My Night With Lucifer

I just put down the controller after finishing the Lucifer fight and saving my second cycle game data.

Lucifer had used Dekaja and Dekunda back-to-back the last round. I was pretty sure it was all over. He would use Root of Evil and some other attack and that would probably be enough to wipe my team with everyone fully un-buffed. Aaah man, after an hour beating on this guy it was all over. There was no way I would live another round.

It's not like I had anything left in reserve either. I had blown through all my special item candy: all the somas and bead strings were gone. I was down to a few candy drops and some life stones. My second and third string crew were dead and cold on the ground. I'd used them up and been hiding behind their corpse pile for awhile now. Pixie didn't have time or mana to bother patching them up. Sure I could swap in some level 40-50 junk I hadn't bothered to fuse up but that would be pointless. Might as well just use my last round to attack.

That last round was all I needed. My last focused attack took him out. Victory, after at least 1 hour of hanging on by just the fingernails with Debilitates and Fog Breaths, and lucking out with no dual Dekaja/Dekunda rounds.. with a full party wipe clearly in sight next round. I don't think I've had any boss battle quite like it in a turn-based game.

I had kind of backed into a build that worked for the fight just through building up skills I tended to favor throughout the game. Obviously I had pierce, but also a +30% health ability, focus, avenge, and a few elemental resists. My biggest bit of luck though was having my original pixie fusion demon when I finally made it down to that special room in the 5th Kalpa of the Labyrinth of Amala. Without her heal I wouldn't have made it. But it certainly wasn't an optimal party. My main character was only level 82 and was the only one with Pierce. Harlot had focus but not pierce. So not a lot of damage going out every round.

Anyway, I got lucky and I'm pretty happy about that. Making you fight the "final" boss and Lucifer directly afterward is a little rude, but that's Nocturne. It didn't bother pulling many punches.

SMT: Nocture - We Need More Games Like This

SMT Nocturne is a great game. It's the kind of game I would like to play more of. The puzzles were good. There were plenty of surprises. Combat is fun and the strategic bit between dungeon crawls and combat is pretty good - demon fusing and building up useful powersets.

Yes, it has problems. I'm not going to bother ripping into the story and characters of an 8+ year old JRPG, especially one that didn't seem to have much of a localization budget. The story is a pretty standard Creation Myth with all the typical baggage that goes with that. Some people seem to get something out of it. The random battles got pretty bad in the last few levels. Frequently I couldn't walk more than 4 floor tiles between fights - maybe 2-3 seconds. Thankfully retreat is an option.

The optional Labyrinth levels were great, especially the last two. I actually had to take a few notes for the 5th Kalpa to find my way through. Most of the dungeon crawling was pretty good. Which works out because there isn't much more to the game.

I just remembered the little box-puzzle-game hidden away in the Manikin city. It was amazing! It's not something I ever imagined would be in the game. I could only make it to level 16-17 or so before my head hurt.

Not being a fan of anime or JRPGs in general, I wasn't expecting much out of this game. It was a massive surprise.

One of my favorite things to do while playing games is to get to places I'm not supposed to be able to. Usually this means looking around for holes in the geometry and testing the limits of the collision detection system. Looking for surfaces that don't line up, areas with odd concave protrusions, or anything "glitchy" in the movements I might notice while just playing through the game. Lately Mass Effect 3 multiplayer has been my glitch-hunting playground, and glitching has been good.

When Bioware introduced the biotic charge ability to the vanguard class in Mass Effect 2 I just about had a seizure of pure joy. This is the kind of movement ability that just blows open the world for movement exploits. It delivered like a champ! Moon-walking on railings? You can do that! Looking around the inside of a shuttle craft? You can do that! Air-dropping yourself from 30,000ft onto a communication disk? You can do that!

And the Mako?! Hell yes the Mako! It's a 6-wheeled rolling physics glitch with jump jets! HOLLY SHIT! I love the Mako! They practically beg you to break the game with the Mako in Mass Effect. It's a beautiful thing hitting a Geth Armature at full speed and rocketing off into some crack in the landscape.

Where am I going with all of this? Mass Effect is awesome. It's awesome in more ways than it even intended to be. These are some of the more non-standard ways I love the Mass Effect games. How about you? What odd corner of the Mass Effect game systems or stories do you love?

in conclusion,

I bought the Dawn of War II pack on Steam based solely on the Quick Look video from Giant Bomb.  The guys did an impressive job on selling the fun aspects of that game.  I agree with Vinny, I like the direction they are taking RTS games by including some RPG elements.