Stories on Tuesday - The Get Out Kids - From Start To Finish On iPhone

I have combined both parts of my playthrough of The Get Out Kids into one story. I have cut out when i failed a puzzle in the second part.

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/R8axa1Pr19U

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/HqxGkIHbmP0

Cloud Monday - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion - Not Recommend To Stream From The Cloud

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

Part 1, https://youtu.be/rUNzRtmKoQk, ended with the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service terminating my connection so in this part we got to see when the last save was. thankfully, it wasn't as bad as i feared. it looks like there is an auto save feature so i probably lost 5-10 minutes of the mission i was currently on rather than 20 minutes or more it would've cost me if the game relied on my manual save instead.

there's more than one reason reason why i've come out and said i do not recommend streaming this game from the cloud. the save system is one of those but there's other things. a bizarre one i don't think i've seen before was when the poor connection logo appeared but it covered up the game's controls right a moment when i needed to guard. i hadn't used guard up to this point, but i was facing off against a boss level character and had to try and dodge whilst i waited for the logo to disappear so i could finally read how to guard. 

another little thing that i noticed more in this part than the first part is how it affected the music in the game. i'm a big fan of the Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII soundtrack so i found it very distracting when there were, admittedly rare, audio issues. The overarching issue that became more apparent in this part was how it interfered with how cinematic the game was trying to be.

The game is full of cutscenes and they look much better than the rest of the game. but when there's an issue with the stream, because these videos are of such a high quality it becomes quite noticeable and distracting and ultimately detracts from the cinematic presentation of this game. this also occurs when you're racing to get to an auto save or a manual save. as you can skip these videos, you're choosing to skip either some cool cinematics or important story stuff.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion does have some useful game design that makes it good to stream from the cloud, but they're only small aspects when compared to grand overall game itself. personally, i don't recommend this game as something you should stream from the cloud and instead you should download it and play it that way,

Demo Play Thursday - The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II Battle DEMO On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II Battle DEMO.

There are 2 demoes for The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II. last week i tried out the Story DEMO, https://youtu.be/Z8q4UuYjIw4, and today i tried out the Battle DEMO. Playing them was a different experience, not just in terms of the demo content but also in how broth approach the customer. as the story demo was from the start of the game, it includes a tutorial and is a much slower pace. this battle demo has no tutorial and puts us into one of two dungeons with basic missions to complete.

Thankfully, have played the demo for The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak and knew about it's battle system. but using this many characters was new to me and things were happening i wasn't too sure about. it's frustrating in that both the dungeons in this demo were specially made for the demo and that this demo feels "hand made" whereas the story demo is just a cut and paste from the start of the game. if the effort was put in to make such a special demo, then why was no effort put in to providing a tutorial. they might as well have just lifted the tutorial from the start of the game as a video and played that, at least it would've been something.

Oh, i would highly recommend setting this demo to easy. i did the first dungeon at easy difficulty level and found it to be a good challenge for my knowledge of how it all worked. for the second dungeon, i tried out the normal difficulty level and ended up getting my first team wiped out. thankfully, in The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II there's a backup team so if the first team get knocked out, the second team take their place and continue the battle.

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!

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/QWXAyHh-R0s

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/95BsHWcN6K0

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/eMh6cvudEOA

Stories on Tuesday - The Get Out Kids - Part 2 - The Final Part

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the iOS version of The Get Out Kids from Frosty Pop Games. I'm playing this on my iPhone 14 pro, using the Lighting to HDMI adapter to record the video rather than using the phone's own screen recorder.

Going into Part 2, i thought that it might be the final part of the story and i was right. but i was not expecting the ending to the story i got. without spoiling it, i thought the premise was just a child's imagination that the guardian was playing into. i also failed to expect what happened to each of the characters in this story, too. but i'm not saying it was a bad outcome. it was unexpected, shocking, and yet also satisfying. 

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/R8axa1Pr19U

Cloud Monday - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion - Couldn't Save Before Being Disconnected

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

The title is the real headline here. unlike the PS2, PS1, and PSP games that have been released on PS4 and PS5 via emulation and can therefore save at any point by pressing the options button, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion is not one of these so i am reliant on the game's save system. in this video, you'll see that i'm stuck in the middle of a mission with no save point in sight. this game uses specific save points instead of manual saves via the pause menu or options menu. so when the 20 second warning came up, there was nothing i could do. i do have a save, but that was from before the mission i was doing.

In some respects, this version of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is worse than the original because the PSP version could be put to sleep and continued at a later date or the game could be paused and the screen turned off. because those features were PSP hardware features and not software, there's nothing equivalent to them when you stream a game from the cloud.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion isn't a 1080p game, but the quality of the stream meant that the videos looked great regardless. from what i remember, the main game is basically an HD skin over the PSP version and in places it didn't look as high quality. playing the game, i noticed character movement was stiffer than expected and the faces often looked poor. But that's the game itself and not from the streaming from the cloud.

Another example of this was in combat. the character animation has priority, so i had to wait for one animation to finish before i could do another move. you can see in this video i was often pressing buttons to attack other enemies as i was expecting it to be more fluid. i didn't notice any delay due to this being streamed to me and a key example of this was the rumble, it always felt accurate to what was happening on screen and of course the original version of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII didn't have rumble as the PSP didn't have the hardware for it.

So streaming the game from the cloud felt great, until the disconnection happened. thankfully the last save point was only before the mission so it's better than Sonic Frontiers which took nearly an hour before i could manual save or other RPGs like Scarlet Nexus which also had fixed points i could save at but it's save points were more than 30 minutes apart. we'll see in Part 2 next week if save points become more frequent as we go but in an age of cloud streaming and when other Final Fantasy games have made it easier to save, it's a little disappointing that Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion wasn't updated.

Mobile Friday - Spin Break: Roulette Battle - A Tough Roguelike Deckbuilder With A Roulette Mechanic

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Spin Break: Roulette Battle, from FIFTYONE PERCENT on my iPhone 14 Pro.

The Roulette aspect of the gameplay was what caught my attention. i was very curious how they would incorporate such a mechanic into the gameplay. would it be simple or would there be depth and strategy to it. the trailer for the game on the iOS page did tease the graphics and some aspects of the gameplay and it helped solidify Spin Break: Roulette Battle as being this week's game.

Once it's started, it takes you straight to a tutorial. at first i thought that it was good, but once i started playing the game i feel like the tutorial was a bit too basic in hindsight. there were on screen stuff in battles not highlighted, nor was the main home screen detailed. i would've liked more help with strategy and a deeper dive into the luck mechanic as throughout this video it felt like i didn't have much and was getting beaten by it.

Thankfully, if you do fail it's not a big issue as this is a roguelike. the only thing that carries over from the stages you completed is some of the blue crystal currency and one relic, out of however many you picked up. if you used a relic during that run, it's now gone, as are any cards and stat boosts you picked up during the run. when it's over, everything's reset to how it was before the start of the run.

the gameplay loop that i uncovered from playing Spin Break: Roulette Battle is simple. get blue crystals and use them to level up your character and your items. But because of how bad my runs where, i don't know a lot about this game. there is a power limit, it takes 5 to do a run and you only have 20 when it's fully charged. my guess is it takes 30 minutes to recharge 1 power.

I was genuinely surprised by how bad i was at this game. i couldn't defeat the first stage after the tutorial, it's 1-1. because of the game's luck mechanics and run to run randomness, i don't know if it was a skill thing or a luck thing either. that's kinda the main negative i have with this game. i'm bad at it, i don't know why, i don't know if it's meant to be like this, and i don't know how to get better at it other than grinding the blue level up crystals.

This isn't a fault with the roulette aspect of gameplay. i actually enjoyed what it added to the game. it's not simply choosing who goes first, if you land on red the enemy attacks and if you land on blue you attack, but there's a surprising amount of strategy to it as the deck building is also somewhat tied to it. if you're able to turn all spots on the roulette wheel blue, you unleash a super powerful attack. to turn the pieces blue you need to land on blue and then use cards. the cards are a mix of attacking the enemy, healing yourself, putting up shields, working the graveyard mechanic, and changing piece color on the roulette wheel.

This is where luck is powerful and not explained fully. there are times when your card will go up against the enemies card and who has the strongest card wins and deals damage. but then there's two luck mechanics that can turn a 70+% card vs. a 30% card from the enemy into a loss. there are also parts of the enemy UI that i don't understand.

I feel like there is a solid game here, but in it's current state it feels unbalanced and is hiding a bit too much from the player. the start of the game shouldn't be this tough. with some better tutorials, some gameplay tips, and perhaps making the first couple of stages part of the tutorial, Spin Break: Roulette Battle could be a game that'd be fun to keep coming back to. as it is now, i do think it's worth trying as the music is great and i did enjoy the pixel art. i liked the strategy aspect, too. but it'll put a lot of people off as it's not quite all there at the moment. 

Version 1.0.7 Played.