Hello Duders. I’m here to talk about Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon and Tomb Raider. I’m going to try and not rush out a word thing like last week. Maybe if I give myself some spacing I won’t use fuck three times in a sentence. I like to be edgy, but come on me.

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon

How disappointing can a game be if I already went in expecting to be disappointed? So as I said in last week’s blog I was half way in FE and as of now I finished this video game. So where do I begin?

Like I said last week, the story was pretty weak and it continues to be weak sauce until the end so I won’t dwell on it. The story is very formulaic to a T and with no twists and character development I don’t see any reason not to skip all the dialogue. I did find the ending romantic stuff to be laughable so I will give it that.

I think playing the game through normal was a big mistake. After learning the patterns of the map and restarting, there were very little difficulty I had when beating a map. I think it had to do with there not being enough enemy units. When the enemy never gets a chance to surround my units and many of my units can destroy them in one battle then me being impatient is the only thing that can kill my units. The dragon people added some tough units, but when the game throws the weapons that can kill them with one hit at you then there’s not much point is there? By the end my Marth was near max level and unstoppable. After grinding him at the arena and giving him all the permanent stat buffs, Marth defeated the dragon boss in one battle. Remember how in POR when Ashnard was hard as balls even with a pimped out Ike? Anticlimactic.

The character leveling up stuff is also pretty poor. I like to keep all my units at the same level so by the time all of them were promotion I was at the second to last mission. Very helpful game. And with the low difficulty I had I did not really feel like I needed to make my units more powerful anyways. One thing I did want to retract form last week is the Ballistas. As it turns out, once I got the second Ballistas person/abomination I used him all the time. Being able to kill tanky wyverns in one shot and annoying healers with fortify from a distance is invaluable. And fun fact, Beck was my only unit to reach max level. I think Marth was at 29.

The fact that there are 4 or so missions that need to be unlocked by having some unis die is bullshit. I play through Fire Emblem games with no one dying and I did the same for SD. Having this rational approach to the games means that I lose out on 10% of the game. Also you know that item that hurts everyone on the map and can be used 3 times? I used it during that battle with wolf man guy and killed everyone on the map, making that level a moving simulator. It was fun breaking the game.

I’m not sure if putting it on hard would make me like the game more but I doubt it would by much. Everything else about the game is uninteresting i.e. the level progression and the map design and the story. Having a shit salad with good dressing is still a shit salad, but this game also has shit dressing so I don't know where I'm going with this....

Tomb Raider

Yeah, I’m not enjoying this game. It’s mostly because I cannot get with the game. If a thing is trying to be cereal and is doing a not so good job at it then it’s hard for me to have fun with it. I should be having fun hatcheting all them dudes in the head but Lara being all “SAM NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, There is something on the island I swear but I won’t say why I think that, Let me say Kanji the wrong way.” If all the character drama was not so piss poor then I could just enjoy the combat but alas. I am trying to mock the characters when ever they talk. Good times.

The combat has a couple of cool things to it. The bow has nice mechanics to it and is fun because it takes skill to be good with it. Auto aim cannot help you with the bow so it’s all skill to aim correctly and release at the right time. The CQC is fun also but that’s just because of the fact that Lara is slashing these dudes up and brutally killing them. Sticking arrows in guys all day long over here.

Everything else about the game is not so fun for me. I can’t enjoy the game when it’s a climbing simulator. I never have fun with 3D plat forming so it’s not that surprising. The few puzzles in the game are also not that interesting. Usually it just comes down to finding all the pieces of the puzzle in the dark. The finding of collectables are also an ehhh, but I probably need to enjoy the moving around the environment part to enjoy that part though. It’s also pretty funny how the game just turns into a Michal Bay flim (that is what the kids are using to say explosive?) at times.

I’m about half way through and by the pace I’m going it will be 2 more weeks till I finish. With the character drama stopping me from enjoying the only part I like I can’t wait till everyone dies. Another thing I hate about media is if the characters slowly die with nothing good happening to them ever, but that’s a story for some other time I guess.

Well, I should be playing Stacking and Pixel Piracy for next time. I also bought Dynasty Warriors 8 cause it was $20. And why not.