What are you playing now?

[JeremyR]

A game I play way too much of, Star Trek Online

 

And a game I spent way too much money on, blowing $150 just to buy a TOS era Constitution (along with 9 other ships, including the JJ Abrams Constitution and the Discovery version)

 

But watching it in game, it's worth it

[onmode-ky]

Geez, $150?!  I think I'm way too averse to spending money on virtual items to do that.  What were the other ships you got?  I hope you got a Miranda-class, for blowin'-up purposes.  A member of the VFX crew from DS9 once told me that we saw Mirandas in the show so often because they simply blew up really well. Of course, he meant the CGI model, not the original Reliant filming model (which, admittedly, had a stunt double for its death scene).

 

Your photos do look very nice, though.  Like we should have yellow or blue episode titles overlaid over those shots.

 

To my shame, what I've played most lately is continued assistance with my mother's Candy Crush Soda Saga.  The game never ends, a fact which affects my text file of beaten games; in terms of mobile (i.e., phone/tablet) games, while I'd beaten at least one each year since 2014, 2020 will have zero.  However, 2020 did have a PSP game beaten, making up for 2019's zero there.

 

Man, I wish I could still disable emojis in AtariAge.  That used to be available, but no longer.

 

onmode-ky

[JeremyR]

It's a lot of money, but it's worth it. Apparently they changed the look of the ship for Discovery and the upcoming Pike TV show to make it more "modern". But I think the classic look looks so good

 

[AXM]

Since the year is now over, I can announce that I beat a grand total of 121 games in 2020. That's a lot.
So it seems fair to list some of my favorites, in no particular order because I'm lazy.
Also I haven't played enough new games, so expect more than a few Most Awesome Games Played In 2020 Not Necessarily Released In 2020.

 

Favorite games
- Hades
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2
- Final Fantasy VII Remake
- Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
- Dragon Quest XI S
- Trails in the Sky the 3rd
- Danganronpa V3
- Demon's Souls
- Halo 2
- Pokemon Moon

 

"I can't believe I actually grew up and don't despise this anymore" Award
Call of Duty (the Cold War demo was fun)

 

"I felt miserable the whole way through" Award
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux
Honorable mentions: Resistance 2, Secret of Mana

 

My new year's resolution is to maybe play less games but more good ones. I really don't want to force myself to beat games I can't stand anymore.

[Atariboy]

Haven't been talkative lately. Been a strange few weeks and I haven't much been participating in my regular online haunts recently. I keep going to PSPMinis.com though out of habit only to quickly remember that our site no longer exists.

 

Things are getting more normal though and I've had the Wii U busy all week. About ten hours into my 2nd go around with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I finally took the time tonight to learn how to play a Wii U indie game called Suspension Railroad Simulator (It's a virtual recreation of an unique elevated commuter railway in Germany). I bought this on sale a year or two ago and couldn't figure out how to move, and quickly shelved it. I came back to it tonight and enjoyed myself sort of, but likely will never play it again unless I someday start uploading gameplay videos to YouTube (I'd like to start uploading videos of Atari 2600, 1970's and early 1980's arcade games, and more obscure modern games).

 

It's very primitive graphically, has some unintuitive controls, and has lots of quirks. Yet I found myself having some fun with it and went to the end of the line before turning it off. If anyone ever wants to play a D+ game that does a lot of things poorly yet manages to not completely fail at being a game, this one is your game. And I also did a run through route A in Star Fox on my Super Nintendo Classic Edition tonight (One of my favorite games and one I revisit quite frequently).

Edited January 3, 2021 by Atariboy

[JeremyR]

I think we were all wondering how you were doing. Glad you are feeling more normal.

 

I'm not entirely sure I've beaten 121 games in my whole lifetime. Granted, I play a lot of games that don't have endings (strategy games and MMORPGs) but I tend to lose interest about halfway through and never get back to it. I am still playing Hades. Still haven't beaten it. It's a good game for lunch time at work, since I seem to last maybe 25 minutes before dying. I did enjoy the Dragon Quest XI S demo on Switch, but never got around to buying it. And now it's on Gamepass, but I'm not sure I want to play it on PC

 

I actually had a Miranda class from a while ago; the game considers it a lousy ship and they gave it away for free. I tried flying it a while because it looks so nice, but it just isn't very good.

 

Most notably, in the 10 pack I got two other Constitutions, one from Discovery and the other from the JJ Abrams movies. The Discovery version does look pretty good

 

And then there is a variant of the Enterprise tv show Enterprise, apparently for a cancelled season of the show

 

 

And another that I really like is a variant of the Galaxy Class. I find that the third nacelle really fills up that awkward empty space in the regular one. Makes it less lopsided looking

Edited January 4, 2021 by JeremyR

[JeremyR]

Star Trek Online is the game that invented lockboxes (in video game). And in like the 10 years I've played it, I never won a ship from it...until now, amusingly with the 5 free keys (used to open a lockbox) they gave away for the game's 11th anniversary. 

 

It's the Mirror Universe version of the Constitution that apparently appeared on Discovery. I really don't understand how the Mirror Universe makes sense in prequels to the TOS, but eh. Pretty cool looking.

 

 

 

Edited February 1, 2021 by JeremyR

[JeremyR]

Here it is flying in a Dyson Sphere. The scale of the sphere is way off, you shouldn't be able to see curvature like that.

[onmode-ky]

On 1/1/2021 at 6:19 PM, AXM said:

- Trails in the Sky the 3rd

 

Man, you've beaten Trails 3, and I'm still barely into the first one since 2011.  Don't even own the second yet, and I'm not sure if I'll want to play it on PSP or PC.  How long did 3rd take you?  The Trails games are super-long, if I recall correctly.

 

On 1/4/2021 at 12:47 AM, JeremyR said:

I actually had a Miranda class from a while ago; the game considers it a lousy ship and they gave it away for free. I tried flying it a while because it looks so nice, but it just isn't very good.

 

And another that I really like is a variant of the Galaxy Class. I find that the third nacelle really fills up that awkward empty space in the regular one. Makes it less lopsided looking

 

I guess a Miranda would be lousy, considering they got blown up all the time on DS9.  Heck, even in the pilot episode's flashback to the Battle of Wolf 359, occurring years before DS9 proper, a Miranda-class ship (namely, Sisko's Saratoga) bit the dust.

 

I've always thought the 3-nacelle Galaxy-class (which, if you didn't remember, was from the alternate future shown in the TNG finale, "All Good Things...") looked unwieldy, actually.  Basically, the opposite opinion from yours.  It looked the part of an outdated design with parts tacked on to bring it up to par with then-current classes.  Then again, I also never thought the Galaxy looked lopsided to begin with.  The flattened-oval shape of the saucer was kind of strange, though.  The elongated oval of the Sovereign's saucer felt better, which might be something I'd say for Voyager's Intrepid class if not for that ship's tiny warp engines, which didn't mesh well with the much longer saucer.

 

On 2/1/2021 at 3:34 AM, JeremyR said:

Star Trek Online is the game that invented lockboxes (in video game). And in like the 10 years I've played it, I never won a ship from it...until now, amusingly with the 5 free keys (used to open a lockbox) they gave away for the game's 11th anniversary. 

 

It's the Mirror Universe version of the Constitution that apparently appeared on Discovery. I really don't understand how the Mirror Universe makes sense in prequels to the TOS, but eh. Pretty cool looking.

 

It actually does make sense, in that one of the last episodes of Enterprise revealed that the USS Defiant from the TOS episode "The Tholian Web" (Constitution-class NCC-1764, not the Defiant-class NX-74205 that frequently appeared in DS9--and yes, I've had these registry numbers memorized for decades), previously only known in Star Trek lore to have vanished, turned out to have been transported into the mirror universe and back in time.  Mirror Captain Archer and crew took command of it.  Then, almost a hundred years later, in Discovery, the mirror universe once again had a connection to the normal universe.

 

I've actually gotten a bit further in Black Rock Shooter: The Game lately.  After having put BRS on the back burner at the beginning of November, which was after I'd unlocked the first of the many post-game EX missions (by unlocking the first ending, then the better ending, and also beating the PSS and Nana 3-mission sets of post-game content), I came back to BRS in mid-February.  That was a much shorter hiatus than the seven years between my beating Stage 1 and starting Stage 2.  I've currently unlocked and cleared the first and second boss rematches.  On the way to the second one, I completed one of the objectives, perfecting all the bike missions, that I'd been curious about ever since 2013, when I first encountered the bike levels and then put the game on the back burner.  The two EX bike missions seem easier to me than the three from the normal game.  During those three, it's pretty much up to you to decide when you need to use the guns (which you manually charge up via near-misses avoiding bike collisions), and it essentially comes down to a matter of when you feel like you can't change lanes fast enough anymore to avoid collisions.  In the EX missions, though, you're more or less told exactly when you need to use the guns, so that tactical planning aspect is missing.  The difficulty in the EX missions stems from the fact that they will actually repeat segments indefinitely until you do something; in the first one, if you crash during a segment, it will repeat, and if you don't shoot the guy at the end of the last segment, that one will repeat; in the second one, in each segment, if you don't charge your guns and shoot Mazuma, the current segment will never end.  So, in the first one, as long as you don't crash (which isn't that hard) and charge the guns just once, for the end, you're fine.  And in the second, well, dodging a particular one of Mazuma's attacks that involves waiting for him to finish charging, that has some timing you have to get down, but other than that, it's not that bad.  Anyway, it was nice to get past a part that, in 2013, I'd thought might give me trouble in the game (and which some players say is one of the hardest parts of the game).

 

onmode-ky

 

P.S. My list of games beaten in 2021 is still empty. . . . I also haven't restarted playing Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed (PSV) since I went dormant with it in August.

[AXM]

17 hours ago, onmode-ky said:

Man, you've beaten Trails 3, and I'm still barely into the first one since 2011.  Don't even own the second yet, and I'm not sure if I'll want to play it on PSP or PC.  How long did 3rd take you?  The Trails games are super-long, if I recall correctly.

I'll list my in-game play time for all three, 'cause that wouldn't make sense otherwise. I tried talking to NPCs as often as possible (their dialogue updates very often) and cleared every marked side-quest.

 

FC: 41:19:16 (Steam: 46.9 hours)

SC: 69:56:47 (Steam: 71.9 hours)

3rd: 56:40:57 (Steam: 49.6 hours)**

 

Mind you that I made very, very good use of the Speed Up button both in-battle and in fields (the time counter speeds up with the game only in-battle)**: these games have incredibly slow battles and a lot of walking -- I'll be honest, I would have never beat them without it, especially SC.

For that reason alone, do play them on PC if possible.

 

**The 3rd is much more battle-heavy, hence the huge discrepancy. FC I might have dropped it before restarting it, not sure, I forgot.

[JeremyR]

On 3/1/2021 at 7:45 PM, onmode-ky said:

It actually does make sense, in that one of the last episodes of Enterprise revealed that the USS Defiant from the TOS episode "The Tholian Web" (Constitution-class NCC-1764, not the Defiant-class NX-74205 that frequently appeared in DS9--and yes, I've had these registry numbers memorized for decades), previously only known in Star Trek lore to have vanished, turned out to have been transported into the mirror universe and back in time.  Mirror Captain Archer and crew took command of it.  Then, almost a hundred years later, in Discovery, the mirror universe once again had a connection to the normal universe.

 

That's what doesn't make sense though. If the Mirror Universe had a Constitution class ship 100 years before the regular universe, why are they still using them 100 years later?

[onmode-ky]

On 3/5/2021 at 12:01 AM, JeremyR said:

That's what doesn't make sense though. If the Mirror Universe had a Constitution class ship 100 years before the regular universe, why are they still using them 100 years later?

 

If I remember right, they aren't.  The stolen starship from the future was used to stage a coup, and the new ruler of the mirror universe's Terran Empire (and presumably succeeding rulers) basically used it as a personal WMD to force subjugation.  It was not copied, and if its technology did get cannibalized, it was not obvious in any episodes.  Its origin remained a secret, and I don't believe it actually appeared in Discovery outside of archives and discussions (at least not in season 1, which is all I have so far).

 

I'm now working toward the boss 5 rematch in the post-game content of Black Rock Shooter: The Game, and two of the most recent missions I've played have stories of frustration behind them--minor spoilers are included, if that's a problem.  The first one is the last (of three) post-game boss 4 mission before his rematch.  It's straightforward, except for an optional (and hidden, actually, until you do it) Challenge (achievement) that you can complete to get an upgrade on BRS-chan's short-range, area-effect bomb skill.  Namely, if you kill one of a particular enemy with that skill, you'll get the upgrade.  Unfortunately, this turns out to have a high probability of being super tedious; once you get into a battle with the enemy you have to kill, it only comes within range of the bomb skill at random, and then moves back out of range pretty quickly.  You could conceivably use the stun snipe skill to freeze it while it's in range, except 1) stun snipe requires a lock-on, and this particular enemy has a frequently used lock-jamming skill, and 2) the delayed detonation of the bomb skill means that the stun effect can wear off before the bomb blows, letting the enemy get back out of range first.  My initial, exploratory playing of the mission took a loooong time before I had a bomb kill the guy.  So, when I took on the mission for keeps, after clearing out the other enemies in the battle and wearing down his life to a sliver, I tried just tossing a bomb out and seeing if he would happen to walk into range when it blew--and he DID! ? By pure luck, I nailed him and got the skill upgrade lickety split. . . . Unfortunately, the mission still dragged on for longer than I had intended, nearly 15 minutes in the end.  What happened was that in the middle of a later battle, my PSP battery ran out.  I quickly plugged in and continued the fight, but what had happened while the system was putting itself to sleep was that the enemies had taken off nearly half of my life.  In my rush to get back on the offensive, I screwed up the order of my attacks and ended up doing less damage, lengthening the battle.  Then, I spent the next battle mostly not fighting, instead activating the healing skill and waiting for it to incrementally refill my HP.  So, a big chunk of time saved by quickly obtaining the skill upgrade was lost to effects of and recovery from the power outage. ? Still, I think the amount of time saved, over the expected length of that particular battle when I don't get lucky, was probably a lot more than the time lost to the outage.

 

After that mission and then the boss 4 rematch, I had my exploratory run of the first post-game boss 5 mission.  In this one, the boss (on your comms) describes a "color," and then you need to destroy the enemy of that color.  Get it wrong, and you fail the whole mission; even if you've gotten four right, a wrong fifth answer will require you to retry the mission.  The first description (maybe I should note that the rest of this paragraph spoils the first two of the correct sequence for the mission) was of someone being girl-crazy, basically always chasing skirts.  In the immediate vicinity, I only saw one enemy, who was pink, so I thought, "Ah, a feminine-associated color, so that should be it."  Nope, mission failed.  My next try, I ran around and discovered a red enemy, kind of hidden in a shadow.  "Ah," I thought, "the color of love, so that must be it."  Nope again, mission failed.  On my third try, not finding any other enemies in the immediate vicinity, I decided to cross a terrain feature that split the environment in half.  Once on the other side, I noticed a green enemy and thought, "Hmm, maybe the color of jealousy, over romance, is what I'm supposed to look for?"  It turned out to be the correctly colored enemy . . . but not for the reason I had thought.  The green was actually for boss 4, because that's his color scheme; the clue referred to him because he is the girl-crazy one of the bosses.  So, each clue was actually describing a boss, not a color directly!  Ah, now that I knew that, the rest would be smooth sailing, right?  Spoke too soon--the next clue, which referred to someone who sucked up to superiors and trashed underlings, had me trying all five remaining colors of enemy before I got to the right one.  To some degree, every boss in the game sucks up to the final boss, and none of them actually have direct underlings but do talk down to all humans and even some of their comrades (I should note that the final boss' color was actually here, but I tried it out despite her having no superiors because I'd thought this enemy's color was referring to the highest-ranked lieutenant (who, it turns out, is inexplicably not represented in the mission), whose color is black/gray, which is present on these enemies as trim color).  The correct answer was the single one I'd thought was absolutely not the right one!  That would be gold-colored boss 3, which is a brother-sister pair, the only non-singular boss; the clue talked about ONE person, so it seemed like it couldn't possibly be talking about the pair, hence my trying everyone else's color first, even as they seemed increasingly less like a fit for "boss suck-up and minion abuser."  But no!  The clue actually referred to only the sister of the pair, because she (sometimes) punished her brother--not an explicit underling, FYI--for subpar performance.  But if you ask me, she wasn't much of a suck-up to the boss, so the clue didn't fit her that well.  Anyway, I got the remaining colors in the right order, but these first two were driving me nuts for a while.

 

Incidentally, with the boss 4 mission discussed earlier, the boss 4 rematch mission it unlocks, and then the boss 5 mission discussed directly above, assuming you've been completing all Challenges as they become doable and have been doing the EX set of post-game missions in order of boss rematches (i.e., do all boss 1 missions to unlock her rematch, then beat her, then do all boss 2 missions to unlock his rematch, then beat him, etc.), you'll then finish off all Stage 4 Challenges, then all Stage 3 Challenges, then all Stage 1 Challenges, one immediately after the next; each of these three missions takes care of the last remaining Challenge in its respective stage setting.

 

Lastly, back in our old forum, I once discussed how upon getting BRS-chan above Level 30, the stat boosts from each level-up become significantly smaller than they had previously been.  I've now reached the Level 50 level cap, and I can say that just for the max HP stat, there is a pattern to the boosts from leveling up.  For the last eighteen level-ups, a six-long boost pattern is repeated three times: +15, +13, +15, +14, +14, +14.  To be more accurate, the pattern is in place for the last twenty level-ups, because there's +14, +14 before the first of the three six-long boost patterns.  However, there is no pattern for the other three stats.  They just dwindle to alternating between +0 and +1 (between +1 and +2 for SKL) without any noticeable pattern, and for going from Level 42 to Level 43 in particular, it's really bad: ATK+0, DEF+0, SKL+1 (and maxHP+14).

 

That's all for today's BRS report!

 

onmode-ky

 

P.S. Thanks for your Trails completion time data, AxelMill.  I'll have to think about whether I want to deal with the absence of speed-up in the PSP version of SC.

[JeremyR]

On 3/22/2021 at 7:45 PM, onmode-ky said:

If I remember right, they aren't.  The stolen starship from the future was used to stage a coup, and the new ruler of the mirror universe's Terran Empire (and presumably succeeding rulers) basically used it as a personal WMD to force subjugation.  It was not copied, and if its technology did get cannibalized, it was not obvious in any episodes.  Its origin remained a secret, and I don't believe it actually appeared in Discovery outside of archives and discussions (at least not in season 1, which is all I have so far).

 

But in Mirror, Mirror, the ISS Enterprise is literally identical to the USS Enterprise.

 

Anyway, here is another new ship, the the AFS Knievel 

 

 

It STO, the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons (as well as Cardassians and even Dominion) have joined forces into an alliance. It's a bit contrived, but they don't want to make separate content for the different factions. And that ship is a Romulan-Klingon design

[onmode-ky]

Back in the old PSPMinis forum, I posted about changes that happened to the timeline in Black Rock Shooter: The Game when you had BRS-chan defend two guys early on (when revisiting the now-question-marked Stage 1 Mission 2 after the initial game clear).  I didn't do a real, complete list of everything that changes later on as a result, though, so here it is now (note: "SxMy" means "Stage x Mission y"; oh, and MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT throughout):

 

### Mission effects of Dully and Lars' S1M2 survival leading up to Better End (* denotes required missions for Better End) ###

 

S1M3: opening dialogue by Rothcall and Phobos differs (Phobos much less angry); Dully and Lars are visible in Phobos' group when he talks

S1M5: Dully and Lars are visible in Phobos' group post-boss, and each has a newly added line; both are visible in closing long shot of mission

 

S2M1*: Dully and Lars are introduced to BRS along with rest of PSS; Marion refers to twelve humans left instead of ten; Dully and Lars must both be spoken to as part of mission (like everyone else, two responses each; Lars' first gives polar bear mascot to BRS (new scene))

S2M2: Dully and Lars can both be talked to (a single, one-line response each) while at base; during bike mission, Dully has a line replacing a line by Phobos that wished Dully were there

S2M3: during bike mission, Dully and Lars have two newly added lines each (both speak once in the same two intermission conversations); at end of mission, Marion assigns them as escorts for Alexei/Chris/Xiaomin prepping Draco (Albert alone remains unassigned in both mission versions)

S2M4: during bike mission, Dully has a line replacing a similar line by Bob

S2M5: post-boss, BRS and Rothcall refer to and name the twelve remaining humans, no longer ten

S3M1: during mission, Dully has a newly added line

S3M4*: (new scene) pre-boss, Marion sees BRS' polar bear mascot and tells her about the passcode-protected message in it

S3M5*: while wandering, BRS includes Dully and Lars when calling out to all PSS members; (new scene) before departure on the bike, Nana retrieves her own polar bear mascot from the house and asks BRS what the passcode is

S4M2*: (new scene) at end of mission, Nana tells BRS that every Gray got a polar bear mascot from Dr. Gibson, and that pressing on its nose invokes the prompt to give the passcode, none of which are known by any Grays--maybe because they, being Grays, forgot, or Dr. Gibson forgot to tell them, or maybe there are simply no messages

S4M5*: (new scene) post-boss, after Nana runs away, BRS accesses Noah Project personnel files on the hidden base's computer and tries using Dr. Gibson's birth year, 1999, as the polar bear mascot's passcode; the code works, and the message says that he forgot to tell the Grays the bear codes, which are all the same, and that BRS may be a White, not a Gray, with much better memory; he asks BRS to pass on a message to her sisters: survive, no matter the hardships

S5M1: pre-mission, after remembering Dr. Gibson's request that she tell her sisters, BRS now says she will, instead of asking what he wants her to tell them

S5M3*: (new scene) BRS finds Nana's polar bear mascot on the floor after the boss rush, listens to its message (contents not revealed to viewers), and says, "Nana, yokatta ne" ("Nana, good for you")

S6M1*: (new scene) post-mission, after Nana says BRS is not the only one who can fight, BRS tells her to forget about amends and betrayal, that they need to survive together, and asks if she wants to hear a message from Dr. Gibson; after the John Doe attacks BRS, Nana shoots it, causing it to drop her and allowing BRS to engage it; after beating it, BRS plays the polar bear mascot message for Nana and viewers (reveals that Dr. Gibson gave her her name (which is one way to say 7 in Japanese), due to the number 7 having serendipitous occurrences in both his and her lives), and asks the weakened Nana to wait there for her

S6M2*: pre-boss, no polar bear mascot anymore among Nana's clothes (which are no longer her clothes anymore, but rather another sister's); (new scene) post-boss, BRS runs toward Nana, calling out her name; during credits roll, scene excerpts from S6M1'S new scene no longer have obstructing interlacing effects; post-credits scenes in hidden base and in arctic now show Nana beside BRS

 

[no changes in the three PSS missions unlocked by initial game clear]

 

That's everything changed or new on the way to Better End.  Really strange how so many little things get changed in missions that aren't required by the game to achieve Better End--maybe the result of the game director deciding late in development to unmark certain missions from the required list, to lessen repetitiveness.

 

On 3/23/2021 at 11:51 PM, JeremyR said:

But in Mirror, Mirror, the ISS Enterprise is literally identical to the USS Enterprise.

 

Anyway, here is another new ship, the the AFS Knievel

 

It STO, the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons (as well as Cardassians and even Dominion) have joined forces into an alliance. It's a bit contrived, but they don't want to make separate content for the different factions. And that ship is a Romulan-Klingon design

 

What I meant was that the Defiant's presence in the Archer-era mirror universe had no perceptible effect on standard Starfleet technological progress.  So, they still managed to develop Constitution-class starships along "normal" timelines, since the Defiant was kept as a personal secret hammer by the imperial rulers.  Heck, maybe it was destroyed long before their own Constitution class was developed.

 

When you say "another new ship," do you mean in your own STO fleet, or just new to the game?  It looks pretty good.  Nifty hammerhead shark vibe going on.  Of course, it's worth mentioning that the original Klingon Bird-of-Prey itself is a bit of a Klingon-Romulan design, what with the name, bird motif, and cloaking device having originally been Romulan concepts.  The Klingon BOP's debut in STIII:TSFS came out of early versions of the script having the enemies be Romulans, and the similarity was later explained as the design having come about from the Klingon-Romulan alliance which had decades earlier resulted in Klingon battle cruisers being used by Romulans, in the TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident."  Personally, I've always thought the Klingon BOP looked much cooler than the Romulan BOP.  I actually have a Klingon BOP toy with functional variable-geometry wings.  Sadly, no functional cloak.

 

onmode-ky

[onmode-ky]

Continuing with Black Rock Shooter: The Game, I had some trouble with the end of the third EX mission for boss 5, disturbingly titled "Suicide TV," before I managed to get through it.  Since there doesn't seem to be much helpful info online about that mission's finale, I thought I'd write up something here, for any future players in need.

 

The ending is a tumultuous barrage consisting of nineteen Nafe Toys ("Nafe"--which is pronounced with two syllables, kind of like "cafe"--is boss 5, a loudmouthed spoiled-brat type) coming at you in waves of three at a time (the final wave is just one Nafe Toy).  A Nafe Toy attacks by launching itself into the air, landing in front of you, and self-destructing; at the level cap, BRS-chan will still die from a single Nafe Toy attack if not blocking, and with blocking will still lose more than half her full HP.  The sole discussion of this mission that I found online, a GameFAQs forum thread, focused on using the most powerful multi-target attack skills in the game to take out some of the Nafe Toys, then using the temporary invincibility skill Absolute 0 (or its 00 upgrade) to survive when your attack skills are depleted, along with using the Ignition skill to replenish the other equipped skills.  However, if you're playing like me, you don't have the most powerful attack skills in the game yet, because those come from Challenges for one of the EX missions for boss 6 (which are available to play already, yes, but I decided to do the EX missions grouped per boss, in their order).  And, given that the Nafe Toys are suicide bombs, you don't particularly need to attack them to get rid of them.

 

The real key to efficiently dealing with the Nafe Toy waves is recognizing that you don't take damage from them when they impact.  There is a half second or so before they detonate, which is when you actually get hurt (killed).  Being able to stay where you are while a Toy is landing smack in front of you helps in two ways: 1) you won't dodge too early to your other battle position, which might mean dodging right into a previously landed Toy who isn't done blowing up all the way yet, and 2) Nafe Toys newly arrived to the battle will target where you currently are when they jump, meaning you can lure them to the position you're preparing to leave rather than the position to which you're dodging.  Indeed, it may be that with proper dodge timing, the entire battle can be survived with no use of any skills or blocking; however, I did try entirely using last-second dodges once, after having already beaten the mission, but one dodge still had me scooting into an explosion--fortunately, I did already have Absolute 00 active, so while there was an audible hit sound, no damage was taken.

 

At any rate, my survival plan for my first successful go was this:

 

- equip Defender+, Skill Boost+, Ignition, and Absolute 00 for the battle, and enter it

 

- dodge the first two waves (Toys #1-6), without using any skills; both can be timed so that all three Toys in each wave target your current position before anyone detonates, and then you dodge to the other battle position

 

- waves 3 through 6 complicate things by staggering the Toys' intra-wave arrival and launch times; activate Skill Boost+, then Absolute 00 (the boost lengthens the invincibility period to something like 9 to 10 seconds--then again, I think I counted kind of fast, so maybe it's more like 7 to 8 seconds); count to 9 (or 7?) as the Toys rain down, then dodge to the other position, activate Defender+ (temporary DEF increase, which will at least help you hold onto more HP if you're hit while blocking), activate Ignition (reenables the other three skills immediately), activate Skill Boost+ again, then Absolute 00 again, and count to 9 or 7 before dodging to the other position again

 

- keep an eye on the display in the bottom left corner of the screen that shows how many enemies remain, and try to dodge what's left now that both your activations of Absolute 00 have ended (Ignition doesn't become available again for 2 minutes after it's used, though you could get the same effect again if you're willing to use any rare-drop Max Charge items you may have), but if anything can't be dodged--i.e., you'd be dodging into an explosion--hold position and block for your one survivable hit (I guess you could survive more than one if you feel like using health packs)

 

In my first successful run of the mission, I still had a few Toys to deal with when my second Absolute 00 ran out, but I managed to dodge everything afterward.  So, even without any attempt at attacking, allowing Nafe Toys #1-19 to all successfully land and detonate, it should be possible to survive the rain without too much trouble.  Heck, even if you don't have Absolute 0 or 00 and haven't reached Level 50 yet (but are at least at a high enough level to survive a single hit while blocking), as long as you have plenty of health packs and a keen eye for when it's safe (and unsafe) to dodge, you might be able to survive.

 

Mind you, I described this as having given me "some trouble," but it really only amounted to one failure at the finale (dodged into a Toy's death throes) followed by a bunch of experimenting at early parts of the mission, to see when it was safe to dodge, how long boosted Absolute 00 lasted, how effective Defender+ was when blocking, etc.  What was really "some trouble" was the following mission, the rematch with Nafe.  I died or used up an unacceptable number of health packs three or four times before I finally passed that with a net gain/loss of 0 items (i.e., I used a 100%-health item, which was then replenished by a drop from defeating Nafe).  Nafe's stupid floating things (kind of like Gradius options, come to think of it) take off a surprising amount of health, even with BRS-chan at Level 50.

 

onmode-ky

[onmode-ky]

I wrapped up all of Black Rock Shooter: The Game's post-game content in early May--well, actually, it was the end of April when I first did it as a test run, but the run where I actually saved, and then also refilled my inventory to full, was a few days later.  The final mission, in which you first fight every previous boss (but each with only one of their normally two life bars), was almost easy, thanks to having finally acquired the most powerful attack skills in the game; if I were quick and lucky, I could actually take them out before they even had a chance to do anything.  The last part of the mission, defeating a souped-up White Rock Shooter (the final boss of the main game), still with two life bars, wasn't that bad, either . . . because I allowed myself to use two of the Max Charge rare-drop items that immediately recharge all your skills--hey, it's the final battle of the entire game, so where else am I going to use them?

However, getting those two items again, to fully stock my inventory for my final game save, took a while, so that was the trade-off.  I replayed Stage 2's final mission over and over again, trying to get that stage boss to drop a Max Charge, reloading whenever he dropped something else (a health pack) instead.  The nonstop reloading eventually got so tedious that I came to think, "Hmm, maybe the item to be dropped at the end of the next mission played is already predetermined as part of the save data, so that the first time playing after a reload is always going to be the health pack and not the Max Charge," so I began reloading after two failed attempts instead of one.  I have no idea if that hypothesis was true, but hey, I did get the Max Charges fully refilled in my inventory on a second run of the mission after a reload.

In the end, my final save file for BRS has 35:44:39 time taken.  I believe this is far longer than the typical player's playthrough of the entire game (as is normal with me playing any game, of course), but I'm not entirely sure why.  I was actively trying to minimize time recorded into save data, hurrying through areas and not doing as much of my usual leisurely exploration, but even just beating the main game for the first ending took me 22:33:12--still much longer than most people would take.  Perhaps, though, it all comes down to how I played the battles, rather than how I spent time outside battles, because I always tried to finish battles with full life and no items used (i.e., I wouldn't kill the last enemy until the health regeneration skill had fully replenished my life).  On any single battle, that might add a small bit of time, and maybe all those small bits together tacked hours upon hours onto the overall time.

At any rate, I enjoyed all that time spent with BRS enough that I'm actually replaying all the story missions right now, but with the alternate costumes equipped (and with stealth mode activated, so no enemies chase me).  Currently about halfway through the story.

I should also note that, while I was wrapping up BRS on my PSP, I also played a little bit of Breath of Fire III (for PSP, the download from the North American PS Store) on my PSV.  I got hung up when I discovered that having one of the party characters kick NPCs might yield items or money . . . which led me to start backtracking in order to kick people I'd already passed.  That never ends well.

 

onmode-ky

 

P.S. Something I'm not playing now, despite having received it about a month ago: my Kickstarter backer copy of R-Type Final 2, with soundtrack CD, art book, Kickstarter slipcase, and keychain.  After all, I can't play it until I have a PS4 or PS5.

[onmode-ky]

After I finished my replaying of BRS with alternate costumes equipped, I tried out one of my few 2021 game purchases, Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection (shortly before the PSP's PS Store closed for real, I bought Pandora's Reflection and inviZimals: The Lost Tribes as my final on-the-handheld-itself purchases).  I took a loooong time to play less than 2 hours of saved game time (a bunch of game time was discarded, spent searching for hidden event points) to reach the end of Chapter 1.  It's been pretty fun, kind of like a mini RTS, but even though it looks like a major game mechanic, summons, only got introduced in Chapter 1's final stage, I'm putting the game aside now to go to some other titles.  Probably some more Breath of Fire III and Hyperdimension Neptunia U.

 

After BRS, I also played around with The Lost Tribes, using the PSV and its built-in camera in place of pulling my PSP camera (which came with my purchase of the original inviZimals in 2010) out of mothballs.  Again, I didn't get far in the game's actual campaign, but I still had fun with the innovative AR interactivity.  Though it didn't catch on in the US, the inviZimals series really was a standout expansion of the PSP's capabilities.

 

onmode-ky

 

P.S. If I remember right, one of the several PSN avatars that come from Pandora's Reflection's character portraits is of a frog character.  Well, now that I've played some of the game, I can say that his presence as a PSN avatar is very, very odd, because he dies at his debut in the game.  Okay, I don't know--maybe he somehow comes back to life later, but where I am in the game, he's *ahem* croaked by suicide.

[Atariboy]

Been busy playing a lot of Super Nintendo games lately. I've done a full 100% run in Super Mario World, I've finished Super Metroid, I've finished F1 Race of Champions (First time I did anything more than briefly demo it), I've finished Top Gear, I'm 1/3rd of the way through Super Mario Bros. 3 in Super Mario All-Stars, I'm about halfway through F1 Race of Champions II (First time playthrough), I just reached the dark world in Link to the Past, and I have a save in progress on Top Gear 2.

Edited October 29, 2021 by Atariboy

[Sniper D. Luffy]

hooked on crystal, and one little other indie game