Cav's Place

Thankfully, it didn’t take nearly as long for me to start playing this game as I thought it would when I finished the first one. It actually took me longer to write the review after finishing it, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the game itself, seeing as it is, and I’ll say it right away, an absolutely outstanding effort for something created by a single person, including elements which’d put even a fair number of well-known titles to shame.
I should also mention that the two games in the series have nothing in common as far as the story and characters go, so you can certainly play this one without ever knowing anything about the first. I would, however, advise against doing so unless you’re sure you want to skip the other, because so many improvements have been made and so many flaws have been fixed that you’ll most probably find it very frustrating to play the first game after this one. So either only play this one or play them in the right order, without letting any frustration caused by the first prevent you from playing the second, unless of course the cause of that frustration is this entire concept of gameplay.

Once again, I’ll start by pointing out the pretty complex and complicated calculations used to determine skill effects or even character attributes, though now the formula used for all but three active skills, and also for health, has a set form. That form, if you’re curious, is ((XS + YPS) * (82 – S)) / 82 + ZP + N, where S is skill level, P is party level, X, Y and Z are the factors, which vary from skill to skill, by which these values are multiplied, and N is a number, which again varies from skill to skill, added to the result. In case of active offensive skills which use a weapon, the weapon damage, multiplied by a number which again varies from skill to skill, is added at the end of the calculation as well. Passive skills have a much simpler formula, though along the same lines, while the three active skills that do not follow the same pattern as the rest may be expressed as N + XS – ZP. And no, I didn’t get any signs wrong, so this is all very interesting once you realize what it means.
With me so far? Good, because there are also five different damage types and the corresponding defensive values associated with each of them, which values are split into resistances, expressed as a percentage, and armor, expressed as a set value deducted from the portion of the damage that makes it past the resistance. And then you have chi, which acts as a shield against all physical damage until it is depleted, aurora, which does the same for magical damage, and dodge chance.

Thankfully, this time around, health and, if applicable, chi are constantly displayed for enemies as well and all other attributes will be shown to you in a popup whenever you hover your mouse over a character or enemy. And knowing your enemies is crucial, since nearly every creature you’ll face will differ from the others, not only in appearance but also in attributes and tactics, so you’ll need to correctly choose the skills to use in every situation. And the choices aren’t limited to the up to 24 different skills you’ll have available at any one moment, but also include the ability to have the characters wait, individually or as a group, either for the right time to strike or for their energy bar to charge enough for them to enter overdrive, which grants massive bonuses for the next action.
The skill chains have also been improved from the first game, as now you’ll be allowed to create a much greater number of them, the number of actions in each chain may vary greatly and you may also create party chains, which may or may not include all characters, allowing individual chains to be combined with party chains as needed. What’s more, and perhaps most notably, you can now easily select single skills to use at any moment, so you can do without actual chains altogether if you so wish, though selecting a skill in such a way will essentially make the character in question start a chain containing only one skill.

Now I’ll have to apologize for focusing on the skills and battles so much, but you’ll probably be in combat most of the time and that’s actually a good thing in this game. To give a few examples, you’ll face enemies that can’t be hit while they attack and others that can’t be hit unless they’re attacking, enemies that constantly regenerate and others that constantly lose health but heal themselves whenever they strike, or enemies that attack harder the more they’re hit and enemies that stop attacking to greatly increase their defenses and rapidly regenerate when they’re badly injured. And let’s not even mention normal abilities like being able to stun, poison, charge their attacks, heal themselves or others or reduce your defenses, or the fact that they’ll frequently switch positions to ensure that the first one is the one most capable of taking the next hit. And all of that doesn’t even include the boss fights, which are almost always memorable, require unique tactics and in some cases may well take you about an hour to win, possibly even more on higher difficulty settings.
There are still no consumable items, which is still something that I’m quite fond of, seeing as I always avoid using those anyway, so all you can rely on in order to make it past everything the game will throw at you are your characters, their equipment and your brain, with the latter perhaps being the most important. Tactics and timing are absolutely crucial and the fact that you can pause at any moment to analyze the situation and choose the next skills to use means that your choices make all the difference, reflexes and hand-eye coordination not factoring into the outcome.

And to finally move past the combat, I must say that the story is actually quite interesting and it can at times make you think of quite a few important issues. A game created, as I must remind you, by a single person, which pays so much attention to the combat, includes such diverse equipment that you may be hard pressed to find an item that’s a direct upgrade of another, and features an art style that again proves a great attention to detail, might have been somewhat forgiven for a weaker story, but this is certainly not the case here. The characters are also fleshed out rather well and you’ll actually feel that you get to know and care for them as they develop over the course of the game. In addition, while you’ll no longer see the kind of individual starting cutscenes featured in the first game, the dialogues will be somewhat different and a few events may or may not happen depending on which of the nine available characters you select when you start the game.

As for negative aspects, there aren’t many, but I must start with the same lack of information I made note of when I reviewed the first game. Granted that it’s much better this time, but there are still two problems left: One is that there are a total of nine available active skills for priests and musketeers, so any such character you pick will lack the ability to use one of them but you won’t know which one until all others are unlocked, which may compromise any strategy you might have planned after reading the help file. The other is that, while now you do see a detailed description of each item in game, the exact effects of any special attributes it may have aren’t shown. Yes, there’s a separate utility available which will allow you to view the item database in greater detail, but why couldn’t this be included in the game as well, especially when the amount of money that can be obtained is fixed and far from sufficient to allow you to purchase and try everything?

Besides that, any other complaints are truly minor. I may mention the fact that I still don’t like the concept of save points instead of being able to save whenever and wherever you want, but at least this time around there are plenty of them and they no longer cost money to use. Or I may say that I still find it rather unpleasant that you have to pick one out of each group of three characters instead of three out of all nine, but that’s quite clearly required for the story and ends up working out quite well. Or I may also note that the varied enemies, constantly changing conditions and highly tactical battles quite frankly make skill chains useless, and in fact I never used them past the second chapter, but of course problems appear when useful options don’t exist, not when useless ones do, because they may be useful for others. The fact that you can no longer edit the chains during combat certainly doesn’t help, however.

I tend to focus on the negative aspects even when reviewing games I like, but this time there really was very little I disliked. Granted that it’s not some sprawling game, with branching storylines and a gigantic world to freely explore, so it can’t compare to one of those, but it still took me a passable 15 hours to complete on normal difficulty and I will once again stress that, with the exception of the music, which is also excellent, the entire game was created by a single person. One man designed every area, every enemy, every item, came up with those skill calculations, balanced everything just about perfectly, at least on normal difficulty, worked out the AI, created all the graphics, came up with the story, wrote the dialogues and polished each and every piece of this mechanism to a level that’s very, very rarely seen… And then, even if about a year and a half after the original release, he made it available for free so everyone will be able to enjoy it at will.
With the exception of that note I made about the lack of information, everything this game tries to do, it does just about perfectly. And it does that while also making you think, both about itself and about the world we live in. I may refrain from giving it maximum scores because those are generally reserved for those huge games with sprawling worlds, branching storylines and an atmosphere you can truly immerse yourself in, but for something you can get for free off the developer’s site, you’ll be hard pressed to find any better. So go right ahead and give it a try; you won’t regret it.

With the United States presidential election approaching, the eyes of the world tend to turn in the direction of US politics even more than usual, with every person who at least occasionally tends to use their brain to think a little being very worried about the possibility of the Republicans returning to power. However, the vast majority of those people, no matter where they’re from, are unfortunately still stuck on the idea that only two parties exist in the US, so their opposition to Romney directly translates into support for Obama even though that will, at best, only reduce the damage while preserving the status quo and making it even harder for any real solutions to be found in the future.
What this means is that, since what happens in the US has a major impact on the whole world, we must all look towards the other candidates, or at least towards those who have attained ballot access in states controlling at least the 270 electoral votes required to win. And since, so far, those are Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) and Jill Stein (Green Party), with Virgil Goode (Constitution Party) also closing in on the threshold, it’s quite clear that the one to watch, support and promote as much as possible is Jill.

Of course, since we’re talking about the Green candidate, the environment is a top priority, which puts Jill in an unique position. Granted that even her plans are still very far from what’d truly need to be done, but the others at most mention the issue, pay some lip service or entertain an idea or two, generally trying to see how little can they get by with, what’s the lowest number of significant changes and what are the lowest costs associated with simply getting through the next few years, their main interests clearly lying elsewhere. Obama’s energy strategy is a clear example of that, seeing as it includes all types of energy sources and claims to make some “green” improvements for each even though there can be nothing environmentally-friendly about fossil fuels, be they oil, coal or natural gas, and nuclear energy carries too many risks, particularly related to the resulting waste, to still be a viable energy source for the future.
However, that’s far from the only thing setting her apart, because another glance over the candidates will make it immediately obvious that Jill is the only one to truly tackle the issues having to do with rights and freedoms, even Johnson, whose party should theoretically be all in when it comes to such matters, falling far behind. You may say that, at least as far as promises go, Obama makes a reasonable effort for someone coming from a mainstream party, but that’s no excuse and he’s still, as one would expect, even behind Johnson on such matters, so he’s absolutely not a valid choice for anyone who truly cares about these issues. Worse, his actions tend to make it even worse, because he has proven to crack under the pressure created by the Republicans and the interest groups associated with them, accepting to make so many moves against rights and freedoms that one analysis goes as far as to say that “as outrageous as it may appear, civil libertarians and human rights supporters would have actually fared better under a Republican administration” due to the fact that at least then there’d have been a strong opposition to such a turn of events.

You might have noticed that I made no mention of economic issues so far, and that’s simply because I’m aiming for an entirely different type of economy and therefore am largely against any and all economic plans and promises put forward by any candidate, party or group which is still trying to find a way to make the current system work again, albeit with some changes. You can see some proof of that by glancing over my results on the VoteMatch test on OnTheIssues.org, where I have under 50% with all candidates, whether they’re still in the race of have withdrawn at some point. (Incidentally, a glance there will serve to point out the difference between Jill and all the others on social issues as well.)
Still, she has some interesting ideas here as well, if only for the dying years of this terribly outdated system. As such, anyone who is interested in the economy, which unfortunately seems to include nearly everyone, may also want to take a look and compare her projects and promises with those of the other candidates. Personally, for the reason stated above, I have only given a passing glance to a part of those proposals, completely skipping over others, but from what little I saw I can say with a fair amount of confidence that “the 99%” will find plenty of things to like in there.

True, even ignoring the economic aspects, there are also things I disagree with, such as her desire to largely take away people’s right to own and carry firearms, which actually goes very much against those rights and freedoms that she’s otherwise fighting for. Much more notably, however, I’m bothered by her demands to find diplomatic solutions to everything and to make the United States just one member of the international community instead of the world’s cop at a time when diplomacy proves time and time again that it’s unable to accomplish anything meaningful and, if anything, certain countries need to be watched and, if need be, set straight by even bigger and more vicious cops, by any means necessary.
Granted that the United States is one of the world’s problems from that point of view, but it’s certainly not at the top of the list, those positions being reserved for China, Russia and perhaps, if for somewhat different reasons, North Korea, followed by a few other notable countries that wield a significant regional influence in their part of the world and behave in increasingly worrying ways. So what’s needed is to take the power of directing the attention of the world’s biggest cop away from those who have so far been making use of it to further their own agendas and then, instead of weakening or even chaining it, make use of that immense force to fix what needs fixing. Nobody should assume that others will eventually sort things out on their own, because they haven’t so far and almost certainly won’t in the future either.

Still, in spite of the issues mentioned above, the good far outweighs the bad and there’s no doubt in my mind that she’s the only candidate who may actually be worth supporting this time around. Yes, Obama’s far less undesirable than Romney, but that doesn’t make him a desirable or even an acceptable solution. To quote Jill, when she was asked whether there’s any difference between the Republicans and the Democrats: “You might look at one party as a rapidly sinking ship and say we’re going to vote for the other guy because the ship’s not going down so fast. We don’t like him but he’s not sinking the ship so fast. But the real question is, if both of those ships are heading for the bottom of the ocean, do you want to be on either of them? No. There’s no question about where those ships are heading.”
The problem is this belief that there are only two possible choices, which may in fact be more similar than they’d like the people to believe. By voting for some other candidate, any other candidate, people would prove this to be wrong and, if that other candidate will get the 5% required to obtain federal funding, break the system, finally allowing the United States to have a proper third party in the near future, which would be the first step towards finding true solutions. And if that vote can be for a person who actually offers at least some solutions even now, then all the more reason to go there and give her your vote if you are an US citizen, or to support her in whatever way you can if you’re simply a citizen of the world, aware of the fact that US politics affect all of us.
Many will say that it’s at best pointless, seeing as she couldn’t possibly get any significant amount of votes, but that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people don’t vote for someone because that person seems to have too few supporters, they’ll seem to have even fewer the next time around and anyone who may think of supporting them will be even more disheartened. If, however, a certain number of people choose to ignore the “useful vote” concept and actually state their convictions through their votes, even if they’ll only be a small minority, that minority will be bigger than it’d have been without them, so the visible support for the candidate or the ideology in question will increase and it’ll become somewhat less difficult to persuade even more people to follow suit in the future.

Of course, there is also the argument that the danger of the Republicans winning is too great and voting for Jill instead of Obama may let that happen, since obviously someone who as much as considers voting for the Greens would have otherwise voted for the Democrats, if they’d have voted at all. And I won’t deny that such a situation is possible, and in fact it probably happened back in 2000, but in that case I’ll simply refer you to the sinking ships analogy. Or, if you want it put differently, if you’re lying on the ground and bleeding to death, you won’t exactly feel any better if somebody only kicks dust into your eyes, also hitting you in the process, instead of shooting you again in the stomach. Sure, the dust probably won’t keep your eyes closed for long and you may get lucky enough for the kick to not cause any additional lasting damage, but it nevertheless makes it harder to find someone who can actually heal your wounds in time and unless you manage that you’re dead anyway, so you take whatever risks you have to take, including trying to crawl past the one you know will shoot you again if you’re spotted, to look for that person.
Plus that, to also refer you again to the Political Compass analysis which I also mentioned above, if we will end up in the worst case scenario and Romney will somehow win, those on the other side of the barricades may be able to regroup and come back stronger, keeping the Republicans and all others who share their utterly idiotic worldview in check even better than they do now, when they’re spread so thin trying to weather their attacks on all fronts. After all, someone who excels in evil may generate such a powerful backlash that the end result will actually be a positive one, while one who’s somewhere in the middle tends to generate nothing but apathy.

I’m no closer to writing that review than I was a week ago, but keeping busy with Two Worlds II at least means that I can put off the expected major crash caused by the fact that later this month it’ll be seven years since she left. Can’t be out of the game and awake for long without pretty much curling up in a ball, which was proven yesterday when I only played for about three hours but basically didn’t do anything else the whole day, only spending some 30 or 40 minutes adding a paragraph to my story… But at least playing for so long, even getting to a good eight hours per day, means that my eyes are very tired and therefore I sleep rather well when I go to bed, so there’s that.
Strangely enough, however, the fact that I’m playing so much doesn’t stem from particularly liking the game. It’s decent, but in quite a few ways it’s worse than the first one and I keep adding to the list of complaints that I decided to keep in order to make it easier to review it after I’ll finish it. And yes, that list would also include positive aspects, but I only found a couple of those. Still, it’s an RPG, it offers a huge world with a lot of content, which is unfortunately increasingly unusual for modern games, and is very forgiving, at least if you play a mage, so I don’t get frustrated and can just keep at it.

Otherwise, that annoying atopic dermatitis seems to be flaring up worse lately, which is actually rather unusual when you think that it’s getting cooler now. I keep waking up scratching my balls raw, and this morning I woke up scratching my balls with one hand and my chest with another, which is even more unusual since it rarely flares up on my chest either way. But I’ve been putting up with this for some 13 or 14 years now, if not even longer, and I’ve been told that I should expect it to keep getting worse with time, in the sense of affecting even more areas, so that’s that…

As for what’s going on outside, the weeds had just started growing again now that the heat wave was over and of course they’re mowing them again. Nothing had grown during the heat wave, so all that was left after the last time they had mowed them were piles of dried leaves and stems, which was actually quite a fire hazard if anybody’d have bothered to think about it, but recently the lower temperatures allowed things to grow again, so I was looking at what was starting to become a proper green area once again, even if they’re just weeds, and of course somebody couldn’t stand that.
If they don’t want the weeds, they could plant trees all over this area and, once they’ll grow sufficently, the shade won’t allow other things to grow around them, so the problem will be solved while keeping the area green. However, a couple of years ago they even removed what little trees were starting to grow on their own behind the fence, so there certainly seems to be no chance of that. They just mow everything that dares to grow and then leave the dried leaves and stems there, along with the branches from those trees that were removed then, which are still in a huge pile ever since.

It’s been quite some time since I last posted something like this, but I’ve recently joined the Female Symphonic Metal group on Facebook, at first without even realizing that it’s connected to the YouTube account with the same name, which I had stumbled upon somewhat earlier, and now my list of bands that I should look into more is becoming completely unmanageable. So I thought I might as well offer a little free advertising to those that have impressed me the most at first glance, as well as to the group itself, and I’ll also throw in a nod towards the splinter group, called Laissez Faire Metal. That was created by some users who were unhappy with Simon’s rules, in particular with the fact that he only accepts songs that are recently released and in English and won’t tolerate advertising anything that falls outside the strict scope of the group, so I won’t be going there myself because it’s just these rules that keep out the things that I wouldn’t be interested in anyway, but it’s there for anyone who wants it.

Actually, I’m going to start with Suddenlash, which is a band that I discovered by clicking on their ad and then mentioned on the group myself almost right away. Their entire six-song demo is available and I do recommend that you give it a listen or two, because it’s very rare that you see bands sound so confident and polished on their first album, not to mention on a simple demo. Everything seems to click into place and their vocalist is amazing, though I do think that her voice sounds so much like Tarja Turunen‘s that it made me frown at first, knowing my poor opinion of Tarja’s solo work.
Next is Downcast Art, who make four songs from their first album available before you need to start digging on your own. Now I haven’t done that, but I did listen to the three songs that are posted there and in English and that was more than enough to blow me away. Outstanding voice and another polished and very confident debut album which, at least based on these songs, could put quite a few established bands to shame. The album’s title song is such an excellent example of soft gothic metal with electronic elements that actually work that I can’t help but think that it’s exactly how Theatre of Tragedy should have ended up sounding around the turn of the century, if they wouldn’t have decided to take a giant shit on it all and release those dreadful albums instead.
And another band that sounds amazingly good when you realize that they’re still working on their first album would be MoonSun, though it’d help if they’d decide where they want to post, because you can find some more songs on their Dailymotion page and some others (plus a few funny videos) on their YouTube page. What first drew my attention were their Nightwish covers, making me wonder where was this girl back when they were looking for a new vocalist, but their actual songs are stunning as well and I think that using an acoustic guitar only helps.

Then you could say there’s a gap before Reasons Behind. They make four songs available and it seems that the album itself only had five, so looked for My Last Act as well, but you can hear that insecurity that’s so typical of new bands, making you wonder whether they’re holding back because they don’t know what may happen if they, for lack of a better term, unleash themselves or because they know all too well that their abilities won’t allow them to go further without ruining even what they have. However, there are also moments when it certainly seems that they have much more in reserve and they only need some more practice and confidence, as well as some better equipment, to show what they’re truly capable of.
Moving further down the list, we get to Sense of Creation, though that same insecurity and a sound that I’m not that keen on would have probably made me put them far lower if my first contact with them would have been any of the songs that are listed there. However, the one they linked to on the group was Inner Child (Orchestra Version), which is an absolutely lovely piece. With vocals and compositions like this and if they’ll choose to focus in this direction, they could get far.

And I think I’m going to stop going through the list here, but not before also mentioning Tears of Magdalena, which I believe I bumped into before joining the group. Now I couldn’t personally listen to the band’s songs in general because they insist on ruining them with growls, so I gave up after bumping into a couple of those, but I was lucky enough to find October Rust before that happened, and that is an absolutely lovely piece in each and every way. In addition, I recently saw Vampire Romance linked to on the group and risked listening to it, being rewarded with a piece that’s very good despite “featuring” growls, because it accomplishes that very rare feat of making them work. Of course, I’d still rather do without them, but at least in this case they don’t deter me from enjoying the rest of the song and can partially see their purpose as well.

Last but definitely not least, I’m ashamed to say that I have only recently found out that Xandria released their new album back in February… Still, better late than never, because I was basically hooked on it for about a week straight. Far from me to say anything bad about Lisa, but their new singer just helped the band move up a league. As far as my favorites go, I guess they’ve always been in my top five, constantly making it into playlists when I wasn’t hooked on some new find, but this is the first serious challenge to the top three since I discovered Edenbridge, several years ago. If you are at all interested in the genre and have also somehow managed to miss it so far, you absolutely must listen to this.

Finished The Spirit Engine II ten days ago, but I still haven’t managed to get around to reviewing it. Worse, that gaming magazine from here that comes with full games had Two Worlds II packed with their latest issue and I was curious about that after playing the first, though I knew that it’s worse, so bought it and started playing a couple of days ago, which obviously means that I’m now even less likely to manage to write that review. I do mean to put some effort into it at some point, however, because the game’s certainly worth at least that much.
As for Two Worlds II, I can certainly confirm that what I had seen before is true and it really is worse than the first one, which I rather enjoyed. It has a few improvements, but many things have gotten worse, the control scheme and responsiveness in particular, plus that the best thing about the first game, namely making an insanely overpowered mage that’d allow you to stop worrying about enemies and just enjoy exploring the huge game world, doesn’t quite seem to be possible anymore, or at least not nearly as quickly or as easily. Still, I’m giving it a shot and I seem to be putting a fair amount of time into it, so at least I’m doing something…

Speaking of doing something, this month really was an uphill struggle to keep putting something into my story and it’ll take some more struggling today as well if I’m to get to the end without falling behind even my own “worst case” schedule. If I’ll manage this, I’m giving up on the schedule again for next month, being content if I’ll manage to still add something every day, even if it’ll just be a few lines, and perhaps try to plan ahead so I won’t be struggling so much to find ideas when I need to write anymore. After all, during the first part the usual rule was playing out scenes in detail in my mind in seconds and then taking days to manage to put a crappy version of them, sounding much worse than I was “seeing” them, in writing, but this entire second part was much worse than that, since I didn’t even have those scenes in mind anymore and basically had to come up with more or less random events to pass the time and very loosely lead to the conclusion, which was the only thing about this part that I had in mind from the beginning… As such, I can only hope that the third part, which I’m about to start working on, will work much better, but fear that it won’t.
As for the blog, well, I do need to write a second post for this week, after all, but have no idea what. The original plan included that The Spirit Engine II review, but somehow I doubt that’s going to happen, so let’s see. Of course, there are several other issues that I’d want to write about, plus that post that I’ve had in a file, as a rough draft that’ll still take a fair amount of work, for the past six months or so, but that’s clearly not going to happen…