Showing posts with label Tose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tose. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 13 - The Journey To The Flying Fortress


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

I was lost at the start of this Part. i knew that i had to head for Lufenia but the guide i was using wasn't as accurate as i would've liked. but i got a hint in Gaia and eventually found it. The Mirage Tower was easier to find and easier to navigate than i expected. But with no Inn this part, i still have to be careful and i made sure to heal my team up at the end as i'm looking forward to exploring the Flying Fortress in the next part.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 12 - The Sunken Shrine And The Water Crystal


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

Most of Part 12 took place in the The Sunken Shrines.  i initially took most of the right turns and ended up at the boss before half way. the dungeon itself didn't turn out to be too dangerous but the boss was the toughest boss we've come across so far. as i took the correct way to the boss, and the water crystal, i went back in to try out the other way and was reward with more loot, exp, and money.

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 11 - Dragons, Class Changes, And Onrac


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the #PlayStationPortable version of #FinalFantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on #UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from #GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

In Part 11 i did a lot of little tasks that didn't seem to be a part of the main story line. In Part 10, i did the Citadel of Trials and got a reward. Here, i was able to take that reward and got a buff to my character classes. one thing that was made clear to me in this part was that the guide i'm using is skipping some of the story telling. twice i went off to different places in this video to get a fairy and a warp cube. from my playing, there were no story reasons for this. but in Onrac i talked to everyone and found people who would've given me the story for finding the fairy. i'd been curious if i had been missing some of the story telling and now it's clear to me that i have. i can understand why the guide skips some of it as it's streamlining the experience. but for me i think i would've liked to have got the story and then used the guide to find out where to go next. i don't think i'm going to change things in the future videos as i've already used it as much as i have.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 10 - Getting The Airship And Citadel Of Trials


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

There were to big things that happened in this part. the first was getting the Airship. whilst it looked cool on screen, i can't help but think that this scene could've had an fmv sequence. the music whilst in the airship is nice. once we had it, the guide pointed us in the direction of the Citadel of Trials. but i don't know why and i feel that it's either the guide of the game, or both, at fault for the lack of why we're going where we're going. for example, it's the game fault if there's no one telling us to go there or the games not pointing us there. it's the guide's fault if the guide is not getting us to talk to the people who would be telling us where to go. so whilst i'm following the guide, i'm not sure about the why we're going where it's telling us.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 9 - Completing The Cavern of Ice


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from Game FAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

In Part 8 my party was defeated. i didn't save, i didn't bring enough items, and it caught me out. so for this part, i learned the lessons and made it through the Cavern of Ice. some things were a little different this time round as i managed to remember a couple of places in the cavern so navigating it seemed to go smoother. i also don't remember picking up the Flame Sword in Part 8 and getting it here did seem to give my team a bit of a boost.

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 8 - The Party Was Defeated!


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

It finally happened, in Part 8 the game managed to beat me. It started fine as i went back to town and stocked up on important goods. but it quickly turned out i didn't have enough. throughout my time in the Cavern of Ice, we were being hit hard and all characters were taking a lot of damage. for the most part we were managing ok, but then we had a fight where the enemy used ice magic repeatedly and defeated my team. in hindsight, perhaps i should've continued my assault and not worried about fleeing or my downed team mates. So i'll try again in Part 9!

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 7 - Mt. Gulg And The Fire Crystal


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

Part 7 shows my journey into Mt. Gulg down to the Fire Crystal. there were a couple of moments early on where i was being hit hard and nearly lost Duncan again. near the end of my time in Mt. Gulg there was a dragon enemy that i encountered only once but in that encounter it nearly wiped my team in just one attack! i wasn't expecting to come across the boss fight when i did and i was expecting it to be more difficult than it was. i didn't panic and for both crystal boss fights i've had a clear idea what i'm going to do and why and it seems that is working. i ended this video having finished Mt. Gulg and in the next part i'll head to town and stock up before heading off to the next crystal.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 6 - Getting The Earth Crystal


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the #PlayStationPortable version of #FinalFantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on #UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from #GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

Part 6 started with some shopping. after my first time going into The Cavern of Earth drained my supplies, i knew i had to go and get more as we'd be going down further into the dungeon. once i was fully stocked up, we went into The Cavern of Earth and came across the Earth Crystal's boss surprisingly fast. one of the problems with Part 5 is just how many battles it took to get anywhere. but here we got kinda lucky. the boss wasn't too difficult either. Defeating the boss played a short cutscene of a statue breaking apart, but that's not where i went next.

The guide i'm using wants me to go after the Fire Crystal next. i'm a little unsure if i've missed out on some sort of story beat or if it doesn't really matter. another example of this is at the start of the video when i went shopping. it was easy to go back to Cornelia but whilst there, i found a shadowy figure and i have no idea what that's about.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 5 - My First Visit To The Cavern Of Earth


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

Part 5 ended up being a little frustrating. getting to The Cavern Of Earth actually went easier than expected. it's what happened in their that ended up making this part fairly frustrating. there were soo many random battles. there were times when i could only move a step before facing off against enemies. Sure, i got money and experience but it slowed things right down. it took nearly 30 minutes to get to the boss, then i found out i couldn't make any more progress and had to get myself out of The Cavern Of Earth. Then things got frustrating once more as i was unable to make my way out for another 15 minutes or so.

Being in The Cavern Of Earth had used up all of my potions, and then i got back to Melmond only to find there was no general store. i have to go back into The Cavern Of Earth to try and go even deeper, but i'll have to go back to a city from earlier in my playthrough so i can stock up on essential supplies. So that's what'll happen in the next part.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 4 - My Journey To Melmond


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

At the end of Part 3 i mentioned how i didn't know where i needed to go after i went back to the Marsh Cave so i was lucky to have the guide to point me in the right direction. After the cave we headed back to locations from the start of the game and once we arrived i kinda started to remember that there were locked rooms previously.

So with all the back tracking done, i was once again lost on where to go. i didn't remember anyone in the story telling us where to go or even giving a hint. the guide i'm using is more general so i knew the rough direction on where to go, but as it doesn't have a map it still took some wandering around to get there. But once there the map opened up again and i thought best to head to the first town, use their inn, talk to the locals, and try and buy some stuff. Now we're in the town, by talking to people it seems like there's a crystal near by and that there's vampires!

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 3 - A Crown, An Eye, And A Tonic


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

I decided to edit Part 3 like i would normally in this series, and like how Part 1 was edited, so that you get to see the whole journey from A to B. I think i'll keep doing this going forward.

Part 3 was interesting as we managed to finish the 3 main quests we were doing. After finding the Marsh i explored it's 3 floors and found some nice items and beat the boss of the Marsh. We got a crown. so net i had to give that crown to the king from Part 2, and once that was settled we got an eye. In Motoya's Cave, the witch needed her eye back so we set off back there and she gave us a special tonic. i headed back to the elf town and gave the tonic to their prince. feeling better, we obtained a special key and set off to open rooms that had been previously locked. 

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 2 - Getting To The Western Keep


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

For Part 2 i wanted to try a different approach. normally, i show everything i do in a playthrough. but with the large number of random battles in Final Fantasy, i wanted to try cutting them out and only showing story progress. so whilst my recording was around 1 hour 20 minutes, with most of the random battles cut out it's less than 50 minutes! Let me know in the comments if this is a welcome change or if you'd prefer i stick to how it used to be. i may put up a community post asking for opinions.

Part 2, in terms of story, was also interesting as we got some things to do. We started in Matoya’s Cave and got a quest there. we visited Pravoka and defeated pirates, earning ourself a boat! next i visited Elfheim and we learned about their Prince and that became a quest. and finally we got to The Western Keep and found a King, who gave us our final quest.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 1 - Getting To Matoya’s Cave


Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. I  have played most Final Fantasy games that came out on PlayStation or later but i haven't gone back and played the first 4 games. i have them on PSP so i thought it'd be fun to try out the first Final Fantasy game. this version came out from 2007 and it kept a lot from previous versions. for example, it's mostly built upon the GBA version but updated with the PSOne cinematics, changed to widescreen, and with improved graphics and sounds.

To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. a great example is how the guide told me about going to the shops at the start of the game before i set off on my mission. i might've spoken with people in the town, but going shopping from the start wouldn't have been my first move.

Not too much happens in this part. i show off the XMB first before starting the game. then there's a cinematic that means nothing right now, and then it came to squad building. this i wasn't prepared for, i'm so used to playing a set team i wasn't quite ready to pick my own. so i took a few minutes to think it over and then the game started.

This Part shows the journey from meeting the king, saving the Princess, and journeying to Matoya's Cave.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Demo Play Thursday - Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on Switch


For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. This game, from developers Tose, is set to come out near the end of 2023.

I've never played a game in the Monsters series but i've known about it and seen enough videos to have a general understanding of how it works. I was curious about how much of a DEMO Square Enix was going to release for the game as they have released some big demo's in the past.

This is a great demo. it has an announcement at the very start explaining clearly that there are limits, that not everything will be carried over to the final version of the game but there are things that will be carried over. And yet whilst i played it, i never felt that the restrictions impacted my enjoyment of the demo. i could see some things greyed out, but as it's the start of the game they are things i wasn't really going to interact with anyway.

With these videos, i try to keep them an hour or less and most games in this series have finished before an hour. I didn't finish this demo and i wanted to keep on playing. for me, that's a good sign of a demo in that when it was over i wanted to keep on playing.

Another sign that this is not only a good demo but also mostly likely to be a very accessible game is how good the tutorial is. it came step by step smartly in the story and throughout this video more and more was slowly being revealed at a nice pace that didn't feel overwhelming. the demo came across in such a way that i feel like the game itself will focus more on story telling rather than mechanics and will do so by making the game very approachable. 

The demo did have some technical issues that seemed separate from the issues the #Switch was having in general. there were some slight hitches where the framerate and fluidity of gameplay felt noticeably off for a brief moment. there was also a moment where a monster seemingly spawned half into the environment. But it was also clear the Switch was struggling a little to run this game. the fans in my Switch were noticeably going, the pop-in was too close to the camera and very noticeable, and some of the graphics just looked like they had a low level of detail and in some instances they looked copy and pasted together. But the game isn't out yet so i can't say for sure if those issues will carry over to the retail version of the game. But as a demo, i do recommend it. it's a fantastic demo and a great look at a game.

Monday, August 21, 2023

Cloud Monday - Scarlet Nexus - Part 2 - Still Fun, But More Noticeable Streaming Issues


Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing Scarlet Nexus on a launch model PS4. In part 1, https://youtu.be/z4pOFUlwWsg, streaming it via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service went really well with only one or two noticeable issues. But in today's video, there were more issues to the point where i got a connection warning. thankfully, it wasn't throughout the video, but as it was more frequent it also was much more noticeable than in part 1.

The game was still fun to play. the combat is fast paced and i didn't notice any lag due to the game being streamed to me. that was true with part 1, so at least the feel of the game holds up across both days. The story is a little slow and the world feels empty, more so in this video. near the end it says i'm free to do what i want. but, as i show in the video, there was nothing i could do. none of the shops are buildings i can go in, it was more like i was at point A and the game wanted me to go to Point B. so, in a way, the game's own story got in the way of gameplay.

Across both parts, a typical thing streaming does is reduce the resolution and i didn't notice it happening. for a 1080p system, the game looks great. but i do worry that if there are streaming issues that the resolution will drop and the game will be greatly affected. the text on screen is small, but for me fine. this and the game's unique art style and way it draws the neon stuff are the most likely to be affected by a resolution drop. We didn't get it, but what we did get in this video was just as bad. there was macro blocking, where squares of color appear instead of fine detail, and even more noticeable were the stream tearing moments as it's just light grey on screen.

I think this is a good game, but i don't think it's a great game to be streamed. i mentioned in the first video how the save system is an auto save and only at specific points. it's a system not suited to a streaming service were you get a 20 second notice of being kicked off. it's unique art style is also susceptible to streaming issues. I have this on disc and if i had to chose between playing the game on disc or streaming it from the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service, i would chose to play it from disc.

Monday, August 14, 2023

Cloud Monday - Scarlet Nexus - Part 1 - Fun Start, But Manual Saves Have Me Concerned

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing Scarlet Nexus on a launch model PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service. It's a game i have on disc and have wanted to play for a while as it's art style and combat mechanics look really cool.

Those two things don't disappoint during this hour. i noticed no lag in the controls, from what i pressed to it happening on screen, so the combat felt fun, fast, and dynamic. it's early on so i'm not too good at it but i 'm curious how it'll change as things unlock and whether or not there are interactions with another character. As for the art style, it's so unique and colorful with bright neon colors and particles that in some respects it was very noticeable when stream tearing happened and grey appeared on screen as it clashed with the game. But it also meant i wasn't able to notice smaller issues like macroblocking. Once or twice there were bigger issues but they only lasted for a second or two and never got in the way.

What was a little concerning for a game being streamed from PlayStation Plus Premium is how the save system works. the game does have an Autosave feature but in this hour i wasn't able to work out how frequently it saves other when entering or leaving an area or after a major battle. But the game, so far, only allows the player to save at very specific places. an example in this video is that it was about 17 minutes between these save points and a lot of story and critical battles took part during that time. I'm concerned as the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service only gives a 20 second countdown before it terminates the connection, whether your ready or not.