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Phial of Fantasia

I've finished a ton of games since my last post here (just the examples I can remember: The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, Life is Strange, Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson, and Metal Gear Solid - if you want me to talk about any of those games, tell me and I happily will), but today I'll just talk about a game that I beat a few days ago.

Senran Kagura Burst - 6/10

I played this game's sequel before this one, so I'm definitely spoiled, but man, this game has some issues. I dove into this series because I got a giggle out of the mixture of a competent beat-'em-up and a slightly dark warring-factions setting with goofy power-of-friendship stuff and - yes, the elephant in the room - ridiculously over-the-top sex appeal/sexploitation, whichever it is. It's a story about two shinobi factions who live to fight to the death and learn that it's okay to trust and nurture relationships with others, but all the characters are teenage girls with GGG cup sizes and bodies that aren't hourglass-shaped so much as "a-generous-dinner-platter-of-specially-selected-and-meticulously-carved-pieces-of-buttery-smooth-and-heaping-thick-white-meat"-shaped. This is a game with such "advanced" jiggle physics that the 3DS will drop frames if the camera gets too close to the characters. That's the kind of game we're dealing with, folks.

Starting with graphics, when the game isn't dropping frames it looks pretty slick and fluid for a 3DS game, but the reality is that you will be playing this game at like 20 FPS for the majority of the experience because there are either a bazillion mooks or more than one main character on the screen.

In terms of game-play, it's technically a 3D beat-'em-up, but the Z axis is very limited, so it really feels more like a Final Fight than a Dynasty Warriors. Light attacks are on the Y button and heavy attacks on the X button, there's a dash and an area-of-effect explosion with invincibility frames for desperate situations, special moves and aerial launches and follow-ups, and different animations depending on when you switch from light to heavy attacks - what I'm getting at is that this is actually a pretty good beat-'em-up underneath all the stripping and the boobs pointing in two different directions. It's not as complex as later games, but this game builds a solid template for Deep Crimson and the Vita games. However, by far the funnest part of this game is the boss fights, and the mowing-down-mook parts (the majority of the game) are either tedious, in Shinobi Mode, or trial-and-error split-second frustration in Frantic Mode, where you strip down to your undies for higher attack and lower defense. That said, Frantic Mode is definitely more fun than Shinobi Mode, but the point is that the game never finds a happy medium.

The story is serviceable, and I'd say even has more thought put into it than a lot of games. By now it should be clear that Senran Kagura as a series has three pillars of appeal: story, game-play, and sex. The sex appeal is... unwavering, but since this first entry falters heavily in the game-play department, the story became a diversion to keep my attention through the Dynasty Warriors-like tedium. The creator/director of these games has stated that he knows the real reason people keep coming back to these games: they get attached to the characters. The characters are certainly familiar to me at this point, but they're still pretty thin (metaphorically, of course). Expect plenty of this sort of thing:

"I will keep fighting! For my friends!!!"

"Maybe the lines between good and evil aren't so clear... good shinobi or evil shinobi, we are still humans!"

"YEAH, FRIENDSHIP!"

"The monster has transformed into a larger monster! This shit is REALLY serious now, more SERIOUS than it was before!"

"Stop sexually harassing, Katsuragi!"

I only recommend this game if you want to see the humble beginnings of this franchise, otherwise just get a newer game is the series, with better titty bouncing-- I mean, better beat-'em-up game-play.

Adamantaimai

Swatman, Rachel. “Pokémon Go catches five new world records.” Guinness World Records, 10 Aug. 2016, www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2016/8/pokemon-go-catches-five-world-records-439327.

I'm getting sick of almost every game I play having a moment (or multiple moments) where I just end up frozen on my screen, but I'm apparently still moving and dying (think I walked off the map at one point earlier due to this).

I'm assuming it's my PC (it's just a cheap desktop), but it also feels like the game just wants to screw me over sometimes. I've had moments where I get out-McCree'd (flashbang + fan the hammer before I can even see them in front of my face), Widowmaker to my head when I just walk in (like they see me before I actually walk in, though, I guess the ult may answer a few of those moments...), Tracer dancing around me faster than I can see her (and killing me in the process), while if I try Tracer, I get one shot if I try the same thing, and a bunch of other moments that make me wonder if I should even play this !@#$%^- game...

Seriously...I'm at the point where I never want to hear the words "Online Multiplayer" again because I know I'm just going to end up looking like an idiot, and it just makes me so *!@#ing mad... I just sit here, almost every game, dying faster than I can respawn, and I just want to smash everything and tell the world how much I hate it and wish it would fall into the sun so I didn't have to deal with it anymore...

...then I just sit back, and wonder what the point of all this is. Why do I play something that makes me feel so $%^-ing stupid? I got this way with another online game (SMITE) and ended up uninstalling it multiple times before finally kicking it out of my life fully. I'm almost at that point with all my online games. I'm tired of feeling like a retard and just taking out my frustrations on everyone around me...

Online, I just end up getting to the point where I'm tired of...everything. Life, existing, people around me...everything.

.............

.............

...Okay, I got waaaaaaaaaaay off topic there... I'm in a bad mood and needed to vent.

...not sure why I felt like posting all that in a forum of random people I don't know, but I guess I felt the need to explain why I rage if any of you have seen a guy named jokool just spamming the chat with rage and toxic *!@#.

...now what was I originally asking?

OH RIGHT! I'm wondering, if it is my PC, is there was any settings that I can adjust to fix performance issues like this, or am I doomed to suffer when it happens (and end up raging in caps lock at the game)?

...though, at this point, I think it's just me. I do have lag spikes though, and it would help if I could figure out how to fix them.

Just for reference, I do have the graphics setting to default low, 30FPS cap, and am usually in fullscreen with one of the recommended aspect ratio (not exactly sure what the extra numbers are for (they usually have like (50) and (60) at the end)). Probably a few other settings I should mention, but I can't remember how I have them set...

...I should also mention that my internet can be a bit of a *%@!!%%! sometimes. I've had ping spikes as well that make the game go haywire, but the game freeze-ups seem to be performance related, and not ping related.

...okay, nobody is going to read this now with all the crap I threw in.

...*posts it anyway*...

omae wa mou shindeiru

@jokool; what's your ping?

So I went to get a Shiny Silvally code from GameStop earlier...it was the same cashier as when I got Marshadow, and when I went up and was like "hey, do you have--" before I could even finish she'd already pulled out a code for me.