Chrono Trigger: A Timeless RPG

Audience, voting time is over. All who participated, thank you. I'm happy to see that each of the games received at least one vote, poor Pokemon Blue, which means that they will probably have their own posts in the future. Probably.

In any case, congratulations Chrono Trigger! I am not surprised that this title won. After all, it is one of the greatest RPGs in the world of video games. How can I possibly write a post that hasn't already been written about such a fulfilling and mind-blowing game? Simple, I'm going to go on tangents and drop tips along the way. This approach usually turns out alright.

Now get in the car Marty!

Where to start...how about the title? Chrono is the name of the main character, the spikey red haired dude pictured above. However, a Chrono Trigger is a magical weapon in the game. Its purpose is revealed about halfway through the game. As always, I'll stay away from major spoilers. I want you to play this game, remember?

Fun Fact: The FMV, full motion video, cut scenes as well as the box art were drawn by Akira Toriyama aka, the father of Dragonball and DBZ.  

The game itself is about a group of adventurers trying to stop an alien life-form that is devouring the planet. This monster has a name, Lavos. Depending on when, yes when, you stop Lavos, you will experience a certain ending of the game. We'll touch on those possible endings later. For now, bullets baby!

• Storyline is amazing
• Chrono is the main hero
• Six other party members
• The sixth member is a secret
• Soundtrack is beautifully overwhelming
• Magic attacks depend on characters
• Creepy Fair Games
• Replayable with overpowered stats
• You can name your playable characters, anything
• Countdown attacks
• Riddlesome* Quests
• Magic combos
• Sake Soup drinking contest

Ahem, Chrono himself is not all that interesting. I say that in the sweetest way possible. Similar to my beloved Link from the Legend of Zelda series, Chrono is a silent character who is designed to be a reflection of the player. There is nothing wrong with this style. It worked. It still works. Regardless, the game went above and beyond by trying something new for the time; it gave the player six five other main characters with distinct personalities. Rather than imagine character traits, Chrono Trigger assigns them via character specific dialogue, attacks, and quests.

Quick Tip: The game allows you to switch between the characters once your party exceeds three members. Try to play with different character combinations in order to not only unlock all group attack sets, but to also experience different dialogue reactions. Having a kickass all-girls team is most satisfying.

By the by, let's quickly summarize these various characters. I'll even include my names for them:

• Marle (Mare) the cheeky daddy's girl/white mage of the group. She is honestly the best healer and can also dish out some sick ice attacks too. I only named her after me because her name is one letter away from Mare.
• Lucca (Bulma) the brains and mechanical know-how in every situation. She is Chrono's best-friend and burns enemies with her fire magic. Like Bulma, she is a scientific genius. Also like Bulma, Lucca has purple hair (books). Unlike Bulma, she is not an obnoxious damsel in distress at all times.
• Robo (Droid) the personified robot aka The TANK. Robo can handle several hits to the face and is one of two playable characters who does not use a type of magic.
• Frog (Kirby) is well, a talking frog. He is a so-so fighter and healer, kinda the red mage of the crowd. Though, even there he is in second place, wink wink secret character. His healing targets the entire group but does not heal as much as Marle's spells. His magic is water based...he's British though?

  

  "What you say? No rubbish, or NayNay head go boom!"

• Ayla (NayNay) is the barbarian babe of every nerd's erotic fantasy. She speaks in broken English but has a strong wit about her. Ayla is the other non-magical character, preferring to use her strength. She also does not have a weapon, just a rock hard fist. I named her NayNay after one of my best-friends for two reasons; she's a beautiful blonde, and the fact that the name "NayNay" sounds hilarious in caveman dialogue. 
• ...there is a sixth companion but that identity is going to stay secret. I'll tell you this though, I named that character Cell. Yes, from Dragonball Z.

Those are the main characters in a nutshell. You can change their names after a while, a nice trait if you make any spelling errors or regrettable jokes. Also, your party appears as a group in the overworld as well as the towns. That's right, one character does not represent your entire party. Instead, they are all realistically displayed onscreen. Their outfits don't change, but put this game in its era. Having multiple sprites as a moving entity was big for the mid nineties.

Quick Tip: You can save in the overworld as well as swap out your party members, heal, change game settings, etc. It took me far too long to realize that all of these options were available to me there. I kept going to The End of Time...avoid that stupidity.

Now, this game's central setting is time travel. In the beginning, you are only exposed to a limited number of eras. This, of course, grows over the course of the game. The End of Time is the central hub for all your time-travel needs. Before your Delorean that is. You can name that too! Mine's called Nimbus.

Go Nimbus Go!

Enough with the names Mare. Let's cover some battle tactics now, shall we? 

I mentioned that there are countdown attacks in Chrono Trigger. This means that a certain amount of time must pass before you can attack an enemy. This is represented by a depleting bar that is located underneath each character while in battle. The speed of the bar depends on individual levels as well as character choice. For instance, Robo has a slow countdown since he is the defense tank. Whereas Marle is all about agility and healing, so her countdown is much faster. 

Depending on whom you have in your party determines the overall quickness of a battle. This matters greatly later in the game; there are some nasty enemies who love to paralyze your party before you can even land a blow. 

Other aspects of battle, ah! I mentioned magic and combos before on the list too, right? Magic is elemental in this game and is assigned to specific characters. In order to unlock magic, Chrono and the gang have to deal with Spekkio. He's annoying as all hell but does give you elemental magical powers. You'll meet him. You'll hate him. Guaranteed.

Anything else on battles. Hmm. I'm certain that I left out Magic Points. Let's talk about that!

Magic is different than Magic Points, MP, because something has to be confusing. Magic Points are what enable your party to do special attacks, Techs. The other two letters in battle, TP, refers to Tech Points. This is your general experience that is earned from each battle. As you level up your characters, they are able to do more Techs and hold more MPs. The maximum amount of Magic Points is character specific and plateaus at level sixty. Health will also reach a maximum, 999/999, eventually. Though there are only a certain number of Techs in the game, TP does not cap like health or MPs. Go EXP TP!

Now magic is a lot of fun to use. There are five factions of magic; light(ning), ice, fire, water, and shadow. Magic Techs will be represented by an elemental symbol in the attack selection. Enemies are elemental as well, this is displayed in battle, and can have up to two element types. Light Techs will hurt water enemies, but things become tricky when an enemy is both water and light affiliated. 

Obviously, same elemental attacks will do squat against the same magic-based enemy. Keep that in mind when exploring new areas. You don't want to be fucked over having to use Lukka against lava monsters. 

Just like enemies, you too can have elemental combos. In fact, you can have tribos, triple combos. Certain Techs exist between characters. This means that you will need to have both, or all three, characters active as well as the Techs unlocked in order to execute the attack. These Techs cause massive damage but cost a pretty penny to use. 

Quick Tip: There are some hidden triple Techs in the game. They are unlocked via gemstones scattered across dungeons and time. You must have the unique gemstone equipped in order to use these awesome Techs.

The enemies in Chrono Trigger are pretty story specific. Certain ones exist in certain areas as well as eras. You enable battles by triggering parts of an area, rather than random encounters on the overworld. These triggers can be anything from grazing an enemy sprite to stepping on a certain patch of grass. After exploring certain areas so many times, you'll have the fastest routes mapped out. 

Besides possible spoilers, I suppose I could mention the coolest part of Chrono Trigger, the endings.

What? Is that an oxymoron? Mare, how can you talk about the endings without spoiling the game? Easy, there are twelve possible endings to Chrono Trigger. I actually have achieved them all, serious Lavos dedication. They are triggered when you initiate the fight with Lavos, the big bad alien/planet eating parasite. Since there are several eras to visit, and certain era changing events that occur in Chrono Trigger, there are many possible conclusions to the game. My personal favorite involves dinosaurs which requires a second play-through.

Don't Panic: Chrono Trigger is designed to be replayed. Once you beat the game for the first time, you are able to roll over all of your experience and weapons to a new file. Basically, you play as an overpowered renegade and can do so again and again.

Anything left? Well, yes, so much left. But what to talk about? I did mention the save-thing already. Also the riddlesome quests, though I don't want to spoil those beyond the word "riddlesome". Perhaps you're wondering about the fair games or the soup drinking contest, audience? 

Games from Hell...Eh, they're weird.

Ha, those are actually important to the plot, namely the soup drinking. The fair games function as optional mini games too, but are necessary at one point. There is one game where you can win cat food. The more cat food you win the more cats you'll have in your home. The number can be a normal two to a ridiculous twelve. Even the crazy cat ladies of the world are shown some love in Chrono Trigger.

This game is beyond fantastic. It is, not was, revolutionary in the world of gaming. Chrono Trigger gives the player choices with vastly different outcomes, an actual RPG. Not the,"good" ending, "bad" ending, and "crap" ending choice of the subsequent RPGs. It introduces multi-functioning attacks that required the player to experiment with all of the characters in order to have the full scope of the game. Then the dialogue diversity revolved around party selection, it is just amazing. 

Chrono Trigger was so ahead of its time, hell, it's ahead of this time. Whoa, just like in the game. Chronoception.

Until next time audience! Here's some music to bridge the gap.

*Riddlesome (adj), a troubling problem related to solving riddles. (Coined by Mary)

Skyrim, the Anti-Hero ways of a Bosmer Mage

It's finally here audience! That's right, my third, and most likely final, post on Skyrim. As promised, this one is themed around those magical folk in robes, the mages. There is a slight change, however.

In my last Skyrim post which featured Thor, my warrior, I promised a blog on Loki my dark elf mage...how to put this...Loki is dead...well, deleted. Senor Horny accidentally erased him many eons ago...Senor Horny the Argonian, who has as the most amount of horns possible, is something my brother created...even though I'm the one who accidentally deleted Loki...so yeah, no more Loki. Instead, I give you my Bosmer, wood elf/feykrosefahliil, mage who does what he wants, Mal-Zeno.

Oh, one more thing before we venture forth. That bold italicized green text above, that's the dragon speak, or tinvaaksedovah or dovah tinvaak or dovah thu'um or thu'umsedovah; the wording all really depends on how formal or casual you want to be. The dragon tongue is here for two reasons; first, I'm somehow more in love with Skyrim than before and this is my way of showing it. Second, zu'u dreh fos zu'u laan. Here is the hyperlink to the translator for any curious minds. Aight, let's go!

So you decided to be a mage eh? Will you be sneaky and hide behind mind tricks? Will you be bold and blast your enemies to pieces? Will you summon creatures whilst shielding yourself in battle? Only you know what type of mage you are. Regardless, your path will be somewhat challenging dear Dragonborn. You will need a lot of patience when it comes to developing your skills and a large supply of potions. At times it seems as though you are the weakest of the lot. But, then you discover runes, atronachs, enchanted armor, staffs, and the Black Star. You realize that no, you are not the weakest. Instead, you are the most badass of all because you can call upon the forces of Oblivion to destroy your enemies and empower your peers with a flick of the finger. Plus Destruction magic is awesome!!! Shall we bullet dear audience?

• Robes are for Alteration lovers, zero armor rating
• Fortify is your keyword
• Enchanting and alchemy skills, no ifs, ands, or buts.
• Illusion is a worthy perk tree
• All magic schools can be farmed
• Duel casting Destruction, enough said
• Conjuration, difficult but rewarding
• Magicka regeneration, magicka regeneration, magicka regeneration
• Restoration skills, get em
• Black star, get it
• Weapons with soul trap, make em

My, that is a rather bossy bullet list, isn't it? Haha, well I suppose I am here to tell you how to become a successful mage audience. Still, sorry for the bossiness. Now where to begin...hmmm...how about the College of Winterhold? Yes, that seems suitable.

Before we continue, if this is your first time being a mage, it is highly recommended that you choose either the High Elf (Altmer) or Breton race for your character. Both are magic strong races. They will give you an edge.

The College of Winterhold is the infamous mage college in Skyrim. It sits on a very steep cliff in what is left of Winterhold. No doubt, as you play through the first bits of the game, you will hear tales of the "Great Collapse"; it was a "natural" disaster that sacked the city of Winterhold by the Ghost Sea.

Rather cozy school, isn't it?

Somehow, the college remained completely intact. Many NPCs believe that the college is responsible for the disaster. I think a Daedric Prince become pissed off is all. The college would've protected itself due to the archive of knowledge in the massive library. As for the rest of the city, kind of screwed. That's my spin anyhow. You never really learn what happens, adds to the mystery of the event.

Anyhow, the CoW is where you can begin to expand your learnings as a mage. They have master level wizards, except Restoration, that trainer is in the temple in Whiterun, who can teach you spells and level your skills in all types of magic. Ah yes, there are five schools of magic audience; Restoration, Illusion, Conjuration, Alteration, and Destruction. Hmm, lemme bullet those too.

• Restoration, the study of healing and magical defense wards 
• Illusion, the science of the mind which bends others' will to your own. Plus invisibility.
• Conjuration, the skill of Oblivion and the ability to bring forth atronachs and weapons from beyond to assist you in combat
• Alteration, the magic of the physical world that gives its user the ability to morph ore and to protect with armor spells
• Destruction, KABOOM! You have just been inferno-ed bitch.

Now at the college, you of course have a main questline which, in my opinion, is very strange. I enjoyed it for what it was worth but I definitely prefer the Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood and Companion quests. Oh, that's another thing, the Dark Brotherhood. Yes, since Mal-Zeno is a bit of a bad boy, we will be touching upon that path later. 

J'zargo is warmed by your presence

Right, the college has three potential followers for you to use. They are your fellow mage students, J'zargo, Onmund, and Brelyna, and are quite useful. They can accompany you on your quests and provide extra storage space for when your pockets become too full. They do not teach you any magic unfortunately, but they each favor a discipline of Destruction as well as Conjuration. My favorite is J'zargo the Khajiit because his voice and sayings are fantastic. 

In order to gain the trust of your peers, you must do special quests for them. These quests only become available after the first main quest in the college is complete. The quests are easy, but Brelyna's quest is hilarious and the most simple to complete. Seriously, you have to check that one out.

Before we attack magic training, I think I should explain a few bullets. Duel casting, for starters, is when you have the same spell equipped in both hands. Each skill tree in magic has a duel casting perk that causes extra damage or longer duration. Destruction is, in my opinion, the most beneficial since your enemies go KABOOM faster. 

Warning: Master level spells are all duel casting. They are technically the most powerful spells but take the longest to cast. This can be bothersome in a battle since enemies frequently interrupt you via melee attacks. Time or power, your choice audience.

I also mentioned enchanting and alchemy. These two skills are useful for just about everybody, but mages gain a lot from strong fortifying enchantments and potions. Armor can be enchanted to fortify, or enhance, your magicka regeneration to your Destruction damage to your sneaking prowess. Potions do the same but for a duration of time. Creating magicka and health replenishing potions with fortifying effects is an asset to being a mage. Hey, you run out of magicka easily in battle and often need a health boost in between spells. Way of the mage.

Shrine of Azura. Pain in the ass to reach.

Another point is the Black Star and soul trapping in general. All magical weapons require the recharge of soul gems after a while; unfortunately, soul gems can be difficult to obtain and fill in the beginning. The best option is to acquire the Black Star from the Azura's Star quest; this is a corrupted version of the reusable soul gem, Azura's Star, that absorbs black souls. Black souls charge as grand souls and come from any human enemy, think bandits and necromancers. Find a weapon that can trap souls, often they are daggers looted from crypts, destroy it, and forge a soul trapping bow. Just shoot a bandit, Black Star is filled. Easy and affordable.

Moving onto leveling/using your disciplines of magic. Now, I did warn you that being mage takes patience audience. It does. A lot of it. You will have to farm some, if not all, of these abilities. Fortunately, the farming ways level everything up in a timely manner, except Alteration. Alteration is a bitch.

Quick Tip: Although your mage may be "focused" on certain schools of magic, having strong Illusion, Restoration and Alteration is advantageous for every kind of wizard. All three have useful perks; Quiet Casting for stealthy spells, faster magicka regeneration with Recovery, and better magicka defense via Magic Resistance respectfully. 

Various tomes of the schools

Leveling up your magic skills! I say we start with Alteration since it is the bitch of the group, allows us to move on to the easy stuff. 

Right-o, in general, when farming magic schools, you want to use low level spells repeatedly. This allows the skill to build up continuously without depleting large amounts of magicka. However, Alteration is not that easy; one of the schools has to be the thorn on the rose. The best way I've leveled Alteration is through trainers and the spell Transmute, the Midas themed spell. Transmute is useful for your finances since it makes gold out of iron ore; you can acquire the spell tome after completing the Treva's Tower quest in the Rift. Seriously, how can anyone deny that spell? Trainers, think CoW services, do cost money but they can be used up to five times per level; use them each level to maximize your leveling process overall, if you have the coin that is. 

Other options include Magelight, a low level spell that can be farmed though it takes time. In the beginning, Magelight provides decent leveling but this plateaus rather quickly. You can use the various "flesh" spells, they give you magical armor, however, they only help to level you in battle, in other words when you're being hurt. The best use of the Ironflesh/Oakflesh/Ebonyflesh spells is to purposely damage yourself, with little to no armor, while recasting them every so often; fires, spike traps, or the winds of The Throat of the World will do the trick. In fact, if you're patient enough, you can level Restoration at the same time.

Quick Tip: You will probably use the Mage Stone, mage skills increase 20% faster, throughout the game. Although, it should be noted that the Lord and Apprentice Standing Stones are catered more to those with magic defense skills. Lord Stone, gives extra armor rating and protection against magic. Apprentice Stone, greatly increases magicka regeneration at the cost of making you more susceptible to magicka damage. Both are located near Markarth. If you are a strong Alteration user, consider switching stones. 

Break out the robes!

Restoration, how I love and loath you. Being the school of healing, Restoration has a large advantage in and out of battle. In fact, one of my favorite perks is available in this tree, Respite; all Restoration spells heal both health and stamina, so sweet! Leveling Restoration can be tricky since you need to be injured for the spells to heal you. You can organically do so by healing yourself in and out of battle and using wards to protect yourself from magical attacks. Or you can farm the skill by purposely injuring yourself. As previously stated, this goes well with Alteration farming. Start off with the basic Healing spell and work up to higher level tomes, such as Close Wounds. Learned Restoration guarantees another day of adventuring. Healing your allies doesn't hurt either. So puny!

Warning: The spells I suggest to you do in fact level your character. You are free to experiment but know that not all spells level the magical schools. Some, such as Clairvoyance, Detect Life, and Telekinesis are just for show. 

Ahem, let's focus now upon Destruction magic. Ah, this is my second favorite school. I mean, fire balls, ice spikes, and lightning all at your fingertips. Plus, magical runes! Runes are traps that damage enemies when walked upon. Don't worry, you can't trigger your own runes audiences. The use of runes is more of a sneaky way of magic, great for those who hide in the shadows and watch their enemies be set ablaze. They are also a good way to level organically because man, does Destruction take awhile to become effective! I highly recommend sticking to one type of Destruction in the perk tree while you level your skills; this ensures one strong element that can kill enemies efficiently rather than an array of spells that don't do much but use up magicka. Fire is the beginner element for two reasons; firstly, it sets your enemies on fire dealing extra damage. Secondly, most creatures in Skyrim are frost resistant, think Nords, trolls, Draugr and vampires, but are susceptible to fire. Once you've perked your way up the fire limb, you can move on to strengthening ice and shock damage. The higher level Destruction spells are quite amazing and fun to use audience. It's a very rewarding type of magic. 

Right, leveling Destruction effectively. Became a bit carried away there didn't I? Personally I just conjured up an atronach and killed it with firebolts or ice spikes. Leveled my Destruction right up. Seriously, like within forty minutes level 100. Speaking of atronachs...

Conjuration! It is the summoning school and somewhat forbidden arts since it draws power from the Daedra world of Oblivion. The best way to level this discipline is not by conjuring. Yeah, you heard me right. You could sit back, bring forth the fire atronach from the depths of Oblivion, and watch it fight until you need to summon it again. Merely conjuring the atronach does nothing for your level unless you're in battle. Summon, hide, watch, repeat. Or, you can cast Soul Trap on a dead chicken. Yes, you can Soul Trap a dead body repeatedly until you are at level 100. It doesn't take as long as you might think and yes, I used a chicken. The college didn't seem to mind one bit.

That brings us to Illusion, the last, easiest, and my favorite school of magic. What can I say? I love becoming invisible! Yes, now Illusion has a spell called Muffle which doesn't use up too much magic but levels like crazy. Seriously, the first fifty levels can be gained one after the other in no time at all; Muffle, level thirty, Muffle Muffle, level thirty-one, and so on. In under half an hour, I had Illusion maxed out. I even made the skill legendary and leveled it back to 100, while running around Whiterun, just for perksies. It's the school that you give the most and gives back the most. Invisibility, all thanks to Muffle, seriously awesome! Plus, Calm, Fear, and other mind bending spells. Still, invisible. 

That is how to level your mage skills in a nice orderly summary. Ha, let us discuss what you can do with some of these skills, namely Illusion since it is often overlooked. Mind control gives you an advantage over your enemies both in and out of battle. Being unseen is not only fun for pick-pocketing NPCs, but is great for stabbing them in the back before looting their bodies. Oh yes, it's become dark in here audience. Dark Brotherhood dark.

The Black Door, security system included.

Though I am an all-around mage as Mal-Zeno, I enjoy being sneaky and stealthy so much audience that I couldn't resist making my Bosmer an assassin too. The Dark Brotherhood is the "guild" of assassins, headquartered near Falkreath in a sanctuary, that assigns my second favorite questline in Skyrim; Theives Guild is always number one. It also has the most annoying character in Skyrim, Cicero. 

In order to join the Dark Brotherhood, you must kill the proprietor of the orphanage in Riften. After, of course, receiving the quest from a brooding child in Windhelm. Trust me, talk to the guards a bit, they'll tell you bout the little weirdo hiding in his house. Do this and you'll be visited soon, after you nap even.

Now, I'm not going to give away the quests or spoils of the Dark Brotherhood, what fun would that be? I mean, yes, they center around you killing people for money, bit obvious there. But the fantastic details of the main questline are too great to tell you. Audience, experience them for yourself. You shall not be bored. Rather than go into that, let's bring up Cicero again.

Cicero, dear sweet mad annoying as fuck Cicero. He's an assassin dressed as jester, whom you are able to encounter outside of the sanctuary prior to joining; he's often found near a broken carriage in Whiterun going on about his mother. Cicero loves to dance, giggle, talk about killing, discuss madness, and sing, all in a high pitched grating voice. He giggles when you touch him. Again, he giggles. Can you believe I didn't kill him? You have the choice to do so, eventually, but I spared him since I haven't done so before; I always killed him. The only useful thing about him is he is an non-killable follower if you decide to let him live. I still want to punch him in the face constantly. Often I indulge my instincts. He's also useful for Restoration and Destruction training. Hit him with some firebolts and then heal him. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Enough about Cicero. Let's move onto Solstheim, we have a bit of time left before this post becomes a novel. Solstheim is an island off of Skyrim that is close to Morrowind, the Dunmer/Dark Elf province of Tamriel. It is covered in ash, ice, and only accessible through the DLC Dragonborn. 

Rustically charming with extra ash!

In Windhelm, there is a boat that will take you to Solstheim. Upon arriving in the port of Raven Rock, you realize that Solsthiem is in dire need of your help. There's a douche named Miraak, a dragon priest in fact, wrecking havoc on the island. He's trying to take over by leading a cult and all that. So original of him. You need to stop him, of course. You are the only one who can stop him, yup. Everyone will criticize you while you save their sorry asses, typical. Miraak does ask for an ass whooping, cause, again, he's a douche, so the questline of thwarting him is satisfying. Besides that, there's an issue with the mine, the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora is on the prowl, the Skaal people are disappearing, and there's treasure to be found! Seriously, the treasure hunt is so much fun! No digging required either. The other stuff, well they involved an old pickaxe and some black books, I won't spoil the fun of it all. Though careful with the books, the "librarians" are touchy about their collections.

Oh! Solstheim, this mysterious DLC that I will not spoil, has a very useful tool for the discerning mage, the staff enchanter. That's right audience, you can enchant staffs again just like in Oblivion! No spell maker or chameleon powers though, damn. Anyways, if you befriend the local wizard Neloth by finding him a new steward, he allows you to use his staff enchanter. You will need a plain staff, he sells them, a few heart stones, a unique rock that can be mined in Solstheim, and a knowledge of magic. The more spells and experience you have. the stronger the staff can be. I love staffs since they allow you to use magic in battle without spending magicka...oh...allow me to highlight that fact...

Quick Tip: Staffs use soul gem recharge instead of magicka. This allows your magicka to regenerate in battle but still uses your strengths in magic; the higher your skill in Destruction fire spells the stronger the fire staffs. Recharge them like any other enchanted weapon.

Wow. This is a long post. I think I'll finish it with a word about Netches. Harvesting Netch jelly is just plain mean! I mean, c'mon, the Netches just float around and don't harm anyone. In fact, they are so peaceful and cute. Screw you Raven Rock for your cruel ways. Ash Spawn are ten times worse but no one wants to harvest them, oh no, just the peaceful native wildlife instead. Netch lover for life! Solstheim is a strange island with plenty of quests to try and enemies to slaughter, just leave the Netches alone.

Save the whales and the Netches!

And that concludes this post. Yup, it's over. I truly believe that I covered everything to enable a strong start in the magical world. I hope you've enjoyed learning about the path of mage audience, Mal-Zeno style. A special thanks to my father for contributing his ideas to this post; you're the most experienced and best wizard I know Dad. Happy casting and mul lah grah Dovahkiin! 

DeathSpank, oh wise cow

It is time for a post! Although my last post had a picture of Foxy, I will not be writing a Five Nights at Freddie's article until October since that is when the last installment of the series is going to be released. I really love Foxy is all, such a weird animatronic. So...that means it's time for DeathSpank, hero to the downtrodden, defender of justice, and eater of bacon.

A question on your mind audience might be who, or what, is DeathSpank? Well DS is the main character and hero of the game series DeathSpank. I will only be covering the first of the series in this post since the second game (I have not yet played the third) requires its own posting glory. I have a few bullets that sum both him and the game up rather nicely.

• DeathSpank is a downloadable game from the Playstation Network as well as Steam for PC; honestly use a controller for whichever you choose.
• You will face great terrors such as unicorns, greems, and undead chickens
• Finding all the lost orphans is a wondrous and long quest
• Sandy is a turd
• Money is never an issue
• The enchanted forest is beyond trippy without the use of narcotics
• DeathSpank talks, his voice is magical and hilarious
• The game is about ten hours long, for completion
• Crossbows seem useless at first, but are very VERY necessary
• Spin attacking enemies is probably the best Justice weapon
• Justice meter, awesome
• Customize-able controls, seriously you choose what button does what
• Food!
• "Get in the bag future criminal"

Alrighty, that was a very informative bullet list. Let's skip the formalities from now on and dive into the meaty bits of the game. First off as often, characters. Starting character, the man of the hour, DeathSpank.

The hero to the downtrodden and vanquisher of evil

As you start the game you, the player, are introduced to an epic opening of DS lore. His mission is to find an important artifact, known only as The Artifact, in order to become the hero he was destined to be. 

Of course, since this is an RPG, finding The Artifact is not DeathSpank's only mission; you have many a quest to do audience. Honestly though, most tedious quests can be skipped. I never skip anything if I can help it, I like complete files, but the Greem mating stones and the Thongoliths are not necessary to beat the game so to speak.

Right, back to DS. DeathSpank is a fantastic character solely on his personality. He is a heroic hero who speaks heroically at all times no matter the situation of heroics. He is fashionable in his purple vest, thong, and mask, and is never hesitant to layer on extra armor of awesomeness. He shoots before he thinks; in fact he does a lot before thinking. Thoughts weigh a hero down with guilt, reasoning, and questions. Why bother with any of those. After all he is DeathSpank!

Quick Tip: This game has the option to be played with two players. The second player is a wizard friend of Deathspank's, Sparkles. He looks like Tom Kenny in a pointy hat and starry robe. Sparkles is a great addition for first timers since he can heal DeathSpank as well as send out various elemental spells.

There are several other characters in the game besides DS, the NPCs, but I don't want to reveal too much about them. The claustrophobic spelunker with a million other phobias is my favorite NPC, just wait until you meet him dear audience.  Encountering and interacting with the various NPCs really adds to the game audience, therefore I don't want to reveal anything that might ruin that experience. Normally I mention more but again, with this game character interaction is a good chunk of the fun. Dialogue.

I will talk about Sandy once more though; she is a serious turd.

The turd

Sandy is the logical NPC who is not about fun and games. No, she takes hero-ing waaaaay too seriously. She tends to point out the obvious in the game which is odd because the player can do so on their own. Is rescuing orphans a good thing? Yes. Is shoving them in a sack a good thing? Probably not. Sandy points out details and scolds DeathSpank on his silliness. There was no need for her to be in the game at all. That would be my only complaint, shitty character Sandy.

Moving on then, so beyond the NPCs and DeathSpank, the characters of the game are the enemies. Do you love silly enemies audience? Great! So do I! DS is full of wacky enemies that make you laugh while you slaughter them. The Greems are gremlin-like creatures that you will find all over the map of the DS world. They are those run-of-the-mill everywhere enemies that are stronger in more difficult areas. Vicious chickens are your first enemies. Killing them is not only hilarious because they are chickens, come on Cucco haters you know you want to, but they drop food. Well, the vicious ones drop lips and the Stoopid ones drop food. Chickens have lips audience, how else could they whistle? Anyways, certain enemies drop food which replenishes your health over time.

Warning: So long as you are not hit during the duration of healing, the food will heal you. One hit and the process stops. For full quick healing try potions.

Chickens, the Stoopid ones, drop chicken legs otherwise known as the first food item that you will encounter. The more levels you climb and the more areas you explore the more food options you will have. More, more, more! Other creatures, well they drop things like french fries, corn dogs, and milkshakes for no apparent reason other than that junk food is delicious.

My favorite enemy, really enemies, well it's a tie between the Giant Turtles and the Gingerbread Warriors. The Giant Turtles are at Turtle Lake and you must collect their gonads for a certain quest. Honestly I really love turtles so this should not be a surprise. The Gingerbread Warriors are annoying little fuckers that are pleasure to slaughter. They giggle and ambush you in the Enchanted Forest all the time. They are one of the only creatures that will constantly respawn in an area that you are in and have recently cleared. Just die little gingerbread men; don't think I'm fast enough? Run, run as fast as you can, oh wait! You died at the hands of my crossbow.

Ah, the mention of the crossbow makes a great transition into the weapons topic. Being an RPG, there is a huge amount of weapon selection in DS. You have your regular weapons, Justice weapons, spells, and summons. The spells are cool because they rain elemental powers down upon the earth which can smite a large cluster of enemies when you are in a pinch. However, they are not to be relied upon because some enemies, undead ones, do not take damage to anything except certain weapons. Undead weapons kill undead enemies, for example. Poison hurts the living, fire hurts poison, ice hurts fire, etc.

Justice in Action

DeathSpank can have four weapons equipped at a time giving a decent amount of choice on how you want to play the game. Spells can have a maximum of five uses before they disappear; the same for summons. The summons bring forth groups of enemies that will fight for you for a certain amount of time. The weapons, both regular and Justice do not disappear unless you sell them. By the way, no need to find a shop keeper to sell your items; DS has a recycling machine on hand at all times that enables him to "recycle" any weapons or items that he picks up in exchange for gold. This is why money is never an issue.

Quick Tip: It is smart to have regular and Justice weapons in your arsenal as well as a variety of elements in order to take on the wide diversity of enemies. Having range, crossbows, as well as close combat gives DeathSpank the best advantage. Think carefully about which weapons you throw away.

The difference between regular and Justice weapons is simple; regular weapons have a set damage that they give while Justice weapons do a lot of damage once the Justice bar is filled and used but don't do much after Justice is spent. The way you build up Justice is by using Justice weapons back to back. Also, crossbows tend to be very weak in this game, even with elemental bolts, and seem useless. However, they are useful when you need to do distance attacks. Have one on hand during the Haunted Forest area; there are skeleton enemies that will suicide bomb you if you don't shoot their red glowing graves first. My weapon setup is often two Justice weapons equipped along with two regular weapons. That way when I need some Justice, usually when a large swarm of enemies attacks, I can quickly power up the Justice bar by alternatively using my two Justice weapons which causes the Justice count to multiple making the process faster. Then, once the bar is empty, I still have strong weapons with my regular weapons since their damage count stays at a constant. If I need a crossbow, I can just hop into my items menu and equip it, easy peasy. Basically do what you want and have fun with it.

Warning: The Justice bar will stop filling up and the Justice count will stop multiplying if you use any weapon other than a Justice Weapon. That being said, if the bar is full, the next Justice weapon you use will activate and therefore empty it. There is some strategy to this game.

Besides weapons, there are cool areas to explore and armor sets to collect. I'm not going to talk in too much detail about either because experiencing them without any major clues or ideas helps to make this game. The art style and creative take on a fictional magical place makes the game that much more interesting and ridiculous. I will say this, Enchanted Forest is super trippy (again) and the Monastery is a place of evil. Also armor sets are so much fun to complete! Armor and weapons are often rewards for quests, namely sidequests, which gives extra incentive to finish the game completely. Otherwise, you'd have to buy all of the missing pieces. Lame!

Oh. I almost forgot to mention something super important, death. Well lives, in video game terms.

So DeathSpank does not have any lives, so to speak. He instead has outhouses. When you die in DS you are teleported to the last outhouse that you activated. You also drop some gold which can be reclaimed if you are quick enough, just run over there you'll make it; none of the bullshit of Sonic and his rings. The outhouses are more than respawn points however; they act as fast travels as well. The more outhouses you find, the faster you can move around the map. Just bring up your map menu and click on the outhouse you want in order to teleport to that area. That will then be your last activated outhouse unless you pass another in the area. The "out of order" outhouses are the only ones that won't let you fast travel, they are only respawn points.

That is DeathSpank in a nutshell. Most enemies can be slaughtered with button mashing, but some require long range, elements, or hit then run away. It is a game that is fun to explore and complete all with fantastic dialogue to boot. I hope you enjoyed this post audience but I hope that you will play and enjoy the game far more. Oh music, yeah it's pretty good. The main theme is best though. Till we meet again in cyberspace!

Skyrim, Being a Bodacious Dragonborn Warrior

So...
Audience! I wrote a lil while ago (let's not count months shall we?) a blog post about Skyrim. The post went over really well since it covered both the basic history of Tamriel as well as tips for being a successful thief in Skyrim. Now this post won't be as informative about Elder Scrolls history; for that information please just click that handy little link above to my previous Skyrim article. It saves both of us so much time.

As the title states, this post is about being a warrior in the land of Skyrim. Being a warrior (by my definition for my three main characters) means doing warrior-like quests and what not. Thor (not original but don't care) my Nord warrior is not involved with the thieves guild or enlisted in the Dark Brotherhood or paid to perform mercenary work or under the control of schmucky Daedra Princes; I'm looking at you Molag Bal. In any case the point is Thor is a good guy. He did accidentally kill one of his rescue assignments once (the guy had his weapon drawn) but the Companions overlooked that minor slip up. Before I go on with details on the silvery Companions and Dawnguard fighters, let's bullet this post!

• Being a warrior has it's difficulties, like magic hurts a lot I mean A LOT
• Armor (armour for some of you) is everything and looks badass
• Healing spells, still necessary
• Shield Brothers
• Running around hacking giants to bits is wonderful
• You can carry a looooooooooooot of stuff
• Sneaking is hard
• Magic is difficult
• Two handed is easy
• Block is simple
• Heavy armor is a breeze
• Smithing is so much fun
• Enchanting becomes your bestie always
• Vilkas and Serana 

There you have it audience. Everything you need to know about being a warrior in Skyrim. Laters, I'm sleepy due to spore. Damn attack hits me every, *yawn*, time...zzz

Wait what? Oops. That would've been a little too short of a post. We have so much more to go over my darlings. So very much.

Let us start with the beginning as a warrior. Like any character you deal with a dragon interrupting your execution and being one of the few survivors of the fiery ordeal. Unlike a thief or mage however, you choose the warrior stone at the standing stone circle outside of Riverwood. The warrior stone enables all skills designated as "warrior" to level up twenty percent faster than all others. This includes Heavy Armor, Two-Handed, Block, One-handed, and Smithing. Although armor and weapon play are important, smithing is far more the nugget of this batch of goodies. Also block sucks to level up without finding a guillotine trap or bandit archer. Seriously it's a shield. Why even have perks?

Essentially what Thor looks like

Back to smithing. Smithing is where you are able to play blacksmith at the local armory. There you have all the tools you need to craft armor, swords, battle-axes, maces, and jewelry. Also bows and arrows but those are thieving weapons; warriors done crossbows. The higher the smithing level the more variety you have on what kinds of armor you want. In fact the smithing perk tree is a bit odd. Rather than have two paths that end in a different "maxed out" trait, this tree ends on the same perk. Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint, it has something to do with- naw screw that. Hints are annoying me at the moment. It's Dragon armor. That's right DRAGON armor.

What's that audience? Some of you don't care about dragon armor? As I told my girls at camp (I'm a counselor each year) if they sang anything from Frozen's soundtrack I would mildly tell them to, "GET OUT." Comically of course. Dragons rule and Frozen, well let's leave my opinion about that for another blog. Dragons rule, end of diatribe.

To be honest the dragon armor could have looked far more awesome. There are two sets of it, Dragon Scale (perfectly named for yours truly) and Dragon Bone armor. Bone is stronger but looks so clunky since it's the Heavy Armor of the two. Scale is better but like Glass is ruined by the helmet. Seriously, why do Light Armor helmets always suck? The best looking armor and my personal favorite from both Skyrim and Oblivion is the Daedra armor. It is worth the climb up the skill tree audience. Not only is it black with a glowing red undertone BUT you look like this: 

Open the gates of Oblivion maggots!

Yeah resembling Sauron from the LOTR trilogy is sweet. I have Thor even wielding a mace. I'm not big on the two-handed battle-hammers. 

So you're probably wondering how long it will take to level up smithing? Happily audience not long at all. In fact there are two methods and one involves leveling enchanting as well.

Enchanting is a mage skill but can be leveled quickly and easily alongside the smithing skill. The only issue with enchanting is finding filled soul gems. See enchanting involves the use of "soul capture" which is where you put a spell on a creature or human that steals their soul once they die. There are different sized souls ranging from petty to grand to black. A black soul belongs to a human or vampire or werewolf character. These are technically the no-no souls since they are frequently used by necromancers. Plus they require black soul gems which none of the court wizards keep in stock. However, you can acquire soul gems (even filled ones) early in the game without being a thief or Daedra worshipper. What you need to do is go to the invisible chest in Dawnstar (not Dawnguard but rather the hold in the Pale) owned by a Khajiit merchant. Seriously I'm not making this up. There's a chest and it has stuff in it including soul gems and...just follow the link for details.

Now you have your soul gems and are ready to enchant! Well except you need to know some enchantments and have some things to enchant. Knowing is not difficult. Simply destroy either weapons or clothing that already have an enchantment to learn the power. For instance if you find a fire dagger on a bandit, you can destroy the weapon at an enchanting table (found everywhere there is court wizard and a Jarl Palace) thus forever learning the fire damage enchantment. It's rather useful. You can even destroy your wedding ring. Yeah, I did that and the missus doesn't seem to care. 

About the things to enchant though, that's where smithing comes in. There happens to be a spell called Transmute than can be acquired whenever in the game. Enemies level up with you in most cases involving caves and I happened nab this at level eight so, yeah. It's doable early on. What transmute does is it turns iron ore into silver ore and silver ore into gold ore. Iron ore is plentiful in Skyrim and always available from merchants and blacksmiths. It's cheap too, so so cheap.

"Come to see Balimund perform miracles with steel eh?"

You do need some patience with transmute since it is an Adept level Alteration spell. What this means is it the spell costs a decent amount of magicka and is slow to regenerate unless you've many Alteration perks. Just drink potions or wait an hour to replenish your magicka, it's worth it. What you do once you have several chunks of gold ore is smelt it into ingots. It takes two ore to make one ingot for most materials so stock up! Once you have gold ingots you can smith some jewelry. The most useful item you can make from gold (for enchanting and leveling purposes) is a gold ring. Or should I say two gold rings. One ingot makes two rings. Excellent. By the way, all of this transmuting goes directly to your Alteration tree which increases your overall level. Really it's two birds with one stone in three ways; multitasking inception with Alteration (iron to gold), smithing (ingots to rings), and enchanting (rings to magic rings). You also can sell the rings for a profit. After all the soul gems were free from the chest and the iron ore costs so little. You my warrior loving audience are off to a profitable start.

Quick Tip: The other way to quickly level smithing is by making iron daggers. They are cheap to make and once again you can craft your own ingots. Just remember to sell them less you want to be over encumbered.

About that time I noticed the girl scout was six feet tall and from the late Paleozoic era. Ha, I love that quote. After gaining some "tree-fitty" from the local merchants and cranking up those skill trees, it's time to do some serious questing. Boy are you in for a treat audience. I give you the Companions and Dawnguard. But first my shield brothers. Sorry Serana, you need to wait your turn.

The Companions guild (or group since they are leaderless) is located in Whiterun at the old mead hall Jorrvaskr. It is the reincarnation of the Fighter's Guild from Oblivion with a few minor changes. The arena is missing and now you can become a werewolf.

Warning: Being a werewolf is overpowering and amazing in the earlier levels of the game. However it becomes a weaker form in the later stages, around level thirty seven, and more of a gimmick. 

Personally I enjoy being a werewolf more than a vampire since the form is totally optional. It acts as a power and therefore can only be used once per day. Also it is fun to go around slashing things to bits and howling at the moon. Plus wild wolfs and your shield brothers are able to join you in lupus battles. This is an optional aspect of the Companions which you can deny while being able to finishing the story line. Fear not! I will not spoil anything from that juicy timeline of quests. You'll have to play yourself for those details audience. Rather I'll go in to some of the advantages of the Companions namely the shield brothers and the Ring of Hircine.

Vilkas is my favorite shield brother or companion friend. The reasoning behind this is well, his voice is lovely and he trains Heavy Armor. He mainly is there to act as a follower who helps you on your quests. You can customize his armor (my Vilkas has exceptional Ebony armor) and weapons to make him a better fighter as well as use him to carry some extra items in case you become over encumbered while questing. He comments on various places you go and is useful in a tough battle. Plus he's also a werewolf so there's that companionship. The voice thing is preference and for those of you looking for sassy females might want to team up with Aela; she also trains archery by the by. Teaming up with a trainer is useful for when you are so close to that level up but just don't have the willpower to farm skill trees. Instead you talk to your companion and ask for them to train you until you hit the next level. Then (this is the trick) you ask to share inventory with them and take back all the gold you spent on training. Free training and friendship, what a deal.

Besides that there's not much I can say about the Companions without spoiling quests. Ah, well I can go into werewolves a bit more. As I said earlier being a werewolf is awesome in the beginning of the game but loses it's luster as your enemies level up. If you didn't level up your werewolf in the beginning and now wish to boost that perk tree (oh yes both werewolves and vampire lords have perk trees) there are a few tricks of the trade. The way to climb the wolf bound perk tree is to feed on fresh corpses left by your victims. In other words dead bandits. Earlier I mentioned that "werewolf" is a power. What that means is that you can only change into a werewolf once a day. This is somewhat annoying when you want to level up those perks. How to go around this? Ring of Hircine. Hircine is the Daedric Prince of werewolves and provides this very useful trinket for your wolf bound character. When worn, the ring enables you to turn into a werewolf as many times as you like. The ring is listed under your power section of Magic (odd but it is) and functions very much like your normal werewolf change.

Such a good guy

Remember Thor is a good guy, he doesn't feed on innocents. The loophole is that you don't have to kill your feeding vessels while in your werewolf form. Instead, slaughter a bandit camp as a terrifying force of Daedric armor and change into a werewolf afterwards. You then can feed quite easily on the dead corpses. Once finished have your character wait a few hours in order to exit the werewolf form. Yes this is annoying but the only way to return to your human form is to allow time to pass.

Warning: When going through the Ring of Hircine quest make sure to kill the mercenaries who are seeking Sinding otherwise you will not obtain the curse free ring.

Right-o let's finish up this post with a few details on Dawnguard. Serana, a lovable lady I name dropped earlier, is an ancient vampire lord. She is a central character in the DLC (downloadable content) Dawnguard. The word Dawnguard refers to a fraction of vampire hunters located in the western area of the Rift. They have sworn themselves to destroying the rising vampire lord Harkon who happens to be Serana's bat-shit crazy father. Harkon's goal is to block out the sun and have vampires devour the world under his rule. Obviously you want to stop this. Now dear audience you have a choice; you can either side with Harkon (temporarily) and become a vampire lord, or stay loyal to the Dawnguard. Regardless of your choice you will be able to kick his guano covered butt later on as well as team up with Serana. She is a strong follower who not only shoots ice blasts but also summons dead corpses to fight alongside you. This is nice when you slay a daedra or another vampire. Doesn't feel so great being on the Harkon side now does it blood sucking fiends! No offence Serana. By the way, Thor stayed loyal to Dawnguard.

What is so special about the Dawnguard you ask? I did happen to mention something about warriors using crossbows earlier in this post darlings. Crossbows are tricky to use at first (if you're accustomed to a bow) but pack a huge punch and come with a variety of magical bolts. Without being a part of the Dawnguard you won't learn how to craft crossbows or magical bolts. That sucks for any warrior. Especially when you can have Dwemer styled crossbows that the Dwarven Spheres use. Those robotic bastards are a pain to slaughter. Instead of your blood rusting on their bronze butts, you can annihilate them with exploding bolts of shock. It's rather amusing to watch them burst from electric surges.

I am a creepy nuisance

Crossbows by far are the best perk of the Dawnguard. However, there is one more thing that makes Dawnguard worthwhile. How many of you love dogs? I know I do. And of those of you who have souls and adore canines, how many enjoy the look of the husky breed? It just so happens that the Dawnguard has husky dogs that will fight along side you and warn you of emanate danger while traveling Skyrim. They are cute and vicious which makes them a great addition to any team. Plus they don't count as a human follower so you can have a husky and Vilkas on your team at the same time. The Dawnguard also have armoured trolls to rent. They are cool but a bit fussy. Trolls will leave you after a while because they become bored. The huskys never leave you. They are loyal. Also husky dogs are cuter than those creepy Death Hounds the vampires make. Bleh, ugly creatures.

I'll stop there with Dawnguard since I don't want to spoil any of the quest line. The Harkon thing is something you learn from the trailer so I'm not feeling guilt over that little tidbit. I hope you all download Dawnguard since it is a great addition to the game. I'll go in the Dragonborn DLC on my next (and final) Skyrim blog. That one will follow the adventures of my baddie of a mage Loki. I know the name is not original and I still don't care. Anyhow, that's all from Elder Scrolls for now. Happy gameplay.

P.S. I put the hint to the next post in a different location this time audience.

P.S.S. It's rather obvious too.

And here's some music!

Fable Lost Chapters, a Sycthey adventure

My sweet audience, some of you may remember that I mentioned Fable TLC in an earlier post about playing certain video games when bored. I briefly mentioned some of the "dickable" activities in Fable which make it an excellent game to relieve boredom. However, I'm not satisfied with that shout-out. No, no Fable TLC needs more than that, as does Skies of Arcadia Legends. So here in honour (just for you Maleficus) of Lionhead's best RPG is the Fable TLC post.

You'll find out who Maleficus is very shortly audience. Also there is some music at the bottom of the page. Yeah, way way down there. Keep going.

This is him. With a few adjustments ahem.

Bullets of beautiful info about Fable TLC:

• You are a boy. Not a single if, and, or but from you audience
• Almost immediately you are torn from your family and forced into the Guild of Heroes. Heroes' Guild for short
• The world of Albian is your terrain and is full of drunk idiots ordering beers with "umbrellars" in them
• Hero does not necessarily mean virtuous *wink*
• There are many NPCs you will hate, namely Thunder
• There are two NPCs you will love, namely Scythe
• The villain is magical and scary as fuck. I love Jack for that.
• This is the game that taught me how to do a poor British accent. Heh.
• You can be a whore if you so wish
• You can be a demon with horns and glowing eyes if you so wish
• You can be a chicken-man if you so wish
• You can be an angel with a halo and face tattoos with perfect blonde hair and perfect scars.Cough.
• You can be whatever you want if you so wish.

Where to begin? Perhaps with the beginning? As you know audience spoilers are to follow BUT not major plot ruining ones. Seriously, I want you to play this game. Why would I do that?

Awaken in Oakvale, a small port-side town busy with NPCs who all happen to know that it is your older sister's birthday. All of them know it, even the new merchant. Everyone except you. Basically you start off as a lazy little boy who forgets his own sister's birthday and waits around for adventure to find him. Rather classic eh?

Anyhow, you begin by doing "deeds" around the town in order to earn enough gold (3 pieces in fact) to buy a box of chocolates for your sister as a birthday present. The deeds are your first steps in the game both controller wise and alignment wise. Alignment is rather big in Fable, we will divulge into that more later. Basically though it is your morality, your amount of good and/or evil. So, you can from the start be all evil, all good, or a nice mix. It's your choice. Personally I enjoy being a total bad boy now and then. Smashing boxes is fun. Sides, "are you just gonna stand there like a lemon?"

Fast-forward past a night of horrible events to the Heroes' Guild. Here is where you really learn how to kick ass or chew bubble gum. Oops, wrong game. Heh, so at the guild you train with at first a stick (lame) then a sword, then a bow, then with plasma lightning that shoots from your finger tips while slowly corrupting your body turning you into a mutated freak who climbs walls and scares the shit out of 18 year old MareBears! Oops, wrong game again. Well sorta. You do in fact train with lightning or will or magic; it happens that cast lightning is your first spell. Still, beware the corruption. Or don't. Being an overpowered mage is awesome.

My overpowered Hero

Ah yes, what kind of hero will you be? Well there are nearly limitless combos. You could just go all out in one skill tree, meaning a maxed out warrior, mage, or marksman. However, that's lame and you'll look weird as all fuck at the end. See, depending on your skill tree you can look like a jacked out glowing giant (which is how I typically go) or a stubby shrimp with trunks for limbs. Or a skinny glowing twig. Or a lanky pillar the width of a pencil. OR a million other things. If you mix your skill tree you can become any kind of hero combination. If you max everything out (which is fun to do) you will look like Maleficus, in other words a jacked out glowing giant with beautiful blond locks. Oh yeah, your "other looks".

Tattoos, hairstyle, facial hair, and hair colour all fall under "other looks" as a category. Some are found in chests, others are only available at specific shops, some are stolen from people's homes. Yes, you can steal hairstyles from residences. How? Why with style cards of course! Fable TLC made it easy to customize your hero's outward appearance with the use of cards. Basically a style is written onto a card and once you collect it, you can have it applied as many times as you want. So if you like a tattoo you own or just want to try it out, you can at any tattoo parlour or with any travelling tattoo artist. It's rather nifty. Unfortunately the colour of your tattoos depends on the card, you cannot change them. Same goes for hair colour.

Quick Tip: If you own the PC version of Fable TLC you are able to design your own tattoos. Unfortunately I'm not that talented of an artist.

Hair colour is not something you can easily mess with. Ok if you know the game then yes, it is easy to change. However, for you curious newbies out there it might be more difficult since hair colour is dependent on your morality alignment. Remember how I said I'd tell you more bout alignment later? Well now is later.

Everything, and I mean everything, you do in Fable TLC affects your morality alignment; quests, games, murdering an entire town, clothing, even food. For instance eating tofu gives you "good" points whereas eating crunchy chicks (whole baby chickens) awards you with pure evil. I should also mention that clothing/armour only affects you when you are wearing it. This means if you want to know your true alignment (every piece of clothing has some push on morality) you need to be naked.

A typical bad-boy

How does alignment affect my appearance? It determines your hair colour (bleh, British spellings), whether or not you can grow hair, your eye colour (glowing red can be attractive to gothic culture) and many other things. Horns, those will appear if you are very evil. So will flies. As will red smoke. Least you learn the vulgar thrust expression. Haha so funny.

The completely good heroes have blond hair and sport a halo above their heads. They also grow blond beards (score!) and have butterflies follow them (um yeah...). Plus they are radiant with glowing light and deep blue eyes. If you are in between the extremes you can have sandy blond hair, dark black hair, light blue eyes, dark eyes, and always pale skin. No one tans in the world of Albian.

Aight so you understand that alignment has a strong presence for your character's appearance personally. Fortunately it does nothing for your quests. You can do all the quests in the game whether you're evil, good, or in between. That is a nice feature, means you won't miss anything. However, quests can have different outcomes (even the big major ones) therefore choose wisely dear audience. Or just make multiple characters, that works too.

Besides looks in the game (hey some of us are vain), you can customize your experience greatly. There are many side quests which can aid you at later stages of the game or just gift you with interesting weapons and outfits. For instance there are these things called silver keys. In Fable TLC there are thirty in total scattered throughout Albian. You can use the keys to open silver chests which have a designated number on them; if it says 15 you need fifteen keys to unlock it. Don't worry, you don't lose your keys after opening a chest. That would be a major pain.

Somehow I am born from something.

Another interesting side factor is the appearance of Demon Doors. These dudes are magic doors which take the form of old bearded men who want you to do something for them. This can be anything from giving them a rose to sacrificing all your silver keys. It's rather mixed. Regardless, you will be rewarded once you've opened the door with some sort of treasure. Often it's a weapon with magical properties. The Cutlass Bluetane is one of my favourites.

Hmm, speaking of favourite weapons, I might as well mention Skorm's Bow. This baby is the greatest and coolest looking bow in the game. Seriously, it is badass. However, acquiring the bow is not easy. In fact, it is a total bitch to earn. There is a temple in Darkwood called Chapel of Skorm. Skorm is the god of evil while Avo is the god of good. Yeah, super complicated.

I am a bitch to get!

Anyways, at the Chapel of Skorm you can make sacrifices in order to earn more evil points. What you sacrifice is followers, human followers. Depending on your alignment (the more good you are the more evil points you earn since they want you to be evil) and the time of day (I swear by midnight, it's the only time that works), you have a chance to be rewarded with Skorm's Bow. As a straight up fact you must earn more than 500 evil points from a sacrifice. This almost never happens in the first try and in fact, ends up with you hiring swordhands in order to make multiple sacrifices until you have the fucking bow. It's frustrating always but so so SO worth it. Guess what's not frustrating? Having your hero look 24 by the end of the game when he's totally maxed out with experience.

As many of you have picked up on, one aspect I really adore about this game is the fact that you can make a really hot character and force him to run around shirtless in the snow. Yup, great detail right there. As I was starting to say at the end of the last paragraph, I know of a way to make your hero be forever young. See experience, though it makes you stronger, also ages you. Your maximum age is 65, therefore once you've maxed everything out, then you are an overpowered retiree. This is fine if you don't care that no one else ages in the game. I care. Also I want Maleficus to be hot, always. So I use a minor glitch in the game to get what I want.

Near the end of the game, not at the end but near it, a quest card will appear at the guild for Knothole Glade/Witchwood. Basically the chief's son has been kidnapped and you need to go rescue him from bandits by travelling through Witchwood. This is good. See the Chapel of Skorm might be in Darkwood but the Temple of Avo is in Witchwood. At the Temple of Avo you sacrifice money (there's another glitch to avoid actually giving all your funds) in order to become more enlightened with being good. Horray. Well the first thing you earn from a large donation is the Sentinus, the "good" weapon which is a club with spikes all over it. Horray again. After that little gift though, you have the opportunity to earn some years of youth. This is what you want. So you give money (though not really) and earn a few years off your age.

See, 24 is better

Now here is where the glitch happens; teleport out of Witchwood to the Hero's Guild (it doesn't matter where you go but the guild is a nice known landmark). The game will ask if you want to abandon your quest, say yes. So now you are back at the Hero's Guild with all your experience you've earned as well as those youth points. However, the quest was not completed. Thus you can start the quest again and repeat this youth process til your desired age. I prefer 24 but you can go as low as 18. 24 is better though.

I suppose I should mention some actual gameplay and a few of the enemies, I just really don't want to give anything major away. Hmm, alright then, balverines and the undead. The other enemies, like hobbes, you'll just have to experience hands on. By the way, my late fish Maxley was named after a very famous hobbe. Just saying. Right then, puppy time!

He's hacking and whacking and slashing. Hack, whack, cutting that meat. 

Again wrong game. My favourite part about these creatures are the scars they leave. I purposely make Maleficus take damage around them in Darkwood just to have this. Perfect. Right, I'll stop drooling and we'll move on.

So cuddly <3

The balverines of Fable TLC are the werewolfs who never change back into human beings; aight at first if someone is bitten they can control the transformations but over time they succumb to the wolfy appetite of humans and other weak creatures. They are a central part of the game (they even dominate their own quest) and are adorable. I honestly think they are just the cutest things.
In Witchwood I kept hitting the stones in the order of S-H-I-T just to hear Maleficus swear and summon a small pack of adorable balverines to come out and play. They aren't too difficult of an enemy. Just equip a weapon with a silver augmentation (oh yes, these are magical stone badges you can add to weapons) and hack away.

Purposeful damage muwhaha

Quick Tip: Augmentations are permanent, you cannot remove them after attaching them to a weapon. Also, weapons only have a certain amount of augmentation slots depending on the level of weapon. Choose wisely.

Ah. The zombies of the game, the undead. These lovely gents, they are all male zombies for some reason, enjoy groaning and slashing at your boots as they rise from the earth. Once slain, they scream into a green puff of smoke before even more pop up to take their place.

Hello there darlings

They are the ultimate experience enemy. There are a few quests (pst, they involve a prison and a graveyard) which have unlimited respawn on the undead. This means you can kill them as much as you want for as long as you want to boost that experience. Add a few potions of strength, skill, and will into the mix and you've got a jacked out hero.

Quick Tip: Even if you don't want to be a mage, a most useful spell is Physical Shield since damage is switched from your health to your mana. If you take hits from your health you not only risk dying, but you also stop your combat multiplier (you'll find out, trust me) from, well multiplying.

Wow I've talked a lot about this game, without spoiling anything major yet either! Score!! There are just two last things, or should I say people I do want to bring up though. Wait, only two?! Alright, let's see. I chose Whisper and Scythe. We'll discuss Whisper first.

"Ello dar farmboy"

Dear sweet silver medalist Whisper. You are a difficult character for me to describe because I have mixed feelings on you. She is, for the most part, annoying, and like all characters (except for the coolest dude in the world) you have the option to kill her if she annoys you too much. I did kill Whisper once, and to be honest I regretted it. She is your first friend and perhaps your only true friend in the game. I mean everyone else is kind of aloof in a professional way or tries to piss you off by calling you a weakling constantly; Thunder, Briar Rose, you two wouldn't know anything about that kind of hero would you? Anyways Whisper is the other apprentice hero you meet early on in the game. In fact, you have to train with her in order to learn the basics. After graduation the two of you compete in quests and even (drum roll) the "arena-rr".

"Did you see th-at? I sawr it. The -eros of the arena-rr are trying ta kill eacho-der."

Heh heh, that's what all the NPCs in the game sound like, according to me. Yes, you and Whisper go along the path of hero-hood together for a while. She is irritating at times (the name farmboy could be retired darling Whisper) but she does have to deal with Thunder. He's her brother and a major pain in the ass for everyone in Albian. He's a giant and decent fighter, but ultimately he's an arrogant pain in the ass. Now for someone not so pain-in-the-assy.

Sycthe! Just again for kicks, SCYTHE! Dude you are the most bad-ass NPC of all time. Seriously, being a decaying hero who cannot be killed since he is technically immortal (yet looks like a mummy) after having entered the Void in order to defeat the Court (minus Jack of Blades since he fled the battle only to return now) and save Albian thus becoming the first Archon!! Plus, dat voice is freakin' amazing.

Sycthe is someone you briefly see in the beginning of the game and then finally meet near the end. He is, as the description above gleefully entails, fucking bad-ass. He is the original hero of the world and the only one to travel in the Void and survive (thus the Archon title). Although you aren't able to do much with him, he is the only character you cannot kill and you can always talk to him. On top of everything, he treats you with respect from the beginning; none of the others do this (Guild Master saying that Maleficus doesn't look like hero material psh) so that's major brownie points. Honestly, play the game and see why Sycthe is awesome. Maze might have beat him out if it weren't for, well circumstances.

So. Have I convinced you to play this game? If there are any doubts to those of you who love men then may I remind you that you alone have the power to craft a hot at as hell hero to your liking. For those of you who love women I'll say that you can own a bordello and sleep with as many nearly nude whores as you like who will praise you for your sexual talents. I might have forgotten to mention the bordello earlier, just slipped my mind.

Rawr. I am Jack of Blades and am a cool yet douchey villain for the shit I do to you. Rawr.

Until next time dear audience.

Oh yes, here's some music.

P.S. I fucking kept my promise. I did it. Hahahaha. Yes! Go ME! Oh, and want to know why May 2nd was the deadline? Cause I turn 22 that day. That's why! Mainly cause I can remember that date. In any case, HA again. I did it!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S.S. I can't believe I used British spellings. Cough cough, bleh.