Winter Tail

A small handful of games, especially indie games and roguelikes (Dwarf Fortress is the capital offender of this) are praised for having a large amount of depth and detail to them, from a huge amount of equipment for every conceivable slot, to your own vital organs having their own HP values. The question though is: "Is it worth it?"

I find that some of the games I really like are the ones that put a lot of effort in the mechanics and a lot of detail into them. Like, a sword's ...

A few moments prior to writing this, Etrian Odyssey 3 came in the mail, which is good because I've not written a review or article in quite a while. All I know of this game is what an odd mix of a friend/asshole/lucky guy. And what is known is nothing much more than "Very breakable" and "epic music".

I flipped through the artbook to get an idea of the style of the game. The art style is like most japanese games, cept the proportions are something between chibi and ...

As I've said, I'm an avid player of Phantasy Star Online, very good game and a classic online game. The main focus is on running through a dungeon and obliterating everything. My focus is on nuking the Hell out of everything with single-target spells that I get a huge boost to from both my race and my weapons. My hotbar is hogged by spells for every forseeable situation, and I'm a ridiculously valuable party member due to my extreme damage output.

So, doing Ruins in episode 1 on Hard, ...

[B]Surviving the game - being a party member:[/B]

MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online, they generally have much higher difficulty ratings than standard games as they assume more people will work together as a team, which is required in most of them since you will never get anywhere in an online game if you just solo everything since some enemies simply cannot be taken down with your standard technique.

When you're in a party with people, you are responsible for ...

So boredom struck and I decided to write a rather long article on how to survive in an MMO with a list of universal rules that more or less apply to every single one that I've personally played. I've not played too many MMOs, or MUDs, my personal list is made up of Shin Megami Tensei Online, Valkyrie Sky, and Phantasy Star Online. In addition to those, I've played Materia Magica and a handful of indie multiplayer games.

I've noticed a firm pattern in how many of them work, I can easily ...