Alchemyprime Challenges You! Game a Month Challenge!

[alchemyprime]

In these tough economic times, I've decided to tighten up my belt and play one game I've never actually finished a month. And I want to challenge other Playgrounders to do the same and post their results and progress here!

My games I need to do:

October: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

The only horror game I own for October. Fitting, eh?

November: DragonAge: Origins

I want to actually try to get further than I am, though apparently I took a wrong turn and ended up causing more harm than good...

December: Skies of Arcadia Legends

I need to actually BEAT this game. Not just Action Replay it at the end.

[Zevox]

...this is a challenge? :smallconfused:

I'm actually not sure I have many games I haven't finished but actually want to. I tend to finish any game I start playing, save for the few occasions where I either really don't like it or another, better game comes out and distracts me. The only ones coming to mind right now are Dragon Warrior/Quest 7 and Final Fantasy 9. Oh, I have others I never actually finished - FF8 and Too Human being two off the top of my head - but I have no interest in finishing them.

Hm, maybe Persona 3 FES: The Answer would qualify. Not a full game, but a damn hard extra portion set after the ending of the main game. I never finished it because of the sheer difficulty (it's locked into the game's "hard" difficulty, and normal is already a challenge!), and because the nonstop dungeon crawl and combat became tiring without the non-combat story and social link portions of the main game to break it up.

Zevox

[jmbrown]

It took me about 4 months to beat Dragon Age so good luck. I'd devote at least 2 months to RPGs unless you have a ton of free time to spare.

I beat Eternal Darkness in a weekend so get started on DA the moment you beat it.

[alchemyprime]

This is a challenge for a few reasons:

These are the games I've put off playing or finally playing through. Also, I have a few RPs I do, a semiregular D&D game, a job and I go to school full time and do homework, so I have little free time to play console games all the way through. My DSi got a lot of love, but my older consoles have been ignored, as have my bigger games. So I want to try to finish as many games each month as I can, and at least finish my main game each month. So Eternal Darkness is a must, but I will also be attempting Dragon Age, as well as 3D Dot Game Heroes, during this time. Just keep going down the list and try to finish at least a game a month.

[Eldan]

Huh. Reminds me to actually go try and finish Dragon Age... but it's so boring at the moment!
Seriously, the game started good, but after a while, it just became wave after wave after wave of the same three types of Darkspawn. Perhaps it gets better later.

[jmbrown]

Huh. Reminds me to actually go try and finish Dragon Age... but it's so boring at the moment!
Seriously, the game started good, but after a while, it just became wave after wave after wave of the same three types of Darkspawn. Perhaps it gets better later.

Depends on where you are. Finding the sacred ashes or whatever and the elf woods are the best dungeons because you don't have to fight friggin' boring dark spawn. I was majorly pissed off at doing the dwarf place last because, holy crap, it's 10 hours of dark spawn.

[GolemsVoice]

I still have to finish Gothic 2. Twice I tried, and got quite far, twice technology showed me who really controls this world by corrupting my savegames and destroying my harddrive.

[Eldan]

Depends on where you are. Finding the sacred ashes or whatever and the elf woods are the best dungeons because you don't have to fight friggin' boring dark spawn. I was majorly pissed off at doing the dwarf place last because, holy crap, it's 10 hours of dark spawn.

Yeah, I did the Dwarves pretty much first, just after the castle, but before the ashes. That was what bored me to the point of giving up. Walk three steps, darkspawn, three more steps, darkspawn, an entire corridor without darkspawn, more darkspawn...

Other games I still have to finish:
The Witcher (no idea why I gave up, I liked it, actually), Fallout 3 Broken Steel, Oblivion: Shivering Isles, Myst IV: Revelation (there was one puzzle I couldn't solve even with the help of the guide. I might try again, with a stopwatch), Aquaria (ran into some hard boss and got bored). There's probably more, I'm certainly forgetting some.

[dsmiles]

So, I think I'll start with Oblivion, but a month may not be enough.

After that, I'll move on to Star Ocean: 'Till the End of Time (which may also take more than a month).

You see, I'm married and video games are not a primary factor in my life (TTRPGs are, however).

[Drascin]

...this is a challenge? :smallconfused:


For those of us who tend to play bits and pieces of every game at the same time, never playing one single game without interruptions? Yes. It's a much harder challenge than most "hard level" challenges, really :smalltongue:.

[Mando Knight]

Mega Man 1. Without using the tricks generally used to make Yellow Devil possible easier.

[alchemyprime]

So, to update: I've since played the first chapter of Eternal Darkness. And I am already being distracted by the siren call of DragonAge. Homework... I do have quite a bit to catch up on for tomorrow and I have work tonight. And my grandfather's birthday is this weekend, and he lives about four hours away, so I will be staying there Friday through to Sunday.

So... I have played SOME. And have realized, even on the green path, I suck at it's battle system. I need a gun for this game...

[Zevox]

So... I have played SOME. And have realized, even on the green path, I suck at it's battle system. I need a gun for this game...
Is the green path supposed to be the easiest or something :smallconfused: ? I always figured that was the red. No special tricks to the most common enemies that way, and you get the green and red runes first, allowing the quickest access to health and sanity recovery magic.

You will start getting guns halfway through the game... but personally, I always found them unwieldy compared to simple melee combat. Except when dealing with particularly deadly enemies I simply didn't want to get close to, I defaulted to melee combat in that game.

Zevox

[alchemyprime]

Is the green path supposed to be the easiest or something :smallconfused: ? I always figured that was the red. No special tricks to the most common enemies that way, and you get the green and red runes first, allowing the quickest access to health and sanity recovery magic.

You will start getting guns halfway through the game... but personally, I always found them unwieldy compared to simple melee combat. Except when dealing with particularly deadly enemies I simply didn't want to get close to, I defaulted to melee combat in that game.

Zevox

Hm... everyone else told me red was the hardest, green the easiest, and blue the medium. I may need to reconsider this now.

[Zevox]

Hm... everyone else told me red was the hardest, green the easiest, and blue the medium. I may need to reconsider this now.
Well, basically, the thing that it alters are what version your enemies are (the most common will be of the color you choose), and what order you get the aligned runes in. They go like this:

Red: Enemies are physically stronger (more hp, damage dealt), but have no special tricks. Rune order is green, red, blue.
Green: Enemies drain more sanity and keep phantom versions of limbs you chop off, making cutting limbs ineffectual. Also the body-snatcher enemies have no heads, making them harder to kill (I think - this was either green or blue, not entirely sure which, but I'm leaning green). Rune order is blue, green, red.
Blue: Enemies have a self-destruct function that kicks in once they're weakened. They can be killed before it goes off, but this can be more difficult than you may think, especially since one entering this state can sometimes cause all the rest in the area to do so as well. Also I believe some of their attacks will drain magic. Rune order is red, blue, green.

Not sure which I'd consider tougher between blue and green, but I always figured red was easiest simply because it's the most straightforward, and you get the runes needed for recovery magic earliest.

Zevox

[alchemyprime]

Well, basically, the thing that it alters are what version your enemies are (the most common will be of the color you choose), and what order you get the aligned runes in. They go like this:

Red: Enemies are physically stronger (more hp, damage dealt), but have no special tricks. Rune order is green, red, blue.
Green: Enemies drain more sanity and keep phantom versions of limbs you chop off, making cutting limbs ineffectual. Also the body-snatcher enemies have no heads, making them harder to kill (I think - this was either green or blue, not entirely sure which, but I'm leaning green). Rune order is blue, green, red.
Blue: Enemies have a self-destruct function that kicks in once they're weakened. They can be killed before it goes off, but this can be more difficult than you may think, especially since one entering this state can sometimes cause all the rest in the area to do so as well. Also I believe some of their attacks will drain magic. Rune order is red, blue, green.

Not sure which I'd consider tougher between blue and green, but I always figured red was easiest simply because it's the most straightforward, and you get the runes needed for recovery magic earliest.

Zevox

Thanks Zevox. I have a friend to go beat up for wrong advice now, but yeah, I'd much rather have straight forward enemies over explodey ones or Phantom Limb.

[Comet]

I'd say that the green artifact leads to the most interesting playthrough, if nothing else. The green ancient one is the coolest of them all, in my opinion. Also, the green enemies drain your sanity which is excellent as losing your sanity is one of the most fun things you can do in this game!

I picked the red artifact on my first run, though, and didn't regret it. Blue is the only one that I think is just firmly set in boring territory.