Arrgh, have played
entirely too much the past couple days. So much, in fact, that earlier today my whole left hand started hurting a bit. It faded with an hour-long break, but when I started playing again my left thumb (on the DS, I'd usually be pressing the joint down on the center of the arrow keys and use it like that) went all funky. It's tingling - or more specifically, the joint is tingling. And starts hurting if there's any substantial pressure on it. Oops. Methinks it's time to keep a longer break from playing. At least until tomorrow or so. =D;;
So. I couldn't keep my hands off it any longer, and started a New Game+. It was a total surprise that the Mus in the first dungeon took a whole 6-hit combo from my lv 43 Yuri to kill. =D;; It wasn't long until I discovered how fun that is...killing toughened-up Mus in that cave, I mean. I can't even remember how many times I went through the dungeon, farming for Mu Fur. Partially because it's so fun killing them. xD
..I'd blissfully forgotten how hard it is to get the items required for custom ordering in this game. You get plenty of drops from most every monster, sure. But those drops are not the stuff you need, most of the time. And especially not on NG+, it seems.
Is it just me or are there added bits in the cutscenes this second time through the game? Maybe I just don't remember them happening, since they didn't make any sense the first time. But having seen the ending, there's many bits where the people seem aware of the time and dimension shifts happening.
The story is every bit as sad as I remembered it being. The 破壊の塔 chapter especially (sorry, I have the Japanese version and don't know what the English name of it would be), when Chaspel shows up at the village. And the rest of the game is not much more cheerful.
And hey, at least I don't have English kiddy!voices mistreating my poor ears. From the vids I've seen, those are
horrid. I can't help but wonder how much they take away from the story for people who play the English version.
I've now saved Al from Mt Vaal and am about to head to the Abyssus Forest to pick up Gnash. Much luff for Gnash. =D
Have also been playing more multi-player with Kitty. And farming the already cleared dungeons a whole lot. There's not much point in going to new dungeons in single-player (mostly because the puzzles are
damn hard to solve on single-player mode, especially the first time through when you have no clue what you're supposed to be doing) but it's manageable after you know what to do. And have gained some levels to take out the monsters more quickly. The AI in this game really does suck.
Lessee... almost got made every equip I had scrolls for, was only missing two...but then we advanced the story with Kitty a bit and now I suddenly have a big backlog again. Damn completionist tendencies. xD
Damn was Iron hard to farm for. The customization shop told me it drops from Ahrimans on Ice Mountain, but I hate Ice Mountain. So I went to farm an Ahriman in Ruins, but it only dropped Iron Shards. I needed a total of 15 Iron. Three Iron Shards can be made into one Iron. An Ahriman can drop 0-2 Iron Shards, mostly 0. ....yeah. I can't remember how many Ahrimans I killed, but it was pretty damn many. At least my Thunder attack/resistance and Dark attack/resistance went up a ton of levels, since Ahrimans also drop Thunder and Dark orbs.
I'm liking my Del Dee, the hired mercenary Red Mage. The male Selkie one. I find it amusing to keep the Zantetsu sword on him and slash away at enemies with that cumbersome 3-hit combo of his, and do
way more damage per hit than any of my other characters, even though they're of equal levels. And Gul Reyn, my main chara, is even higher level than him. xD
I thought it somewhat of a bother at first that I could only level up one character in multi-player (instead of four in single-player, since you have the NPCs there), but now I think it a good thing. Having Gul Reyn over-leveled in comparison to others allows me to switch in Del Dee in his place for single-player farming, and I can level my three NPCs and Del Dee at the same time. Since they're the same level anyway.
The story so far seems pretty interesting. Of course, I'd stumbled on a pretty bad spoiler previously, so it wasn't quite as much of a shock as it could have been, but...we've now reached the Ruined Village in the story. In fact, just before I started writing this entry and my thumb started hurting too much to continue. =D;;;
I wonder where to go now, though. Sherlotta didn't say, just said that we should go and try get more crystals or some such...I guess it'll become apparent soon enough, since I tend to talk to all the people in town after every story advancement and of course, have to farm all those dungeons to get the items required for customization...
It bothers me that to be able to hire one of the mercenaries in Echoes of Time, you need to have a minimum of five people on your friend roster. Anyone have on the flist have the game and access to wifi? >.>'
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