Wade

Gaming, modding, lifting, and video editing. YouTube sometimes. | Our time together, memories, and everything else... I'll take them all with me to the future.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

https://t.co/2V8LCfVLeN

[Wade @DefyingFate]

After everything I finally decided to move back to the place that feels closest to "home". I'll eat crow and all that later. Cause I will.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Just a note... If you disable the low-quality effects, it turns off the B&W filter for this scene. Which is a shame.

Now... All I have to say is...screw this battle. Anyone that says this is easy is lying to your face. It's unfair and intentionally so. I've never felt so many negative emotions and motion sickness for a boss battle until this point.

Mess up once anywhere in these seven-ish minutes? Back to the beginning for you. Have a moving camera to fuck with you? You bet! No visual clues for you! Change the tempo so you never truly get the beat down? Hell yeah! Didn't know about that hidden note at the end during the dialog? Too bad! We're here to crush whatever hope and accomplishment you felt. Back to the start. Good luck getting back! :D

Just this part alone makes me hesitant to recommend this game to others. But I beat it at least and will never play it again. And no, I don't think the ending was worth the suffering.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Drakengard 3. Honestly? This game is kind of a mess. But an enjoyable mess...almost...until the final boss "battle". Yeah... The combat is janky and unpolished. But the story and characters more than make up for it. And I do recommend the DLC stories. But I will say, if you hate anything vulgar, then this game isn't for you. Music is pretty great too.

I ran this game/DLC on RPCS3 for higher fidelity, to get around the long loading time, and not deal with the performance issues. A few bugs here and there but a good experience overall.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Clock Tower 3. This really felt like it was meant to be another game. The very, /very/ few clock tower elements crammed in feel like an afterthought. The story feels rushed and just plain goofy at times for what's here. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but I can see why a lot of people didn't like it. At least it's really short to play and beat.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Illbleed. I've played and beaten this game once before. I just never did a second playthrough for the true ending. Which requires you to not save any of your friends. With every failure, Eriko will lose parts of her clothes (to the point of wearing almost nothing) and look more beaten up if you go this route. So, warning for the easily offended.

My thoughts haven't really changed on this game. There really isn't any other game like it. Its random, goofy, and funny at times while also claiming to be a horror game. I'll even admit that, while short, the true ending did throw me a curveball. Gameplay is completely unique to this game. Clunky, but at least it isn't frustrating...unless you choose to let it be. I like it and don't regret owning it. Dreamcast game and expensive now.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

So, I'll talk about them for a bit. I don't want every post (or when I bother to post) to be me talking about well...Grandia 2. Which I will talk about again soon enough because...of course I will.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Taken some time to actually play and beat some older games. I've realized the chances of me playing the shiny new ones are low and my backlog is like...300 or more at this point.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Talk about more later.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

I've added/fixed the missing sound effect for Melfice's sword in this scene. Present in the Asian versions but missing in the English one (and the other languages based on it in this port). It's even missing in the original Dreamcast version for NA. Not sure about the PAL version. I've included an emulated game clip to show this. This also shows the sounds that are still missing in this scene...and other glaring issues.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Not exactly the kind of "fix" I'm happy with... The enemy isn't supposed to make a sound here. But it does... And that noise is actually one of the two ambience noises for the forest (which is forest00L and forest00R). I don't know how to reassign the ID itself... And it has a broken loop to boot. So, I can't even replace the audio with the sound the enemy makes. And so, it'll stay muted like in the original.

Outside of the left one being assigned to the bird, I don't hear the right one at all. Nor do I hear the howling sound. I've included an emulated version just to show what the entire thing is supposed to sound like.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

The broken animation in the Asian version (JP, KR, CN) of this scene has been fixed.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

The audio for this door has been corrected. Looking into it I can see how it happened (the ID showed two potential sound files) but really should've been double checked.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Time to talk about a few Grandia 2 "Remaster" fixes and whatnot, I guess.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

I like how serious discussions seem to always devolve into some form of sweeping statements and moral grandstanding from both sides. It's not worth engaging in when the line is already drawn and insults are at the ready.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

They did fix the battle speed. That was expected. As for the video hitching, it's 100% the game. The video files play normally outside the game, but not in it. For all I know, the game itself might just be hitching. I don't intend to play farther to find out. The sound effects are definitely hit more miss. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. And those ugly shaders are forced on you, with no choice to turn them off. (Just like FF8 Remaster.) Also, I swear something is wrong with Wedge's face when he blinks...

If we ignore things like FFNX for the 2013 version... Is this version better? Not...really? No more ":O" faces and actual button icons are good things, but...not when everything else is arguable worse in some ways. But, hey, I assume most people got this for free on Steam anyway.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Guess it isn't a Square PC product without issues at launch. Why are the battles at double speed? Because for some reason the game isn't going down to 15FPS. The opening video playback definitely has some weird hitching too. I'm sure there are more issues somewhere else. I used Special K to run the game at 5760x3240. Which is what I do with all old, non-demanding games when it lets me.

As for the background filtering... I thought that was already in the console version and was known about? The good is the models don't seem to have the ":O" face anymore. And the sound effects seem to sound better.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Been awhile but I decided to mess with the Japanese version of Grandia 2 "Remaster" some more. The music now plays and the text box appears. The timing of the text box appearing is off... But it's still better than it was. Showing the whole scene to show it plays all the way through. This also shows just how badly broken some of the text timing is. Especially the ending. Still looking into that one... If I can figure it out at all.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

One of the things I fixed in the Grandia 2 PC port was the audio desync in the Birthplace of Gods. Had to edit the actual audio file. Hard to say if it is perfect, but I can always revisit it later in another update.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

The Japanese version also has this issue, but... We have a lot of issues here. Between the unusually long pause, Elena's text not working correctly, and...well...it just gets worse from there. Basically...no point in messing with it.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Update: No dice. While the IDs have no assigned sound file, the ID themselves aren't being used in the rest of the scenes either. That's not to say there probably isn't a way to still use them. But you'd need to dig deeper into the game itself, I bet.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

Fixed the missing the sound effects in one of the (in my opinion) most impactful moments... Which is Mareg's final scene.

[Wade @DefyingFate]

In total I've probably restored about 15 missing sounds. This doesn't include the missing sounds from the original PC release. There are plenty of IDs that could be them. But there are about 150+ of those suckers and I don't have a way to know what ID a scene is trying to find.