[Tiny Farm] Winter Animals Collection

2013/01/242013/02/28 koukoupuffsLeave a comment

Final update (Feb 7th):

I forgot to update this entry after the promo ended. ^^; Just so everyone knows, you can STILL get the animals from the Winter Collection via any sort of egg. This has always been the case once a holiday promotion or special event ends. They may even appear from a Valentine’s Egg or present throughout this current Valentine’s Day event!

I never got a Winter Alpaca even though I bought many Golden Eggs and even Frozen and Mysterious Eggs. >_> It’ll probably be summer time when it’ll show up. 😛

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Update! January 31~! (For Winter Deer)

Tiny Farm - Winter Deer Quest — 7 Times!? Good thing the community has put together a list of folks with the animal!

So Com2uS updated the game last night to include the Winter Deer. Players have confirmed that ANY tier Reindeer or Sika Reindeer pairs can breed the animal. Additionally, this thread has a list of players with 1 or more Winter Deer at their farms. As usual, Alfredo has a few too~

Tiny Farm - Alfredo's Winter Deers — He/Com2uS also has one in the Toy Village.

Tiny Farm - Winter Collection Final — Looks like Com2uS finally settled on the animals of the Level 1 Collection. Kind of disappointed they’re not all alpaca. XD

Update at 5:22 PM ET:

Finished the first at of the quest~! :3 Now to breed a Winter Deer. X_X

Tiny Farm - 2nd Winter Deer Objective — Breed reindeer types, buy eggs, or spend money to buy another one with 150 Bells. :B (Of course, you can use TapJoy offers to get all those Bells too.)

You know, I visited a few farms manned by Korean and Chinese players and lord, they LOVE to spend money on the game. It’s evident that they’re splurging on IAP since there’s no way they can have like 50 Nine-Tail Fox each in Tiny Farm, Tiny Beach, AND/OR, Toy Village. Check out this screencap below. All the white things between the Christmas Fences and Hello Kitty Cars are Nine-Tail Foxes:

Tiny Farm - Someone has too much money — It’s possible this player constantly gets Bells and Hearts from other players too. Either way, this person thinks Tiny Farm is worth hundreds of dollars. Or maybe it’s a Com2uS employee?

I’m content playing the game in a slow, snail-like pace since I don’t have tons of money to spend on it. And even if I did, I’d limit myself. The above is just an example of extreme fanaticism, in my opinion (assuming it really IS a regular user). But I digress. Anyway, my first Winter Alpaca still eludes me. 😦

Tiny Farm - Winter Collection - No Winter Alpaca :( — Where is my Winter Alpaca? TT

Edit on Feb 2nd:
Got my second Winter Reindeer~! For what it’s worth, I bred level 95 and 100 Blue Reindeers. Pretty sure levels don’t have much influence during these promos because it always takes me meant tries before I get one. (Typically, higher level animals means that a higher tier breed comes out easier.)

Tiny Farm - Winter Deers~! — FYI, I don’t provide my ID because I like to keep my visits consistent. I’m too lazy to keep track of who I didn’t visit before and stuff. Sorry.

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Update! January 24~! (For Winter Bear)

Winter Bears in Alfredo/Com2uS)'s farm — Very adorable bears!

All right, here’s the lo down so far about getting a Winter Bear! The following are reported as working methods by people at the official Com2uS forums and Tiny Farm Facebook page:

Breed Bears or Polar Bears of any tier. Yes, talking-type bears are included too!
Frozen Egg. (Unsure if a regular polka-dotted Mysterious Egg will allow you to get one too. :/)
Finishing the first part of the current quest which rewards you with a Winter Bear. If you need user IDs for folks with Winter Bears, check the links above. Com2uS (Alfredo’s farm) has 2 Winter Bears for everyone to groom so take advantage of that!

Winter Alpaca, Winter Bear, and ... ??? — This Winter Collection is turning out to be pretty cute! Hope the last one in the Level 1 Collection isn’t an ugly assed donkey or horse.

Blargh. I never got a Winter Alpaca even after breeding all manner of Alpaca around 50 times during the course of the promo. Apparently, they’re available through eggs during this time … which is pretty much how any player can get rare animals once a promotion is over. 😡

Edit on Jan 25th:

Tiny Farm - Winter Bear get! — Tiny Farm – Winter Bear get!

Tiny Farm - 2nd part of Winter Bear quest — Sadly, you can’t breed a Winter Bear with any other bear to get one.

Edit on January 27th:

Finally got my 2nd Winter Bear~!

I got the other one by breeding a Level 46 Polar Bear and Level 37 Black Polar Bear. Originally, I was using Brown, Red, and Turquoise Bears but after many tries, no Winter Bear appeared. The Polar Bear types took less attempts. (Was actually using 2 Polar Bears at first.)

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Original post from January 16th (for Winter Alpaca):

Not sure which Alpacas to breed. Will update once I find out. — People are reporting that breeding any kind of alpaca will do~!

~~Sorry for the horribly useless post but I’m putting this as a placeholder until I uncover the information.~~ So far, I have a regular Alpaca and Black Alpaca on my farm. I just bred them a few moments ago and out popped a regular one. 😦 I’ll try breeding 2 1st tier types to see if I get anything. I hope so though because it’s cute! ^o^

Edit: Word at the Com2uS forum is that a regular Alpaca + Pure White Alpaca (tier 3) will produce at Winter Alpaca.

Edit #2: Tiny Farm Facebook page has people reporting any combination of alpaca types will do.

Not sure if the app didn’t update properly but there’s no reward (other than gold and experience) and all the Winter Animals are alpaca variants???

Edit #3 (Jan 21): Bred them like 30 times already and still haven’t even gotten a Winter Alpaca. 😡 I’ve been switching between alpaca pairs but I might focus more on the regular ones for the last 2 days. Goddamn.

games · iOS

Final Fantasy ATB: Expensive Nostalgia

2013/01/172013/02/22 koukoupuffsLeave a comment

I bought Final Fantasy All the Bravest out of curiosity. It truly should have been freemium or at least a goddamn 99-cent game. Square’s been pretty outrageous with their pricing strategies so it’s not a surprise that they’d tack on in-app purchases on top of the amount you have to pay up front.

Here’s my no frills look at the game. I’m not going to talk about the visuals or music since I imagine most reviews around the Web already do:

Mindlessly Tap or Swipe Your Way to Victory

The gameplay is like a much more interactive version of many RPG-themed Japanese waiting games (see Hunt the Monsters! and Hunt the Hero! I should mention that you can at least make use of the virtual money gained in those titles. The currency in All the Bravest is just number on the screen). Incidentally, I pretty much only make the comparison to point out how insanely effortless and inane this game is. Oh, plus there’s the whole character, weapon and monster collecting bit too. With that out of the way, I’ll just get back on track about the gameplay — In FF ATB, you just get a bunch of randomly selected generic 16-bit heroes based on various job classes found in various FF games and tap on them or swipe across them to trigger attacks. They’ll attack on their own and you have absolutely no control over which enemy they target, nor get a say in what attacks they should use. As far as I can tell, each character only has one type of attack anyway. The speed at which they’ll throw themselves at an enemy is dependent on how quickly their Active Time Battle meters fills.

You start off with a microscopic number of characters. However, after some hours of levelling (or some hefty investments in Premium Characters), you’ll be travelling around with a party of a maximum of 40 units. To speed up the process, you also have the option of getting 1 additional party slot by helping SE promote the game through the wonders of social networking; you can either spam the Facebook time line or Twitter feed of your friends. To ensure that your followers won’t defriend you or physically come to your home to punch you in the face, you’re limited to 1 status update/tweet per 24 hours. Of course, they may still perform either action once they learn that you actually bought FF ATB.

Most battles will cause your pixel party to dwindle in size as enemies can take out party members in one hit. Once your group is reduced to 0, you have to wait for the party meter to replenish which goes at the rate of 1 character per 3 minutes. There’s an hourglass icon next to the meter though which will allow you to bring back everyone in an instant. Square gives you 3 complimentary hourglasses but if you require more, you’ll have to toss money at them. Such gimmicks are typical of freemium titles but sadly, this game isn’t freemium.

You will navigate the world map by a pre-determined route. Enemy encounters and bosses are in fixed locations but with the exception of boss monsters, they’re randomly generated from a pool that’s specific to the spot your party avatar is standing on. Speaking about bosses, there’s a good chance they’ll wipe out your party on a first try. If you happen to have a Fever saved up, this would be one of the best times to trigger it. (A Fever simply gives you a brief moment, free of ATB meters, where you can swipe or tap your screen like mad to try and get in as much damage as you can. It also only pops up once every three hours.)

OCD + In-App Purchases = Lots of Money Down the Drain

Every single enemy in the game has a weapon spoil but the drop rate isn’t very high which means obsessive-compulsive players will have to repeat battles over and over until they get it. Of course, it’s most likely dependent on the enemy as well since I’ve gotten a few drops from later enemies but I’m still working on the damn Cockatrice from the first map. There are also rare monsters too such as the Cactuar and Tonberry which means more rounds of visiting areas you’ve already conquered. Joy.

Square Enix had it in their heart to exploit fans right from the start since there’s actually a Catalog that records all the job types unlocked, Premium Characters bought, weapons found, and enemies encountered. Really, it’s obvious it’s a game made for people that obsess over collecting everything in a game. What these kinds of players should realize, however, is that FF ATB is a very costly game as there are 35 Premium Characters to collect that cost 99 cents each and 3 different Premium areas, each with a price tag of $3.99 (for some unfathomable reason). If you add everything up, you’re looking at just over $50 US/CAD for the game which is bloody expensive given the lack of content and substance. In fact, you can probably buy 1 or 2 FF mobile games at full price and get a ton more out of them than you ever could with Final Fantasy All the Bravest. I would definitely recommend waiting for this title to go on sale before taking the plunge.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that while you can obtain Gil in the game, there’s no way to spend it. However, there is a Game Center leaderboard based on how much wealth you’ve racked up.

Anyway, here’s a gallery of some screenshots I took while playing FF ATB.

1 character per 3 minutes or use the Gold Hourglass to get all characters back. Sadly, the game only provides you with 3 Hourglasses. If you want more, you have to pay.

Speck of life left but he knocked out all my characters. >:/

Yay! I can …. buy stuff now! With real money!

For $4 each, you can get new areas to play in.

Every enemy drops a weapon. I suppose they’re auto equipped because you can only view them in the Catalog.

As you level, new jobs will become available.

>:/

What was funny was the first battle in this area had about 99% Beastmasters. ^^;

Dark Knight Cecil! ❤ ❤ ❤ (Not entirely sure I'll get any more Premium characters. I only purchased one to test out the restore purchases feature. ^^)

Uh oh. It’s the annoying boss pair from FFVI.

Had a Fever saved up. Mwaha. Took them both one. XD

There are Regular and Premium achievements. >_>

Why this game wasn’t freemium from the start is beyond me because this is the sort of shit you’d see in them.

Android · games

Impressions of some RPGs on Android

2013/01/062013/02/21 koukoupuffsLeave a comment

The quest for fun RPGs on Android continues! However, I think I discovered 3! ❤

The Bard’s Tale

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inxile.BardTale&hl=en

Like all the games I’m writing about in this entry, I only put in a few hours (or maybe even less) into The Bard’s Tale. I just got to the jail part in Houton Forest. Managed to kill one of the prisoners by accident but I got the door open on a second try. XD I didn’t save since I want to see if I can keep all three alive.

I’m not going to write much about the gameplay or story since that’s what search engines are for. But here’s a link to a walkthrough, just because. Anyway~ Quick pros and cons. XD

Pros~

The voice acting isn’t all that bad so far
Has subtitles (I always enable subs in games)
Fun dialogue. The bard’s a pretty snarky guy and it can get a little grating at times though. $:\$
Handy familiar! 😀 I love my Thunder Spider. Can’t wait to learn more tunes because hopefully, I’ll get even better partners. :3
Decent graphics. They look very sharp on my Galaxy Tab 10.1. Given the fact that this is a port of a game that came out 9 years ago on the PS2, I’d say it looks pretty swell. (I’m unsure if they tweaked the graphics though.) Incidentally, I’m playing the standard definition version.
Graphics-related customization options such as lowering details, shadows, frame rate, etc.
Quest/target locations are marked on the mini map.

Cons~

Big ass file size. I have a 16 GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 which doesn’t have a card reader of any sort. This means I am stuck with only 16 GBs of storage space. Standard def file size is 1.3 GB or something. HD is 3 GB. I chose the former due to storage size and I also had some doubts on how well the tablet could run a high definition version. (Wait. I never did check to see if HD only applied to pre-rendered videos.)
Fixed camera. For some reason, I think I would have preferred it more if the camera followed the direction of your character in dungeons. I have to keep rotating it to make sure I’m not missing barrels to hit or treasure chests to loot and stuff.

9th Dawn (Demo)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.valorware.vw9thdawntechdemo

Sweet bejeezus. Why couldn’t Forgotten Tales be like this? 9th Dawn reminds me of Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny which automatically means good times because U5 is among my fave Ultima games. (I really wish people wouldn’t compare FT to the Ultima series because it’s a massive insult to the latter.) I’m not sure there’s a party system in 9th Dawn since I’ve only played the demo and it restricts the player to some very early quests as well as a small portion of the world, but based on the battle system, I kind of doubt it.

Real-time battles have taken the place of the turn-based ones seen in pre-Ultima VII: The Black Gate. People left critiques on the product page complaining that the character can only face one way in battles and that the controls were terrible. I must admit that I thought the same thing initially too until I started tapping within the circle in the direction of an enemy instead of flicking. This made fights infinitely easier and didn’t result in constant death.

Unfortunately, tapping doesn’t work with ranged weapons such as bows and arrows; you have to remember to flick away from enemies. Otherwise, you would probably think that the character can only face one way. >_> One neat thing about using a bow is that you can retrieve some of the arrows that missed their targets.

Oh hey! There’s an Aim Assist option in the Game Options menu. I kind of prefer rapidly firing arrows wildly though because with the Aim Assist on, I’m forced to …. aim properly.

Now on to the good and bad about 9th Dawn (demo version):

Pros~

Decent balance. Levelling up doesn’t take an eternity and enemies don’t swarm you like bees. And if they do, it’s possible to move away from them while attacking (if you have room).
Hot key binding. Super useful when being attacked since everything happens in real time; you’re not safe even when you’re perusing your inventory.
You can sleep in anyone’s bed. That’s right, be like Goldilocks — just wander into a stranger’s home and take a POWERFUL NAP.
Quest hints. Although not all areas are clearly marked on the overworld map, it’ll at least give you an idea of where to go, what to do, and what to look for. Oh, there’s also a handy quest log too (which can be easily accessed if you map it to one of the Item Binding slots :3).
Day and Night system. I remember this from Ultima V as well but in that game, there’s more of a reason for it since you had to pay attention to moon phases and such to use Moon Gates (which only worked at night). In 9th Dawn, I’m not sure if there are any specific quests or monsters that come out during certain times of day but I suppose it’s there to add more depth or something? I mean, your field of view is severely limited during night hours. But come day time, you can see things many squares away!

9th Dawn demo - Night Time — Field of vision sure is limited!

9th Dawn demo - Day Time — I can see again!

Cons~

Better documentation. Maybe like some step-by-step screenshots or even a video in-game of how to use melee and ranged weapons. That should cut down on the amount of low ratings the game gets. 😛 There’s an NPC that gives you a run-down of the basics but lord knows visual aid would work better for a lot of people.
Not enough places to explore. It’s a demo so … XD

Twilight War

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ycgame.vampireen

OMG. How did I not discover this earlier!? The developers of the hilariously translated Gods Wars: Shadow of the Death released another RPG in English! I loved Gods Wars and even though I’m not even an hour in, I’m already enjoying Twilight War. Gameplay mechanics and features seem identical so far which is great because those are the things I liked about GW.

Sadly, the whacked out localization seems more in check this time. Still, you get silly sentences such as what you see in the screenshot below:

Twilight War - After hung D: — After … hung …??

Since there are many similarities to Gods Wars, you can probably refer to this link for the Pros: https://koukoupuffs.net/2012/08/16/gods-wars-shadow-of-the-death/

It’s too early to list the cons but I’m thinking grinding for levelling, money, and materials will fit the bill since Gods Wars eventually ended up that way. Still, I really appreciate the fact that the game doesn’t slap on restrictions for the sake of egging players to shell out money for more inventory space, stats, items, and equipment like certain Korean mobile game developers do.

Oh, there’s a slight issue about audio in Twilight War! To get around the no audio problem, right before starting or loading the game, go to the Options menu and at Volume, press left or right. For some reason, the game starts of on mute. I think this is some sort of trend that Chinese developers have (at least with their older games?) since I’ve seen many of them include a screen that pops up upon starting a game where it asks whether or not audio should be enabled.

Actually, I’m going to mark this as a con because not only does the game start off with no sound, but I can’t make use of the volume buttons on my tablet to adjust the volume. I have to go into the device system menu and raise or lower the audio from there.

Edit:

Ran into an issue! The side quest named “Treasure Exploration3” causes the game to freeze. 😦 I sent an e-mail to GTWMarket (the developer) in simple English in regards to the bug. I read at the Play Store that there were other people experiencing freezes but at different points in the game. Hopefully, they might update the game in the near future.
Selling equipment and items is still as hazardous as it was in Gods Wars. There’s no confirmation of whether or not you want to sell something. D: It actually requires double tapping an item but the big problem is that the touch accuracy (not sure what to call it) is off so it’s extremely easy to sell something you don’t mean to sell. The proper place to touch is the empty space that’s right of an item to select it. 9__9 Not sure if this is the case with all devices though.
Oh, there’s a con (that’s also present in Gods Wars): You can’t sort your inventory. 9__9

Edit #2:

Well, the game freezes every time I try to load up a save in the Corruption Area(?) 2. I e-mailed the dev but no reply and no updates. I’m not surprised at all. Well, it’s been a fun few hours I suppose.