Happy Easter everyone, hope you had a lots of chocolate and not succumbed to the usual jesus bullshit that this time of year brings. I'm a strict bunny and chick person no god here.
Anyway the heading promised more on Legend Of Legacy and i'll also talk more on an old PC I'm trying to resurrect.
Legend of Legacy actually has quite a few things in it not well explained, another legacy of its SaGa roots. Magic can be awakened as well as skills kind of like the light bulb moment from the original SaGa. I've only got this once so far and it sort of makes it permanent, so you don't need spirits to power it. Another thing is running away what I call Benny Hilling, enemies will chase you and you can end up with a few following sort of like the old sketch but minus Yakety Sax playing in the background.
Its a real pain updating drivers, most of the driver updaters are actually pretty horrible and the driver sites out there are hardly any better. Most will download a malware ridden installer or offer a horrible driver checking experience. Tweaking Hardware do a good offline checker that you can use to see whats installed and whats required to get it working so far I've managed to update the soundcard drivers for an old PC and get sound working but apart from that nothing. We have an old Buffalo Wireless G Airstation dongle that really needs some drivers that aren't for XP but have no luck. We want them for win 7 but no one seems to support them at all.
The online home of Bear or Bust.
Sunday, 27 March 2016
Sunday, 20 March 2016
Legend of Legacy Review.
A trip to Croydon and I've finally snagged this in the wild which is proving to be quite a nice little RPG, like every RPG on the 3DS its produced in minimal numbers so even if its not your thing its probably going to be a collectors piece especially the EU version. Anyway on with the review.
Its, as I've mentioned, an RPG in the style of the SaGa games, notably the first SaGa Frontier for Playstation as both gave you a choice of 8 protagonists to play through. It has a few bits and pieces in common with SaGa as well in its choices of stats and stuff, also in its difficulty too as its bastard hard.
You do not get LP like you would in SaGa but you have a max HP score instead and if you get knocked out then it gets reduced by an amount. You can be revived by cure spells but unless you escape and go back to town your Max HP will not increase. You don't get WP or JP here but SP instead which are used to power your weapon specific skills. SaGa fans will be pleased to know that you can awaken and learn various skills in battle just as you would a normal SaGa game and I'm guessing that the spirit skills will yield up magic and stuff though I haven't sparked that yet.
I don't really know the names of any of the characters except my own which is called Liber and is a treasure hunter kid. His scene opens with him eating a whole bunch of stuff while a pal relates to him the story of the Star Graal and the newly arisen island of Avalon. So far my party consists of healer woman (Eloise) who is genuinely useful (no really she's the only one who can heal at present) and knight guy (Meurs not to be confused with Ollie) who's handy with a shield, there is also a frog prince (Filmia) with a neat line in spear skills.
The main town of Avalon is also the only town, being as it is a gateway to the frontier. After all cut scenes are through, you are dumped into a forest outside town with various shadowy things and a brief to complete the map and find stuff. Soon you come to a scene where you can take a few exits and look at a few things in the landscape. We came to a rock that sparked a boss battle which we barely won against a giant bird, bosses here are tough, we are currently pushing our luck with a bastard of an elemental boss to the right of the main map and running from battle will only send you back to the entrance which is cool but annoying at the same time.
When completed the map can be sold on for cash much more than you'd get in battle.
With the elementals freed we can add water to some attacks which boil down to a minimal regen effect at the end of each round. Sometimes you'll level up an old skill which is cool or awaken an old one as I've mentioned also you'll get stat boosts at the end of the round and rarely an item or gold (st).
The graphics remind me of SaGa Frontier 2, they're 3D though but still have that nice pastel vibrancy that SaGa Frontier 2 is known for. Music seems nice and there is some speech to it but mostly I've been playing in a place with a lot of noise so not noticing much.
At present its a solid 7/10 from me.
Atlus / FuRyu main site here
Its, as I've mentioned, an RPG in the style of the SaGa games, notably the first SaGa Frontier for Playstation as both gave you a choice of 8 protagonists to play through. It has a few bits and pieces in common with SaGa as well in its choices of stats and stuff, also in its difficulty too as its bastard hard.
You do not get LP like you would in SaGa but you have a max HP score instead and if you get knocked out then it gets reduced by an amount. You can be revived by cure spells but unless you escape and go back to town your Max HP will not increase. You don't get WP or JP here but SP instead which are used to power your weapon specific skills. SaGa fans will be pleased to know that you can awaken and learn various skills in battle just as you would a normal SaGa game and I'm guessing that the spirit skills will yield up magic and stuff though I haven't sparked that yet.
I don't really know the names of any of the characters except my own which is called Liber and is a treasure hunter kid. His scene opens with him eating a whole bunch of stuff while a pal relates to him the story of the Star Graal and the newly arisen island of Avalon. So far my party consists of healer woman (Eloise) who is genuinely useful (no really she's the only one who can heal at present) and knight guy (Meurs not to be confused with Ollie) who's handy with a shield, there is also a frog prince (Filmia) with a neat line in spear skills.
The main town of Avalon is also the only town, being as it is a gateway to the frontier. After all cut scenes are through, you are dumped into a forest outside town with various shadowy things and a brief to complete the map and find stuff. Soon you come to a scene where you can take a few exits and look at a few things in the landscape. We came to a rock that sparked a boss battle which we barely won against a giant bird, bosses here are tough, we are currently pushing our luck with a bastard of an elemental boss to the right of the main map and running from battle will only send you back to the entrance which is cool but annoying at the same time.
When completed the map can be sold on for cash much more than you'd get in battle.
With the elementals freed we can add water to some attacks which boil down to a minimal regen effect at the end of each round. Sometimes you'll level up an old skill which is cool or awaken an old one as I've mentioned also you'll get stat boosts at the end of the round and rarely an item or gold (st).
The graphics remind me of SaGa Frontier 2, they're 3D though but still have that nice pastel vibrancy that SaGa Frontier 2 is known for. Music seems nice and there is some speech to it but mostly I've been playing in a place with a lot of noise so not noticing much.
At present its a solid 7/10 from me.
Atlus / FuRyu main site here
Sunday, 13 March 2016
Funny Headsets
This week I have been mostly been playing around with VR. Or rather someone else's Virtual Reality Headset. My boss is a massive early adopter of technology where as I will pick it up when its cheap enough he will splash out on the latest tech and then sell it on when it goes a bit funny or outdated. He's got a Samsung 7 mobile complete with Oculus headset and is determined that we are all to like it by giving us mortals a go on it. Its impressive but left me feeling a bit funny around the head and that with a few tech demos and rollercoaster rides but no killer app for me. Thanks to Elite Dangerous not being single player offline and having a PC or phone not powerful enough to take advantage means that the best thing I can do is wait till its better implemented before jumping in.
He had a few things to play including a demo from Jurassic Park where you got to go eyeball to eyeball with an Apatosaurus, and some jump scare bollocks set in an asylum which I wisely chickened out off. Odd enough is the home cinema app which is for viewing film. Putting you in the heart of a strangely abandoned multiplex to watch a film on the virtual big screen, you can look around by moving your head and marvel at cup holders and the decor and look straight down at the slow horror that... you are not there!.
Its disconcerting to say the least to see you do not exist and are at best present merely haunting a cinema the ghost in the machine it was much more scary than the dino really, which big though it was was more like a scaly horse with its long neck and huge tail. Really helps to know that Apatosauruses are the huge long necked herbivore ones and that, no matter what your brain is saying, that its not real. At all.
Glasses ain't bad to be honest and I suppose you could use them for Porn but to be honest the most fun you can have with them is watching someone else use them and laugh at them try to react to things only they can see and hear. Sort of like second hand Schizophrenia but without the downside of a life changing mental illness. I predict this will become a mainstay on caught on camera shows and Failblog style react videos soon as its quite hilarious.
He had a few things to play including a demo from Jurassic Park where you got to go eyeball to eyeball with an Apatosaurus, and some jump scare bollocks set in an asylum which I wisely chickened out off. Odd enough is the home cinema app which is for viewing film. Putting you in the heart of a strangely abandoned multiplex to watch a film on the virtual big screen, you can look around by moving your head and marvel at cup holders and the decor and look straight down at the slow horror that... you are not there!.
Its disconcerting to say the least to see you do not exist and are at best present merely haunting a cinema the ghost in the machine it was much more scary than the dino really, which big though it was was more like a scaly horse with its long neck and huge tail. Really helps to know that Apatosauruses are the huge long necked herbivore ones and that, no matter what your brain is saying, that its not real. At all.
Glasses ain't bad to be honest and I suppose you could use them for Porn but to be honest the most fun you can have with them is watching someone else use them and laugh at them try to react to things only they can see and hear. Sort of like second hand Schizophrenia but without the downside of a life changing mental illness. I predict this will become a mainstay on caught on camera shows and Failblog style react videos soon as its quite hilarious.
Sunday, 6 March 2016
A few rants and that.
Terra Battle first up.
Had to reinstall this from scratch as the latest update would not download and would just cycle through endless downloading and Google play error codes. To add much more to the whole pain of it all I forgot my migration password and that so its effectively a reinstall from scratch. We had to install from an APK in the end as Google Play were being extremely cunty and not letting us download it again. From the top of my head we had quite a lot of good characters, Kuscah and Lucia at LV35 and a couple of stonefolk Mages as my stand out characters also Echo from a FF promotion they ran. Ochu as a companion and a fuck load of metal Minions yeah I'm not bitter, but its a big kick in the knackers that's all.
This run I'm down to level 3-4 already and have Grace as my main starting character which I've read isn't half bad actually, something to do with dragon killing which makes optional bosses much easier. Also I've taken a screenshot of my login and password so this time I can transfer it over if need be.
Scan of the week returns.
Who ordered a bizarre feminist tract... anyone? Didn't think so. Normally I find Africa Church leaflet, these are usually a mix of Gospel Choirs, abundance prayer whoring and obscure Bible notation worked into a theme such as men of Iron.
There are all the usual feminist tropes here including the "wage gap", rape reporting (Raw data here if you want it) and blaming the credit crunch for gender related redundancies (I think you'll find its everyone being laid off).
Where are all the Feminists. I'll tell you where, moaning about manspreading and mansplaining on twitter and other inconsequential bollocks. Its bickering about First world problems of little matter, when it should have to paraphrase the Pet Shop Boys, gone east and added some much needed equality to the middle east and southern Asia.
Had to reinstall this from scratch as the latest update would not download and would just cycle through endless downloading and Google play error codes. To add much more to the whole pain of it all I forgot my migration password and that so its effectively a reinstall from scratch. We had to install from an APK in the end as Google Play were being extremely cunty and not letting us download it again. From the top of my head we had quite a lot of good characters, Kuscah and Lucia at LV35 and a couple of stonefolk Mages as my stand out characters also Echo from a FF promotion they ran. Ochu as a companion and a fuck load of metal Minions yeah I'm not bitter, but its a big kick in the knackers that's all.
This run I'm down to level 3-4 already and have Grace as my main starting character which I've read isn't half bad actually, something to do with dragon killing which makes optional bosses much easier. Also I've taken a screenshot of my login and password so this time I can transfer it over if need be.
 |
| So much wrong. |
Who ordered a bizarre feminist tract... anyone? Didn't think so. Normally I find Africa Church leaflet, these are usually a mix of Gospel Choirs, abundance prayer whoring and obscure Bible notation worked into a theme such as men of Iron.
There are all the usual feminist tropes here including the "wage gap", rape reporting (Raw data here if you want it) and blaming the credit crunch for gender related redundancies (I think you'll find its everyone being laid off).
Where are all the Feminists. I'll tell you where, moaning about manspreading and mansplaining on twitter and other inconsequential bollocks. Its bickering about First world problems of little matter, when it should have to paraphrase the Pet Shop Boys, gone east and added some much needed equality to the middle east and southern Asia.
Sunday, 28 February 2016
New 3DS.
We've finally gone and done it and updated from our much beloved DS Lite to a brand New 3DS. It was going cheap in Cash Generator (£90) and as an early birthday present decided to snap it up at that price.
Was still shivery for a good hour later as its a lot for me to just buy stuff like that as its way out of my comfort zone, but it feels good to finally be part of this generation now. First of all we have a generic charger bundled with it that does DS / PSP and DSi onwards. What I didn't know was that they redesigned the charger port for DSi onwards so those with lite or the old fat DS's are out of luck when it comes to charging.
Secondly we decided to give it a test out of my old DS games, starting with Castelvania Portrait Of Ruin and working through various imports up until we tried our R4 to see if it would play Etrian Odyssey 3 or Pokemon Silver from the flash card and we got nowhere, which to be honest is to be expected.
Firmware is quite nice with a PSP style home button and 3d which gives me no problems but is switched off due to battery consumption. I even went as far as making a Mii version of myself although I can't see myself adding it to anything. Face raiders is horrifying as it ignored my mouth and proceeded to put another one in my chin, so I effectively shot at 2 mouthed freaks.
Finally we have Bravely Default 2 today which is really nice and feels like something that should be on a major console like a PS3 or 4. You can use the analogue sticks to move in and the d pad to navigate the main menus. Cart itself is white with an extra tab to prevent confusion with old DS games but so far, yeah this is nice, could do with the region locking being disabled which is still disgraceful for a handheld console but it gets my thumbs up so far.
Was still shivery for a good hour later as its a lot for me to just buy stuff like that as its way out of my comfort zone, but it feels good to finally be part of this generation now. First of all we have a generic charger bundled with it that does DS / PSP and DSi onwards. What I didn't know was that they redesigned the charger port for DSi onwards so those with lite or the old fat DS's are out of luck when it comes to charging.
Secondly we decided to give it a test out of my old DS games, starting with Castelvania Portrait Of Ruin and working through various imports up until we tried our R4 to see if it would play Etrian Odyssey 3 or Pokemon Silver from the flash card and we got nowhere, which to be honest is to be expected.
Firmware is quite nice with a PSP style home button and 3d which gives me no problems but is switched off due to battery consumption. I even went as far as making a Mii version of myself although I can't see myself adding it to anything. Face raiders is horrifying as it ignored my mouth and proceeded to put another one in my chin, so I effectively shot at 2 mouthed freaks.
Finally we have Bravely Default 2 today which is really nice and feels like something that should be on a major console like a PS3 or 4. You can use the analogue sticks to move in and the d pad to navigate the main menus. Cart itself is white with an extra tab to prevent confusion with old DS games but so far, yeah this is nice, could do with the region locking being disabled which is still disgraceful for a handheld console but it gets my thumbs up so far.
Sunday, 21 February 2016
Update time is here again.
A few updates on old stories and things, including a few things to read before you die. First of all a round up.
PS Vita Piracy is a thing now?
Read this on Wololo last week but as I was writing about the Chinese New Year then I plumb forgot about it. Apparently there is a pirate version of Uncharted for Vita that has been released now. There are no flash cards or Emulators available at present to take advantage of this but its a start (). Maybe in 2020 they'll be a working Vita Emulator complete with romhacking scene to take advantage of all the pirates work and that but at present its a nice thing to have. Maybe there will be a game exploit like Locoroco was for PSP that will give an exploit for full access, or a way to back up games that you own to prevent them getting lost and that.
Super Famicom.
They have in one of those Mobile Phone / game shops a Super Famicom for sale and its not cheap. They want £220 for it and it comes with a bizarre selection of carts with it. There is Game of Life, a few horse racing games including Derby Stallion 96 complete with bizarre cart that is Satellaview compatible and Dragon Quest V. They also have D Force a sub par shmup from Asmik Ace which at least requires minimal Japanese knowledge to enjoy unlike the others for sale.
Windows 7.
I finally got something working on the old Sony TVPC. Was going to go with linux but in the end as it came out garbled to fuck, decided to upgrade to windows 7 via an iso. file on an old Hard Drive. It has a pirate key on it and to be honest its not going on line ever but its coping well so far. We added tweaking hardware which I've found invaluable for sorting out old drivers to installed hardware, and Service Pack 1 via usb key. Its at its max of 1GB of ram and still looks like hell though but at least its current now.
Finally you'll have a few things that I've found interesting over the past week or so.
Want to read up on the original version of Star wars and how a group of fans are remastering it from original 35mm prints, then click here.
EPSXE have a new version of their PS1 Emulator out, I spent a good hour dicking about with all the settings trying to get Magical Drop 3 to work before I learned I was trying to run an iso. file as a CD doh. On better news they fixed the annoying cursor control issue for Pro Pinball the Fantastic Voyage which is a minor miracle, anyway that link is here.
Oh and finally PPSSPP the nice PSP emulator has also been updated as well. You can bag that here.
PS Vita Piracy is a thing now?
Read this on Wololo last week but as I was writing about the Chinese New Year then I plumb forgot about it. Apparently there is a pirate version of Uncharted for Vita that has been released now. There are no flash cards or Emulators available at present to take advantage of this but its a start (). Maybe in 2020 they'll be a working Vita Emulator complete with romhacking scene to take advantage of all the pirates work and that but at present its a nice thing to have. Maybe there will be a game exploit like Locoroco was for PSP that will give an exploit for full access, or a way to back up games that you own to prevent them getting lost and that.
Super Famicom.
They have in one of those Mobile Phone / game shops a Super Famicom for sale and its not cheap. They want £220 for it and it comes with a bizarre selection of carts with it. There is Game of Life, a few horse racing games including Derby Stallion 96 complete with bizarre cart that is Satellaview compatible and Dragon Quest V. They also have D Force a sub par shmup from Asmik Ace which at least requires minimal Japanese knowledge to enjoy unlike the others for sale.
Windows 7.
I finally got something working on the old Sony TVPC. Was going to go with linux but in the end as it came out garbled to fuck, decided to upgrade to windows 7 via an iso. file on an old Hard Drive. It has a pirate key on it and to be honest its not going on line ever but its coping well so far. We added tweaking hardware which I've found invaluable for sorting out old drivers to installed hardware, and Service Pack 1 via usb key. Its at its max of 1GB of ram and still looks like hell though but at least its current now.
Finally you'll have a few things that I've found interesting over the past week or so.
Want to read up on the original version of Star wars and how a group of fans are remastering it from original 35mm prints, then click here.
EPSXE have a new version of their PS1 Emulator out, I spent a good hour dicking about with all the settings trying to get Magical Drop 3 to work before I learned I was trying to run an iso. file as a CD doh. On better news they fixed the annoying cursor control issue for Pro Pinball the Fantastic Voyage which is a minor miracle, anyway that link is here.
Oh and finally PPSSPP the nice PSP emulator has also been updated as well. You can bag that here.
Sunday, 14 February 2016
Chinese New Year.
Celebrate Chinese New Year Monkey, Newyear Felicitations, beneficial. We could say it is Monkey Year or Iron Monkey God Celeb ration, for much prosper in the way we into the Auspicious much in the ways.
Hello readers, I hope you liked that intro, that was of course written in the traditional language of China "Chinglish" I have taken the liberty to add another example from the collection above to show you what I'm getting at. I bloody love Chinglish, no disrespect of course but those who don't know English or have a tenuous grip on it can twist it in may's wost beautiful.
If you didn't know, today is the official new year celebrations up town involving fireworks and all the stuff I don't much like, so with leave banking up, we decided to venture out on the Friday seeing as Saturday would be rainy and see what was occurring. The answer of course is nothing much as it was cold out, so while I didn't see any Lion Dancers or Monkey Gods on the loose, I did get quite a good view of all the new year decorations up at China Town.
Streams of red lanterns hung everywhere and there were people out with camera's taking shots of it all. Down by the fire station there was a series of displays detailing the Journey West aka Monkey! for those old enough to know the old show. It displayed a potted synopsis of his greatest hits along with Pigsy, Sandy, Tripitaka and his horse in their quest to retrieve the sacred scriptures from India. I always thought the end tune said in "Condora" as a little kid but its actually Gandhara. Pretty sure it was rerun on Sky One in the Mid 90's too.
Anyway I didn't see any Lion Dancers this time or Martial Arts as I have previous years but what I did see was pretty cool. I'll leave you with a photo of the big gate leading down to Leicester Square and of course to wish you Gong Xi Fa Cai.
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| Sinister Cupping Machine Chinglish |
If you didn't know, today is the official new year celebrations up town involving fireworks and all the stuff I don't much like, so with leave banking up, we decided to venture out on the Friday seeing as Saturday would be rainy and see what was occurring. The answer of course is nothing much as it was cold out, so while I didn't see any Lion Dancers or Monkey Gods on the loose, I did get quite a good view of all the new year decorations up at China Town.
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| Sun Wukong badass. |
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| This is a pretty good representation of it all. |
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| Lovely. |
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