Picking Nits Instead Of Guitars

Didn’t really have time for more than a small handful of songs in RB2 tonight, as I spent most of it getting things set back up again on the PC.

One thing I wish they’d improved that they didn’t is the stats collection. At the end of the songs it still doesn’t tell you things like how many total notes there were, your percentage isn’t permanently tracked, the setlist in tour mode doesn’t show your score, the five-star range is still fairly large… It makes it hard to tell later on which songs you still need to improve at a lot and which you’re already close to the best you can do. (Expert difficulty has the gold stars, but that’s a looong ways away for me.)

Starting From Scratch

I spent the rest of the night wiping and completely reinstalling everything on my gaming box. Well, not everything; tonight I could only get the OSes (XP SP3 on one drive, 64-bit Vista on the other), the usual updates, drivers, and Spore installed.

Spore was one of the reasons I did this wipe in the first place, since it and Mass Effect hated something about the previous install, and now…it works. No time left to actually play with it tonight, though.

I Wanna Rock And Roll All Evening

It was finally time to fire up Rock Band 2, and it’s turned out to be more than just another set of songs to play. The solo mode now works within the band’s world tour mode, where you’re gaining fans and stars to unlock more gigs and venues instead of just playing through a bunch of tiers. You also get the option of playing bass and still advancing the tour mode, whereas in RB1 you could only do solo bass in quickplay mode. Some of the gigs are also random picks out of the entire library, RB1 and DLC included.

There are also a bunch of challenges that I didn’t get around to trying; I just played enough songs tonight to unlock a few more cities, but probably still have a long ways to go. The mix of songs seems to be decent so far, though nothing’s really stood out yet.

Somebody Needs To Take My Debit Card Away

I really have to stop buying more games that I don’t have time to play…

Though I will make time for Rock Band 2, and I wound up buying it today even though I won’t actually play it until I finish off Persona 3. But while I was there I couldn’t resist picking up a copy of Burnout Paradise (it was cheap, and there have been lots of updates), and Spore. Spore was the one I had preordered at Amazon and still hadn’t shipped yet, but I wound up finding a Galactic Edition copy in the stores and canceled the preorder.

Unfortunately, Spore has a problem — it won’t run on my machine. It just crashes when I try to launch it for the first time, and I suspect it’s related to the copy protection system it uses: SecuROM. It’s the same system used by Mass Effect, and that one also won’t run on my system; it doesn’t crash, but it does give me a ‘failed to load’ error when it tries to start.

Usually these copy protection problems are caused by virtual CD drives on the system, but I’ve never had one installed under Vista, so I’m not sure what the problem is. I’ve tested a whole bunch of games on this system, so maybe it’s conflicting with the copy protection or drivers of some other game, but damned if I can tell which one it is.

It’s just another example of how modern PC gaming sucks, alas, but it’s still my preferred platform for a lot of things. Maybe it’s just time for another wipe and reinstall and hope that clears up these problems…

I Don’t Get All The Girls In RL Either

I hurried through remaining days in Persona 3, mainly working on finishing off the social links I could and a last few weapon fusions. I maxed out the link with Bebe; I didn’t really want to help him sew a kimono, but his was the only one I had a chance at maxing out, and I had to abandon the links with Mitsuru, Chihiro, and Aigis. I was a total of 19 ranks short, out of about 220 total, but I screwed them up early on by spending too many school days working on non-school links when I could have left those for holidays instead.

With Bebe maxed I could get the Yurlungur persona, and I realized that I was also still missing Masakado, and with them the compendium is now 97% complete, and that’s as far as it’s going this time. I also couldn’t do any more of Elizabeth’s quests, since the only ones left are the joint skill ones, and I can’t get past the current one because I can’t make Metatron.

I popped back into Monad for one last grind session to earn cash, since that carries over to a New Game+, but I’ve saved on the day before the final battle, and that should only take one more day to go through.

Okay, Maybe Now I’m Slightly Overpowered

I found some lists of good fusions in various forums and FAQs, but most take a lot of time, effort, and money in merging a whole lot of steps together, often requiring low-chance combinations that you have to keep retrying over and over and over. So, I just put together a good Helel one, with Victory Cry and Spell Master.

That’s pretty powerful as it is, though; when I also have the Satan persona around, I can cast the Armageddon spell that does 9999 damage to all enemies, which is good enough to kill them all but one special one (which I can’t fight on the first playthrough anyway). Normally Armageddon has a mana cost equal to your entire mana pool, but Victory Cry replenishes all of my health and mana after each fight, so I can keep casting it in every fight. And Spell Master halves the mana cost, so I could spend some mana out of combat and still be able to cast it in the next fight. So, yeah, I’m pretty much unstoppable now.

I also got tired of farming heart items from Messiah, since I kept getting the same ones, but I did at least get one Omnipotent Orb out of him, which blocks all physical and magic damage. Which isn’t quite full invulnerability since I can still take ‘almighty’ damage, but it’s not like they’re going to get a turn to attack after Armageddon…

Anyway, I could continue futzing around with personas for ages. Tomorrow, I start heading for the endgame in earnest. Oh, and apparently Chidori is alive again now, but has amnesia. Original!

Exploiting Jesus For Protection

I finished off the last grinding session in Monad, which got my character up to level 93. After that I maxed three social links in quick succession: the photography club, the rival athlete, and Fuuka. Maxing the social links with the girls always seems to wind up in their bedrooms…

Anyways, with that I was now able to fuse more personas, and got the compendium up to 96% complete. That’s about as good as it’s going to get this run, unless I can max out more social links before the end of the game, but that looks unlikely at this point. Most of these personas are still fairly basic, too; I need to redo them properly in order to get better combinations of skills on them, but that’ll take more time and money.

One of the personas I could finally make was Messiah, and I spent a while farming his heart items, since he produces good pieces of armour. And I found it way too amusing that I managed to fuse the Die For Me! skill onto him as part of the preparation for heart piece farming…

The Reaper Better Fear Me

Back in Persona 3, I farmed Tartarus a bit more for exp and finally got a few of the ice immunity items. With them, and a bunch of healing items picked up at the antique store, I was finally ready to take on The Reaper.

It turned out to be rather anti-climactic, though. I used a strategy found on some forums where I used Thunder Reign to keep him vulnerable to criticals, put crit rate up weapons on everyone else, and told them to knock him down. That caused the Reaper to keep losing his turn getting back up again while we got in the occasional all-out attack. There was one turn where I missed with Thunder Reign, but Akihiko still managed to crit him that turn. I never even had to use a single item in the battle.

And then I realized that I hadn’t actually accepted the request to kill him, so he hadn’t dropped the item I needed. Whoops. I had to do the fight over again, but this time it didn’t go as smoothly since Yukari kept attacking when she should have been healing, as I’d set her to Heal/Support, and that screwed up the attempts to keep him knocked down. By the time she’d stopped doing that, the Reaper was second in the combat order and Thunder Reign wouldn’t help since it would wear off immediately.

After that the battle was just a matter of healing and reviving as necessary (a Megidola would often kill Yukari even at full health, or the occasional light/dark spell would hit), and attacking with high-damage spells (Ragnarok seemed best) when the opportunity arose. I used a handful of items this time (mainly Bead Chains and Balms of Life), but still had plenty left over. There was one annoying stretch near the end of the fight where he kept using AE attack after AE attack though, and I just had to keep wasting Bead Chain after Bead Chain since Yukari was dead at the time.

That opened up Monad, which is another set of floors much like Tartarus, but with tougher enemies. It’s worth it though, since they give out a lot more experience as well, so this is where I’ll be grinding from now on. I went from level 83 to 88 just going through the first few floors, and the rest of the group gained a bunch as well.

I’ll have plenty of time to grind too, since there’s still 18 days left until the final battle.

The Ninja Strikes Again

Not much time to play tonight, so I just did a few episodes in the new N+ level pack that was released this week. I didn’t die too much or require too many restarts, but it’s definitely starting off harder than the first level pack did. This might be the one where I finally hit the difficulty wall again.