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 From the Desk of The Incredible Yorkshire Tea  Making a LP of Mega Man 9 was a blast: Firstly, it’s a great game on its own merits, from gameplay to soundtrack; secondly, our playthrough and analysis helped me to understand, on a more fundamental level, why it works so well; and thirdly, hanging out with your best bud is a perfect way to spend any evening. I was eagerly looking forward to the sequel. Fast-forward to the second week of playing through Mega Man 10, and I was telling Natural20 the only way he could make up for inflicting this crap on me was to let me pick the next game. Choosing a game was tough. Any eligible title from my eclectic range of esoteric poo poo had to fulfil three very important criteria: 1) It must not be a horror game, otherwise Nat will go into Maximum Overwuss and derail the whole thing. 2) It must be fast-paced enough that Nat does not fall asleep at the controls. 3) It must be simple and straightforward enough to avoid baffling Nat, who is a very uncomplicated man with a very basic nervous system. Out went Resident Evil HD and all the many episodes we would have spent arguing about keys, camera angles and why taking a detour halfway across the map just to avoid that one Hunter is a terrible/perfectly sound idea; out went Grim Fandango and my attempts to explain how the puzzles were totally fine and sensible and made sense, no shut up, YOU’RE the dumb one GEEZ; out went killer7 and… well, pretty much any Grasshopper Manufacture game, really. Eventually, it struck me: Castlevania. It’s only been in recent years that I’ve grown to love Castlevania. As a kid my only option was Castlevania 64, and since this was in the days when you had to take out a mortgage to pay for a single N64 cartridge I decided to spend my money on Yoshi’s Story instead (totally worth it). It wasn’t until Circle of the Moon that I got hooked, but even then, it was several years before I finally got round to playing Symphony of the Night, probably the most famous installment in the series. Even then, SOTN still managed to impress me with its mixture of intricate 2D art and creative 3D effects, its memorable cast, its simple-yet-effective storyline and its excellent soundtrack. There’s a real sense of majesty to Alucard’s journey, but there’s also a charming goofiness which belies its Hammer-inspired roots. A perfect choice. Symphony of the Night is a story about many things: the undying nature of evil, the inescapable bonds of destiny our heritage places upon us, and how a few good people can turn the tide in the fight against darkness. Alternatively, it’s a story about an angsty half-vampire with no junk and a serious inability to eat peanuts. I think Nat will like it. From the Less Amazing Desk of Nat20  This is set to be a video LP of Symphony of the Night. I will be running the game entirely blind whilst Yorkshire Tea acts as my guide, helping me by explaining mechanics I might not understand and ensuring that the run hopefully keeps a relatively brisk pace. Videos are set to release three times a week, usually on some combination of Monday/Tuesday Wednesday/Thursday and Friday/Saturday. To my chagrin, the blind nature of the run does not lend itself to voting, so unfortunately thread interaction will be limited to laughing as I flail at the game horribly. (The fortunate upside of this is that Tea and I can now afford to bank episodes meaning we shouldn’t see large content breaks) With that in mind, part of the fun will necessarily be talking about spoilers in the game. As I have to monitor the thread to make sure updates get correctly posted here and that everything with the discussion is fine, I would make the request that spoilers about aspects that I have not encountered be discussed with spoiler tags, like this!. Tea will happily read along and chat about these things with you guys, but I will pointedly always ignore spoiler tags until after we’ve completed the run. This is most important if I've managed to miss something along the way. Please don't highlight it without spoilers. Tea informs me that the intent is that we clear all the enemies within the game. I have also made it clear that he is not to tell me about hidden rooms or secrets in the game. So if I miss an upgrade I won’t be told about it. The aim is ideally to see how a player entirely new to the game would progress with as little input as is reasonable, whilst hopefully providing at least a little illuminating commentary on the nature of game design. We are of course flexible and if people have suggestions about a different way to deal with the run that can be integrated easily, we’ll be happy to include them.                                         
Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 00:03
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Reserved for Fanart/Whatever we might need here.
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Jun 22, 2018 00:03
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 Episode 01 - Can I die in This? A quick aside for this episode, I've included a small introduction bridging the discussions that I've had across my other LPs over to this one. I'm not planning on doing it for any other episodes, but equally if people find it completely obnoxious I'd be willing to edit it out.
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Jun 22, 2018 00:05
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Go for the knees. He'll fall like an oak!
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Jun 22, 2018 01:03
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You saved the world from the work of the dreaded shaft congrats
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Jun 22, 2018 01:42
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Huh, so you're completely blind to metroidvanias in general? I wasn't really interested when I just saw the thread pop up, but knowing this I'm glad I decided to at least have a look. I'll be following for sure.
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Jun 22, 2018 11:18
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IIRC, obtaining the Cube of Zoe causes candles to start dropping items, not enemies. Remember, you got both the Short Sword and the Red Rust before the Cube.
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Jun 22, 2018 11:22
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Commander Keene posted:IIRC, obtaining the Cube of Zoe causes candles to start dropping items, not enemies. Remember, you got both the Short Sword and the Red Rust before the Cube. Correct, this makes Cube of Zoe possibly the single most important relic in the game. You can also totally Climb the elevator early. You can't get very far up, but you can climb it and get a thing Looking back a thing I love about SOTN is that it's absolutely jampacked with details. All the backgrounds and areas look really pretty and really distinct. There's some really weird and wonderful things that exist only for a single room and I love it.
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Jun 22, 2018 14:47
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Zanzibar Ham posted:Huh, so you're completely blind to metroidvanias in general? I wasn't really interested when I just saw the thread pop up, but knowing this I'm glad I decided to at least have a look. I'll be following for sure. It will come up later, but I played the Prime series all the way through and I remember playing some of Super Metroid, but if you asked me anything about that game all I'd be able to say is that speedrunners do weird poo poo with it and there's something about animals and saving time. It's enough that I'd feel dishonest not mentioning it, but also enough that really, I have no idea how this is going to work at all.
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Jun 22, 2018 16:26
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Natural 20 posted:It will come up later, but I played the Prime series all the way through and I remember playing some of Super Metroid, but if you asked me anything about that game all I'd be able to say is that speedrunners do weird poo poo with it and there's something about animals and saving time.
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Jun 22, 2018 16:30
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That's still a lot less experience than usual for a metroidvania LP, so I still intend to follow along  I'm interested to see what you'll think of the game.
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Jun 22, 2018 16:44
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SHIELD SLANDERER!  They're totally useful. You just need to pair them with the correct weapon to horribly break the game. Also, there's a few spells that aren't useless, but for the most part, you're correct in that stabbing is just better.
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Jun 23, 2018 06:59
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Natural 20 posted:To my chagrin, the blind nature of the run does not lend itself to voting, so unfortunately thread interaction will be limited to laughing as I flail at the game horribly. (The fortunate upside of this is that Tea and I can now afford to bank episodes meaning we shouldn’t see large content breaks) Don't forget yelling at the screen in impotent rage, the most attractive part of any blind run aside from "I'm going to ignore the spoiler rules and talk about everything as if it's obvious so I can feel smart for once in my life" that makes Dark Souls streams so popular.
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Jun 23, 2018 08:07
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AHHHHHHHHHH It's my childhood being played before my eyes. Looks like I'll have to boot this guy up again...
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Jun 24, 2018 15:10
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 Episode 02 - Best Murdering Buds Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jun 25, 2018 |
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Jun 25, 2018 21:00
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Ick, small error with the video (it's still fine to watch, it's just not framed properly). I'll be fixing that up and reloading in a bit.
Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jun 25, 2018 |
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Jun 25, 2018 21:11
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The "magic salt" is actually probably plain old vanilla table or rock salt. Salt was believed to have mystical purification powers in many mythologies due to its role in preserving food from decay (which, before it was understood that microbes were the cause, was believed to be the work of witches or demons). Hence the practice of throwing a pinch of spilled salt over your shoulder to ward off evil, or the Supernatural TV show's obsession with rock salt bullets. The backdash is faster than walking forwards, and can be repeated infinitely (even in the middle of another backdash), so it's a common speedrun tactic to see Alucard sliding backwards through Dracula's Castle. I can sort of sympathize with Nat20 on the issue of "confusing buttons"; while I have no real problem segregating the Sony and Nintendo controller formats due to the latter using letters to designate buttons and the former using symbols, XBox controllers confuse the hell out of me, because they're like Nintendo controllers, but just different enough to gently caress with my muscle memory.
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Jun 25, 2018 21:55
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Those tables are no joke. Not only are they small enough to be under most weapon swings, with a hitbox large enough (due to those floating tableware) to make reach an issue, but they're placed in spots that can easily knock you into a screen transition or other bad position.
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Jun 25, 2018 22:02
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Shields are awesome and they offer several benefits including PASSIVE DEFENSE BONUS: so equip your drat shield.
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Jun 25, 2018 22:48
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Video's all fixed up!
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Jun 25, 2018 22:58
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Commander Keene posted:The "magic salt" is actually probably plain old vanilla table or rock salt. Salt was believed to have mystical purification powers in many mythologies due to its role in preserving food from decay (which, before it was understood that microbes were the cause, was believed to be the work of witches or demons). Hence the practice of throwing a pinch of spilled salt over your shoulder to ward off evil, or the Supernatural TV show's obsession with rock salt bullets.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:27
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Commander Keene posted:The "magic salt" is actually probably plain old vanilla table or rock salt. Salt was believed to have mystical purification powers in many mythologies due to its role in preserving food from decay (which, before it was understood that microbes were the cause, was believed to be the work of witches or demons). Hence the practice of throwing a pinch of spilled salt over your shoulder to ward off evil, or the Supernatural TV show's obsession with rock salt bullets. The "magic salt" are actually meant to be Vibhuti, blessed scented ashes of the dead from Hindu tradition. Considering that you can kill things with a bible or holy water it makes sense you can kill monsters with Vibhuti since it's also a holy object. As for shields, you can actually use them to block Gaibon's fireballs, both the regular and the angry mode giant ones. Luck mode is a lot easier when you use your shield effectively. Slogra and Gaibon were bosses from Dracula X/Rondo of Blood as well, so having them here is a callback. You can also Shields up and walk through an Axe Armor's axe, or a skeleton's bone, or a bone slinger's boomerangs or the Stone Rose's projectiles. Basically, with all due respect, I think Yorkshire Tea is just flat wrong and shields are awesome.
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Jun 26, 2018 02:37
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Omnicrom posted:The "magic salt" are actually meant to be Vibhuti, blessed scented ashes of the dead from Hindu tradition. Considering that you can kill things with a bible or holy water it makes sense you can kill monsters with Vibhuti since it's also a holy object. Slogra and Gaibon were also in Super Castlevania IV, although they were fought separately at the time Also, Luck mode is the real Castlevania SOTN mode. No other mode will do.
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Jun 26, 2018 04:23
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UnSmith posted:Also, Luck mode is the real Castlevania SOTN mode. No other mode will do.
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Jun 26, 2018 10:50
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This second video made me realize that the best and/or most agonizing part of this whole blind LP is going to be how atrociously bad SOTN tends to be at marking the entrances to save rooms and boss fights.
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Jun 26, 2018 18:36
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Ah yes, another small update. Since Tea and I can now queue episodes, I've taken to preuploading videos and setting them for timed release. What this means is that there might be some lag between episodes appearing there and me posting here.
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Jun 26, 2018 23:13
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Regarding the box pushing puzzle at the beginning of the video: The spikes at the beginning of the video will lift the block if you push it on top of them and make the spikes come out again. Also, how did you manage to miss three save points 
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Jun 27, 2018 02:15
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Oh my god the save point missing. Just as a general tip, you do want to at least poke your head into every room you come across. Could save you a lot of grief.
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Jun 27, 2018 14:24
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Cerebral Bore posted:Oh my god the save point missing. Just as a general tip, you do want to at least poke your head into every room you come across. Could save you a lot of grief.
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Jun 27, 2018 14:46
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 Episode 03 - Eat Book
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Jun 27, 2018 23:50
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gently caress you it's 3AM and I have a deadline in the morning! ...aw gently caress it, I needed a break anyway.
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Jun 28, 2018 00:37
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"Eat Book" sounds like a command you'd enter in a text-adventure game if you were trying to solve a puzzle and got bored or frustrated. I CAN'T EAT BOOK. Also, seconding that Harmony has the worst soundtrack I've heard in a Castlevania. I always have trouble against the Doppelganger; his small size and quick movement combine to make him pretty tough, IMO. I usually resort to spells for damage.
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Jun 28, 2018 01:06
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I would say that Doppelganger is one of the harder bosses of the game, if only because for most of the other bosses are extremely easy to accidentally overlevel yourself for.
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Jun 28, 2018 08:29
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Terrible opinions of Monster Hunter aside, I am excited to watch one of my favorite games get a legitimate blind run through. I've had tentative plans to do a, uh, weird LP run of this game for years now, and seeing a blind run oughta give me some ideas for it, should I ever actually start working on it. That said, I'm going to have to never post in this thread again. The temptation to backseat and otherwise dole out helpful information is far too strong. Yorkshire Tea seems to be taking a hands-off approach while in the expert's seat, so I should respect that.
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Jun 28, 2018 22:30
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 Episode 04- Woof! Woof!
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Jun 30, 2018 01:20
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Y'all may want to stop being coy and just add "pointing at save points along the way" to the list of permissible info.
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Jun 30, 2018 01:25
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Woof. Woof.
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Jun 30, 2018 03:05
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I don't think I've ever felt as anxious while playing a Castlevania game as I did while watching the entirety of that library section; this whole run is going to be amazing. At least the map makes it a little easier to figure out which rooms might be save points.
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Jun 30, 2018 16:58
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That trip through the library sure was... educational. 
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Jun 30, 2018 17:10
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 Episode 05- Why Game!?
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Jul 2, 2018 23:04
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