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xyzzysqrlOkay, you didn't think I was going to leave it at that, did you? Really? Just walk away from a game I profess to genuinely enjoy?
Well. Yes, okay, I might. Particularly since I just picked up the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy on PSN. Why did nobody tell me there is DRAGON SKATEBOARDING in Spyro 3? That was missing from my life!
But in this case, I really do want to show off some of what makes Metal Saga unique. As the manual tells/warns you on the first page, Metal Saga is not like most JRPGs. You can pretty much do anything you want. There are very few "you must" plot events, usually just ones linked to each other. There are absolutely places too difficult for you to go and too hard for you to survive, but nothing's locked off. If you can get somewhere and survive it, you're okay to be there.
You might not be rewarded much though. Metal Saga is kind of hilarious because a lot of things you can just DO if you want to... but the game won't give you anything for it. The experience (not experience points) is meant to be its own reward.
Let's have some experiences!
Again from the top. Auer's going to be a HUNTER. Mind's made up, let's roll. Mom is naturally a bit let down, but she's going to support our choice. You can't be a Hunter without a vehicle, though. Just Not Done. The only thing a Hunter without a vehicle can find is trouble. She slips us some cash and tells us to at least buy some equipment in town. She also makes mention of going to Newfolk, the town off to the northeast. We can talk to a mechanic there.
At least one person's willing to support Auer's big Hunter dream.
Thanks, sis. Mom also mentions if we ever get sick of the life, we can come home and be a mechanic instead. So, yes. You can end the game at any time by just ... walking out on it.
Our hero also comes with his own Satcom system, which keeps track of things like shop inventories in every town we've ever visited, email, monster info, bounties, settings, maps, and a few other things I'll talk about later. These first few updates are gonna be dense, but I hope to spend less time on mechanics (so to speak) and more time on playing later.
We can also pop on the Internet and pay $200 to have a kill-sat fire space lasers at whatever we're in combat with. That is the skill we START with. (It's not very good, admittedly. But c'mon. SPACE LASERS.)
That blonde dude with the backpack visible in the screenshot is McKinley. He's a friend of Auer's father and talking to him in each town usually gives us a little info about what's going on. In this case, it just makes him ask if Eddy (dad) shrunk or something. Was it something we ate? ... Nah, he just mistook us for dad. Must be 'cause we're a noob Hunter. We've got the Look.
There's someone else in town I wanna show off, too.
Meet Hare Head, who wears a business suit, white sneakers and what appears to be a leather bondage bunny mask which never comes off for any reason. He (I think) appears in towns, says a few cryptic things and then mysteriously vanishes. This dude is a callback to the previous games in the series (Yes, this is a series.) which had... mysterious men in business suits and leather bondage bunny masks who said cryptic things and then vanished. In many cases, their dialogue is the same as it was back on the SNES.
One final thing I'd like to show...
Our hero Auer keeps a to-do list. Let's work down the line to start things off.
1. Gather info at the Hunter Office.
As we walk in the door, some random guy waves our way. Auer's gonna be a Hunter? Y'know, you can't be a Hunter unless you have a sweet ride. (I am quoting this directly.) Try rolling into hostile territory without a vehicle and you'll have a lot of complaining to do because you'll be dead. The random Hunter suggests we poke around in Junk Mountain. It's a huge junkpile the town is built around. The local economy runs off scavenging, and new stuff gets dredged to the top all the time. Maybe someone's dug out a vehicle.
Good a place to start as any, really. We can also check out the local wanted posters...
And save the game. As we leave, the Save Girl waves after Auer. "Have a wonderful day full of leveling up! ...no offense, but you look like you'll NEED it."
2. Obtain avehicle Sweet Ride at Junk Mountain.
Before we do this, we equip up at the local shop. Some overalls, thick gloves, and a folding pocket knife. We're a long way from swords and plate mail here. We also grab some "stick-on armor", which is just a rack of bulletproof tiles attached to a sticker. It breaks easy, but it's extra protection. Then it's off to Junk Mountain!
Before we leave though, I skip ahead a bit to...
6. Talk to Doctor Solomon.
Doctor Solomon is enormous. He used to be a monster researcher, but he's fallen on hard times. Still, he'd like to get back into that again, so he hires us tocomplete the pokedex use our Satcom to gather info about roaming creatures. We bring it back here and show it to him, he'll give us stuff. To start off, he gives us the monster-hunting equipment he used to use: A giant metal glove. "It fits over your head." the item description notes. This is unusuable by us, but will probably sell well.
From there it's off to Junk Mountain! (As we leave town, Dad emails us to let us know he thinks it's awesome we're gonna be a Hunter. Thanks, Dad.) Junk Mountain is a giant mountain of, uhm. Junk. And it's patrolled by these dudes.
Which are giant knives with robot legs who ride around on unicycle wheels. They pedal around and stab you. The future of AI Technology, I guess. They explode when we stab them back. Also around here are walking gas cans on legs (which explode when stabbed), zombies made of rusty metal stuck together (which explode when stabbed) and giant slugs (which explode when stabbed). I do not believe there is any enemy (including other people) in Metal Saga which does NOT explode when you defeat it. If I ever successfully find anything NOT made of explodium I'll let you all know.
A good long time of wandering around the heaps later, and we've found our prize.
Our first "tank". The game doesn't make a lot of distinction, it calls several things tanks that... obviously aren't. Humanity has clearly lost the ability to tell a hawk from a handsaw, but that's okay. It means we can weaponize some really interesting vehicles.
You can do a lot of things to your vehicles... smack more armor on them or strip armor tiles off to lighten the load, use them as carry-mules, tune them and repaint them, and of course ride them into battle. They even get names, because they're basically as important as the humans in your group.
That's what this is, right? As a note, tank names can be changed. If YOU have a preference for what we name the "Buggy", please do let me know and as soon as the option's available I'll swap names out.
The Handsaw comes with a Buggy chasis (the basic vehicle), a "Donkey" engine (able to drive with up to 8 tons of weight on board), a Spasibo II CPU (or "C-Unit", the AI that allows only one human to drive a tank that should take three or four people) and 7.62mm gatling gun that requires no ammo to shoot at things.
Which is all really cool, but doesn't seem like quite enough somehow. If only we had something --
yes perfect.
We find this 37mm main cannon in a box on the way out and it puts us a ton overweight, so Auer snaps off armor tiles until the Handsaw rolls with it installed. It's okay, there's only one enemy in the Junk Mountain that can even scratch us in this beauty and it can do, at best, maybe 13 damage per attack.
Take that, Trashie. We gonna get paaaaid. O/~ $$$ o/~
On the way out after THAT explodes, we pick up some camo clothing and a shotgun... which is (LAW OF ANIME) much weaker than our folding knife. It does hit all... but we have a BUGGY. Why would we get out and shoot things? Never get out of the car.
Back in town we save and turn our bounties in. That puts us at a cool two and a half grand -- not bad work for an evening... and we're not even done raking in the cash. Still... for now, let's save and stop.
Tune in tomorrow for biology, piracy, and more Metal Saga!
(psst. Hey. How are the screenshots? Big enough? Too big?)
Well. Yes, okay, I might. Particularly since I just picked up the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy on PSN. Why did nobody tell me there is DRAGON SKATEBOARDING in Spyro 3? That was missing from my life!
But in this case, I really do want to show off some of what makes Metal Saga unique. As the manual tells/warns you on the first page, Metal Saga is not like most JRPGs. You can pretty much do anything you want. There are very few "you must" plot events, usually just ones linked to each other. There are absolutely places too difficult for you to go and too hard for you to survive, but nothing's locked off. If you can get somewhere and survive it, you're okay to be there.
You might not be rewarded much though. Metal Saga is kind of hilarious because a lot of things you can just DO if you want to... but the game won't give you anything for it. The experience (not experience points) is meant to be its own reward.
Let's have some experiences!
Again from the top. Auer's going to be a HUNTER. Mind's made up, let's roll. Mom is naturally a bit let down, but she's going to support our choice. You can't be a Hunter without a vehicle, though. Just Not Done. The only thing a Hunter without a vehicle can find is trouble. She slips us some cash and tells us to at least buy some equipment in town. She also makes mention of going to Newfolk, the town off to the northeast. We can talk to a mechanic there.
At least one person's willing to support Auer's big Hunter dream.
Thanks, sis. Mom also mentions if we ever get sick of the life, we can come home and be a mechanic instead. So, yes. You can end the game at any time by just ... walking out on it.
Our hero also comes with his own Satcom system, which keeps track of things like shop inventories in every town we've ever visited, email, monster info, bounties, settings, maps, and a few other things I'll talk about later. These first few updates are gonna be dense, but I hope to spend less time on mechanics (so to speak) and more time on playing later.
We can also pop on the Internet and pay $200 to have a kill-sat fire space lasers at whatever we're in combat with. That is the skill we START with. (It's not very good, admittedly. But c'mon. SPACE LASERS.)
That blonde dude with the backpack visible in the screenshot is McKinley. He's a friend of Auer's father and talking to him in each town usually gives us a little info about what's going on. In this case, it just makes him ask if Eddy (dad) shrunk or something. Was it something we ate? ... Nah, he just mistook us for dad. Must be 'cause we're a noob Hunter. We've got the Look.
There's someone else in town I wanna show off, too.
Meet Hare Head, who wears a business suit, white sneakers and what appears to be a leather bondage bunny mask which never comes off for any reason. He (I think) appears in towns, says a few cryptic things and then mysteriously vanishes. This dude is a callback to the previous games in the series (Yes, this is a series.) which had... mysterious men in business suits and leather bondage bunny masks who said cryptic things and then vanished. In many cases, their dialogue is the same as it was back on the SNES.
One final thing I'd like to show...
Our hero Auer keeps a to-do list. Let's work down the line to start things off.
1. Gather info at the Hunter Office.
As we walk in the door, some random guy waves our way. Auer's gonna be a Hunter? Y'know, you can't be a Hunter unless you have a sweet ride. (I am quoting this directly.) Try rolling into hostile territory without a vehicle and you'll have a lot of complaining to do because you'll be dead. The random Hunter suggests we poke around in Junk Mountain. It's a huge junkpile the town is built around. The local economy runs off scavenging, and new stuff gets dredged to the top all the time. Maybe someone's dug out a vehicle.
Good a place to start as any, really. We can also check out the local wanted posters...
And save the game. As we leave, the Save Girl waves after Auer. "Have a wonderful day full of leveling up! ...no offense, but you look like you'll NEED it."
2. Obtain a
Before we do this, we equip up at the local shop. Some overalls, thick gloves, and a folding pocket knife. We're a long way from swords and plate mail here. We also grab some "stick-on armor", which is just a rack of bulletproof tiles attached to a sticker. It breaks easy, but it's extra protection. Then it's off to Junk Mountain!
Before we leave though, I skip ahead a bit to...
6. Talk to Doctor Solomon.
Doctor Solomon is enormous. He used to be a monster researcher, but he's fallen on hard times. Still, he'd like to get back into that again, so he hires us to
From there it's off to Junk Mountain! (As we leave town, Dad emails us to let us know he thinks it's awesome we're gonna be a Hunter. Thanks, Dad.) Junk Mountain is a giant mountain of, uhm. Junk. And it's patrolled by these dudes.
Which are giant knives with robot legs who ride around on unicycle wheels. They pedal around and stab you. The future of AI Technology, I guess. They explode when we stab them back. Also around here are walking gas cans on legs (which explode when stabbed), zombies made of rusty metal stuck together (which explode when stabbed) and giant slugs (which explode when stabbed). I do not believe there is any enemy (including other people) in Metal Saga which does NOT explode when you defeat it. If I ever successfully find anything NOT made of explodium I'll let you all know.
A good long time of wandering around the heaps later, and we've found our prize.
Our first "tank". The game doesn't make a lot of distinction, it calls several things tanks that... obviously aren't. Humanity has clearly lost the ability to tell a hawk from a handsaw, but that's okay. It means we can weaponize some really interesting vehicles.
You can do a lot of things to your vehicles... smack more armor on them or strip armor tiles off to lighten the load, use them as carry-mules, tune them and repaint them, and of course ride them into battle. They even get names, because they're basically as important as the humans in your group.
That's what this is, right? As a note, tank names can be changed. If YOU have a preference for what we name the "Buggy", please do let me know and as soon as the option's available I'll swap names out.
The Handsaw comes with a Buggy chasis (the basic vehicle), a "Donkey" engine (able to drive with up to 8 tons of weight on board), a Spasibo II CPU (or "C-Unit", the AI that allows only one human to drive a tank that should take three or four people) and 7.62mm gatling gun that requires no ammo to shoot at things.
Which is all really cool, but doesn't seem like quite enough somehow. If only we had something --
yes perfect.
We find this 37mm main cannon in a box on the way out and it puts us a ton overweight, so Auer snaps off armor tiles until the Handsaw rolls with it installed. It's okay, there's only one enemy in the Junk Mountain that can even scratch us in this beauty and it can do, at best, maybe 13 damage per attack.
Take that, Trashie. We gonna get paaaaid. O/~ $$$ o/~
On the way out after THAT explodes, we pick up some camo clothing and a shotgun... which is (LAW OF ANIME) much weaker than our folding knife. It does hit all... but we have a BUGGY. Why would we get out and shoot things? Never get out of the car.
Back in town we save and turn our bounties in. That puts us at a cool two and a half grand -- not bad work for an evening... and we're not even done raking in the cash. Still... for now, let's save and stop.
Tune in tomorrow for biology, piracy, and more Metal Saga!
(psst. Hey. How are the screenshots? Big enough? Too big?)
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no subject
Date: 2014-04-19 07:24 pm (UTC)AND MR. TORGUE THINKS THAT IS AWESOME!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2014-04-21 02:45 am (UTC)