Dragon's Crown: The Playing

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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata »

K wrote:This game really should have perished in obscurity as wanky fan-service clones of shitty games are supposed to die.
Except it really isn't. Having played it for quite a while now, the game may seem to be just a fan service clone, but there really is an old-school charm to it.

The art and presentation really has a lot of references and throwbacks to old school D&D. For instance, you don't have scripted FMV sequences in between battles. You get a DM-like narrator. Cynics may say it's just the company not having a FMV budget, but it actually really meshes with everything else in the game.

The cynic in me wants to scoff at it for being so old school, right down to how you need to actually have a physical paper print out of the rune combinations instead of just having an in-game tool tip. But that's the exact sort of thing that the old school RPGs used to have (e.g. you typed in the name of the spell), and the way it's implemented here (even without the paper guide) is actually not so annoying or frustrating. It's like the designer winking at us old fogeys and reminding us of tricks from bygone days.

It's a lot like Pacific Rim honestly. Its premise is ridiculous, and the artwork is over-the-top. But it gets to the heart of the genre better than anything that has been released in recent memory.
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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch »

name_here wrote:
Starmaker wrote:Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is amazingly sexist
Uh, what?
It's a shonen manga and it's not called One Piece. These two facts make it amazingly sexist.
@ @ Nockermensch
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

Long overdue update:

So a buddy got his own PS3 controller and came over here and we took a dwarf (me) and a wizard (him) from level 1 to level 9, and through four dungeons and three sidequests.

First of all, I want it understood:

The dwarf is fucking awesome. He can grab enemies and objects, and throw them. And it's amazing. Damage could be higher, but they'll go through all the enemies in the way. Some skills upgrade the impact, so you can throw an enemy or thing upwards and it'll hurt the baddies around the landing spot. His basic aerial attack is him spreading his arms out wide and dropping on the enemies like he's trying to dash their heads open upon his mighty pecs.

The wizard is badass complement to a frontline fighter, being able to throw down some asskicking if he can be guaranteed a breathing space.

I can only imagine how crazy this gets with four people. As in, we could lose track of ourselves once a -big- fight started.

Speaking of which, the Doom Beetle was a bitch to fight, and I'm glad I had backup for it. It would have been hell trying to kill the cocoons and the Beetle at the same time.

Anyway, yeah. The dwarf in co-op the most fun I've had in this game. Especially when it turned out we can't actually hurt each other (but can inconvenience). When we were running to the gate, I did the dashing attack and got by buddy from behind and sent him flying on a flat trajectory across the screen and out of sight behind the exit.
Last edited by Maxus on Sun Aug 25, 2013 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by Starmaker »

name_here wrote:
Starmaker wrote:Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is amazingly sexist
Uh, what?
(Missed that.) "Menz get to have awesome adventures, wimminz should sit at home ready to patch them up" is an actual quote from the series' designated font of wisdom. (It is by no means lacking in sexist tropes, but I am too lazy to list everything only to have people respond with "noooo, you just want everyone to fuck like rabbits and whine because they don't".)
nockermensch wrote:It's a shonen manga and it's not called One Piece. These two facts make it amazingly sexist.
Brotherhood is the second (better) anime. I stopped reading the manga when Amazon went UPS-only. Never watched One Piece.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

The dwarf can also glide like a flying squirrel, dropping bombs from his loincloth.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

Flying squirrel sounds a little too strong a word.

He seems to just flex REALLY HARD and displace the air behind him to propel himself forward.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by icyshadowlord »

I love how people never talk about men being objectified.

Also, if Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is sexist, then EVERYTHING is sexist.

You just can't ever debate / argue with a feminist / feminazi, because you are a man and thus evil.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Maxus wrote:Flying squirrel sounds a little too strong a word.

He seems to just flex REALLY HARD and displace the air behind him to propel himself forward.
"Dwarves have a +10 racial bonus to jump and tumble"
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

The dwarf's got some crazy moves for a guy who looks like this.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Maxus wrote:The dwarf's got some crazy moves for a guy who looks like this.
It makes sense:
Image
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

Oh so true.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus »

icyshadowlord wrote:I love how people never talk about men being objectified.

Also, if Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is sexist, then EVERYTHING is sexist.

You just can't ever debate / argue with a feminist / feminazi, because you are a man and thus evil.
I can't tell how seriously to take this post. It's right at the point where my incredulity and pessimism intersect.
name_here
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Post by name_here »

Starmaker wrote:"Menz get to have awesome adventures, wimminz should sit at home ready to patch them up" is an actual quote from the series' designated font of wisdom. (It is by no means lacking in sexist tropes, but I am too lazy to list everything only to have people respond with "noooo, you just want everyone to fuck like rabbits and whine because they don't".)
Winry is pretty much the only major female character who even kind of takes that advice. Izumi, May, Oliver, Lan Fan, and Riza sure as hell don't. Yes, some of the villains rough them up. Said villains also rough up male main characters and fucking tanks.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Winry's only defining motivation is Edward's dick. Lan Fan's only defining motivation is Ling's dick. Riza's only defining motivation is Roy's dick. I can't actually think of any male characters in FMA Brotherhood who are defined by their devotion to women.

On the flip side, May, Oliver, and Izumi all have rather independent motivations. May is from a disgraced family looking for a way to restore her status, and gets to be the good guy along the way. Oliver finds out bad shit is going down, and wants to stop it. Izumi has had bad shit happen to her that is connected to what is happening in the story, and wants to stop it. Some of those motivations aren't fleshed out as much as they could be, but they are also characters that exist in the limbo between primary and secondary cast and so it's understandable. Izumi also has the thing going on where she is Edward's teacher, but "protecting your sort of children/student/whatever" isn't really a gender-specific motivation.

I don't really get why anyone would call it amazingly sexist. Sure, a lot of the women in the primary cast are defined by their relationships to men, and almost none of the men in the primary cast are defined by their relationships to women, and that does trip some alarms. But there's also a decent number of women in the primary cast defined by some personal goal. And the women from both camps are ass-kickers and day-savers. I would place it solidly around the sexist median. Winry is the worst offender of the bunch, but despite being the main character's romance it doesn't get a lot of attention or focus and is basically just tacked on. Seriously, why does Winry even exist?
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Winry represents the brothers' idyllic pre-mutilation lives and the hope that they can live normally again. It's an important narrative role, but it is not handled particularly well.
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