Eden Eternal Rule #4868: Don't forget to look cute while gathering your racial crafting materials!

Eden Eternal: A Basic Guide On Racial Crafting

by Sarah

In my last post about Eden Eternal, I covered all of the cash shop goodies and the various ways for you to throw money at the game. Today, I’m going to start talking about how to manage in the EE world without spending any real-life money at all! I’m planning [...]

This is probably misrepresenting Venetica. Oh well.

Venetica and ERPGs

by Mento

So hey, I haven’t written much lately. My bad. I’ve been super busy (at least in terms of internet blogging about games, which isn’t perhaps busy by any traditional sense of the word) writing about cutting down my Steam backlog in a daily series of blogs on Giant Bomb throughout [...]

Well, it's just concept art, but it sure is pretty~

Next Tales Of Game Teased In Jump Magazine

by Sarah

Well, it’s not much to go off of, but the world has gotten our first tiny sneak peek at what the next game in Namco Bandai’s “Tales Of” franchise may look like: So yeah, nothing too specific, just some pretty concept art. The main image does look like some sort [...]

Nocturne's Demi-Fiend has come to the Shin Megami Tensei MMO to kick your character's ass all the way across Tokyo. Probably.

The Demi-Fiend Descends Upon the Shin Megami Tensei MMO

by Sarah

Okay, first things first, let’s get the inevitable “wait, there’s a Shin Megami Tensei MMO?!” out of the way – because yes, there is, and it’s been running on both a Japanese and English/International server for years yet still seems to be widely unknown. If you’re curious, you can play [...]

An adorable eldritch horror. I wanna hug it. Fearfully.

To Strafe, Perchance To Doom

by Mento

A plasma blast from the past, Doom is an evergreen FPS from once-giants Id Software. It’s about some guy on Mars who shoots all the bad guys. It’s perhaps not a game that requires much of an introduction, though that is not to say that there isn’t a lot going [...]

Eden Eternal’s Cash Shop: Free to Play With a Side of Gambling

Categories: MMO Trip Reports
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Published on: April 29, 2012
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So I’ve been getting back into the swing of things with Eden Eternal over this past week, and while I surely don’t know everything, I feel like I am starting to get a handle on some aspects of the game.

I’ve mostly been focusing on my character that was already 39; once I hit 40, I swapped her from her previous Thief class to the Martial Arts class that unlocks at level 40. Since I finally achieved that goal (I’ve had my eye on Martial Arts since the moment I created her), I’ve mostly been working on leveling up her new class, getting her to 43 so that I could craft her some new gear, and doing my best to play the market enough that I could score her some decent cash shop gear as well. Today, I’m going to talk exclusively about the cash shop goodies – what they are, and the different ways to obtain them, and what I think about the whole setup (spoilers: just read the post topic).

So basically, there are special AP (Aeria Points) costumes, pets, and mounts. Now, when I say ‘costumes’, I’m going to be referring to all of the looks-changing items that cover up your basic, in-game gear. So “costumes” = AP boosting items that work in tandem with, not replacing, your in-game weapons and armors.

The items with diamond toggles near them are costumes - your actual stat-boosting gears are the things listed below them.

For costumes, it seems that most items are one of three ranks – basic (ie, just the costume – it will change your looks but nothing else), Alpha (will give a small boost, for example +5% critical damage from a certain Alpha rank back item), and the coveted Prime (the highest boost, so continuing the example that I gave for the alpha, it would be +10% crit damage for the same back item with a Prime rank). Since, as you can probably guess, the Prime rank items are the most in demand, they’re also the hardest to obtain as well as the priciest.

Look at all this cool stuff that I can't afford!

Now, as a note, if you’re solely interested in the looks and don’t really care about getting an alpha or prime version of a costume, then I’d suggest that you look into the Alpaca Capsule Machines in Tranquil Hill. It’s slightly more labor intensive than just AP spending your way to fashion victory, but the quests that give you the Alpaca Tokens do also reward you with Experience, Class Points, and money, so it’s not a bad deal at all. The rewards are random, of course, but you can end up with plenty of other handy things, like pet food or safety stones, even if you don’t get the costume you wanted on your very first try. You can read more about the Alpaca Capsule Machines & Tokens here, since I don’t really see the need to just reiterate what’s already a perfectly good guide.

Because even adorable anime fantasy worlds can't escape the lure of gambling.

In regards to pets, each type of pet has its basic form that can’t participate in combat, but can still pick up loot for you… but there are also many other forms of each “base” pet that give a wide range of combat abilities and player boosts. For example, if you look in the Pets/Mounts section of the current Item Mall, you can see the differences (in both abilities and price points) illustrated very clearly. The basic Himalayan Cat, at 499 AP, does nothing beyond pick up your drops and follow you around looking cute. The “Brave” Himalayan Cat’s cost jumps up to 2999 AP, and it gives the player a +10% Crit Dmg boost as well as giving the pet the ability to join in combat with basic attacks. The “Robust” Himalayan Cat, at a whopping 4999 AP, gives the same boosts as the Brave as well as having a higher durability (100/100 as opposed to the 50/50 – when the pet’s dura reaches 1, you either have to feed it or it can no longer be used in combat) and some special skills of its own (Ambush and Swift Attack, in this specific case). So as you can see, differences in abilities translate to VERY large price jumps in this game.

Adopt a virtual cat for almost $50 USD. The fact that it's not much less than a real cat's adoption fee is... either sad or funny, idk which.

It’s the same with mounts. Various mounts have different movement speeds – the basic alpaca freebie mount that the game gives you only has a 15% movement boost, as opposed to cash shop mounts like the Stalwart Sabretooth, while will run you 6999 AP (yes, that’s $69.99 in USD) in exchange for a 50% movement boost. There are also rarer mounts – things like dragons that can carry multiple people or seasonally-themed mounts like pumpkin stagecoaches for Halloween – that command very high in-game prices due to their ‘rarity whore’ appeal.

It’s worth noting that most of the desirable or limited-time weapons and costumes and such can’t actually be purchased straight from the Item Mall: to get what you want, you’re going to need either a lot of a luck or a lot of AP, since obtaining the newest items requires a whole lot of gambling.

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The Secret War: Facebook Game/Ad Prelude to The Secret World’s Beta

Categories: Game Promo/Merch
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Published on: April 27, 2012
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If you’re actively keeping track of coming-soon conspiracy MMO The Secret World, then you are most likely already aware of The Secret War, a pre-beta “social online experience” (translation: it’s a Facebook game) that lets you have your first taste of the game while giving you the opportunity to win such prizes like guaranteed access to the actual MMO when it goes into closed beta.

Come, advertise for FunCom via your Facebook page! We'll give you prizes, maybe!

There are other prizes – you can win a trip to Montreal, or things like (much cooler, imo) having your name written into the actual MMO’s lore/world. Regardless of the prize that you’re hoping for, supposedly the more time you spend playing the Facebook game, the higher chance you’ll have to win big.

The mini-game itself seems to basically be a thinly-veiled way to get you to tell your friends about the game. Basically, you have to recruit your Facebook friends as “agents” in your preferred faction (the personality test recommended that I join the Illuminati, so that’s what I went ahead and rolled, if you’re curious~ So I guess anyone reading this should totally join them as well so we can conquer Facebook together, or something?) in order to deploy them in missions to take control of certain world areas from the enemy organizations.

Apparently, it's my deepest, darkest, desire to wear creepy gasmasks and pose stylishly with guns.

You also gain points by doing “missions” (liking the game’s Facebook page – 30 points!) or posting stuff (“propaganda”) about the game on your Facebook wall, and the more of your friends who click your Secret War posts, the more points you get. Like I said previously, it’s a not particularly well disguised attempt at free word-of-mouth for the game, but if you’re interested in the prizes and have a Facebook friends list full of gamers, it’s not so bad. I’m not sure if I’ll really bother – to be honest, I really don’t use Facebook – but for those of you who do decide to play, good luck~

Sarah’s Backlog: AKA I Need To Actually Play The Games That I Buy

Categories: News & Announcements
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Published on: April 25, 2012
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So now that I’m finished with Devil Survivor 2 (you can read my thoughts here, if you haven’t already), I’m trying to think which console game I should go for next. If I was at all organized like Mento and actually remembered to use my Backloggery, this decision might be easier! But since I tend to be horribly about remembering to log into single-purpose sites like that one, I’m just going to go ahead and keep track of my backlog of games here, on-site. The link should be at the top of the page, but I’m gonna link it again anyway because I love redundancy:

Sarah’s Backlog

I’ve written out all the games that I could find while I was packing them up this week that I still have yet to finish (or, in some cases, even begin). Feel free to let me know which game you think I should prioritize and tackle before the others, if you have any opinions on the matter at all~

Fez Roh Dah!

Categories: Game Reviews
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Published on: April 24, 2012
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As you could tell by the title, I wanna shout about Fez for a bit, the new Xbox Live Arcade game by Phil Fish and the others at Polytron. Fez has been making all sorts of waves recently, given its storied, troubled background and the slightly, let’s say, incendiary comments Fish made on the creativity inherent in the current Japanese game development community, or apparent lack thereof.

It’d be all too easy for me to turn it around (so to speak) on Fez and talk about how puzzle platformers with a cutesy retro approach and at least one central gimmick is hardly a soapbox from which to deride the lack of creativity of others, but instead of doing that (or, I guess, concurrently with doing that), I’ll go on record to say that Fez is pretty great.

Protagonist Gomez, pre-hatwear.

One’s first playthrough of Fez is the sort of low-hassle Indie platformer we’ve all experienced a few times before, whether you’re a fan of Braid or PB Winterbottom or have spent any amount of time in Newgrounds‘ games section or Kongregate or Armor Games (all great time-waster sites, incidentally). The collectible cubes are lying around the topography waiting for you to figure out how to spin the world around in such a way to form a path to them. The universe is spread out as cuboid nodes on a map, so there’s some degree of Metroidvania-esque exploration to be done though the many branching areas. Otherwise, it’s a rather simple jaunt through a series of very pretty pixel worlds, which are filled with nice little graphical details such as cute pixel animals hopping around and a sky changing color as it slowly goes through a day/night cycle.

It’s the other half of the game where things start getting cerebral. The player will have encountered several rooms that, instead of presenting its golden prize from the offset, will require a puzzle of some sort to be solved beforehand. Doing so awards you “anti-cubes”, which are just as plentiful as their regular counterparts but far harder to find. These puzzles require you decrypt the in-game language, decipher the meaning behind oft-spotted glyphs formed of tetranimos (which are, as all gamers know, the shapes from Tetris) and occasionally go a little meta such as manipulating the console clock and using a QR code reader (though it’s purported that the QR puzzles have alternate solutions found elsewhere in-game for those without that technology).

The 2D worlds are actually 3D. But I won't tell if you don't!

Fez likes to envelop itself in mystery, possibly to prompt the sort of “what does this mean?” viral promotion that has, inevitably, surfaced from how vague some of the puzzle leads have been. A cynical viewpoint, perhaps, but it’s not hard to mistake intent given how successful it’s been in spreading awareness for the game.

So, ultimately, what am I saying about Fez? It’s a fine game, is what. It’s expansive for an Indie game, but not expensive. It’s colorful, cartoonish and bright, but also thoughtful, deep and subdued. It has the sort of metaphysical aspirations in puzzle design that the Myst games had prior (and Fool’s Errand prior to that), and given Fez’s predilection for gloriously rendered yet hauntingly lonely environs as well it’s clear Fish is a proponent of the Miller bros’ CD-ROM epic.

It doesn’t feel like a brand new paradigm in gaming, but rather a layered homage to one man’s fondest game experiences. I’d say that’s perhaps more than enough reason for anyone to want to share the experience, especially for only 800 MS points. Buy some below, and maybe use the other half for something less cute? Like Doom 2 perhaps.

Crystal Saga: Starting My First 2D Browser MMO!

Categories: MMO Trip Reports
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Published on: April 23, 2012
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Now, I already talked about the fact that I’ll be poking around Eden Eternal – but given that I tend to have a really hard time focusing on only one game, I’m also going to be looking into R2Games’ newest offering, Crystal Saga. I’m not terribly experienced with browser games – well, to be frank, the only browser-based MMOs I’ve ever played were Forumwarz and Kingdom of Loathing, and it’s safe to say that both were… rather unique experiences (but I have to admit to falling HARD for Forumwarz – I totally bought all the episodes and some upgrades to boot!) and probably not comparable at all to what I’m playing now.

...Why is your world named after a type of onion, though...? That's... kinda strange.

I’m currently a super-tough level 9 cleric-type character in Crystal Saga, and so far I’m enjoying it. It’s still at that very beginning part where I’m basically being an errand boy in a glorified tutorial, but I can already tell you a few things that I’m liking:

-The 2D sprites and backgrounds are really, really pretty. They’re not at Vanillaware levels of “holy crap why is this so beautiful it’s like staring into the soul of the Gaming Gods” (If you’ve played Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Odin Sphere, or GrimGrimoire – all of which I heartily recommend – then you know exactly the feeling I’m talking about), but definitely quite beautiful and enjoyable to look at. I’ve only unlocked two spells – my basic light-elemental shot and my basic heal – but so far, the casting animations are quite nice, with intricate glyphs on the ground as you cast.

Well, aren't you perfectly normal and friendly.

-The music is wonderful! I actually went and turned the music to 100% output and turned the sound effects way down, just so I could enjoy the music more. I’m actually currently idling in Kraken Beach as I type this, enjoying the soundtrack. For me, music is a huge part of making me love certain games – I first knew that I was going to fall in love with Tales of Legendia when I entered Fallingwater and heard this beautiful BGM, for example – so the fact that the OST here is already making me want to listen to it outside of actual playing time is pretty awesome.

-So far, the gameplay seems pretty normal/cliche for this type of game, skill trees and set classes and hp/mp potions and hotkeys, but I’ll keep an eye out for anything new (to me, at least) and make note of it in the future.

I GET THE PICTURE I'LL SIT DOWN OKAY

So yes, I’m definitely going to continue playing this game as well and am actually going to go right back to it after I hit publish! I’ll be sure to update with any more thoughts/opinions I have as I progress, and more details about the game itself as I learn how to play.

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