Goemon

I’m currently a couple of hours into Legend of Xanadu 2 on the PC Engine. It’s another Falcom game and has a similar play style to Ys. As soon as I knew this and saw the graphics, I was in like Flynn! It’s a mix of overhead with a bump/auto attack mechanic and a 2d platform fight for the bosses, and it looks gorgeous! I really do like Falcom’s idea of more straight forward fighting when you’re generally adventuring and then a more strategic boss fights. Unfortunately it’s JPN only, which is a real shame. I have limited JPN knowledge so I get a bit of a gist but that’s about it. It has an unusual mechanic on levelling weapons/armour the more you use them. I guess it’s like familiarity. This means it’s not just a case of buying a new weapon and equipping it, you have to fight to get the levels up. This lead to a point where I’d got to the 2nd boss, it had 625 points of health and I was literally doing 1 damage even though I had the best sword I could access. I had to go off and grind to raise to the level of the sword on once I did I started taking chunks off the boss. Falcom really need to bring this and it’s predecessor out as a collection.

Not sure what’s happened. Either everyone has dropped off already, they’ve turned off a load of servers or they‘ve bust something. Having limited game time, I’ve unfortunately stopped playing this When I’ve only got like 45 mins to play something and the best I can get is 1-2 games and the rest of the time is waiting then I’m just not going to waste my time. I don’t understand why it’s not constantly buzzing.

If you suspect someone is going to throw all you have to do is attack, you don’t have the plan a throw escape attempt. As long as you’re attacking their throw will fail. Throw escapes are more to be used for when the opponent blocks a move from you which is a guaranteed throw move or just to cover you in the scenario where the opponent is at advantage. If you go into training you can find this out. If you have a move that when blocked leaves you at -10 then you need to think about throw escaping as you can’t do anything before they can throw you. The majority of moves are negative, which makes it your turn after blocking an attack. However a lot of moves aren’t negative enough to guarantee a throw, so it’s totally normal to have sessions of blocking back and forth because you take a chance to throw that the opponent isn’t doing something else. The best time to use throw is when you believe you’ve convinced the opponent they must block. This can come after 1 punch or it can be 3 strings consecutively, you just have to get a feel. The game is designed around reading the opponents tendencies. Watching that video you were very lucky, you went for combo into low kick far too many times. The opponent blocked it every time and that move leaves you at -18, which is very dangerous. If the guy had known his punishes better he could have taken you for a decent chunk of health every you did it. You should definitely go into training and look at where your moves leave you on block

I have no idea what my stats are, as I have them switched off. You should too if it affects you. It’s hard to get too caught in in stats when I literally have regular unplayable games due to lag. Sooner just turn them off and get on with playing. I’d personally consider Pai more straight forward to use than Lei. While I’m no expert with either character I think Lei looks super setup/situational heavy, which requires a lot of understanding to make effective. His stances, what you can do with them and how you move through them are fairly essential requirements I’d say. I think Lei looks super cool but I don’t feel I have the time to get into him.

Just fnished Ys Origin with all 3 characters. Was a nice game. Lots of fan service to the first 2 games, which was cool. While the fighting was pretty basic, it was always satisfying and never got boring. One thing Ys seems to do is have a fair pace on the action, which I think keeps it from getting dull. The story of the 3 characters was interesting but not as well thought out as I thought it was going to be. It has some nice lore to the series but there’s significant variation in the story depending on who you play as, which doesn’t really add up as all characters are supposed to be traversing the tower at the same time. I’m talking like an NPC dying in one version of events and surviving in another. I’m really surprised that this series is not more popular.

Wow, what have they done to this version!? Room Match has a soft lock in it where if you and a player ‘ok’ up and a 3rd player leaves at the same time, the match doesn’t start and you’re stuck. Only way out is to reset the game.

Having recently became an Ys fan, I’ve just ordered Monstrum Nox for the Switch. I couldn’t find it anywhere, is this a limited release? Eventually got it from the games collection but everywhere else I tried had no listing. I’m just on my final playthrough of Ys Origins, which has a lot of fan service to the original games. I’m interested to see what transcends across games into the newer versions, e.g. the item collection jingle.

Can anyone tell me what the differences are in the classic version to the original? Have they changed the controls? Having just been though the normal game and then trying classic mode I felt Alex controlled much better.

My 2p The guy was looping a low hitting attack into a mid attack into a low etc. The mid is low profiling him. You started far too many sequences with a high attack, which most of the time sailed over his head as he was maintaining his low position. He broke so many of your sequences by mashing LP, you should have been using mids constantly to cover his low profile. Both of the moves he was doing are easily side stepped. Couple of times you side stepped but all you got was P,P,P.....As @Kayin Amoh mentioned you've leaving far too much damage on the table. In a game with latency and spamming you need to be taking the guy for as much damage as you can get, some of your punishes were barely 30 points. Side stepping the shoulder into launcher could have netted you 70-80 damage each time he did it and you would have had him dead in 3 combos. I don’t know Pai but again, like @Kayin Amoh says, Pai will have this stuff, so you need to know what it is.

needs vids

In all honesty I have no idea how the connections work. I went into a ‘Green’ connection room the other day and when I joined both players were marked as Red.

Jean Kujo is the first character I’ve been disappointed with for just being generic in every way. Every character I’ve found some interest in for various reasons but him, there’s just literally nothing I find interesting. Unfortunately I’m not really getting the time to play this and end up theory fighting as opposed to actual fighting (looking at frame data / moves and planning move sequences) It’s always the case too that my theories go straight out of the window as soon as I do get a chance online and I resort to the same old mash. The game really needs a black list. I had a couple of super laggy matches yesterday. One person it matched against 5 times! I started quitting as soon as I saw the name but I was still getting penalised for ‘quitting’ the match even though it hadn’t even started. All I was thinking was ‘Give me the option to play the guy or not!’ It’s stupid that this isn’t an option.

When people don’t know what they’re doing, they resort to the lowest common denominator, which in this game is low punch spam. It’s not the threat people think it is though. Any decent speed mid will beat it out when you have the timing down.

LOL! Hey! Some games can still be tough even with infinite continues when you only have like 3 lives to finish the level. I kinda suspected this wasn’t the case for this game though as I’m up to the castle where you reuse your brother after about an hour. Anyone know if the Japanese version was different? I know in the early days the JPN versions were easier due to things like infinite continues, which would get taken out for Western releases. I’m always up for the challenge so I’ll bare the no continues in mind but like I say, fast character vs 1 block platforms is a recipe for frustration

The Dark Souls Nightfall mod has a release date. Hoping for a @robdood stream.