to go into the castle dungeon and use their secret tunnels. It was only after I wandered around, going back to zombie-ville, levelling up a bit, until I realized I should probably check the blog to make sure I was going the right way. Good thing about blogs is, its a journey journal, and I should have checked it. So, I went ALL the way back to Wyndia and used the stupid tunnel to get across the humongous bridge to the East. Once across I found a copse of trees that said I couldn't enter because a big tree was blocking my way. So I went further south until I came upon a couple of towns.

They're called Tantar and Tuntar

One was full of wolf humanoids called The Forest Clan. The other seemed to be regular humanoids. Turns out, these guys are suffering a drought caused by a damn built by the baddies. The villagers say that there's a big Robot that can help out, but only the chief knows what to do. However, the chief said he had no clue. So I was confused and interrogated (pressed A when adjacent to) a bunch of people and one guy let let slip that he saw the chief go into the Forest of Despair, but the chief was in his house...odd?

Went back to Tantar (wolves) and the blue haired chief was pretty adamant about some kind of treasure that they didn't want to give to the Dark Dragons.

 So that didn't help the current problem.

 And neither did this guy...

That was when I found the blacksmith. A big dude in the wolf clan. He said he'd give me a Saw if I gave him an I.Ore. Which...for some odd reason, I apparently had...

And I'm not questioning it.

Then I made an immediate trek to the Forest of Despair.

Ryu Used Saw

It's Super Effective!

The forest was pretty creepy, and I must say I HATE the enemy called "Stool". For those of you who aren't  familiar with my hatred for poison, please go back to here: http://16bitwarriors.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-not-safe-to-go-alone-take-300-gold.html

So I weaved through the dark and spooky trees, trodding on many skeletons before coming across a stone building. Inside was another basic maze-like dungeon, but this one had sneaky floor drops in the middle of hallways. By the end I defeated three guards and saved the "Chief". The "Chief" took us to steal the bad guy weapons and locked us in a room. This is where the "Chief" said Pog would have a nice tasty snack.

Not so bad...

WRONG!

Pog and I went at it, and it took almost all of Nina's AP worth of healing, but we killed the sucker. The "Chief" could believe it and he was getting pretty angry but then this guy showed up...

It's Bo, yo!

Just in the nick of time, I got a sweet, range weapon dude to join me in a battle against...

The General!!!!

I currently forget if this guy had real significance. He very well coulda been the dude who fought Sara at the beginning? I'll read back and probly regret writing that...oh well. So the General went down pretty easy, seeing as Bo had some powerful moves (Frost is my fave) and I just got Nina to either heal or use E.Key. He had a few things to say about it though, and it wasn't even cliche...

I lie.

So that was that, the real chief was there now and said he'd try and figure out a way to move the rocks in the damn...but I already know the answer...oh well. Bo tells me he's go beef with the Dark Dragons, so he joins me.

 Breath of Fire is about diversity.

And we made it back through the spooky dungeon and the spooky woods. On the outside world, I quickly realized that characters beneath the top level of the party quickly advance due to speedy battles. So I leveled up a little and went back to Tantar and Tuntar. Wolf Chief still won't shut up about his treasure, and other chief seems to have failed on the new information thing...

Robot secret is in another castle.

And proceeds to add another step on this side quest. Oh well, at least I got a wolf-faced archer added to the group. Got one more slot before I get full-party action.

Keep on gaming gamers!

-ME0

Mega Man X: Holy Boss-Battles Batman!

So I demolished the rest of the old bosses in this one level, and fought a new robo-beast; which ended up having me face 6 boss fights in one level! SIX. I was running low on all counts of powers and energy tanks as the level progressed. It also felt like the bosses were a little more difficult than the first time I fought them... not that I DIED a whole lot. The fights just felt harder.

The first boss door (which again was pretty much as the start of the level) was the Armored Armadillo. I knew I had to electrocute him with my lightning shot to get rid of his armor, and then continuously do so until he died.

Don't worry, I'm not invisible, I just got hit by his forehead shot.

After defeating Armadillo, I made my way through some baddies and got myself to full health; just in time for the next boss door (which was pretty much a single hallway away.)

And within this doorway was that bastard who can actually turn invisible: Sting Chameleon. He was just as annoying as I recall, the first time we fought. Only THIS time, I found his weakness!

THE BOOM!... erang.

So I made my way out of his chamber, down a little drop where there was some health behind some pipes. I used the boomerang to snag them up (that thing is all kinds of handy, ain't it?)

Onto the next boss! Here I had to face off with Spark Mandrill! I already knew his weakness, so I could use my wonderful Ice Shot to freeze him whenever he was getting to close for comfort. I did not leave the battle unscathed however, as each one of his flying punches would knock me off the wall if I tried to avoid them that way.

You know what killed the dinosaurs? The ICE AGE!

So that was 3 bosses down, so I was imagining I would be facing a new boss right away, but I was wrong! I dove down into some water and instantly knew what was coming.

Hmm... I wonder who I'm fighting next?

Oooo... Surprise, surprise.

Octo-whatever his face is was a bastard. I very much did not enjoy fighting him. Mainly because I couldn't figure out his weakness, and also I couldn't remember how I beat him last time. So I switched rapidly through my powers and buster shots, trying to avoid his missiles and keep away from his whirlpool thang.

Then I killed him with his own powers; just for the hell of it.

Then I leapt out of the water and found another boss door. When I entered I saw the conveyor belt and knew right away I was to be facing Flame Mammoth. Last time I didn't have his weakness, and I knew I did this time. As far as I could tell, it seemed the tornado power did more damage to him. I jumped away from his fireballs, and soot shot, and blasted him down as much as I could.

I finished him off at the same time as getting knocked into the air by his fat-ass weight coming down.

So I had finished them all off. All them old guys. And the level wasn't over? Who was I supposed to fight next?... Some rather large robot, T-Rex head thing? This guy was annoying as hell. He killed me a fair amount of times, to be honest. He only had two attacks really. His upper half and lower half would split and move seperately attempting to hit me. The other is if both halves come together and shoot a large electric orb out at you. I had to dash under that one. You can't hang up on the wall to avoid it... It will launch at you.

Also, in trying to jump through the gap of top and bottom, the top would often be too fast and crush down on me, causing a fair amount of pain. How I ended up winning was getting into a rhythm of his movements and blasts; I scrolled through my powers, charging fully as well as I could to do the most damage possible. And in the end, it was still a damn close call.

HUZZAH! I won! Whew... That was DAMN stressful.

But I finished him off, that I did. And was then sent to the boss screen again. This HAS to be the final boss now; Sigma. I'm also curious as to whether I'll get some answers of some plot? Maybe?... Maybe I'm hoping too much. I guess we'll see.

Catch ya later gamers.

Mega Man X: Underwater Battle!

Alright. So, underwater levels never really were 'my thing' in most games. They make your character sluggish, unresponsive, and in general more difficult to avoid attacks. Happily it appears that SNES games (or just Mega Man X here) that they don't change all that much, except that cause your jumping to be slightly slower, but it actually enhancing my ability to choose where I fall when I leap. This level ended up being fairly lengthy, though might've just felt that way.

It started with shallow water which had robot water-bugs. They died with some buster shots. It got deeper fairly quickly and the first deep dive ran me face-to-face with some robot sea-horses who popped out of the ground and hurled themselves at me. They were rather annoying to be honest. I killed a bunch, and tried to keep moving, but they kept launching up from the ground! couldn't escape them. I kept blowing them up again and again, until I finally got out of their 'territory' and ran into these robot piranha things.

If you're wondering where I am in this picture; I'm inside the fish. It ATE me. It sucks in water and pulls you into it's belly. Luckily this doesn't do any damage and I can just shoot my way out, it's just an inconvenience. Next big thing was this guy:

There seems to be a trend of forced movement in this level, which I suppose makes sense, considering that it's underwater. Anyway, this guy didn't really have anything too special, he just sucked and blew, attempting to get me to fall into the pit of spikes. He also launched out these... robot snake-things which homed at me. I was hit by them a few times, but after continuously blasting him with my buster, and a couple other powers, he ended up dying. So I continued on my way, and these bombs started raining down from the surface. They weren't homing, but they were annoying. I moved as fast as I could through that area, and avoided the spikes... Then I heard some rumbling;

And thus, giant-snake-mini-boss thing popped up. It moved slow enough, and didn't shoot anything, so as long as I just kept myself away from where it's head was, I was alright. The only parts of the body I could hit were the head and the end of the tail. The body bounced my shots away. It took a bit to kill, because it would sometimes go back into the dirt, but it was just delaying the inevitable. It died, and dropped me some health and some energy for my ammo for my super powers, and the boss door was there shortly after. However, I didn't find a single power-up in the level so I did some back-tracking and found a rather large gap. I jumped over it before cuz I thought I'd die; but the camera moved down with me, so I decided to see how far down it would go.

I entered a cavern of some sort, and there was another giant-sea-snake-mini-boss thing. So I killed him, and then there was a health increase! I was so happy, and then promptly fell into a spike pit. so I fought my way back through the giant-sea-snake-mini-boss thing and went to slay the boss.

So this punk pointed and me, and said I was going down. So I was like 'Oh, you are SO going down.' This Octo-punk shot missiles. MISSILES! Luckily a charged shot usually destroyed the ones that would hit me, and then hit him, so I could plug away at his health that way. Again, I didn't have the power which was his weakness though, so I had to plug away his health normally. The regular buster/charge-shot combo seemed to be the most effective. So I killed him good.

So there are 3 bosses left, and the last 2 bosses I fought I didn't have their weaknesses... So, I hope I have the chameleon's weakness, because I think I'm gonna take him on next. Catch ya late gamers.