Dante's Disc

I've finished the first disc from Devil May Cry 2, aka Dante's Disc. I still think the game is very under appreciated. Sure the game has no story at all, but then again I didn't think that DMC 1's story was all that great.
The game wasn't at all tough though, took me 2 tries to get the final boss, and only 1 for the one before that (final boss this time being both Argosax the Chaos and Despair Embodied, or whatever it's name was). The toughest boss was the one from the building.

Anyway, I've just started Lucia's disc and played 2 missions now. Her style of fighting is pretty cool, I always like dual wielding and the air-combo capabilities (which I was told was never introduced until DMC4).
I'm gonna play through Lucia's 13 missions as well, but I don't think that it'll change my current opinion of it being a pretty bad game, but still under appreciated.

Devil May Cry 2

Since I've finished the first Devil May Cry game I thought I'd start DMC2 as well. Even though I know that 90% of the people who liked DMC hated DMC2, I can't figure out why. Sure I've only just finished the third mission, but up to this point it's actually more fun then the first game.
I don't know maybe it becomes really bad halfway or something, but thus far nothing seems to be so bad about it that it warrants being called the worst sequel/prequel ever...

Devil Never Cry

About a week ago I downloaded the Devil May Cry 4 demo for PS3 and was shocked by the awesomeness that it showed.
Almost 4 years ago I bought Devil May Cry for the PS2 because my girlfriend liked it and wanted to play it (she'd borrowed it from a friend once). And I tried playing it a few times aswell, but after a while I just stopped liking it at all.

But when I saw DMC4's demo, I just had to try again, and this time I didn't care at all about any challenge. So last sunday I picked it up again, dusted it off and hoped it would still work in my PS2.
I played for a few hours and yesterday I finished it.

I'm glad I didn't try normal because I don't think the game is all that good anyway. Sure the fights are ok, but the voice acting and the story are pretty bad. Characters too.
But it was fun anyway and the horror theme is always appealing and they did that very well. I've already got DMC2 ready to be played, which everyone tells me sucks, but I've found more games that everyone hates or dislikes that turn out to be awesome.
Crazy really, but maybe I'll get to playing that too someday soon.

Final Boss Fight

A few days ago I made it through Beyond The Gate and got to Lady. I was then and still am grossly unprepared.
The first time around I forgot that Johnny didn't have anything equipped against ring abnormalities, so when Lady first used ring abnormality, I was kinda bummed out.

Then it got to be that she and her friend 'big ugly', aka Malice Umbral, got to use a combo attack. I don't know what the attack's names were, but total obliteration describes it pretty well.

I've been training a little almost every day since then, and though I can get a few more turns in before I die, once they use that combo I'm still dead no matter what.
So I decided to do some side-quests first. No biggie. But I couldn't really find many of them and I just want to finish this game and be done with it so that I can move on. So I looked them up on GameFaqs.

So now I'm working on getting everyone's ultimate weapons and armor and just get generally stronger. I'm only level 40-something, so maybe that is my biggest problem. We will see soon enough when I've trained some more.

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Now playing: Wuthering Heights - Lost Realms
via FoxyTunes

The Humanity...

So I'd entered the gate last time and had walked around a little to see what I was going up against. Later I turned on my PS2 to continue and the first fight I got in was against 3 Phobos all with 1 stock bar and more speed then me, so I had a few double attacks coming from those beasts, can't recommend it for recreation as it sure as hell will kill you and won't make you stronger.
But then finally today I got my nerve back enough to turn my PS2 on again to play this game.

I walked where I should, ran into a malice thing tree root thingy. Kinda weird to fight against a stationary enemy in this game. No real trouble though, but then Gilbert came along...

Not knowing what he was going to throw at me I was of course as always somewhat unprepared, but I never would have guessed that he would lower my SP so much as he did. I did find out before the fight with gilbert that Johnny is way stronger as Awaker and in healing too. His release ability combined with the flare brooch(?) reduces SP consumption from 4 to 2, which I'm sure was intended to be used in this way (used it with Shania first but she has a lot of SP).
So his increased power helped a lot and I found out that Tatan'ka's Howling ability is pretty nice aswell.
Even though I tried my very best, Shania and Johnny did go berserk 3x, which also is not so very healthy for the rest of your team.

With a lot of hard work and stress and feelings of loss, I did finally defeat him with all my characters sane and alive so they may bask in his experience. But I am glad I'm through with him, it seems that these bosses tend to get more annoying with each game, Shadow Hearts was just keeping an eye on your HP and SP and having the patience to beat god, Shadow Hearts: Covenant was easy most of the time and only the final boss gave you any real trouble, but this one here is just stress all around with every boss. I guess you could say that they are making the game more challenging, but being used to easy bosses and always getting stuck near bosses means that it's hard work for me not to just call it quits (but hey, I've finished both games before this one, I should be able to finish this one too).

As much as I hate these bosses and hate knowing the fact that I have 2/3 more on the way is really not boosting my morale, but I know that all games are finishable and if I just keep trying eventually I will get through it.

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Now playing: WASTEFALL - Sleepwalk
via FoxyTunes

Killer

It was my turn to play again this morning. I could play extra long though because my girlfriend had to go to the doctor to get some medicine for something that now appears to be more then just a cold.
This did allow me to go through Johnny's memory though and after that to his old burnt down house (easy puzzle this time dude) and found out about him and his sister. And got Roger to take us up to the gate.

When we blasted off though I was shocked to find that my screen went blank and never returned to normal...
This is apparently a problem HDLoader has with this game, luckily though I searched the internet a little andn found that I had to press up on the D-pad during the HDL splash screen to enable MDMA0, which luckily did work.

So now I was at the gate. I walked up to Lady and Killer and killer showed that deep down, even though he was a serial killer named Killer, he was a good person who just wanted to be loved and to have his friend Lady's wish granted, whether it be to regain her humanity or to destroy the world...

First time I faced him I was (as always) grossly unprepared. And most of my characters were quicly disposed of by his instant death attack.
Afterwards though I took some more time to prepare and of course equipped Leonardo's Bear on everyone and something on Frank to stop him from being Sealed so he could Arc Heal everyone. Crazy thing about sealing that I learned is that you can Fuse whilst sealed, just not into any creature, just back to normal I guess.

After a long time and quite a few deaths and ultimate attacks (his attacks, not mine), we finally won. His Malice for really reminded me of Yuri's 2nd and 3rd fire fusion. But aside from my great wish of seeing one of the old characters back (I know roger is still here, but even in Shadow Hearts some characters crossed over from Koudelka) he was a real bad egg.
After he was beaten he kinda does look dead, but you never know with Lady around.

I have now entered the gate and I don't think I'll have much longer to go...

Graveyard scene anyone?

I was happy to find that the puzzle I completed yesterday was one of the last. I went up to the next floor and found no puzzle, which was a nice relief. Then up one more floor and here was a puzzle, but I didn't need to walk around a lot for it, just light up a star. I opened both doors (first the dark one on the left, 80% of the time left is lucky, but right is right) and went up to the last floor, where they tried to place the rings, but were interrupted by Killer.
To my great surprise this was the first boss-fight in a long time that didn't actually kill me and needed me to try a 2nd time.

After he was beaten he tried to kill Johnny, who then magically transformed. Being the evil bugger that his transormation is, he starts knocking everyone on their asses and even hits Shania with the back of his hand (abusive right after the wedding?).
Shania then activates the shrine and Johnny is turned back to normal, except he's KO.

He then suddenly wakes up in his old room in his old house. This reminds me a bit of how Yuri always gets to his Graveyard the first time. I'm still rooting for atleast a guest appearance of one of the cooler characters (Yuri, his cousin, alice, the girl from SH2).

But then I found my save point and of course my girlfriend wanted to play her game so I had to stop playing again (dammit).

Just a puzzle...

Had very little time this time, so only could complete the puzzle for a single room. I could've played longer, but I knew my girlfriend wanted to play Suikoden III real bad, so when I finished the puzzle and saw that I could still easily reach my save point, I decided to let her play. So I'm still stuck on the 4th floor.

4th Floor

My girlfriend went off to watch some TV and actually had the option to save right before she had to go (she's playing Suikoden III). So I saw my opportunity to play some more Shadow Hearts, since I couldn't do all that much this morning except go to where I had to and buy some new equipment.

This time it was a little more productive, though it was very uncertain whether or not it would be during the first half hour since I couldn't find my way out!
In the puzzle with all the pillars and stuff in the first room it's never actually explained that you need to touch the white crystal to open the door, and as observant as I am (not), I overlooked it. So I was running around testing various combinations of raised and lowered platforms only to find that none worked... frustrations started building up just a teensy bit, and then I noticed it! All this might not seem like it is a lot (since there are only 3 types of pillars), but with the enemies going around there this can take quite a while.

In the end though I did make it, but only to stumble upon a room with seemingly no white switch. Thoughts were processed along with images and enemies so that I may find out that there was a white switch down on the 'floor'. So I rode one of the pillars and back up again to find that the switches also show what they do to which pillars. So the switch I thought was the end in sight (yellow) actually only sent the yellow ones down...
Looking around I found no 'up' switch, so I went down again, luckily finding the right switch.

So now I'm on the 4th floor and I don't know how many I have left to get to, but I'm sure it's no more then half to be tried again tomorrow...
These games seem to progress really slowly...

Salt Lake Tower

I collected the other blue ring, which was way easier then I had expected, not even a single fight was needed.

Now I need to unlock the blue power to counter the red power so that Lady and Killer don't get their wish of her becoming human again (which is downright silly because she just wants to destroy the world!). I don't know if he likes her and is gullible or that he knows that what he's doing will mean the end of all living things on earth, but he seems convinced that he's doing a good thing and that the 'kids' are the evil-doers, even though he's the serial killer named Killer.

So I'm pretty sure that once I get up upon that tower I will have to beat (and possibly kill) him again. All this in a tower made of holy salt, I wonder if it can take such stress.

Descet

After having tried that boss thingy I talked about earlier in Shadow Hearts 3 once more I can safely say that he won't bother me again. I killed him and I got the nice shiny blue ring. Unfortunately that was also the exact time I had to stop playing, because House was playing on TV and my girlfriend wanted me to watch it with her and her mom. We're all big House fans in this house.

Shadow Hearts From the New World

Well, I've been playing Shadow Hearts 3 for a while now and I'm still really bummed out that the original main character(s) aren't in there anymore. My hopes are still high that they might someday return to this franchise and kick ass again.

Of course it's typical that the day I think up this idea of posting what I'm doing in games would be the day that I spend an hour and a half playing, only to advance even a tiny bit in the last 5 minutes. So I've been walking around in circles all this time trying to find a ring in the Aito cave. Damn labyrinth with it's watchmen only allowing you through one-way.
Anyway, in the beginning of that cave it is explained that the red statues (magicians) would send you back, or atleast that's what I thought they said, but you're actually just transported somewhere else. So I also found out there that I've been walking around whilst already knowing the way to the next part, just without knowing that I knew this. So I tested it and the first thing that happens is that I'm sent right where I'm supposed to be.
Unfortunately given my current location (in the real world) I was only allowed to play for 1 hour and I had already passed that by far. Still, I was very curious about what I had to prepare for so I went on and saw the big centaur-like demon thingy protecting the itty-bitty ring.

There is something seriously wrong with these bosses. Always allowed to hit twice or more or just jump-start their stock on their own and stuff. I usually need atleast 2 tries to beat them now.

Anyway, I kinda lost after 3 or so turns and then decided 'What the hell, my time is up anyway' and turned off my PS2.

I am not looking forward to this fight whilst my last fight with Killer is still so fresh in my memory.