I've been sick with allergies on top of having a heavy workload. Once this workload dies down I'll commit more time to both the blog and the forum. Everything's just been really stressful and it's hard to keep up (other aspiring graphic designers probably know what I'm saying). Luckily I have places like this where I can be at least somewhat calm and feel at home.
I'm not quite sure of what my next blog entry will be yet. I've started and saved a few in Wordpad but haven't finished any of them yet (though one is very near completion). You can probably expect that blog entry in a couple days.
I know nearly all of us here have some really good memories of playing Capcom games, or maybe even finding a game that you wanted but could never find before. Here are some of mine.
First is how I found out about Project Justice. About May 2001 or so, I went to the newsstand with my parents to pick up some new comics. They had the new Tips & Tricks issue there; I forget exactly what games it covered that month but I remember the Project Justice logo was on the front cover. When I saw the logo, I thought, "oh great, another lame shooting game."
Of course, I'd played Rival Schools extensively by that time, including the most recent one (that I knew of), Seishun Nikki 2, but plumb forgot that the credits of Rival Schools said Project Justice on them (I'd never known that a true RS sequel had been released at that time in Japan), so I was in for a huge surprise once I got in the car.
Okay, so I open the magazine, and start flipping through it furiously. I catch a short glimpse of who I thought looked like Shoma from Rival Schools. Sure enough, I flip back to that page and it was indeed Shoma I saw! And all the other Rival Schools characters! And a girl wielding a violin as a weapon, which was the funniest thing I'd ever seen!
I freaked out right then and there. My parents thought I was being killed or something. The English Dreamcast release was coming in June or July, apparently, according to the guide. We get home, and I just keep looking the article/strategy guide over wondering if I'm dreaming or not.
My best friend at the time had gotten a crapload of money somehow, and wanted to get me a birthday present that week since my 13th birthday was in three months. Remembering that Tips & Tricks said that PJ wouldn't be out for a while, I asked him to either get me Power Stone 2 or Skies of Arcadia. He said "okay" and hung up.
A few days later, he calls back and says that the store he went to didn't have either of those two games. I groaned at this point. But then extreme happiness came later when he said he picked up a cool-looking fighting game called Project Justice. I thought I'd misheard what he said, so I stopped him and asked him to repeat the name of the game. "Project.....Justice." I really wigged out when he said this and thanked him profusely!
The next day came and he brought the game over. We spent all day playing it and unlocking characters, laughing at the new team-ups and party-ups, and the new characters like Yurika and Momo. I was so grateful I even let my friend do the majority of the play by himself that day since he wanted to unlock people. That was truly the best memory I'd ever had of a Capcom game. I got the Japanese version later just for the board game mode.
Breath of Fire III I had a weird history with. Around September '98 or so, five months after it got a US release (and exactly a week after my tenth birthday), I saw the game at Blockbuster for--wait for it-- only 6.99! Needless to say, I picked that up with the quickness for I loved the first two games.
I take it home and have fun with it, the characters, the gameplay, everything about it was captivating. It made me wonder why Blockbuster sold the game for so cheap. But at first, I had a ton of problems trying to beat the first parts of the game (especially McNeil's mansion which gave me the most trouble when I was younger), and ended up restarting it once I got to the lighthouse because I didn't know how to power it.
Once I restarted it, I stuck with it and eventually beat it and it became pretty much my favorite Playstation title so far. I had a lot of great memories of both playing it and from actual events that happened in the game. It remains my favorite RPG ever.
Playing Street Fighter III: 2i was somewhat of a love/hate thing for me at first. I loved the new, even deeper gameplay (that was improved from New Generation), but hated how I'd either get whooped by the AI or by other players. I stuck with the game, though, and became a bit better. My main characters were usually Sean and Ibuki, who coincidentally were found later on to be two of the best characters in the game.
Learning how to parry was somewhat of a milestone for me, especially since I was only 10 when I learned how to do it. I knew it was in NG too, but never really learned (mostly because I didn't get to play NG so much). I'll never forget the first time I parried a Hadoken using Sean. A few months later I'd go on to parry a full Shinku Hadoken out of reflex with Dudley. That blew me away.
It made me want to practice my parrying and combos even more, the same way SF2 and SFA make you wanna learn their respective systems. Needless to say, when SF3TS came out one-and-a-half years later, I was willing to try to learn the new characters, and later, how to kara throw (found out about kara throwing thanks to a Tips & Tricks issue from 2001 or so). Third Strike became one of my favorite SF games, and one of my favorite fighters period.
These are just a few of my best memories of playing Capcom's games. If anyone has any to share, feel free to. :) I'll add more of my own later.
When Capcom put that five-word phrase onto the front of the American BoF3 box, they sure as heck weren't kidding.
Ah, Breath of Fire III. What can be said about it that hasn't been said already? Beginning development in late 1996/early 1997, this game marked a time in which Capcom's ingenuity in the RPG genre would pay off for once. BoFs I and II were severely underrated, but at least this one got its due as time went by.
Released in 1997 for Japan and 1998 for America, this RPG was notable for quite a few reasons, including:
-Lush graphics in which the characters were 2D and the backgrounds were 3D. Capcom made sure they could pack nearly every detail needed into every inch of the graphics.
-The Master System gave players a new way to train up their characters. Do you wanna sacrifice magic power for brute force, or will you take a more balanced approach? Want certain characters to learn certain moves? Apprentice them under different masters for tons of different options.
-The Dragon Gene system, which allows players to make all sorts of dragons each with their own stats and special attacks. This truly added kind of a curiosity element to the game.
But all this was bundled together with a deep story, great soundtrack, and awesome characters. Seriously, this time the saga of Ryu and his pals was truly a cut above the rest, especially for its time. Eschewing the standard "burning town, chosen one" story you can find in just about any other Japanese RPG, BoFIII told the story of Ryu and how he got through his hardships, figuring out more about himself and his clan (the Brood) over a number of years (all of the young characters become grown up about halfway through the game, after the fight between Ryu and Garr).
And what hardships! The game starts off with two guys talking in a mine, riding a mine cart. They find a baby dragon encased in a crystal (this turns out to be Ryu). The two guys, Gary and Mogu (you may recognize the name Mogu from the first BoF game, but this isn't the same one), use some dynamite to blow up the crystal. Ryu awakens, gets mad, and pretty much burns them to death while being controlled by the player. Ryu's only mission at this point is to escape the mine. As a cute, green baby dragon, no less.
After passing all sorts of scared miners (one even wets his pants as he mentions himself in the game), he ends up near the end of the mine, but ends up fighting a builder (at the player's control). Before he can use Whelp Breath to finish the builder off, somebody in the mine distracts him by yelling, and he's hit with a crane, caged, and put on the back of a train.
Outside, Ryu wiggles free of the train and he and the cage fall an indeterminate amount of feet to the ground. Rei, a Woren tribe warrior, finds Ryu naked in the forest. He carries Ryu back to his house, where his cohort, Teepo, lets him become a thief along with them. Ryu finds out his own name (and has a rather weird, elaborate prophetic dream), and the three go to start committing crimes.
One rather memorable crime they commit is when they try to mug someone on Yraall Road. Specifically, they have Ryu do it. Of course, he's reluctant to do it; however, Teepo pushes him out into the road from the bushes. Ryu stumbles and runs into Bunyan, a big, menacing lumberjack (who oddly enough looks like Hagrid from Harry Potter, or rather Hagrid looks like him). After a rather unsettling threat towards Ryu and his thieving buddies, Rei decides they'll pay Bunyan back for the threat, so they break into his house to get food. Once they get their spoils (a pack of beef jerky), all three hear the door opening. Rei, being somewhat scared, decides to check out what's going on.
A very funny yelp later ("BUHIIIIII!") Teepo and Ryu go up to check on Rei. Instant blackout. Total flipping darkness for two seconds. When Teepo and Ryu come to, they notice that they're tied up and that Rei's gone. Bunyan explains that he sent Rei to Mt. Glaus, and tells Ryu and Teepo to chop wood to pay off their debt and to "do some honest work for a change." After this, Teepo decides they'll go to Mt. Glaus to find Rei. This is one of my favorite parts of the game 'cause it definitely shows how long Capcom had to think about writing a great story, and how far they were going to go to write one.
Of course, just because I stopped listing hardships doesn't mean that there aren't way more of them. After going to Mt. Glaus they kill a Nue, a chimera-like creature and find out it was just trying to feed its babies. Ouch. There's also the part after this where they break into Mayor McNeil's mansion at the request of a cloaked fellow named Loki, which turns out really bad as they earn the distrust of all the villagers, and get stalked by these two crazy horsemen for a good chunk of the game.
Outside of the one part that I said was one of my favorites, I have a slew of others. Training a lanky bookkeeper named Beyd to fight a sailor named Zig to earn his childhood friend Shadis' hand was very memorable for me. Also, the Contest of Champions was well-done, and the fight between Ryu and Garr much later on before the time skip is another point of interest for me. If I rattled off every event I liked, this post would be far too long. :P
Aside from the story being on point, the characters are awesome too. You have Ryu, of course, who's of the Brood clan and basically a silent hero outside of having a few yells in battle (though he speaks in the game, it's not seen or heard by the player, yet the other characters react to what he's saying), and has a ton of dragon transformations. Rei, the thief from the Woren tribe who can turn into a Weretiger and has a will of steel, Teepo, the mysterious warrior whom actually is the basis of one of the best plot twists in the game, Nina, a cute little princess who's hankering for some adventure, and you meet other cool characters like Garr, Momo, and Peco throughout your adventure.
My favorite characters besides Ryu would have to be Nina, Garr, and Rei. Garr is my standout favorite because of what he was sent to do: kill Ryu. As one of the Four Guardians, it was his job to kill Ryu as Ryu is a member of the Brood (the Four Guardians specialized in killing the Brood). In a twist of delicious irony, Garr beats Ryu to near-death in the tournament, joins up with him to fight Balio and Sunder, and stays pretty much an MVP in your party for most of the game, then it gets to a certain point and he decides he wants to test Ryu's power (basically his own roundabout way of saying he's gonna kill him). Some circle of life, huh? Where's that song from The Lion King when ya need it?! :P
And yet another great point to the game is the gameplay. The new additions make the battles great. The new Dragon Gene system allows players to pick and match up to three genes to make any of a wide assortment of dragons. This keeps battle fresh and is actually quite useful at certain points of the game. And I just love the designs of the dragons, specifically Tiamat, which IMO is the coolest-looking one out of all of them. In addition to this, there's also the Master system, where one can apprentice any character under any of them and their stats raise or lower depending on the masters themselves. Characters can also gain new moves this way. This makes the game nearly infinitely replayable. The boss fights are just awesome. I remember the first time I fought the Dragon Zombie in the Dauna Mine. Good times.
The soundtrack is one of the best I've heard. There's a dichotomy of opinion as to whether the soundtrack is genius or it sucks, but I'm personally in the former camp. I love this game's music. The boss battle theme is one of the very best I've ever heard, and In The Morning, Nina's theme, is one of my favorite character theme songs ever. The whole soundtrack just sets the mood for the entire game.
All these things culminate to make Breath of Fire III my favorite RPG ever, and one of my top 5 favorite games of all time. I know when I'm bored or depressed, I pop this game in for a good time. It truly is the classic role-playing game.
I'm basically just doing this for fun and also because I know some people who had trouble beating Le Mu at the end of Star Force 2. I have the Zerker x Ninja version of the game, so this will mainly deal with that.
Some things to know before going in:
-Include many potent HP recovery cards. I cannot stress this enough. There's a specific reason why you must do this, and it'll be further outlined later on.
-Those stage-affecting cards that inflict certain status onto the opponents' panels? Don't use 'em for this battle. They won't work. Replace a couple of those with Invisible or SprBarrier, if you have it.
-Have at least 520 HP or so before going into battle (and be sure to keep your HP up past 500 for at least the first half of the fight; e.g., until after he shoots off the beam). This is because of Le Mu's scripted, unblockable, unescapable beam attack once his life gets down to about 970 or so. It does about 500 damage to Mega Man, which could be bad if he's taken a beating already for the duration of the fight.
-By the same token, save some of your most potent Recover cards for after the giant beam so you can get your strength back.
-Don't really waste time with cards like DblStone, AtomMine, or cards like that when facing him. They won't affect him or his patterns.
-I used the Giga Card DarknessHole to actually finish him off, but others may have a different strategy as to how to do that.
-While we're on the subject, save any of the Giga Cards you may have gotten for last. Yes, even if you get the card extremely early in the battle.
Now for the fight itself. You'll notice that Le Mu doesn't have an HP total under him. There's a reason for that. When you shoot at him, the colored plate on the front of him absorbs the impact of your attacks, pretty much. While being damaged, it'll change to yellow and eventually to red. After enough "in-the-red" damage, his armor will break off and you can finally damage him for real. His original final-boss self has 2,000 HP. I usually use the somewhat weaker cards to break his armor off and save the better ones for the actual fight.
He has only a couple attacks I've noticed in his first form (before the armor breaks). Occasionally his arms will turn into drills. When he does this, start going left and right to dodge them. He'll oftentimes summon Murians to attack you, but these are easily dodged as well.
The real problem here is probably his black hole attack, which goes through Invisible and poses a problem to dodge because he usually has an elemental Murian trying to attack at the same time diagonally across from where you're standing. But if you can detect when exactly to dodge to the extreme opposite row from where you're standing to get away from both attacks (the timing's usually a couple seconds) the black holes will be easy to dodge.
After the armor is broken, all bets are off. Le Mu starts going a bit more haywire with his attacks, but he's still incredibly manageable. His black hole attacks become faster, and he summons more Murians. Just use the same strategy I outlined above, dodge to the extreme right or extreme left row (depending on where you are) and neither attack should hit you.
Le Mu also does a machinegun attack. It took me a while to figure out exactly how to dodge it, but here's how I do it. He shoots in what seems like a sort of wave pattern, but with a twist: the machinegun fire actually follows you. What I do is stand in the left square, use the shield, and he should shoot at you, then shoot forward to the square in front of you. When he does this, go right to the next square and use the shield again. He'll do the exact same thing. Repeat this for the last square, and whenever he shoots his machinegun like that, just use that pattern to escape the brunt of nearly all of it (you might still get tagged once by a rare, unpredictable hit).
Le Mu's broken armor form has a sword attack, but it is very rarely used from what I've seen. He didn't even use it the very first time I fought him. Since that time, I fought him about 20 times and he's only used it 5. Weird. The sword attack basically takes up two rows each time it hits (it hits twice) and does a hefty chunk of damage. Just dodge all the way to the right for the first attack, and all the way to the left for the second. You should escape unscathed.
Now comes his most devastating attack, a giant beam that covers the whole stage, cannot be countered or Invisibled through (believe me, I've tried), and does heaps of damage. Once you get Le Mu to about 970 HP left, be wary, 'cause he'll rev up the beam shortly. If you have a SprBarrier card it will help you greatly and absorb a small bit of the beam's punishment. Also have some Recover cards ready for after the beam is done with, 'cause you might need them if you don't have any really hard-hitting cards.
Before weakening Le Mu to under 1000 HP, make sure your own HP is over 500, 'cause 500 seems to be about the amount of damage the beam does. When he ducks down, sits there and stops attacking for a couple seconds, and you see his eye, that means he's getting ready to use the move. Stand your ground and clench, basically.
Thank goodness for either having gotten a lot of HP Memories or having that SprBarrier, huh? Certainly came in handy.
Now just use any Recover cards you might have and just resume attacking and dodging as normal. If you have the Giga Card DarknessHole, then once he's down to under 500 HP, use it and victory is yours. Or if you have any other Giga Cards, those would be fine too.
And after this grueling battle, you can basically just sit back, relax, and watch the ending and the credits. But wait, don't turn the game off yet. After the credits there's more to the ending, then you can save your game and get a nice little star above the New Game/Continue screen for beating it. There are other stars you can get for beating other parts of the game that open up upon saving your clear file, but I'll outline those in a future blog entry.
Finally, my summer break is over and I can get back to blogging here. My summer break was very eventful-- encountered conflict, went on a couple trips to other states, bought a whole slew of new games (including Mega Man Star Force 2: Zerker x Ninja-- which I've already beaten once and am in the process of getting all the cards now), and just generally had a weird amalgam of a time.
I look forward to adding some awesome blog posts either later tonight or sometime tomorrow when school lets out.
