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 Most recent update:  The Game: Valdis Story: Abyssal City is an exploration based 2d platformer with a large interconnected world. Y’know, a Metroidvania. Though it’s more Vania than it is Metroid. However it has a stronger focus on making it’s combat not total garbage unlike most games in the genre. It’s level design and story is pretty drat solid too. Honestly it’s the best Castlevania styled game I’ve ever played. It was created by a 4 person team called EndlessFluff and originally released in 2013 but there was a recent big update that added two new playable characters, new bosses, a bunch of other stuff, and generally made the game a whole lot better. The LP: This won’t be a full 100% LP as that would require a playthrough each character. I will, however be doing two playthroughs. One with the character Wyatt, then another with my favorite character Vlad. I’ll show off the other two as bonus videos though. I’m also going to be playing on normal. This game can be quite challenging and I’m admittedly not an amazing videogamist. If you’re looking for a LP that will get SSS scores on all the bosses while playing on God Slayer difficulty then you’ll be sadly disappointed. Spoiler Policy: Don't post story or lore specific spoilers outside of spoiler tags. Let's try not to spoil abilities or equipment either. (If you’re wondering whatever happened to my Orcs Must Die! LP. It’s done and on YouTube. I’ll be starting 2 after this LP is done.) Updates: Wyatt 01 - Tagrum District - Video Wyatt 02 - Mausoleum District - Video Wyatt 03 - Abandoned Garden - Video Wyatt 04 - The Library - Video Wyatt 05 - Western Skyway - Video Wyatt 06 - Guardian Temple - Video Wyatt 07 - Sewers - Video Wyatt 08 - Engineers Palace - Video Wyatt 09 - Mana Crystal Mines - Video Wyatt 10 - Ziggurat - Video Wyatt 11 - Tainted Lab, Sunken Prison, The Hallow - Video Lore: Before the title screen there is a bit that gives you some back story. Unfortunately pressing any button skips it making it difficult to record. Here’s some screenshots:     The game also contains a Lore section that gives short descriptions of all the characters, enemies, and some equipment. It’s nothing major. A few sentences and the item drops for enemies. That’s about it. Here's where you can find them all Combo System Guide: This game features a combo system that is not unlike something you’d see in a game by Platinum, albeit the combat system is not quite as robust. Admittedly I find it kind of arcane and don’t really pay attention to it so will likely not comment much about it during the LP. However if you’re interested there is quite the detailed guide on Steam about this game’s combo system. Located here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=285679883 D_W fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 14:24
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Update 01 - Wyatt - Tagrum District https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U115PyA2CHM Lore: Wyatt Goibniu - Atalan Trair - Azudor Ire - Fish Demon Assassin - Demon Archer - Demon Ogre D_W fucked around with this message at 14:27 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 14:24
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Alright, I'll enjoy watching this! Got this some months ago. I had fun with it, but as happens when you're buying a whole bunch of bundles all the time I got distracted... Hopefully I'll get back to it soon, I had a fun time.
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May 16, 2015 14:55
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This game is awesome and seriously deserves an LP. Also I had no idea that update was finally released! Time to get back to it.
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May 16, 2015 15:00
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I love this game. I'm glad you're doing this, with the new patch I've been tempted to make a new games thread about it just to increase the visibility.
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May 16, 2015 15:08
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I played this game up through the... Ice boss I think, then my saves got borked changing laptops and I was moved back to before getting to the village. It was really good before that endured I'll never play it again though!
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May 16, 2015 15:35
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You should all play the new update. It adds so much to it. We'll actually be seeing the Ice boss in the next video. It doesn't surprise me that's where you stopped. It can be pretty tough, but there's one trick that makes it fairly easy. Perhaps I'll call the update: "One Weird Trick that Ice Bosses Hate." hrmm perhaps that's too obvious.
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May 16, 2015 16:46
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Oh no I beat him, it was the massive loss of progress that shut me down. That was like, 4 or 5 bosses and multiple major areas, gone.
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May 16, 2015 17:08
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Chalk me up as another one that didn't know the game got updated. I'll have to fire it up again between DFO binges.
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May 17, 2015 04:12
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Wyatt's Heavy attack smashes through enemy guards. He has an easier time in the early game than Reina. Did they ever fix the Luck stat? That was really wonky when I originally played this game.
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May 17, 2015 04:58
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I'm sure how it was broken, but there are ways in the new update that you can really take advantage of Luck. Especially with the two new characters. There's also an accessory that increases all three of the other states by 1/3rd of your luck at the cost of constantly draining your health. However there are ways to offset that fairly easily depending on the character build. There are a lot of really powerful gimmick builds in this game to get certain stats really high. Example on my last Vlad run I had 105% crit chance and could one shot any normal enemy. Still had a hard time versus bosses. I'm not so sure we'll see anything like that as Wyatt as I haven't done a complete playthrough as him in a while. Though I doing basically three runs at the moment. 1 as a sort of scouting run, then another as a practice run, then the recorded run. Since there are some optional things that can happen narratively I'll probably be showing them off because of these multiple runs.
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May 17, 2015 05:30
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Basically it's the way the drop system works. Back when I played it (which was admittedly a while back, the two other characters weren't even out yet) the enemies only dropped one item at a time. Their drop table has several items whose chance increases with your luck stat. This meant that as you gained luck, the rarer items became more and more common, and start to displace the common items. "Well that's a good thing, isn't it?" nope. As the OP said, we don't have currency, we just have crafting materials. So all those 30 Greater Demon Essences would be useless if you have 0 Lesser Demon Essences the recipe requires. And with higher luck (and higher enemy levels), you were unlikely to see those Lesser Demon Essences ever again. There are also a few newbie traps, but I'll let the op talk about those.
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May 17, 2015 05:42
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Ah yeah. I don't think the drop tables work exactly like that actually anymore. You'll still get rarer items with more luck, but you'll still get the common items as well. I assume they put some sort of cap on it or they just increase the drop rate of items overall. In the update they added in venders that will sell you the higher tier spirits for lower tiers. I'm pretty sure they had that for other common items before the update as we already saw when I bought all that steel.
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May 17, 2015 06:12
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Update 02 - Wyatt - Mausoleum District https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6VxHgVMHG4 Lore: Angel Soldier - Angel Priestess - Angel Templar - Tagu Feral Hermit - Feral Siren - Feral Reaper - Ruckjahl, The Frozen One
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May 20, 2015 02:41
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I did not equip my paladin armor while going through this place. Let me tell you what fun I had getting constantly frozen 
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May 20, 2015 03:25
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At 9:00 there's a ledge with a chest I think you missed.
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May 20, 2015 04:05
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SSNeoman posted:I did not equip my paladin armor while going through this place. Let me tell you what fun I had getting constantly frozen Yeah! It loving sucks. Fortunately the warm elixir will also protect you against being frozen. So it's not necessary to equip the paladin armor there. Mraagvpeine posted:At 9:00 there's a ledge with a chest I think you missed. If I did not get a chest then that means we couldn't get to it at the moment. That chest we need double jump or ice tower to get. D_W fucked around with this message at 11:08 on May 20, 2015 |
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May 20, 2015 11:04
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IIRC you can get to that chest with a combined damage and magic boost, but it's hard enough that you're better off just waiting for the proper way.
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May 22, 2015 06:44
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I like how you keep calling the monks "priestesses" 
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May 22, 2015 09:03
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Captain Bravo posted:I like how you keep calling the monks "priestesses" Angel Priestess is that enemy type's official name. I was curious about this game when I saw some other person LPing it one time, but I think they didn't finish. Looking forward to seeing more.
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May 22, 2015 18:30
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They're called Angel Zealots. There's a later enemy type called Angel Priestess and they both share a lore entry as "Angel Zealot and Priestess" since initially it was just default zealots and recoloured zealots. I seem to remember there also being a blog post about how they initially only planned to have priestesses since they were an enemy type in the original unfinished Valdis Story but then later decided to go for the male zealots. I suppose they then decided to also have the priestesses as well for the latest patch.
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May 22, 2015 18:52
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Genocyber posted:IIRC you can get to that chest with a combined damage and magic boost, but it's hard enough that you're better off just waiting for the proper way. Ah. I didn't know. Admittedly I don't really know much about this game's unintentional movement methods like damage boosting. a cartoon duck posted:They're called Angel Zealots. There's a later enemy type called Angel Priestess and they both share a lore entry as "Angel Zealot and Priestess" since initially it was just default zealots and recoloured zealots. I assumed it was the other way around. The angel enemies certainly look more female than they do male and considering how there are more female characters/enemies than male, I've always just assumed those enemies were female as well.
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May 22, 2015 22:25
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D_W posted:I assumed it was the other way around. The angel enemies certainly look more female than they do male and considering how there are more female characters/enemies than male, I've always just assumed those enemies were female as well. Turns out I was halfway wrong and we went from male priests in the original Valdis Story to female zealots in Abyssal City. Still, we originally only had Zealots and Priestesses were a new addition of the latest content patch.
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May 22, 2015 22:54
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Man this looks wild! I'm on board and will be following this with interest.
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May 26, 2015 02:38
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I I'm liking the art style. Wish OSX had more game options  I have also sort of noticed a "light is female, dark is male" thing going on here.
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May 26, 2015 13:45
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Pollyanna posted:I I'm liking the art style. Wish OSX had more game options Oh goodness no. It's only really here at the beginning, to try and keep you not getting very confused later. Everything has a common trait: being a jerk that attacks you on sight, with little concept of gender. Interestingly enough, they did rewrite the script for all of the characters individually. That conversation with Atalan can end up sounding significantly different, although Wyatt's one establishes the pretty important fact that the player character is neither a servant of demon goddess Myrgato or a "slave" to her sister, Alagath, goddess of angels. It doesn't seem like Alagath is all that "angelic" in the traditional sense however...(I mean, whats the deal with that supermutant angel you just fought?) Seconding the choice for Wyatt for your first run, he's a pretty amazing all-rounder, being pretty drat good with anything from Magic to just straight up sword bashing through everything. Although you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by just unequipping his sword: you get parry for free if you use your hands and feet to attack enemies. You can even change fighting stances from The Crane to The Wolf. They are very interesting for Wyatt, because I think those are unique to him.
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May 27, 2015 00:43
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Pollyanna posted:I I'm liking the art style. Wish OSX had more game options Hrmm No OSX version? I'm surprised considering it was made in GameMaker: Studio and that comes with the ability to export to PC, Mac, and Linux by default. But perhaps they just don't have access to a mac for testing or feel their team of 2 is not large or knowledgeable enough to create a mac build that runs as well, and don't want to/can't afford to hire someone. Who knows! It is a shame though. Anyway, this game has some fairly non-traditional gender roles/dynamics and it's great! It's something that I didn't really think about or notice until correcting someone as to the gender of one of the secret bosses. Most really powerful beings in this game's world are female. Many gained that power from a life time of hard work, practice, and sacrifice with the exception of the two main faction's deities (but we'll get to that eventually.) All of the bosses we've seen so far have been female (though I'm not fully sure about Ruckjahl to be honest.) Most of the male bosses we'll come across tend to rely on sneaky/annoying gimmicks rather than raw power as we'll see in the next update. This even extends to the playable characters to some degree. Wyatt is fairly simple and easy to play relying on brute strength or sneaky stealth. Where Reina is more technical and relies on getting up the style and combo meter to be really effective (at least from what I remember of playing her.) Vladyn is, in many ways, the game's easy mode. He attacks from a distance, basic attack locks on to targets, and can summon helpers to draw aggro away from him. Gilda is the only character who doesn't get a block at all and relies on hit and moves strats early on to basically destroying everything with multiple hit/multiple element attacks later on. For enemies you're sort of correct. There are female demonic enemies and male angelic ones. Ferals tend to be nongendered or female. New update either tomorrow or thursday. I'm going to try to record a couple of episodes tomorrow. EDIT: Faust IX posted:Oh goodness no. It's only really here at the beginning, to try and keep you not getting very confused later. Everything has a common trait: being a jerk that attacks you on sight, with little concept of gender. But yeah, Alagath is angelic in the way that someone who wasn't specifically raised Christian but grew up around a lot of ..umm.. "passionate" Christians while was also somewhat aware of Christian history would view angels. Biblical angels are kind of hosed up. Dark and Light in this game seem to be something different than the traditional concepts of good and evil. I don't think Law and Chaos quite fit either. But you do have to remember that they're often called "false gods" for a reason.
D_W fucked around with this message at 01:12 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 01:00
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About that first boss...he's Gilda's older brother. And there is as wonderful a conversation as you think that reunion scene would, and even moreso when you do the re-fight. They had a lot of fun writing Vladyn and Gilda's lines. Also, CORRECTION: You have A BIRD stance, A WOLF stance, and A BEAR stance for Wyatt unarmed, at least from going through the first area all over again at the moment. Maybe more, but that was what I just figured out by trying to rack up a stupid combo. BIRD is your default stance on the ground using light attacks, and is the fastest to make a punch. You can switch from BIRD into BEAR if you do a small combo attack with BIRD and then make a heavy attack (this one is hella useful). Using heavy attacks on the ground causes you to enter WOLF and deliver a stunning forward kick. If heavy attack is mashed, you will do the WOLF kick, then do a backflip into BIRD, gaining some height, and then do a downward punch knocking the enemy back a bit. Once you are in any of these modes, if you absolutely need to do something with a certain set of moves (high punches, low kicks, higher kicks, you get the idea), just stay on the ground and use your light attacks. Keep up the good work dude, and see you next update.
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May 27, 2015 01:19
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I think it's just Wyatt who calls them false gods because he's a melodramatic grump, honestly. Also Wyatt does have a fourth stand if you manage to get a single basic combo extensions and do a four-light-one-heavy-attack combo. It's his fastest stance and supposedly also has extra Armor Ruin. I never played around with his stances much though, I liked Reina's and Vladyn's unarmed styles more even if they lack Wyatt's stance mechanic.
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May 27, 2015 07:13
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Magic is actually fantastic if you go full tilt with it. I mean you can either try to gain skills and master the combat system, or simply invest heavily into one soul + into mage equipment and then spam spells all day. Our ice soul is actually perfect for this, as is our dark soul. I hear that it was nerfed because ice spears used to freeze bosses and people were pulling out absurdly easy S-ranks. And yeah, Azudor's a dude. This game does a good job of having both genders on all sides. It's just that pretty much all sides except ours are dicks (By which I mean bad people ).
Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 07:16 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 07:14
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Oh strange. I could have sworn when I read Azudor's lore entry it said "she." The only plausible explanation is that I woke up in a parallel reality where that is the only difference. Yeap. It's not that I somehow misread it. It's the only possible explanation. No other would make sense. Nope. Not at all. 
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May 27, 2015 07:47
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Glad to see an LP of this game now that it's pretty much complete. You're doing great work so far. IIRC the devs was actually just two people and a sound/music guy for most of the game, with some extra hands added for the giant update with the two new characters. They've been great at feedback and patching the game outside of the initial release due to some unfortunate circumstances, which coloured people's opinions. I believe one of the devs' parents died (that grave in the Mausoleum District with the special music is a tribute to them) just a week after the initial release, which kinda postponed updates for a good couple of months. If I have one criticism, I'm not too sure about the grinding? I usually beat Azudor by level 3(he's a tough but cool first boss), but maybe I'm just used to playing on Godslayer. Speaking of which, the difficulties are great since they're not just a flat number increase but give the enemies new moves that you'd usually see in late game. I have to agree with the praise for the artstyle. I think some people don't really realize it but the models in the game are actually 3D and painted over to look like 2D sprites, it's a really cool technique that's seemingly getting more popular lately. Would you mind if I made some observations on changes from the prior versions? There isn't much in these initial areas outside the addition of elixirs and the exit to the Frozen Catacombs. While it has a switch and a destructible wall now, it used to be a single large wall that you couldn't jump over normally, and even if you did, it was actually lined with spikes, so the only way back into the catacombs was going aaaaall the way around to the start.
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May 28, 2015 12:31
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Yeah, the dev's dad died midway through making this, and they took an understandable hiatus on this game. On note of the grinding its very, very easy to max out your level before you get near the end of the game. The difference between level 1 to 5 and level 15 to 20 is huge, because of how much XP the enemies give out at their respective points in the game (it's very slow at first, and very fast at the end). The difficulty options are deceptive because the flat number increase and new moves make the game somehow smoother in combat. The Ice "affliction" doesn't work as much on the bosses now, not as easily, anyway, so an S/S/S rank is actually a good challenge (although there are some that are downright unfair unless you know well ahead of time what -might- happen). Now, lets talk about something cool. All of your spells in your game have a stat attached to them called "Affliction", which gives a status debuff to whatever gets hit by it if if it works. The one we're probably going to see soon enough is the Ice soul ending up freezing enemies in a big ice crystal. It scales with the size of the enemy! Keeps them for attacking or doing anything for a while, but its no where near as long lasting as it used to be. I do not remember the Light soul's affliction off the top of my head, but the Dark soul applies a little icon above the afflicted enemy, and I think either gives you a very small amount of health back from any hit, or makes Dark magic hit a lot harder. Besides, we probably won't be seeing many Affliction hits as Wyatt, unless we really go out of the way to show them off as a bonus thing.
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May 29, 2015 20:32
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Light magic affliction just causes your typical run-of-the-mill silence status effect on enemies while Dark magic prevents HP and MP recovery and debuffs Armor and Resist by 30 points. At least that's what the manual been saying since the game came out, I'm not sure how accurate it is today. I know the Light silence effect and the Dark HP/MP block effect work as advertised though. Also while the Dark affliction effect doesn't recover health, the Dark-air spell does.
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May 31, 2015 17:40
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D_W posted:Biblical angels are kind of hosed up. This is one of those marvelous understatements. Angels tend to do one of two things when they show up: if they start with "Be not afraid," or some such, you're probably fine. Otherwise, some poo poo is about to get wrecked. Christopher Walken's Gabriel in The Prophecy has a line that sums up Biblical angels pretty well: Gabriel posted:I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why. Because "good" doesn't mean "nice." (I hope this isn't completely irrelevant, since we're dealing with things getting called angels and demons...) Anyway, never heard of this. Looking forward to it!
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May 31, 2015 19:01
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Update 02 - Wyatt - Mausoleum District https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhamTF2O7_Q Lore: Vladyn Demon Bat - Demon Mistress - Shu Gohth I recorded the commentary for this update in a bit of a rush to be honest. There might be some errors here and there. I was a bit annoyed at something that day and I think it comes off in the commentary. Also I commit a great LP sin of saying my real name. Not once, but twice! Now you all know what the "D" in my username is short for. Whatever shall I do? But yeah I didn't want to re-record it since I had a long tiring week and am already behind schedule. The next update should be fun though. There won't be much progress made story wise, but rather some really light non-glitched sequence breaking to get double jump sooner than most would. HGH posted:Glad to see an LP of this game now that it's pretty much complete. You're doing great work so far. Grinding is more for crafting materials then levels though having parry could be helpful if I actually was good enough to use it well. haha. There's a lot of changes to the level design. Some are pretty minor like the one you've mentioned. Other times there's some pretty major things. Whole new areas/rooms rearranged. That sort of thing. Outside of one area in particular that I find frustrating because I'm impatient, I think the level design in this game is really good. azren posted:This is one of those marvelous understatements. Angels tend to do one of two things when they show up: if they start with "Be not afraid," or some such, you're probably fine. Otherwise, some poo poo is about to get wrecked. Christopher Walken's Gabriel in The Prophecy has a line that sums up Biblical angels pretty well: Yes, this is very accurate to the kinds of angels that exist in this game's lore. They're certainly "not very nice."
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Jun 1, 2015 07:18
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Shu Gohth is a dick because he sort of follows the theme of the entire Abandoned Gardens; namely poison and dickish platforming. D_W's anti-poison potion prevents the most annoying aspect of the fight, but Shu is still a curveball because he requires precise jumps along with dodging the falling spores (not easy thanks to the small platforms). Even with the frost blade he's pretty beefy, and getting his health down in time for an S rank can take some doing. He is definitely a step-up from the previous two bosses, who were either stationary, or they might as well be.
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Jun 1, 2015 08:47
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One thing to note about Shu Gohth is that on higher difficulties whenever he turns to stone to heal he summons one to two floating skull. Now while they do negligible damage and die in one hit they still love to knock you into the poison mist or poison rain, so ideally you want to prevent him from petrifying in the first place. Luckily, as D_W mentioned, he follows a completely rigid pattern so once he moves from the right-most platform to the lower-left you can just camp the center one and hit him as soon as he moves. Knowing his movement pattern is pretty vital for the latter half of his fight anyway as he spends less time on each platform as he loses health, making hunting harder and harder and pre-empting him the far easier and time-efficient solution.
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Jun 1, 2015 09:11
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While I'm not 100% sure about this, I think you have to be a certain distance from he before he'll teleport. I've had battles with him where he'll be at low life and do a bunch of fast teleports then stop for a moment. Usually on the right most of the screen. He then won't teleport again until I moved closer to him. Or maybe he won't teleport to an area if you're standing near it. I don't know the exactly qualities of his patterns, but there seems to be more to them just a speed increase. Regardless he's still one of the harder bosses in the game for when you encounter him. It's understandable why a lot of people hate him. He's one of the handful of non-optional bosses I've never got an S rank on. Still I think he's a really cool boss fight and I love his character design.
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Jun 1, 2015 09:37
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I picked up this game on sale at gog recently and it's been 4 dollars very well spent. The demo didn't allow you to retry bosses which was a huge minus for me (I hate missable stats), but I heard that the new version allowed retries and so it has. It's been great fun. e: Son of a bitch less than five minutes into your LP I learned something new. I didn't know you could kill fish for items! e2: My only gripe about this game is that skill cancel is mapped to down, which leads to a lot of frustration and wasted skill cancels sometimes. AnonSpore fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jun 7, 2015 |
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Jun 7, 2015 14:05
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