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My arthritis has been killing me lately. >.< My right arm has just been hurting almost non-stop for over a week now and the pain meds I have hardly take even the edge off. The pain isn't severe, it's just enough of a dull ache and weakness that I can only type or play games in short bursts.
With that said I haven't recorded anything new for Dark Seal this week. I've still got video from every stage of the game but the very prospect of editing it all together makes me shudder - partially because I don't enjoy rewatching footage of myself making mistakes and getting my ass handed to me repeatedly. I can make it up to the purple poison beast thing at the end of the second stage without continuing but then I get there and just die, die, die.
I fired up an early revision of the game in MAME and talk about waaaay harder. There are more enemies, more generators, more traps, and the generators take one hell of a beating before dying. Every time you kill a critter spawned from one of these generators a cluster of items drops. The armor, necklace, scarab, and ring all absorb only 1 hit of their respective types before being destroyed while the guantlet and speed boots only last for a brief time and have this annoying sound effect when they're about to fade.
I only played the first two stages but it seemed like the bosses had more health and items would appear periodically out of nowhere. This might be a bit skewered by also having played the Japanese version which is a little easier then the U.S. one. For example the drake boss at the end of the first stage suffers more damage when hit in the head in the Japanese version. This might also be true in the U.S./world revision.
Revision: I've tested this in the World Revision 3 and the drake is vulnerable in the head, but the hitbox is smaller making the only real opportunity to take advantage of this specific weakness when it stops to fire it's lightning breath. When standing below the drake face up with a line of fire lined up roughly with the beast's beady eyes.
U.S. version 1 didn't seem to have any blue slimes (hurray!) so that's a big plus in my book. There might be some past where I stopped. Despite being overall a bit easier the Japanese version has more enemies in a few spots and pulled a fast one on me with the hellhound's desperation move. In the world version it uses it at around 25% but the Japanese hellhound likes to use it around 50%.
When fighting the hellhound it runs offscreen through the lava around the fighting platform to reappear elsewhere. If it appears at the top of the screen and is flashing, immediately stop whatever it is you are doing and haul ass to the lower left corner (this is where you first enter the room). The hellhound is completely invincible while flashing and will spray every inch of the arena except that tiny spot with deadly blue fire. If you don't make it to this safe spot you will eventually die as there is no space to run around the streams of fire.
I stopped after that - not like I was particularly looking forward to fighting the red dragon or anything.
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News on Warsong:
There is no news to report. I haven't recorded a bloody thing for this game. Why? Well I finally decided (being between walkthroughs and all that) to fire up King Arthur & The Knights of Justice and see if the game is as bad as it's been made out to be. Flying Omelette's got a shrine to this game that I've read a few times over now so I wasn't flying completely blind.
After playing for awhile I understand why the developers couldn't implement a save system and stuck with passwords. Just playing casually I worked myself into a position where continuing with the game required rebooting with a password because the Ruby of Compassion wasn't being placed where it was supposed to be and the curse on Welton therefore couldn't be broken. Thinking it might be a bug relegated to ZSNES I repeated the steps in SNES9x and came up with the same result.
Now I haven't tested all the possible variables in this but what does work (or break, depending on your point of view) is to have access to Welton and the east forest. Obviously don't use a password that already has Welton free of the curse. If you are loading from a password that starts you out with Merlin saying you should go kill Warlord Bash and want to know if Welton is cursed or not just go see Merlin in his room immediately. If you see the following text, Welton isn't cursed.
With that said I haven't recorded anything new for Dark Seal this week. I've still got video from every stage of the game but the very prospect of editing it all together makes me shudder - partially because I don't enjoy rewatching footage of myself making mistakes and getting my ass handed to me repeatedly. I can make it up to the purple poison beast thing at the end of the second stage without continuing but then I get there and just die, die, die.
I fired up an early revision of the game in MAME and talk about waaaay harder. There are more enemies, more generators, more traps, and the generators take one hell of a beating before dying. Every time you kill a critter spawned from one of these generators a cluster of items drops. The armor, necklace, scarab, and ring all absorb only 1 hit of their respective types before being destroyed while the guantlet and speed boots only last for a brief time and have this annoying sound effect when they're about to fade.
I only played the first two stages but it seemed like the bosses had more health and items would appear periodically out of nowhere. This might be a bit skewered by also having played the Japanese version which is a little easier then the U.S. one. For example the drake boss at the end of the first stage suffers more damage when hit in the head in the Japanese version. This might also be true in the U.S./world revision.
Revision: I've tested this in the World Revision 3 and the drake is vulnerable in the head, but the hitbox is smaller making the only real opportunity to take advantage of this specific weakness when it stops to fire it's lightning breath. When standing below the drake face up with a line of fire lined up roughly with the beast's beady eyes.
U.S. version 1 didn't seem to have any blue slimes (hurray!) so that's a big plus in my book. There might be some past where I stopped. Despite being overall a bit easier the Japanese version has more enemies in a few spots and pulled a fast one on me with the hellhound's desperation move. In the world version it uses it at around 25% but the Japanese hellhound likes to use it around 50%.
When fighting the hellhound it runs offscreen through the lava around the fighting platform to reappear elsewhere. If it appears at the top of the screen and is flashing, immediately stop whatever it is you are doing and haul ass to the lower left corner (this is where you first enter the room). The hellhound is completely invincible while flashing and will spray every inch of the arena except that tiny spot with deadly blue fire. If you don't make it to this safe spot you will eventually die as there is no space to run around the streams of fire.
I stopped after that - not like I was particularly looking forward to fighting the red dragon or anything.
------
News on Warsong:
There is no news to report. I haven't recorded a bloody thing for this game. Why? Well I finally decided (being between walkthroughs and all that) to fire up King Arthur & The Knights of Justice and see if the game is as bad as it's been made out to be. Flying Omelette's got a shrine to this game that I've read a few times over now so I wasn't flying completely blind.
After playing for awhile I understand why the developers couldn't implement a save system and stuck with passwords. Just playing casually I worked myself into a position where continuing with the game required rebooting with a password because the Ruby of Compassion wasn't being placed where it was supposed to be and the curse on Welton therefore couldn't be broken. Thinking it might be a bug relegated to ZSNES I repeated the steps in SNES9x and came up with the same result.
Now I haven't tested all the possible variables in this but what does work (or break, depending on your point of view) is to have access to Welton and the east forest. Obviously don't use a password that already has Welton free of the curse. If you are loading from a password that starts you out with Merlin saying you should go kill Warlord Bash and want to know if Welton is cursed or not just go see Merlin in his room immediately. If you see the following text, Welton isn't cursed.
After establishing that, yet again, Merlin is pretty useless walk to the eastern forest and grab the Goblet of Loyalty but leave the Ruby of Compassion where it lies. Picking up the Emerald of Reason is optional right now. Go to Welton and place the goblet on the altar in the church. Every time I did this the ruby vanished from it's spot never to return. Unfortunately this breaks progression because unless you break the curse you can't get the Scroll from the magic woman to get Tone's key. Without Tone's key Merlin will teleport in front of you when you try to enter Warlord Lucan's room and bitch endlessly that you need to get Tone's key first. Nevermind the fact that if he'd just shut up and get out of your way you could kill Lucan and take the Key of Truth that's like 10 feet in front of you. Oh, no, Merlin is an asshole that wants you to turn around, walk all the way out of Lucan's fortress and go traipsing around the forest looking for another key that's not going anywhere.
If you couldn't tell I don't like Merlin very much.
If you couldn't tell I don't like Merlin very much.
