So Zetta Slow - Hectopascal! The World Ends With You Appreciation Thread

The Game Room
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Spoilers may follow
Anyone else played this game? I think it’s now officially on my top 5 list, it was great just with the main story but the Another Day chapter just sealed the deal (Great, not only are we named after crayons but apparently this kid has been EATING them too…) I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a great joke chapter or self-parody.

Normally I don’t like characters who are insane just for the sake of having an insane character because they usually tend to have a disturbing lack of character development or lovability, but they seemed to pull it off amazingly with Sho (which I’m sure you can tell I thought from the title).

Right now I’m working on Secret Reports, post game stat buffing, and getting various Pin/Thread sets. I still need to beat Another Day’s Pork City, I heard the boss is a nightmare to beat, so I want to be reasonably well prepared for him. I also need to beat [del]Jesus’[/del] Joshua’s boss attack, curse him and his Technicolor Dreamcoat, but I really need to buff up first, I couldn’t even finish it on easy with my current setup (believe it or not I completed the main story on normal, then hard when available using almost entirely first week pins, albeit the evolved versions of a lot of them).

Overall I would rate it 10/10, it’s a very solid game, and a lot of fun to be had. My only complaint was spoilers with the totally unobvious ( :rolleyes: ) Jesus parallel (yup, totally unobvious, Joshua totally didn’t go ON A FREAKING CROSS before the final boss or anything, nope), but that feeling was summarily discarded because it was actually done pretty well, and was smothered by the sheer amount of awesome elsewhere.end spoilers

Anyone else play this? Insert obvious questions about how you felt and discussion questions blah blah

Also I was thinking of maybe doing an RP thread with the Reaper’s Game, though I think it may be a little complicated to explain without more than one participant having played TWEWY, so if there’s a few people here who may want to help planning we could get it started (we would only need reapers and players, I don’t think a composer or conductor is necessary unless we want to plan for someone going for the title and the GM would just be a volunteer/appointed reaper. Well, maybe a conductor for organization purposes.)

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Great game. You might appreciate this video review from Zero Punctuation. The reviewer trashes almost every game he reviews, but it’s quite entertaining.

The point he makes about how most JRPGs has you wheeling the main character from one cut scene to the next is quite valid. You do have very little choice in this game, even if you supposedly have a choice. But the game is made by the great combat, decent story, and fantastic presentation. I’ve never played a handheld game with this much style before, and even the J-Pop songs really add to the atmosphere. Just wish the gameplay was stronger outside of combat.

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Actually I probably would’ve never even heard of it had it not been for Yahtzee. :wink:

Though I agree you’re basically wheeling the character around I don’t mind that. Plenty of games do it and you still have at least a superficial effect (specifically: Whether Neku and partner actually live to see the next cutscene). Sometimes Yahtzee is a bit fickle, one review he says “there’s nothing particularly wrong with linearity in games” and the next he says “it doesn’t feel like my actions have any impact on the story.”

Whatever to each his own.

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I love the game. I just finished getting stars in all the categories last night–getting 100% pin mastery took the longest, mostly because I wound up having to master Anguis twice.

The Another Day chapter is hilarious, and it helps that Slammer is actually kind of fun to play (unlike most RPG minigames). The Pork City boss is tough, but fortunately you can still get his pin drops pretty easily with your level turned all the way up. CoBa came up with a very effective strategy, if you’d like me to post it. Equipping Joshua with the feather helps tremendously, but I’ve also beat him with Shiki. Fortunately, you only have to fight your way up through the floors once.

As to Joshua…

yes, they beat you over the head with the symbolism–but then they twist it around on you. There are two candidates for the martyr position, and Joshua isn’t one of them. He’s not the one who offers up his life in an effort to redeem people, nor is he the one who faces death in an act of faith. Read the Secret Reports, and watch the extra ending scene that unlocks once you get all of them; they might give you a different perspective on who’s who, and what their roles really are.