Skald: Against the Black Priory
Finished! I really enjoyed this one. It's somewhat short and small for a classic-style RPG, as it took me just under 24 hours to do absolutely everything including the two major optional quests, but it was enjoyable from start to end, and each location and quest felt interesting and substantial--no being tasked with collecting five squirrel nuts in the woods, in this game.

Although it appears to be a fantasy RPG with some horror elements, it's really more of a horror RPG that happens to take place in a fantasy setting. It gets surprisingly (and increasingly) mean and gory as the game goes on; I should have played through this back in October instead of on Christmas day! The story and writing were both quite good, though the focus of the game is definitely on combat and exploration.

It's quite a linear experience overall, though there are two optional quests that are actually quite meaty, and the middle portion of the game consists of a large chain of quests you can complete through either combat or diplomacy. Your choice here will largely be determined by the type of character you've built, so it's probably worth replaying the game with a different type of character to see what the other solution is like.

The combat is not particularly complicated or hard, but you do have plenty of skills and abilities to use and it's a lot of fun! I enjoyed developing my party of characters over the course of the game, and unleashing all of the abilities of a fully developed party toward the end of the game can be a thing of beauty. All area encounters are fixed and do not regenerate, while you have the option of enabling or disabling random world encounters; I ended up turning these off because you get plenty of experience points just from the fixed encounters.

I really don't care for how the game looks, and actually prefer how it looked early in development when it more closely resembled a C64 game. However, it makes excellent use of sound effects in battle to really give combat a sense of weight and impact, and the music is outstanding.

Overall, I had a blast with Skald. Highly recommended!

More progress in Demon's Souls. I tried going to the Shrine of Storms, but that area might be too difficult for my current stats and equipment. However, I noticed that those rolling skeletons near the start give a decent amount of souls when killed. They are fast and strong, but like in DS1, vulnerable to blunt weapons. So I bought a plain old club, and farmed them for some extra levels. This allowed me to raise Vitality and Endurance to 20 each, which improved my survival chances considerably.

I then paid a visit to Stonefang Tunnel, which had some irksome platforming segments. Those top hat wearing enemies were pretty nasty too, due to their homing fireballs. And the fight against the big spider just wasn't that enjoyable for me. I heard that some boss battles in this game can be gimmicky or tedious, and now I see why. I died a few times here due to the lack of space for dodging, but eventually, I was successful. Still, forcing the player to fight that humongous thing in such a cramped location was an odd design choice.

Next up, I went back to Boletaria, to try my luck with its second level. Had no problems with the dragons torching those bridges, since I keep my equip load under 50%, and can sprint pretty fast when necessary. After some time, I found the area boss, that being the Tower Knight. This guy reminded me of the Iron Golem from DS1, so I knew what to do. Poked his knees until he fell over, then just piled on the damage. And sure enough, I got him on the first try. I wonder if this went so smoothly because I always play without lock on. In any case, I liked this boss fight much more than the last one. Looks like the next area is sealed off for now, so I went back to the Nexus to fix my gear and level up.

P.S.

I heard that Demon's Souls can run at 60 FPS via emulation and decided to try that. So I used the Apollo tool for copying the saves from my PS3 to a USB stick, and then transferred them over to RPCS3 on my PC. Worked fine, and the game does indeed run at a locked 60 FPS, thanks to a fan made patch. I also increased the resolution to 1080p and bumped up Anisotropic Filtering to 16x. Looks great and runs like a dream now. Think I'll continue my playthrough here, since everything feels much more responsive. Also, I prefer the Xbox controller to the DualShock3. The latter is a bit too small for my hands, so they get strained after prolonged play sessions.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Today, 08:13:

I heard that Demon's Souls can run at 60 FPS via emulation and decided to try that. So I used the Apollo tool for copying the saves from my PS3 to a USB stick, and then transferred them over to RPCS3 on my PC. Worked fine, and the game does indeed run at a locked 60 FPS, thanks to a fan made patch. I also increased the resolution to 1080p and bumped up Anisotropic Filtering to 16x. Looks great and runs like a dream now. Think I'll continue my playthrough here, since everything feels much more responsive.

Good to hear, I've got RPCS3 installed but I haven't yet had the time to even launch it, but apparently PS3 emulation is mostly in good shape. I intend to give Demons/Dark Souls a go with it at some point but quite honestly I expect going monkey bananas and launching the controller out the window sooner or later. I don't think they are for me but better make sure since they clearly are good games.

Also, I prefer the Xbox controller to the DualShock3. The latter is a bit too small for my hands, so they get strained after prolonged play sessions.

The first three PS controllers are pretty small. Caught me by surprise when I bought a factory sealed PS1 partly because I wanted an unused controller, well I got one but the thing is tiny. Didn't have that problem back when I was a teenager.