I agree with Arac. The more I’ve played fallout, including that AWFUL DLC, the more its left a bad taste in my mouth.
Ookay… To be honest, I don’t remember^ where I got stuck last time, but maybe I’ll fire up my emu and retry (next year). I think I followed SE’s advice last time (I’d surely read one of his long-ass posts before replaying), but my stuff is already backed up somewhere and I won’t be searching for it now.
^I think I let her live, magnanimous being my middle name.
@ poke: OMG! I never got the 4th fucking shaman bitch. Holy shit. I can see why now. Which town is it btw? Btw, there is a version of the ultimate spells that hurts everyone and a version that hits the enemies only. They can only be used by warlocks and the princess class. My princess was level 40 when everyone was level 20 because its all she did. I used an item to give her mp at the start of the fight and had her cast it and wipe out the map.
Yes, the “Dragon Magic” spells, that you can get in Hell’s Gate. (Or at least after you’ve been there, because you have to unlock the warlock class in there. I don’t remember where you actually get them. It’s been so long since I played it. :P)
I usually used the Charge spell instead of items if I wanted to boost MP, just because it’s very useful if you know the trick to using it.
(The spell is probably meant to “transfer MP”, except it happens like this:
- Target recieves MP.
- Caster loses an equivalent amount of MP, but if she doesn’t have that much, she loses whatever she has.
So if a Witch casts it on someone and has 10 MP left, the target might get 40-50 MP while the Witch won’t lose more than 10 MP.
The trick is: Since the MP loss is calculated BEFORE the spell takes effect, you can cast it on yourself to gain 50 MP, then lose 10 MP because the spell doesn’t take into account the MP it generated itself.)
Reincarnate and Snapdragon are much more broken than the attack spells though.
Reincarnate because you can use it to max out your stats VERY easily if you combo it with Necromancy*. And Snapdragon because you can sacrifice soldiers to create weapons that are just INSANE.
Anyway, I used to use this guide which has this to say:
"How to get Shelley Fouriner: (From Horiyama)
When you are in Banhamooba Palace, you have to fight this un-filial
daughter. If you kill her, she is dead, and that sucks. So if you want to save
her, these are the steps:
knock her HP lower than 20.
Make sure you have all other three sisters (not sure if all are needed, but the
Water Sister is needed I think).
When HP is lower than 20, she will run away. Then go back to Fidach Castle and
see the event.
Then head to Barmamutha village. Go to training then use the magic Call Storm
After that, try to leave the town, there will be an event for her to join."
(The item I was referring to before has the same effect as the Call Storm spell. It’s called a Dragon’s Horn, and you can get it by selling a Thunder Dragon at lvl 10 or higher at Grimsby.)
There’s some other step too, sort of alternate way of getting her or something. But that refers to “the Neutral route” which I never really understood how you were supposed to go.
Hmm… Re-reading bits of the guide, I just rememebered that you should NOT let Kachua commit suicide. You should save her, and then let her die IN BATTLE, if you want to unlock the Lord class.
…Man, now I want to replay Tactics Ogre again even though I’ve probably played through it a dozen times already. :S
No, seriously. I have.
I played through it over half a dozen times on SNES emulator, so I didn’t understand ANYTHING about the plot other than “okay, so Guy #1 just stabbed Guy #2 and then Guy #4 said something about “Chicken Man” (Canopus).” ^^
I was very happy to get my hands on the PSX version later. The loading times were worth it to actually be able to understand what the heck I was doing.
And so I didn’t have to remember to the towns as “Okay, they wan’t me to go to town “box, squiggly line, window, hat”.” (I don’t think there was a town like that, but you get the point. I couldn’t read the actual town names, so I just tried to remember roughly what the kanji looked like so I could keep an eye out for it while skipping through the dialogue. :P)
*The Necromancy - Reincarnate trick is a classic, but in case someone didn’t know:
Necromancy revives a dead party member as a ghost or a skeleton. Reincarnate will turn a ghost/skeleton into a lvl 1 soldier/amazon. Except you keep all your stats, but HP/MP are reduced by 50%. So your soldier have the stats of a, say, lvl 30 character and half the HP/MP of one. But he IS lvl 1, so he can be leveled up to lvl 30 again for roughly double the stats of a lvl 30. (And then you can do the trick AGAIN, if you want.)
Hmm I didn’t know the reincarnate trick. I had no patience to do the snapdragon stuff. Besides, the dragon magic was overpowered as it was.
I haven’t actually done the trick or any Snapdragons either (except in Knight of Lodis where Snapdragon is found in the form of items instead of a spell), so I can’t even say for sure that it works. I’ve just read that it’s supposed to work that way in guides. 
All I’m wondering about Fallout 3 is this: It’s been TWO HUNDRED YEARS since the bombs went off, why is the sky still yellow? The dust kicked by the dinosaur-killing meteor shouldn’t have stayed that long, let alone the dust from the nukes. Even if they didn’t rebuild, the completely radiated barren wasteland is a little hard to buy after two centuries.
Fallout is powered by Science! rather than Science. It’s a cultural satire of the Cold War that grew into a cultural satire of America in general. I mean, if you want to talk about inaccuracy, let’s start with ghouls, immortal zombies made by radiation. Or the fact that there are fairl advanced androids but green-on-green computers that don’t seem to have microchips. It’s a world with the wonky envisioning of the Future! from '50s-'80s B grade sci fi and Reagan-era star wars defense ideas. I could totally see the gipper comissioning a giant, commie-hating robot who ignores the square-cube law of mass with his righteous hatred of those damn pinkos.
I actually like Fallout 3 a lot, it’s just the ending that is stupid. Well, that and a few things that really should have been followed up on Go say hi to Gob’s mom. She says to tell him she loves him. Go back to Gob. Do not have the option of saying this. Thanks., especially considering how simple they were. I had the PS3 version, so I got to dodge the stupid-sounding DLC. I wouldn’t take the expansion pack, anyhow; no way I’m joining the Brotherhood of Steel. I hate those fuckers, for reasons mentioned in the spoiler.
The problems with fallout isn’t only the ending. The problems extend to mediocre gameplay, bad design, flat voice acting, lack of reason to give a shit about anything, esp since your partners are completely inert to everything happening around you because they (as Bethesda admits) were added late. Its a single player MMO where you go from 1 place to the next to collect x items or kill y bad guy and one’s choices don’t have very far reaching impact. The game isn’t bad but it is severely overhyped. Fallout is a nice world with a lot of style and that’s the extent of it. And christ does it ever show that the guys at Bethesda are MASSIVE D&D nerds (pun intended). A lot of games do everything Fallout 3 does but better. Mass Effect and Fable 2 come to mind. I didn’t dislike Fallout 3 so strongly until I finished the DLC…
I enjoyed the gameplay, personally. As for reason to give a shit about anything, that’s the way things are. These are people who need help. You have no reason to give a shit about them beyond a desire to help or more physical self-interest. The only parter I took with me was Fawkes, who was actually fairly responsive to the shit that happened in the world, marvelling that people didn’t hate him because of his appearance, even trusted him despite it, because he was with me.
Then again, this could come down to you disliking open-ended games, which tend to offer less concrete backing and impact isn’t too far-reaching for while, and me disliking games which rail me in. Word of the good things you do spreads, at least, and people being to appreciate you as a hero. I mean, you’re helping small towns one at a time, and they aren’t going to figure out until GNR or a caravan explains what happened in one of the other towns. The endings of the first two do a better job at showing what you achieve; starting a new societyfrom which civilization can rebuild by saving a single girl, for instance, than the third. I like the friends you make and the little good deeds you do, though. I like just being a part of the world that strives for good, which is the feeling Fallout gives.
I’ve never played fallout but judging from the responses about it from everyone here, I’m not so sure I want to…should I? Would it still be worth getting? I don’t want to get it only to have a bad experience with it and give it back to my local retailer…
Get the original two. It’s cheaper, and you’ll have a better experience (not that I hated the third at all, it’s just… not as good :-P).
You’re welcome.
It helps to play them first, even if you do go for the third. I liked the ability to talk/lockpick oneself out of more situations than one could in the Third, but the engine of the first two, in both combat and basic movement always felt clumsy to me.
Alternatively, one may download the same three games as the Amazon deal in a wholly legal way for about ten dollars less. Search, like, Fallout Trilogy Download. You’ll get Fallout, Fallout 2, and the ability to install Fallout Tactics, which I would advise against actually doing.
Fuck that, Fallout Tactics kicks ass. It’s fucking hard though.
I’ve only seen someone play the third game, but I really enjoy the first two Fallout games. Combat and basic movement doesn’t really feel clumsy to me, but maybe that’s a (small) generation gap? Games like that were fairly common when Fallout came out.
It’s not that it’s old, it just doesn’t do some small, specific things (scrolling is such a pain, the city design where you have to physically walk out to the map instead of just going to it, pixel-hunting with some skills, saving a game on the start of my turn in combat and loading it to find it the enemy’s turn, that sort of thing) that really hurt over the course of a game. It just feels like X-Com, but with a little less care put into the engine. I also just find it comically ridiculous to see the zigzag pattern the little dude runs when he wants to make a straight line across hexes.
I had the same problem with the first Fallout. The concept is original and all, but I thought the control scheme was awkward and required “too much clicking.” The option to rest was buried somewhere in one of the menus, you had to push a button to end combat, your inventory screen only showed a few things and you had to scroll each time, and so on. I also thought that scrolling on the screen was also pointlessly cumbersome. I’ve played a couple of Fallout clones which streamlined the process a little (e.g. the same detailed character generation, but with real-time combat a la Diablo, or an inventory screen that shows all your items together), and I thought it was much more convenient that way.
It can be tedious, but keep in mind all the features this game had for its time limited by the technical advancements. True there was a lot of clicking though.
I can understand and even agree. But what makes Fallout stand out isn’t gameplay. It’s the interesting characters, good writing, and world that sets Fallout and Fallout II above the rest.
Although I will say that I prefer turn-based combat to real-time. It’s easier for me to plan ahead and strategize in a turn-based environment. And don’t even get me started on Diablo. I don’t understand what the big fuss is about. Diablo and Diablo 2 had a horrible story, and completely BRAINLESS gameplay. It was one of the dullest series I’ve ever played. I didn’t even finish 2, because it was getting so tedious.
You know how to make Diablo fun, is to turn of the boring ambient music and put on hyperactive anime music. Then, you’ll do stupid things like run into a room of billy goats gruff and try to kill them all to death by yourself. Making consistently bad choices on purpose was what made Diablo fun to me, lol.
As that little side-bar indicates, I obviously got over my qualms with the first few Fallout games, I’m just pointing out that they have their downsides, too, since everyone is jumping all over the third, poor little guy. I honestly found the third to be just as well-written as the first. While it had a few oversights in sidestories, it also had a vastly larger number of possibilities to make one. Three’s only real, majour fuck-up in my eyes is still the ending. Which, I guess, the original hit perfectly.
EDIT: I always let just about everybody I could live in Ogre Battle. I was a good li’l guy. With some evil damn units.