Soul Reaver [4] – Tomb of the Serafan and Morlock

March 6, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

Where to Go After the Cathedral

This time in The Soul Reaver, I took the opportunity the save system gave me by always putting me back in the first area to look around and explore some more. It was worth it to. I ended up wandering into the human citadel again and found a brand new upgrade. This time, it was an artifact that outright doubled my spell points, allowing me to use my two glyphs much more frequently.

This magic upgrade was the first I found and it doubled my spell points.

I then went back to the outdoors area with the huge skull, hoping to finally find the way further, but after a good half an hour of aimlessly looking around, I found nothing. Eventually, I gave up, saved my game and ended my session.

It kept itching at me, though, so I started the game up again and deiced to listen for the Elder God’s advice by standing on the platform in the starting area. This time, I listened carefully and realized he was telling me to go “past the pillars”. Then it dawned on me. The pillars are where I fought Kain. The outdoors area was just the place where I got my stone glyph, nothing else.

Sometimes the graphics really shine. Not this time.

With this knowledge, I went back to the Sanctuary, talked to the spirit at the Pillars of Nosgoth and immediately found a climbable wall which led me to my next destination.

Tomb of the Sarafan

The ancient tomb of the Sarafan, once impenetrably sealed… Now, ravaged by Nosgoth’s upheavals, its mysteries lay exposed. In the time of Vorador, centuries before Kain was made, the Sarafan warrior priests waged a merciless war against the vampire tribes of Nosgoth. Emboldened by righteousness, they committed unspeakable and indiscriminate acts of violence – massacring fledglings and ancients alike, they decimated entire bloodlines in mere decades. Now their husks lay here – murderers enshrined.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/81929345″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

The Tomb of the Sarafan was a short area, but it represented a huge part of the story. It was also filled with the first class of vampire enemies I encountered in the game. I got some practice with the Soul Reaver, though, so getting rid of them was much easier now. All it takes is some patience and a single proper hit with the Soul Reaver, followed by a stab, to completely obliterate them.

I guess Kain loves irony.

I ran through the passages, found and activated the portal and then finally entered the tomb by passing through a gate in the spectral realm. Once I got in and shifted back to the material realm, the realization happened. The Serapan heroes enshrined in the tombs, the humans celebrated as saints were Raziel and his brothers. Kain has a weird sense of humor, I guess. He raised his mortal enemies as his first lieutenants.

I shifted back to the spiritual realm inside the tomb chamber and fell to the area bellow, where I was able to get back to the material plane and fight the next boss.

Morlock

I’m not sure if I missed it, but I didn’t catch the game telling me the name of this boss. Instead, I googled it afterwards and found out it was Morlock. In any case, I’m not sure if I should even consider Morlock a proper boss. I hit him a few times with the Soul Reaver and then impaled him like any regular enemy. I’m not even sure he has more health than some of the slightly stronger versions of regular enemies.

I can’t really call this guy a boss.

The ability he gave me, on the other hand, was well worth the boss status. I can now emit some sort of ranged force projectile which stuns weaker enemies and activates various switches, the few of which I’ve already seen in the previous areas.

As soon as I got hold of the ability, I got back to the portal and went to back to the outdoors area, where I remembered one of these switches was blocking the way to a health upgrade. I had to climb all the way to the Stone Glyph tomb to get to it, but it was well worth it, since it was my tenth upgrade, meaning my health has now increased for the second time.

I’m also pretty sure I saw one of these back in the Silenced Cathedral, so I’ll probably go there next. For now, it was time to take a break.

Pokemon Ruby [1] – All the Way to Petalburg Gym, A Day Off

March 5, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

If you play a Pokemon game on an emulator, trust me when I say this, you do not want to start it up on a weekend. Well, maybe you do, depends on your priorities. I started playing Pokemon Ruby on a Saturday and I ended up playing all the way up to the Petalburg Gym in a single sitting. Just to elaborate, this is the fifth gym.

The Start of Ruby

As I sad in my previous posting, I picked Treecko, just like Ash did and then I caught a Pikachu with cheats, before genetically modifying it to resemble my Pikachu from Pokemon Crystal (i.e., I used cheats). Because of this, I didn’t train Treecko to much on my way through the first three cities.

I’ll admit it, I used an HM slave this time. It’s just to annoying without one.

Yup, the first gym you can challenge is way up in Rustoboro City, which is the fourth city of the game and also the large metropolis of Ruby. Little Root Town is the starter town of the game, while Oldale city is the next town over. Petalburg is the third city and it does contain a gym, but it’s owned by the main character’s dad and it can’t be challenged until you get four badges.

Mind Blown

This led me to a realization which, in hindsight, should have been obvious. In the anime, Petalburg is the first gym Ash challenges, but he doesn’t get a badge and also has to return to it later. The reason he doesn’t get it is because the gym leader’s son poses as a gym leader and ends up wasting everyone’s time, more or less. Basically, Ash ends up fighting and sort of defeating the main character of the third Pokemon game generation.

Catching Taillow

Overall, Pokemon Ruby allows for quite a faithful following of the anime’s story. I caught my Taillow in Petalburg Woods, just as Ash did in the anime. I also basically started with Pikachu and Treecko, just as Ash did. This means the first two gyms, Rustobro and Dewford had me in the exact same situation Ash was in.

Rustboro is the huge city of Ruby, but only in appearance. The important buildings are in later cities.

In Rustboro, I also had my first encounter with the game’s bad guys – Team Magma. Pokemon Ruby (and Sapphire) sort of mix things up when it comes to bad guys. There are actually two different teams – Team Aqua and Team Magma. While both teams have some strange ideas, in each of the two games, one of the teams is portrayed as the bad guys, while the other team fights them. This ties in nicely to each of the game’s colors, with the red Ruby going with Magma and the blue Sapphire going with Aqua. This also ties in to the two legendaries of the game.

The Rustboro gym was easy to deal with, since it was rock based. The second gym, in Dewford Town, wasn’t as easy with mostly fighting types, but overall, picking the grass starter puts you in a very favorable early position compared to Pokemon Crystal, I think.

Cheating with Everstones

Of course, by this time, I had to start cancelling evolutions, so I ended up doing some more magic with Enciclopedia Pokemon and gave an Everstone to both Treecko and Taillow. Sure, it’s cheating, but it also means I won’t be using any attack boosting items, so it’s not like I’m actually improving my odds. I’m just making the circumstances less annoying.

Taillow and its evolution, Swellow, have a good speed and attack.

The third gym was all the way in Mauville City, which means I did a half circle around the Hoenn region by now. This one was focused on the Electric type, so again, Treecko was very useful. Sadly, I had to deviate from the anime now. By this point, Ash already had a Corphish, but I can’t catch one until I get the Good Rod, which only happens after the fifth gym.

Mauville City also contained a Game Corner as well as a bike shop, which offers two types of bikes in this game – the Mach Bike and the Acro Bike. I picked the Acro Bike at random, but I didn’t really care about it, since I won’t be using bikes for anything in this challenge.

Team Magma on Mt. Chimney

Before I could get to the next gym, in Lavaridge, I had to do almost an entire circle through the Hoenn region. First, though, I went to Verdanturf Town to try my luck with a contest (Pikachu won in the cool category) and to create a shortcut through the nearby cave with Rock Smash.

After that, I went back to Mauville and then further north towards Fallarbor town and further towards Meteor Falls. This is where I met up with Team Magma again, which then lead me to Mt. Chimney, where I finally had a proper boss battle with their commander. After that, I could access the Jagged Pass and finally get to Lavaridge.

Cut scenes! A first in the series!

The Lavaridge Gym was, naturally, Fire based, so I didn’t have any type advantage. What I did have were a well-trained Pikachu and Taillow, so it wasn’t too hard. After I beat the gym, I immediately rushed back to the Fiery Path to get my next team mate – Torkoal.

Torkoal and Petalburg

Torkoal will be the heavy hitter and the tank of my team. It’s basically the first Pokemon with high level stat values I was able to get in this challenge, so I was very much looking forward to catching it. I spent some time to make him catch up in levels with the rest of my team, so now I had an amazing Fire sweeper.

This thing is amazing and it looks cool to.

It was now time to go to Petalburg to beat Ruby’s dad (remember, I’m Ash), so that’s exactly what I did. The Petalburg gym had a lot of Pokemon with varied types, but most of the trainers had only one Pokemon in their party, so I was able to go back and heal as often as I wanted. As expected, Torkoal was amazing in the final battle agains’t Ruby’s dad, being able to survive most of the hits which would one-hit any of my other Pokemon.

I had my fifth badge and I had about four or five hours of play behind me, so I finally decided to take a break here.

Grandia [7] – The Tower of Doom

March 4, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

As I said last time, I was about to enter the Tower of Doom in Grandia, but before that, I had to go back to the village to advance the story for a bit and, more importantly, to teach Rapp a spell element. I decided to go with Wind for now, but I’ll end up teaching him all four of the elements eventually, since Rapp is one of the final four characters.

The “monster” Rapp is talking about would be the Lainian Milda.

As soon as I got to the Tower of Doom, I got introduced to another awesome temporary character, who’s basically a replacement for Gadwin – Milda of Laine. According to Rapp, if you anger a Lainian, you’re as good as dead. Well, this one was really angry. In fact, she was so angry, she immediately attacked the party, but this time, it went a lot better than with Gadwin. She was relatively easy to defeat and she ended up joining the group, since she was there to destroy the tower to.

Milda can’t learn any spells, so I won’t be making any hard decisions about that. She also doesn’t have a lot of skills. What she does have is pure damage. Because of this, I gave her Justin’s Chain of Gems, which allows the wearer to attack three times in a single combo, basically increasing the damage output by 50%.

I’m still learning new moves, regardless of low experience gains.

The Tower of Doom wasn’t hard, probably because I’m still outleveling the area. I don’t know how exactly this happened, but since Virgin Forest, I barely get any skill or spell experience and most enemies die within a single area attack. I still gain a few skill levels thanks to generous SP and MP usage, but it slowed down to a crawl.

I had to get through several levels of the Tower of Doom and found some minor loot, but I didn’t get any mana eggs this time. That’s fine though, because it’s quite obvious I’ll get more than enough by the end of the game, so I’m in no danger of any of my characters not having all of their skills and spells.

Grandia’s story is full of “convenience”. it works! The Spirit Stone protects the group from certain doom.

Once I got to the top of the Tower of Doom (I just love saying its name), I got to enjoy the shenanigans of the three Garyle officers again, while founding out that the Garyle forces are breeding monsters. I ended up fighting one of this monsters called Gaia, right after finding out it was responsible for turning Rapp’s village to stone. It would have ended up turning the party to stone as well, but Justin’s Spirit Stone protected them.

The fight was long, but not hard at all. After it was done, the monster turned into a sprout (?) and Justin picked it up to take it back to the village. I guess I was the only one here thinking that wasn’t a good idea, because the village elder didn’t seem to have a problem with it and actually took it from Justin to examine it. Of course, the same night, with Leen leading them, the Garyle forces attacked the village to take back the sprout. At this point, a major revelation happens – Leen is an Icarian!

This raises so many questions!

How? Does that mean Leen isn’t Feena’s sister? Does it mean Feena is an Icarian to? These questions remain unanswered for now and since my memory about it is a bit hazy, I don’t want to say something that might turn out wrong later. In any case, the sprout was gone and it was time to go further east, towards Laine. For that, I had to cross the Zil desert and get to Zil Padon, Guido’s home town.

I immediately went to the desert and soon found a great new accessory for Justin, to replace the Chain of Gems I gave to Milda. The Energy Ring restores SP through normal attacks, to a greater degree than the Medal of Yore I previously used. This means Justin will be able to use his awesome moves more often, making me even stronger.

Get your finger out of there. That’s nasty!

The Zil Desert also contains the entrance to the first optional dungeon of the game – The Soldier’s Graveyard. I’m pretty sure I skipped the optional dungeons on my first playthrough, so I decided to explore it this time, just for the fun of it. I was also kind of hoping I’ll get more experience and stronger enemies in there, but the first few battles after the save point didn’t look promising. In any case, this is where I stopped playing.

Pokemon Ruby [0.5] – Generation III Save Editor

March 3, 2013 by Nikola·6 Comments

In my last post about Pokemon Ruby, I made a plan I’ll be following during this part of the challenge, so after that, I’ve spent some time figuring out how exactly I can follow this plan. The issue is, while the DS games have an excellent set of save editors, even one that’s completely online and can create ready for use and completely legitimate Pokemon out of nothing, this isn’t the case with the GameBoy Advance games. Heck, even the GameBoy generation has a large selection of tools.

It took me a while, but eventually, I found the tool for me.

Enciclopedia Pokemon – A Generation III Save Editor

I tried a couple of different editors, most of which are Japanese in origin, clearly not made for the western region and very poorly translated. The Pokemon Encyclopedia, however, is perfect. It has a nice and simple interface with a bunch of extra features as well, it works, and it does what I need it to do.

The choice of starters was much easier this time – there was no choice.

I did what I did with Pokemon Crystal. First, I started a fresh game in Ruby and picked Treecko as my starter, according to the plan. Then, I played through all the way to the point where I was able to freely roam between Littleroot and Oldale town. Then, I googled and found some Pokemon Ruby Gameshark cheats. Most importantly, the one for infinite pokeballs in the first PC slot, and the one which causes Pikachu to be the only Pokemon that appears in the wild.

The code for 99 Pokeballs in PC Slot 1:

[code]BCDEC2FB 74886C64[/code]

The code for making Pikachu appear in the wild:

[code]39E924C4 4136A9DD
9D4A1BFF 05120D39[/code]

With that, I had a brand new level 2 Pikachu in my party.

My Pikachu’s stats in Pokemon Crystal.

Next up, I opened up Pikasav and loaded my Pokemon Crystal save. I took note of Pikachu’s stats in there. The mechanics change a lot between Generations 2 and 3, so I had to do some calculations.

IV – Inherent Value

Believe me when I say I’m no expert and this might be completely wrong, but the way I understand it, Individual, or inherent value, the way I call it, means the potential a Pokemon has. In the first two games, the IV’s ranged from 0 to 15 for each stat, and the higher an IV was for a single stat, the higher that stat would be as the Pokemon gets stronger. In generation III, the IV range increases to 0-31, and the formula changes to, but instead of stressing about it to much, I just doubled all of the IV values for my “reincarnated Pikachu.

Thus, I ended up with 14 for his HP, 30 Attack, 22 Defense, 4 in both Special Attack and Defense and finally, 28 for speed. My Pikachu will end up being physically tough and extremely fast. All of this is translated from back

in Pokemon Yellow, where I assume Pikachu’s stats where the way the developers imagined them in the anime.

EV – Effort Value

Effort value, unlike inherent value, can be trained. Each wild Pokemon my Pokemon manages to defeat increases his effort value in some stat by a few points. Each Pokemon can collect a total of 510 effort value points combined, so hardcore Pokemon fans actually do EV training to maximize the strengths of their Pokemon. To maximize a single stat, you need to invest 252 points into it, so the option is to maximize two selected attributes of a Pokemon, or to spread the 510 points in some other way between the attributes.

Now, this mechanic was introduced only in generation 3 and before that, it was completely different, so I couldn’t really transfer what I had to the new game. Well, technically, I could have, but this would mean I would just end up evenly distributing all of my EVs between my Pikachu’s stats. Instead, I figured out how far along my Pikachu was in Crystal and figured out this would translate to about 427 EV points earned up to that point. I then distributed those points between my attributes based on the already existing inherent values. Basically, the more inherent value a stat had, the more effort value it would get.

Enciclopedia Pokemon - Gen III Save Editor

The final stats of my “converted” Pikachu.

This got me 58 in HP, 126 in Attack, 92 defense, 18 in Special Attack, 16 in Special Defense and finally, 117 in Speed. I had some rounding errors, so I added the final two points to Special Attack, which is why it ended up being different from Special Defense. Now at this point, I have my doubts, since Pikachu is supposed to rock with Thunder attacks, but I have my math and I’m sticking to it. I can always grind some more if Pikachu ends up to weak.

How to Edit the Pokemon Ruby Save?

Well, as I said, I opened the Pokemon Crystal save in Pikasave, saw the stats and did the math. Then I opened the Pokemon Ruby save with Enciclopedia Pokemon and edited Pikachu’s values there. It really is as simple as that. I had one minor issue after I did this, though. Loading the game with Visual Boy Advance gave me a message about my save file being corrupted and reverting to the last save, but the game loaded up fine anyway and I didn’t find any issues.

Download Enciclopedia Pokemon – A Generation III Save Editor

Soul Reaver [3] – Killing Zephon and Going Further

March 3, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

Zephon

As I thought, the area with the next boss, Zephon, was right after the teleporter room I unlocked in the Cathedral, just before I saved my game and ended my last session. Teleporter room, you ask?

Soul Reaver has a method of navigating through the world similar to the Castlevania and Metroid series. Come to think of it, the game basically is a metroidvania. When you load your game, you start at the very beginning, but you can get to your last location relatively quickly thanks to the fact that you unlocked shorter routes by pushing blocks and hitting switches, but more importantly, because you enabled portals which take you from the portal room near the beginning to a portal room in one of several game regions.

I guess “spider” was an understatement. I don’t know what that thing is.

In any case, I fought Zephon. I’d say he was even slightly easier than Melchiar, since he didn’t push me into the spectral realm even once. All I had to do was dodge his claws and hit them when they get stuck in the ground. This would cause an egg or something like that fall out of his body. I had to set the egg on fire and throw it at him. After three of this, he was down and I got a new ability – I can now climb certain walls.

Exploration

With a new ability, it was time to get new stuff, so that’s what I did. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything decent in the Cathedral, but I distinctly remember there being some health upgrades in Melchiar’s area, so I went there. I also decided to go check out the entrance to the Cathedral but the one health upgrade on the tall cliff next to the shore was still unreachable.

The walls which can be climbed with the new ability are clearly marked.

I was going to get a few more upgrades I vaguely remembered previously seeing, but I ended up taking a route which I thought would take me to a secret area, but actually took me to the next region of the game. I’m not sure what this new region is called, but it contains a skull of some giant creature. I ended up climbing right to the very top of the area, where another block puzzle was waiting for me.

The Giant Skull Area

The objective was to first flip all of the blocks to their correct orientation and then push them into their respective slots on a large fresco (check me out, I’m using smart words!). The puzzle alone was not hard to figure out, but my problem was finding the last two blocks in the lower area of the room, where the statue was. I found the first block in one of the corners of the room, but the second one was nowhere to be seen. After some walking about, I finally found it in the previous room, on top of a balcony.

The Stone Glyph

It turns out this wasn’t a new area, though. Solving the puzzle “just” gave me a brand new spell. Oh, and by the way, the spells in this game are actually called glyphs. This one was the stone glyph.

I solved the puzzle, but I can’t yet say it was worth it.

What happened next was that I made a huge mistake. I went outside the stone glyph area and figured out I had to glide to my next destination, but I missed the jump and ended up all the way back at the bottom, next to the giant skull. It took me about fifteen minutes to get back up there, mostly due to the difficult jumps I needed to do half way through.

Eventually, I got back up there and this time used the camera and jumping in place to look around for a bit, before I made another attempt at jumping. I found the right spot and ended up right next to another portal room. This is where I saved the game.

Also, I didn’t get the chance to try out the stone glyph yet, so I have no idea what it does.

Pokemon Ruby [0] – The Plan

March 2, 2013 by Nikola·1 Comment

It’s been some time since my last part of the “Follow the Anime” challenge, so I think it’s time to start planning for another one. Since I’ve recently attempted a Nuzlocke Challenge in Pokemon Emerald, I decided to go with Pokemon Ruby as my third generation game of choice.

The Pokemon

In the Hoenn region, Ash manages to acquire even fewer Pokemon than in the Johto region, with me being able to count only four in total. Three of those evolve during his travels through the region, but even so, that’s a tiny number. On the other hand, this might also mean I’ll have an easier time with outleveling my enemies. We will see.

The Starters in Pokemon Ruby

The three starters of the Hoenn region are Treecko, Torchic and Mudkip. While I had a tough choice in Pokemon Crystal, what with either having to start with all three of the starters via cheats or step away from the anime by only picking one, which is what I did in Crystal, there really is no choice in Ruby.

The hoen starters have the coolest grass type, in my opinion, though as a combatant, it still sucks.

From the three starters, Ash only gets Treecko. This means my choice is simple and I actually won’t have to cheat to have my roster follow that of the anime in this game. Of course, I’ll have to cheat to transfer Pikachu over, but that’s about it.

Treecko’s Moves

Pound
Quick Attack
Bullet Seed
Leaf Blade
Solar Beam
Agility
Leaf Storm

Treecko will evolve some time between gyms number four and five – Lavaridge and Petalburg. He doesn’t evolve to its final form during the Hoenn journeys.

Taillow / Swellow

The rest of the Pokemon are also relatively easy. I probably wont be able to catch all of them at the right moment, but outside of that, all of them are available in all three of the Hoenn games, I believe.

I always need a flyer in my team.

The first of the remaining Pokemon is Taillow. I’ll have to catch him in Petalburg Woods if I want to follow the anime, though I could do it earlier in the game. This is well before the first gym, so I’ll have three Pokemon by the time I get there. Taillow will evolve into Swallow some time between gyms number five and six – Petalburg and Fortree.

Taillow/ Swellow’s Moves

Peck
Wing Attack
Quick Attack
Aerial Ace
Double Team

Of course, I’ll need a Pokemon which can learn Fly, so Taillow will have to sacrifice a move slot for that.

Corphish

Corphish will be my surfer, provided I don’t miss to Good Rod needed to catch it. Ash catches it on the way from Dewford City and gym number three, to Mauville City and gym number four. I can fish for it on routes 102 and 117, or even in Petalburg Town, but I need a good rod to do it, which I can get at route 118, so I’ll probably catch it in Petalburg, after I beat its gym, which is gym number five.

I can only get Corphish a bit later in the game, after I get the Good Rod.

Corphish’s Moves

CrabbHammer
Bubble Beam
Vice Grip
Harden

Harden will, of course be replaced with Surf the first chance I get.

Snorutn / Glalie

Snorunt is the final Pokemon Ash catches in Hoenn and this happens between gyms seven and eight – Mossdeep and Sootopolis. It evolves to Glalie only after gym 8, so if Phanty has anything to say about it, Glalie will probably be useless throughout the game. Then again, it’s an Ice type, which means it might be useful against any dragon masters, so I hope I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Snorunt / Glalie’s Moves

Icy Wind
Headbutt
Double Team
Ice Beam

With such a poor list of moves used in the anime, I’m seriously considering to abandon this “rule” I made up in the last game. I need variety in my team and it seems the team I’ll have in Ruby wont have it. We will see.

Despite the lame appearance, an Ice type might be fun.

Torkoal

Though Snorunt is the final Pokemon Ash catches in Hoenn, I decided to save the best for last while writing this. Ladies and gentlemen, we might actually have a proper powerhouse in the Ruby part of the challenge. Torkoal is a tough Pokemon which I’ll be able to raise quite well, since I get it about half way through the game. I’m looking forward to this one.

I’m looking forward to getting this one.

Torkoal’s Moves

Flamethrower
Overheat
Iron Defense
Body Slam
Heat Wave

It’s a tough Pokemon with great moves. What else is there to say? It also get’s Flamethrower very early, so it will be kicking ass throughout the game.

In any case, this is the plan for Pokemon Ruby. Right now, I need to figure out the best way to import my Pokedex and my Pikachu into a fresh Ruby save. Hopefully, it’s no harder than it was for Crystal, which I think was already hard enough.

Soul Reaver [2] – The Sanctuary, Kain and the Cathedral

February 28, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

Exploration

After getting my now abilities to pass through barred gates, I spent about thirty minutes exploring every place I’ve already been to and I’d say it was worth it. I got a total of four health pieces, meaning I need only one before I get an actual health upgrade. I also got my first spell, which is something I completely forgot exists in this game. The spell basically knocks back everything around me, which doesn’t seem extremely useful at first, but if I’m next to a body of water and surrounded by enemies, it becomes extremely useful.

I got a few of these.

The Sanctuary

Eventually, I got tired of the exploration, so I went to the Sanctuary, which was the huge locked building half way between the huge whirlpool and the Elder God’s lair. To enter, I had to use my new ability, but other than that, the area was pretty straightforward. Soon enough, I got to the throne room surrounded by the corrupted Pillars of Nosgoth, where Kain was waiting. There was a short conversation where Kain basically hinted he knows something Raziel doesn’t and then the fight started.

Again, I love the voice-overs in this game. They are of extremely high quality.

One hit from Kain was enough to push me into the spirit realm, so I had to be really quick on my feet. He did manage to “kill” me a few times before I landed my third hit on him, but once I did, the fight was over and, through a series of events, I got hold of the Soul Reaver, both in its material and spiritual form. It only appears in the material plane when my health is full, so thanks to my skillful play, this basically means I don’t have it most of the time, but it makes the spiritual realm extremely easy, so getting killed is now just a minor nuisance.

With Kain gone, for now, it was time to go to the next area of Soul Reaver – The Silenced Cathedral

The Silenced Cathedral

“Once a testament to mankind’s defiance of Kain’s empire, this towering cathedral now stood derelict, the humans who worshiped here, dead for centuries. Its architects conceived this tower as a holy weapon against the vampire menace, a colossal instrument of brass and stone. The cathedral’s pipes, once tuned to blast a deadly hymn, now stood silent, and these vacant spaces whistled their impotence.“

The Silenced Cathedral used to belong to humans, but is now under the occupation of the Zephonim – the clan following the vampire Zephon. I haven’t seen Zephon yet, but I’m guessing he’s some sort of a spider, since his vampires look and sound very much like spiders. They can climb walls, use webbing and have a tendency to respawn quite frequently, which I found extremely annoying.

Lot’s of puzzles like this one in the Cathedral.

The region consisted of several huge areas with puzzles mostly involving climbing and activating various machines to create air flows which allowed me to get to higher-up areas. Probably the hardest one was near the end, where I had to find, get to and activate three different valves and fix three pipes before I made the air flow strong enough to lift me up to the main area of the Cathedral.

Also a lot of enemies like this one in the Cathedral

Once there, I had to break the shielding on four more switches, activate those and then do some other thing I can’t remember right now, because this is about where I stopped playing. What I do remember is that there were three block puzzles where I was constantly being interrupted by enemy respawns, as well as a couple of secret areas where I found more health pieces. Yes, this means I got my health upgrade.

I also had to fight some human enemies, which I’m guessing are vampire worshipers, since I can’t think of any other explanation on why they would be there. In any case, human enemies just mean free health, so I wasn’t bothered by that.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver [1] – GOG.com Wins Again

February 27, 2013 by Nikola·3 Comments

The Soul Reaver series was on sale recently on GOG.com. This series is one of those that takes me back to my childhood even though I never actually played most of them. In fact, I only ever read about Blood Omen, played the Soul Reaver demo once in my early PlayStation days and actually started my blog with Defiance, but ended up abandoning it due to a game breaking bug. I remember being sort of scared of the Soul Reaver demo and having a hard time figuring it out, but I also remember how cool it was to throw a spear at an enemy or impale it with one.

I wish prerendered video cut scenes would make a comeback.

As I said, I abandoned playing Defiance, but I liked the style of the series, so I decided to give it a shot with the first game in the Soul Reaver series, after finding it on sale. I know Blood Omen is the actual first game and I know it’s supposed to be awesome, but it seems to be quite different in style to the other ones, so I decided to skip it for now.

Does Soul Reaver work on Windows 8?

Short answer? Yes, yes it does.

A slightly longer answer would be that it runs fine, but it has some issues. The GOG version runs in full 1920×1080 resolution and my generic DualShock rip-off controller works, but it has issues with analog controls, so I have to play with the d-pad.

The sound also sometimes has issues where it stops working or works on a delay, bit this only happens after lengthy playing sessions. Other than that, the game works nicely and the experience is very enjoyable, provided you don’t have an issue with graphics.

It can look nasty up close, but most of the time, the game looks nice enough.

Actually, I’d even say the graphics are fine, even impressive, considering the era. The models are of low fidelity, of course, and there are no facial animations, but this is offset by extremely nice voice-overs. The soundtrack is amazing and very atmospheric. It fits the game perfectly. Raziel’s wing animations and the shift between the material and the spectral realm are also very nicely animated. I wonder if the game looked as good on the PlayStation as it did on the PC, because I don’t remember it.

The Plot

The story of the game is that Kain doomed the world of Nosgoth by not sacrificing himself to restore it. Instead, he raised a bunch of vampire lieutenants and basically besieged the entire world. Now, vampires mutate over time, gaining new abilities, etc., so Raziel, the protagonist, somehow managed to develop actual wings.

The Elder God is a “Cthulhuesque” creature.

In an act of jealousy, Kain tears of Raziel’s wings and throws him into the Lake of the Dead, a large, natural whirlpool. Since Raziel is a vampire, the water kills him, but some time later, he gets resurrected by an entity calling itself “The Elder God”, as a soul reaver – a creature that feeds on souls like a vampire would feed on blood. Apparently, the vampires threw the flow of souls out of balance, so it’s now Raziel’s job to kill his brothers and restore the balance.

Killing Melchiah

The first part of the game was sort of a tutorial. This game was quite complex for its time and it introduced a few very original elements, so the Crash Bandicoot style of introductions was pretty much out of the question. Still, the game doesn’t consider the player completely incompetent, so quite a lot was left for me to figure out on my own. This caused me to get stuck on some puzzles along the way, but also made it feel so much better when I finally did figure it out.

The puzzles up to now were mostly leaver and block based.

Eventually, after familiarization with the realm shifting feature, some relatively easy block pushing puzzles and a lot of fighting with zombie vampires, I got to the area belonging to Raziel’s former clan. I got all the way through it, circled back and unlocked a shortcut to the back area by pushing a block on top of another one and creating a new route, I got really stuck.

I couldn’t find any way to continue. Every single new route I found and tried ended up needing another ability to get further and the Melchahim clan lands seemed to be fully explored. I actually ended up wandering into the human city and took note of a lot of items I’ll be able to pick up later, but I wasn’t able to advance the story any further.

Eventually, though, I did figure it out. The shortcut in the Melchahim area wasn’t a shortcut. I was supposed to move the two blocks to the side a bit to unlock a whole new route, which lead me to a larger block puzzle. After using some braziers to collapse a whole floor, I finally opened the gate to Melchiah, Raziel’s brother and the first boss.

Melchiah is not a pretty guy!

Defeating Melchiah was another puzzle. I had to lure him under a bared gate and drop it on him. After that, I needed to do it with a second gate and finally lure him into the cage in the center and drop a huge grinder on top of him.

Defeating Melchiah gave me my first ability. I could now pass through bared gates in the spectral realm. Nearby in the area, there was a gate like that which lead to a room with an item that increases my health, so I collected that soon enough. I need to collect five of those to actually get an increase, though, so there wasn’t any change in my stats yet.

The Elder God let me know where to go next, but for now, I think I’ll do some exploring of the areas I was already in, to see if there’s anything else I can collect.

By the way, did I mention the music in this game is awesome?

[youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDIuxzYjmjM” width=”400″ height=”255″]

Grandia [6] – Pirate’s Island and the Virgin Forest

February 25, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

Pirate’s Island

Last time on Grandia, a very nice moment with Justin and Feena was ruined by Justin being an idiot after meeting a pretty girl in peril. It was extremely obvious the girl was luring Justin into a trap, to anyone except Justin, apparently. In any case, the location to explore now was called the Pirate’s Island.

The island part was all the way at the end though. I’m not sure what I was walking on most of my time in the area, but I’m guessing it was sand, or maybe magical sea foam or something. In any case, it was a maze of white, floaty, sandy stuff with a lot of twists, turns and dead ends.

That’s a really weird beach if you ask me.

I did my best to explore all of it before finally getting to the island in the center but there’s still a strong possibility I missed something. What I’m worried the most is that I somehow missed a mana egg somewhere. I also think I’ve spent far too much time grinding in the past, because the enemies here weren’t giving a lot of experience in any category.

Eventually, I got tired of walking in circles and got to the island at the center Apparently, the pretty girl in peril has a bunch of identical siblings, because identically looking pretty girls seemed to be the islands only population. They managed to convince Justin to get inside the cave and “beat the pirates” and then the obvious thing finally happened. The cave contained the monster behind the illusion – a giant angler fish with a lure in the shape of a pretty girl.

A trap! Who knew!?

The boss took a while to beat, since I only had two people in my party, but it wasn’t hard in any sense of the word. I have to say, though, it’s a very creative-looking boss. Enemy design is one of Grandia’s strengths.

The Virgin Forest

The island sank and I soon landed on the shore of the new continent, or a new part of the old continent, to be more precise, since the sea was described as “The Inner Sea” earlier in the game. Just as with the island, the Virgin Forest contained enemies that gave me very little experience, so I actually tried avoiding some battles. Of course, I ended up just getting ambushed because of it, so the exploration probably took longer than it should have.

New enemies and a new battle theme!

I soon met up with Guido, the talking rabbit I already met in Dight, so he used the opportunity to relieve me of some of my money by offering shelter and bed and then asking for payment after it was all done.
Again, I took some time exploring, but I didn’t find any mana eggs. At this point, I’m almost certain I missed at least one in one of the last few areas, because it’s been a couple of hours since I’ve last seen one.

Eventually, I got to the third area of the forest, where I met a new playable character and one of the final four party member – Rapp. Now, I think I already mentioned Rapp in one of these posts, but I also think I called him Ralph or something like that, so I apologize for that. I’m pretty sure I also said that Rapp doesn’t start with any magical elements, but it turns out I was wrong – he starts with the Fire skill already learned. It’s at a very low level, but this still means I need one less mana egg than I thought I would.

Rapp is involved in a sort of a “lost boys” situation.

Rapp uses daggers, swords and ranged weapons, so Sue’s Bow book will boost his strength quite a bit. He also has a lot of ranged skills, so I guess that’s supposed to be his focus in the game. Of course, I still want to teach him all the spells and other weapon skills, provided there’s enough mana eggs left in the game by now.

Anyway, Rapp leads a gang of kids and he thought Justin and Feena were bad guys so he trapped them in a pit. Soon after their encounter, though, one of his “apprentices” gets attacked by a monster, so I get the chance to prove Justin’s good intentions. Rapp invites Justin and Feena to his village and soon after takes them to the Petrified Forest, the next area.

Next up – The Tower of Doom

Apparently, a tower was built next to Rapp’s old village, by some people looking a lot like Justin (i.e. humans). Right after the tower was built, the village somehow got turned to stone, which is how the Petrified Forest came to be. The survivors built the village of Cafu and Rapp promised himself to destroy the tower sometime in the future. When Justin saw what happened to Rapp’s old village and his family, he immediately offered to help Rapp destroy the village, so this takes us to our next area.

Oh, and I finally found a mana egg at the Petrified Forest. I think Rapp will learn Earth or Wind next.

Pokemon Crystal [8] – How to Get all the Pokemon Ash Caught in the Anime

February 24, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

This is not Pokemon Yellow. I feel like this should be said. Pokemon Yellow is the only game in the Pokemon franchise that even remotely tries to follow the plot of the anime, so it’s the only game where you can even get close to being Ash from the anime. Even there, it’s not the same. That being said, there’s always the “as close as reasonably possible” goal you can go for, so this will be the guide on how to reach that goal in Pokemon Crystal.

How to Transfer Pokemon from Generation I

To put it shortly, you can’t, not really. There is no tool which can simply transfer Pokemon or any other data on the PC. If you have the hardware, you could do some trading, but with emulation on the PC, you can’t do it.

Another part of the challenge completed.

You can do two things, however. You can edit your saves and copy the data manually, which was buggy for me, or you can use cheats to catch the same Pokemon you had in generation I and then edit the saves to copy EV and IV data, moves and PP levels. This is what I did. I tried just editing the saves with PikaSav first, but this caused the game to behave strangely. Instead, I used some Gameshark cheats in Visual Boy Advance to make Pikachu appear in the wild, caught him, and then edited the save to change his stats to the levels from Pokemon Yellow. The tools I used for this were

The important cheat here is

The cheat to catch any Pokemon – 91xx04d2

You need to replace “xx” with the number from the list on Supercheats for the Pokemon you want to catch. When you enable this cheat, the Pokemon you chose will be the only Pokemon to appear in random battles. For Pikachu, the “xx” is “19”. Once I caught him, I saved my game and loaded up Pikasav. First, I opened up the Pokemon Yellow save to write down Pikachu’s stat and move information and then opened the Pokemon Crystal save to set the information for the newly caught Pikachu to those values.

I only bothered getting Pikachu. It takes to long to transfer everyone.

I did this only with Pikachu at first and simply used Pikasav to add all the other Pokemon I caught in Yellow to the Pokedex. The procedure was simply too tedious for me to do it with all my other Pokemon. Later on in the game, I also used this method to get Kingler back into my team.
Depending on how much patience, time and willpower you have, you can do as you please.

How to Follow Ash – Violet City, Flying Gym

Route

New Bark Town -> Route 29 .> Cherrygrove City -> Route 30 -> Route 31 -> Violet City

The Anime

In the anime, Ash Catches a Heracross and a Chikorita well before the first Gym. He also tries using Chikorita in the first gym and fails.

How to Follow

Chikorita was the starter I picked, though it sucked during the first few gyms.

You should probably pick Chikorita as your starter, though the other two are also valid choices, since Ash gets them later in the anime and you won’t be able to get them any other way. Sadly, this means that you’ll have to pick between one of three Pokemon Ash eventually catches. As for Heracross, you can’t get him yet. He only drops from trees in mountain areas, so you need to get Headbutt from Illex Forest first.

How to Follow Ash – Azalea City, Bug Gym

Route

Ruins of Alph -> Route 32 -> Azalea Town

The Anime

In the anime, Ash leaves Charizard, though he’s able to call back on him later. He also catches his Cindaquil.

How to Follow

You can’t do much, really. If you picked Chikorita, you can’t get Cyndaquil, and if you went with Cyndaquil, you already have it, so you can start using it now. If you transferred Charizard, it’s time to put him in the PC, probably.

How to Follow Ash – Goldenrod City, Normal Gym

Route

Ilex Forest -> Day Care Center -> Goldenrod City

The Anime

In the anime, Ash officially gets his Totodile. He also leaves his Squirtle with the Squirtle Squad. Finally, he gets a shiny Noctowl. He’s luckier than I ever was.

How to Follow

Simple. If you picked Totodile as your starter, you have it. If you have a Squirtle in your team, leave it. Not much else to do there. However, since you got Headbut from Ilex forest, it’s time to go get your Heracross. For that, you have to walk all the way to before Azalea Town, to Route 33. I believe this is the closest mountainous route you can get to at the point where you get Headbut. You won’t be able to get Noctowl, not yet. If you want, you could catch a Hoothoot in Illex Forest and evolve it instead.

Heracross will probably be one of your strongest for a long time.

How to Follow Ash – Ecruteak City, Ghost Gym

Route

National Park -> Route 36 -> Route 37 -> Ecruteak City

The Anime

Nothing of note happens. Ash encounters a large amount of Pokemon, but doesn’t officially expand his roster. He does catch a Beedril and immediately gives it to a friend, though.

How to Follow

Do nothing, basically. You’ll just spend a lot of time cancelling the evolution of your starter, since the first one to evolve in the anime is Chikorita and that’s only after Ecruteak Gym. If you want to follow the story, catch and release a Beedril using Headbut. It definitely drops from trees back in Illex forest. I never did this. Oh, and it’s finally time to get that Noctowl, if you haven’t gotten a Hoothoot in Illex forest. You can find it on Route 37 at night.

Noctowl will be extremely valuable and you get it just in time for Fly.

How to Follow Ash – Cianwood City, Fighting Gym

Route

Route 38 -> Route 39 -> Olvine City -> Route 40 -> Route 41 -> Cianwood City

The Anime

During this time, Chikorita evolves into Bayleef. That’s about it for the anime.

How to Follow

Simple. Just follow the story and finally let Chikorita evolve. If you’re like me, this doesn’t mean you can stop cancelling its evolution, since its level will be high enough to evolve to the final form, which doesn’t happen in the anime. Note that you’ll go through Olivine City, which also has a gym, but you’ll have to return to that later, since that’s how the game story goes.
You might not have a Pokemon able to use Surf at this point, so it’s time to bring in one from your old team. I picked Kingler, but if you want to also follow the Whirl Islands part, it might be time to get Lapras. I didn’t bother.

Since you don’t have a Surf capable Pokemon unless you got Totodile, you need to bring in Kingler or Lapras.

How to Follow Ash – Olivine City, Steel Gym

Route

Route 41 -> Olivine Gym (or just fly)

The Anime

At this point, the Whirl Islands part of the anime starts and ends with the Whirpool Cup

How to Follow

I didn’t. The whirl islands are just an area in the game, not a region like in the anime. I just went back to Olivine and beat the gym.

How to Follow Ash – Mahogany Town, Ice Gym

Route

Mt. Mortar -> Route 42 -> Mahogany Town -> Route 43 -> Lake of Rage -> Mahogany Town

The Anime

Some major events happen in the anime, just like in the game and the Phanpy Egg hatches.

How to Follow

You can’t get a Phanpy yet, so you can’t really do much, other than going with the story and beating the gym.

How to Follow Ash – Blackthorn City, Dragon Gym

Route

Route 44 -> Ice Path -> Blackthorn City

The Anime

Again, not much of note happens here regarding Ash’s roster.

How to Follow

Play through it and get to Blackthorn City. You might want to catch a Phanpy on Route 45, south of Blackthorn in the morning before tackling the Gym.

Phanpy wasn’t very useful for me, sadly.

How to Follow Ash – The League

Route

Go back to your home town and Surf to the east, then go through Victory Road to get to the League.

How to Follow

At this point, you can forget about the anime. All you have to do is beat the game. None of your Pokemon will evolve further, nor will you be able to expand your team. Technically, Ash uses Larvitar for a while in the anime, but he never really catches it and you can’t get it in the game yet anyway.