Because I was bored...

[Dark_Fairy]

http://www.lunarthreads.com/memberlist. ... &sk=m&sd=a

I found out that I'm currently the only White Dragon Knight on this forum, lol. There are a few people getting close to changing over, luckily. Then I won't be alone anymore. It's not easy being a lone White Dragon Knight though.

[Nobiyuki77]

I like being a Legendary Hero myself. ^^;;

[whitedragon_nall]

I don' t like being a Black Dragon Wizard. Perhaps I should post more.

[Kizyr]

Shiva Indis just needs one more post! KF

[LuNaRtIc]

I made the top 10! D:

[Sonic#]

It's a shame that Leo was the only White Dragon Knight, though he wasn't the only one looking out for justice...

[phyco126]

I used to be number 1 in post count, but now G1 is a far more effective spammer than I

But I'm stuck at Dragon Master, now and always. Because I'm cool like that.

[Dark_Fairy]

This is the highest post count I have anywhere on any forum, lol. I really don't post a whole lot at forums. I'm mainly a lurker elsewhere. Here on the other hand...not really. I guess my love for Lunar shows.

Come on Shiva Indis! Just one more post so you can join me and I can stop being lonely!

Also, 777th post. XD

[Shiva Indis]

I made it!!!

[GhaleonOne]

I'm surprised I haven't been bumped off yet. I lurk most of the time, but rarely post like I used to. Mainly because lunarthreads.com is blocked at work and it's too much hassle to sign on via my crappy phone. Plus, lack of free time limits things too. Don't worry, phyco, you can catch me if you put some effort into it. Kiz might too with some effort. And speaking of top posters, where's Alunissage? She's been MIA for a while.

[phyco126]

Kiz will actually likely surpass me and unless you really start lurking, I'll likely never catch up. Which is fine; life has really over taken me and I've become less... vocal I guess. Maybe I should start posting here more again. I've been lurking more and more...

[Nobiyuki77]

I'm surprised I haven't been bumped off yet. I lurk most of the time, but rarely post like I used to. Mainly because lunarthreads.com is blocked at work and it's too much hassle to sign on via my crappy phone.

Same here. My work blocks websites that have tags like "Bulletin Boards", "Forum" and the like.

[Sonic#]

Maybe we should call this the "Totally Work-Related Productivity-Harnessing Ergonomic Energy-Efficient Green Lunar-Net." Or, a Twurp-heegal instead of a board or forum.

[phyco126]

I like the former suggestion Sonic# Or something like "Yeah, this is totally work related. Nothing to see here. Move Along."

[Shiva Indis]

My work blocks websites that have tags like "Bulletin Boards", "Forum" and the like.

That's one of the scariest things I've ever read.

[Alunissage]

And speaking of top posters, where's Alunissage? She's been MIA for a while.

My ADD kicked in, I guess... was suddenly immersed in knitting and spinning and WORK*, argh, and dropped a lot of my online reading. I forget when the last time I posted was, but I can tell you that April and May were really really busy. I think I read the forums once or twice in that time period, even though this is pretty much permanently the first tab in my browser.

I also have played basically two games this year: Valkyria Chronicles 2 (about 450 hours on that one so far) and Okamiden. Plus watched a fair bit of zq (spouse) playing Grandia. Man, that game's a product of the 90s and no mistake. I keep meaning to get back to SSH with my usual copious note-taking, and even brought a laptop with most of my Lunar 1 notes and files with me to Germany (weeklong trip in May) specifically for that purpose, but ended up, um, spinning and knitting the whole time. Still, I have it in both languages and VC2 on the same PSP, so I'm carrying it with me everywhere...

Also got an iPhone in February, so am intrigued by the prospect of Lunar on it too. Though I'm no better about playing games on it (Phoenix Wright 1 has been on it most of the time and is still mostly unplayed) than I am the PSP. I really wish someone would come up with a way to play games like this without needing one's hands. Part of why I've gotten so much time in on VC2 is probably because I can knit or spin during the opponent's turn. Though I think I may have done some of that in HSS too.

Blah blah blah. You know I never vanish completely, but maybe I need a reminder or two now and again to check in. I think there was some question DezoPenguin asked me the last time he was around that I never got to answering, so maybe I'll dig that up and it'll refocus me on Lunar for a bit.

*That work thing? I've mentioned a few times that I keep trying to cut down my hours to allow for time to do things I actually WANT to do, and we'd come close to maybe making some progress in that direction by hiring another full-time admin for the lab I manage so I could work primarily on specific projects that tend to require long hours for a short period of time rather than those plus the full-time day-to-day operations. Well, I had one of those projects in early April, and the day it was turned in my co-admin informed me that he'd given two weeks' notice. So since then I've been covering his job and mine and sorting through resumes for his job and interviewing and ... Plus, the day after he told me this is when we got the news that my husband was indeed being sent to Germany for a conference in May, and we'd really hoped that I'd be able to take some time off and come too since it was unlikely we'd be able to manage an overseas trip all on our own any time soon. It was the worst possible time for a trip like that, what with being short-staffed, but my boss was sympathetic and let me go anyway. Did I mention he was out of the country the entire month of April, which made things worse, not better? So now I'm back, and he's back, and extra stressful things have come up and I was starting to have chest pains from stress last week and I still need to eke out time to interview people and so on. SIGH.

So yeah, not so much game playing going on. Lots of knitting though because I can pick it up for a few minutes when I need to do something to de-stress that can also be put down rapidly. Easier for me to explain knitting that way than game-playing.

[phyco126]

Alunissage! Welcome back! I get the whole, other things took me away from this. Life happens, been there dealing with that myself.

Nice to see (or hear from, I guess) you again though.

[Nobiyuki77]

Yay! Alun's back!! ^_^

That sounds... so harsh Alun. You've got my sympathies. And man, I got 80 hours out of VC2, but stopped after I beat it because I've had so many other games to work though. 450! Damn, you definitely got your money's worth! ^^

[Monde Luna]

D_F Congrats on your 777th post, how lucky!

And Alunn i've been putting off on VC II since it's for the PSP, how is it? (I have a hard time w/ handhelds) I assume based on the hours you put into it it's pretty good.

[Alunissage]

I've really enjoyed VC II. I should note that I didn't "play" the first game; I watched my husband play it and contributed useful suggestions, so it's hard for me to address the controls in comparison. But I had no trouble with the controls that I can recall. The characterization is just as solid and the voices just as good, to my mind (I adore Zeri especially), although since the game is set in an academy most of the characters are essentially high-schoolers, which is not my favorite age group. There's been some comment that the story is weaker and/or less immersive than the first one, which is probably true; it's organized into months where at the beginning of each month several missions show up and after you've done a certain number of those then key missions show up which advance the storyline and eventually boot you into the next month. I'm not sure whether any missions you've not finished for the previous month become unavailable at that time (they all open up after the game formally ends). So you can end up with having a number of non-story missions to do before you get any story development, which I suppose isn't that different from having to traverse dungeon-type areas in an RPG that aren't story-related.

As you use your people in battles -- I forget how many playable characters there are, but you can create squads of 18-20 to take into a mission, from which you can have at most 6 in play at a time -- short scenes involving them become available when you're back on the main screen after a mission. (There are also more general scenes of "everyday life" and more story-related scenes; all of these are viewable but not interactive.) After three scenes with an individual, a mission relating to that individual becomes unlocked, and completing that mission gives you more information about that character and usually (always? not sure) results in a positive personal battle potential. I rather like this way of fleshing out the characters better than in the first game, where you'd hear that they'd been "interviewed" and then another paragraph would show up in their biography section. You can view all of these scenes again and replay these individual missions at any time.

This can possibly have a negative effect on pacing, though. If, like me, you keep trying to get everyone's events and story battles and such as soon as you can, in the middle or later months you run out of events to view between required missions and so the first few months can seem really full while the last few have this apparent disconnect between the urgency of the story and nothing to do except your required 3 or whatever missions to make the next story mission available. So it may be advisable to just play the event missions as they come rather than repeating missions within a month to get more and more events to view, as you'll run out of them.

What's been the big timesink for me is developing equipment. Rather than just capturing better weapons from aces (although this happens too), each mission can result in you getting some materials to develop new weapons. Probably over half of that development, especially the tank, occurs after the game formally ends. For some reason this brought out the completist in me. There are also some downloadable missions and the very best weapons seem to be in these. I didn't play any of these until after I finished the game, but it's not necessary to wait until then (although I wouldn't be surprised if some of the downloadables were locked if you got them before the end of the game, as some of them include settings and bosses from late in the game). I honestly don't remember if one can upgrade weapons in the first game.

The tank configuration is very different from the first game (simplified application but more types), and grouped with developing the other weapons. You can choose from several tank types, but I've spent the entire game using just one, which can also carry a couple of people and only takes one command point. Unlike the first game, losing your tank in battle is not a game over, although you do have to repair it before you can take it out on another mission.

What else... oh, class development. There's a fifth basic class, the armored tech, which basically takes the mine-defusing and repairing aspect of the engineers and combines it with very high defense and a weapon that's basically an axe or sledgehammer. The engineers still repair the tanks, but have a heavier emphasis on being healers. Characters earn credits of different types in battle (each mission specifies what credits are available to be earned) and earning enough of the right combination of credits allows the character to be promoted to a more advanced class. There are 35 total, 7 versions of each of the main 5 types, but only the main character can change type. For the most part the second tier is either a more advanced version of the beginning type or a related specialist (e.g., a scout can be promoted to either a more advanced scout or to a sniper), and the third tier is similarly two versions from each of the second two. There are different battle potentials associated with each type and they also vary from character to character, so that's another thing to get all completist with. To my surprise, I've generally found that part to be fun, figuring out what is optimal for each character depending on both the individual set of potentials and the weapons available, and there are relatively few useless categories. Sometimes a character might be more useful at the intermediate-tier position than at the most advanced one, even though the physical stats might be worse, because the potentials are a better set. Also, some weapons are only usable by the intermediate classes (because the advanced ones have their own types) so then you end up with cool stuff that you can't use unless you keep someone at the earlier level.

Regarding characterization and story again... One thing I appreciated with both the first game and this one, very much, is that there's very little gender stereotyping in the gameplay. I haven't checked, but there's about the same number of male and female playable characters, not only overall but in each class, equally competent. So why, why didn't the character designers get the memo?? Each of the 35 classes has its own uniform (rather neat, that) and without exception, the male uniforms have (of course) pants and boots while the females have miniskirts (or long tunic/dresses) and thigh-highs. The (female) tank driver alone is exempt from this, being in coveralls as befits one who is also the mechanic. But she's the only one who wouldn't have bare skin scraping the ground while crawling through the snow, the desert, the rain, and she's in a vehicle. I might have let this go, a little, if the game hadn't also made a specific point about environmental effects -- both snow and desert have negative effects on the squad's performance due to the cold or heat -- but it's just unbelievably ridiculous to do that in a battle uniform. The in-battle models are only distinguished by their heads anyway (I'm fine with conceding ignoring the helmets one must assume are there in favor of the player being able to tell who is who), so giving them all pants wouldn't be that big a deal. I'd even deal with them being leggings rather than trousers if they were just all covered up. But it's ridiculous.

A more subtle bit of related sexism is in the body language of the model when the class of a character is changed. The in-battle 3D model is shown, standing with one leg forward. The men's feet are turned slightly outward, the women's rather more inward. When the class is changed, the model rotates and is redrawn in the new uniform, and at the end the character salutes. The men hold the salute for a moment and then rip their hand out to the side and down, confidently; the women hold it and do an odd little skip to the side and lean over to the opposite side as if losing balance. Once I noticed this it aggravated me every time (which has been many times, since I've promoted every regular character to every class) how the women were given this timid, uncertain, off-balance stance. Grr.

It probably goes without saying that in the scenes that take place at the school the girls are in school uniforms with extremely short skirts, while the guys are in pants -- even in a scene where they're complaining about the very cold January weather. There IS variation in the uniforms, but it all occurs above the waist. But in general I didn't care for the drawn style of the animated scenes (there aren't many of these; most of the scenes use character portraits moving around to surprisingly good effect) and some of the stills, which just didn't quite match the (much better IMO) greatly varied character portraits.

Writing was good (spotted the occasional typo but generally pretty rare) and voicing was spot-on. I didn't like everyone's voices, but that was because they were personality types that annoy me, not for any lack of authenticity. There were also some good interjections during the missions, though sometimes inapropos (like hearing a distressed "No! He was such a good guy..." from the enemy radio after blowing up an automatic gun turret).

I keep thinking of more and more to mention, like multiple types of mission (collect things, destroy a specific target, escort a vehicle, kill them all), but this is mercilessly long already. I really should put it in the thread about this game, but that thread might have some spoilers in it. I hope I didn't put any, or at least nothing crucial, in this post...