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 Let's Play Starshine Legacy Starshine Legacy is a series of 4 games available exclusively through a book-club, released first in 2005. Together, they weave quite the tale. There's adventure, magical horses, platforming, and mysteries to be had. Yes, so many mysteries, if the titles are to be believed. With names such as "Mystery of the SoulRiders", "Secret Of Pine Hill Mansion", "The Legend of Pandoria", and "The Riddle of Dark Core", how could one not be intrigued? What are the games like? Starshine Legacy is -at its core- a 3D platformer series. You jump, usually as horses, but sometimes as humans. You do also, however, spend just about as much time reading dialogue as you do actually engaging with the game's mechanics. Starshine Legacy's biggest strength and detriment is its narrative. There's a genuine attempt here to blend demographic pandering, complex fantasy, and emotional depth into one seamless package. The end result is interesting, if not exactly sensible. How is this gonna go? We'll be playing through all four games, and I'll do my best to be informative and affable. I do love the series in spite of its fluctuations in quality, so I'd like other people to find the experience pleasing as well. Videos 1. Mystery of the SoulRiders  2. Secret of Pine Hill Mansion  Artwork  
GamesAreSupernice fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Apr 28, 2021 23:03
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There has to be a legitimately good game in here. I see it there, peeking out from behind the bushes. Then you move the camera around.
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Apr 29, 2021 17:52
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berryjon posted:There has to be a legitimately good game in here. I see it there, peeking out from behind the bushes. Some of those bushes are clipping through solid objects.
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Apr 29, 2021 18:13
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GamesAreSupernice posted:Some of those bushes are clipping through solid objects. Like your character's model.
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Apr 29, 2021 18:23
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It's interesting seeing the way it kinda fluctuates between buggy shovelware and things that show legit effort. Like the whole falling star thing or the way composer really tried, but then for budget purposes they didn't also commission or license less foreboding music for the regular parts. I totally can see where this works as just freebies tossed into a book club for kids who like horses, but yeah it's weird they'd try and sell it episodically afterwards instead of as a bundle. Like what kid would spend 10-20 bucks on that hour of a game that only really gives you access to to the gameplay in the last 15 minutes -and then clamor for more?
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Apr 29, 2021 21:31
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Coolness Averted posted:it's weird they'd try and sell it episodically afterwards instead of as a bundle. Like what kid would spend 10-20 bucks on that hour of a game that only really gives you access to to the gameplay in the last 15 minutes -and then clamor for more? It really reeks of some particularly greedy egotism. I can't imagine how they perceived the gaming landscape in 2005 that they thought they could sell what's essentially a 4 hour game as 4 separate episodic pieces. This was around the time you could buy FATE for the same price.
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Apr 29, 2021 22:33
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When you go to 'sneak in' to the school, the time said it was 'dawn'. The scenes after that were set at night with the stars shining brightly. During the daytime there's a red mist that obscures the full power of the sunlight. Also, characters can phase through seemingly solid objects. It seems to be clear that Jorvik is a colony for vampires. It might explain the lack of proper family units, and why it's possible for some of them to be awake almost all of the time. Good music, and some nice horse faces.
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May 2, 2021 07:18
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It could be worth pointing out that the plot of the game series continues in a MMORPG called Star Stable Online, and that new chapters in the main story are still being added once in a while: https://www.starstable.com/en/ It is not as plot-focused as Starshine Legacy, but pretty much all the good parts from the original games are there!
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May 5, 2021 18:59
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pepperoni and keys posted:It could be worth pointing out that the plot of the game series continues in a MMORPG called Star Stable Online, and that new chapters in the main story are still being added once in a while: The magic horse plot thickens...
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May 7, 2021 11:45
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There were also some other spinoff games that just focused on the horse-riding aspects, for a bit.
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May 8, 2021 02:38
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My little sister got this game and I ended up helping her beat a lot of it. I think she spent more time on it doing wacky stuff than playing trough it as the game is rather buggy and unpolished. Anyway, some notes: Stage 5: When you're supposed to hide behind the smoke, getting caught will not restart the stage. It will instead lead to an alternative scene that has some good lines from the villains. Also, Mr Sands and his two goons do nothing, you can run into them just fine and IIRC, even push around them. Stage 6: You really should have shown off the cloaked rider. It has by far the best design in this game IMO. Stage 7: You can go trough the race in reverse and the game will still let you win. After the race, the game will automatically make Lisa dismount. If you hit the jump button repeatedly, the horse will rear and Lisa will dismount as it's rearing, leading to her either standing on top of the horse or getting flung off pretty far.
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May 8, 2021 10:32
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Crystalgate posted:My little sister got this game and I ended up helping her beat a lot of it. I think she spent more time on it doing wacky stuff than playing trough it as the game is rather buggy and unpolished. Anyway, some notes: I didn't expect anyone else to have played it, and I'm glad to know there's a method to make the goofy dismount happen manually. It happened to me once and I couldn't repeat it.
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May 9, 2021 20:02
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I've now retired my video-editing software of 7 years, so pardon the wait while I work with new programs. The next game is definitely the best written and produced of the four, on the upside.
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May 10, 2021 16:30
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2. Secret of Pine Hill Mansion I, personally, think the two month wait was worth it.
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Jun 21, 2021 23:10
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This might be the only piece of media that starts with ominous music and the words "Something has awakened..." and then says that's a really good thing.
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Jun 25, 2021 09:05
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Kangra posted:This might be the only piece of media that starts with ominous music and the words "Something has awakened..." and then says that's a really good thing. "Something has awakened, and actually, it's just a girl with magic powers. Sorry."
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Jun 25, 2021 19:54
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I think that one problem with Lisa is that she's designed to be the (fairly generic) main character. She's a transfer student, has her traumatic past and gets the horse the game is names after. This works somewhat as long as she is the main character, but once she isn't, she's left with very little. I interpret Herman as someone who was always superstitious and believed in the supernatural, but denies it. The game may have contradicted that idea though. This was also my and my sister's favorite Strshine. In particular, my sister loved going for out of bounds hunt at "Race Back to The Stables". If you get to the car by going out of bounds, you will find it standing still, floating in the air and without any wheels. As for failing the stage, you can not ever run out of time, I think the only failure trigger is to dismount and then jump down a bottomless pit. In this game, if you fall down a bottomless pit while riding, you respawn and are sent backwards a bit, but you have to restart the stage if you're on foot. I think the reason for that is because while mounted, the game has only one entity to move while it was too complicated to teleport both the rider and the horse. At the dam, I don't recall the game stopping me from going without the horse. IIRC, I was good to go on foot as soon as the horse rammed the crane. Maybe we had different versions? The jump at the end can easily be bypassed. Anyway, when checking the map, I'm having a hard time seeing the destruction of the dam doing much else than causing a lot of property damage. Pine Hill seems to be the only building close to the dam and it looks like the water would quickly spread out. Heck, the existence of the dam doesn't make much sense in the first place.
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Jun 25, 2021 20:45
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Crystalgate posted:The jump at the end can easily be bypassed. Yeah, you can skip it easily by jumping from the top with Linda, though I wanted to leave everything in for the sake of the story. Crystalgate posted:Anyway, when checking the map, I'm having a hard time seeing the destruction of the dam doing much else than causing a lot of property damage. Pine Hill seems to be the only building close to the dam and it looks like the water would quickly spread out. Heck, the existence of the dam doesn't make much sense in the first place. I'll add that to the list of things the writers didn't think out so well. I'll probably look at the map and bring it up in the third video. Thanks for drawing it to attention.
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Jun 26, 2021 02:14
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The dam might be the place's only source of reliable electricity, given how high it is while still being apparently quite narrow. Maybe their primary fresh water, too. Either way, I think it's enough to wipe out anything below it or within a mile range of the channel, even with the buildings having outsize ceiling heights. Walls of water several hundred feet high just don't spread out that quickly.
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Jun 27, 2021 09:16
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Kangra posted:The dam might be the place's only source of reliable electricity, given how high it is while still being apparently quite narrow. Maybe their primary fresh water, too. Either way, I think it's enough to wipe out anything below it or within a mile range of the channel, even with the buildings having outsize ceiling heights. Walls of water several hundred feet high just don't spread out that quickly. I'll ask around to get a few more opinions on it before I dedicate to mentioning it, in that case.
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Jun 27, 2021 10:48
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The closest building to the dam that would be put on a map is Pine Hill mansion and based on the view you see from Pine Hill, the dam if pretty far away. There does not seem to be any collection of buildings even remotely close to one mile. That said, a dam breaking is a very bad thing and the skybox can probably not be considered very accurate. Still, the game developers should have put the town closer to the dam on the map rather than putting a forest and then open fields between the two.
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Jun 27, 2021 12:09
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Without knowing how big the reservoir is or more about the dam, it's hard to really say. Given how you have to go up and down there are probably parts of Jorvik that would be completely untouched. I think it's more on the side of plausible but questionable, along with the questions of why nobody is there at the dam to keep teens and horses from just wandering inside to arm/disarm bombs, or even what all the construction going on there is. Here's a simulation of a dam break (this dam is 300 ft high) into what's essentially a big open plain. It's sort of hard to gauge the height (lighter blue is higher), but this is a rapidly-moving wave a meter or more in height, not just flooding that gradually reaches that level. The distance scale is shown at the top in kilometers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEJEHnKrueo Kangra fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jun 27, 2021 |
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Jun 27, 2021 15:27
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The dam you showed is way bigger than Jorvik's, like more than 20 times broader. The town is also next to a sea, making it immune to slow flooding (but not fast flooding). The dam break could still be deadly, if we assume the dam is bigger than what the game shows us due to engine and gameplay reasons and if the terrain is such that it would lead the majority of the water towards the town rather than letting it spread out evenly. We can also interpret the distance between the dam and the town as favorable as reasonable possible. I suppose I can agree with plausible, but questionable. While a deadly scenario is possible, the issue is that the game doesn't sell it at all. The game tends to hint towards things being far out in the middle of nowhere where you're far away from help if you get in trouble. Then it puts one such location, Pine Hill in this case, right between the dam and the town, making the distance from the dam to the town twice of "far out in the middle of nowhere". This is not a defined distance, but if you mentally put the dam fairly close to the town, you also end up diminishing the feeling of isolation. The dam is not very broad and there's a sea that will quickly drain any flooding. The thought "hey, the townspeople are in great danger" does not come naturally, I have to think of ways to justify the danger. All the developers had to do was to put Pine Hill somewhere else.
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Jun 28, 2021 19:15
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I am absolutely going to tell everyone I know that my LP sparked a debate about the flood radius of a dam explosion.
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Jul 3, 2021 17:11
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Crystalgate posted:The thought "hey, the townspeople are in great danger" does not come naturally, I have to think of ways to justify the danger. Put these essay landmarks near the dam so Linda has to save the dam or restart the essay because the landmarks get washed away and Ms Graham would give her grief for that 
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Jul 9, 2021 12:29
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I have to agree they really didn't sell it very well. All we had to go on was a picture of an explosion and a horse that almost looks more disappointed in Lisa than scared about the wall of water possibly headed toward a possible town. Even just showing a shot of the school or something next to a river, with them oblivious to what might happen, would have been enough. Also maybe they could have had provided some sense of urgency aside from "nobody showed up to work at the dam, guess it's Lisa's job to fix it again".
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Jul 10, 2021 02:57
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