Week of 11 Aug 2024
“Now feel the scorching heat of my fire!”
Achievements Earned In:
- MicroBot
- Front Mission Evolved
- Power Rangers Super Samurai
- Defenders of Ardania
- Dragon Sinker: Descendants of Legend
- Vampire Survivors
There wasn’t much left of MicroBot as I began the week. I was entering the final area, and luckily had managed not to miss any of the collectibles up to this point, so it was all about just killing the end boss and grabbing his collectible for that achievement. There’s a “rougelite” challenge mode that has you making it through random areas, and an achievement for making it through three of them. The first attempt didn’t go well, as the third area threw a few too many enemies with homing missiles at me at once and I got wrecked. Luckily the second attempt was much easier and the spawns were very easy and manageable so I knocked that out. That just left a small grind for Atoms, since I didn’t realize earlier that I needed the 50k Atoms on-hand for the achievement and I’d foolishly been upgrading everything as I went. But just running the first encounter in 2-1 repeatedly garners plenty of Atoms at a very nice and laidback rate. And that’s that! Neat little game that I’m glad I snagged before it was lost to time forever.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+9) | Completed
You'll never make it to the ovaries on my watch!
This week was all Front Mission Evolved’s multiplayer with my new boosting partner, Jimbo LaFleur. It wasn’t easy, as the servers aren’t exactly in the best state, like with most Xbox 360 online titles nowadays. But the winning solution was for him to host the match and then we could all connect. We tried multiple methods of grinding experience while also working on winning on every level and match type, and soon found that the established method is by far the most efficient. We thought maybe there would be a better one since we’re double-boxing, but really the presence of our alternate accounts only helped to make coordination easier. Domination, on Vritra, meet in the middle, Wanzer A shoots of Wanzer B’s armor, Wanzer B does the same, Wanzer A kills Wanzer B and then self-destructs off the bridge. Rinse and repeat! I ended the week with just over 100k experience (out of the needed almost 198k), so likely two more sessions?
Achievements unlocked: 26 (+5) | Completion: 96%
I jumped back into Power Rangers Super Samurai on Tuesday, and found that when the Xbox 360 I had connected to the old Kinect had died earlier in the week it had taken my save with it. Why I had the save on the console instead of the cloud? No idea. But I figured I’d at least try and get some of the easier or early-game achievements I’d missed before. Especially the one for dodging the spin attack of the second boss three times in a row. I also found out the progress on my badges was saved to my profile, so I started where I left off! Which is fine since it’s a massive grind anyway. I think I’m gonna make it a point to really start making serious progress on this game at a more consistent pace soon.
Achievements unlocked: 17 (+3) | Completion: 36%
Like MicroBot, another digital-only, non-backwards compatible Xbox 360 title I grabbed was Defenders of Ardania and, since I love tower defense games, I wanted to start it soon! But to make sure I didn’t get screwed, I figured I’d knock out the one online achievement before something happened. It took barely a few minutes to get it with double-boxing and having my other account quit out as each match started, so that’s all I really “played” of this game so far.
Achievements unlocked: 1 (+1) | Completion: 8%
The only reason I didn’t dig into Defenders of Ardania was that Xbox announced the Free Play Days games for the weekend, and I decided to do Dragon Sinker: Descendants of Legend from notorious RPG-mill Kemco. Seriously, take a scroll through the recent games on the store and if you see anime key art with gameplay that looks like a generic Japanese RPG and a generic name, it’s probably Kemco. And the style of RPGs they make range from NES- to PS1-era games, so I guess that’s neat. This game is included in the new KEMCO RPG Selection Vol. 1 bundle, which was included in this week’s Free Play Days in its entirety, so I quickly discerned which is the easiest of the four included titles and landed on this one. It’s got a 12hr-15hr completion time, and it’s all very straightforward and easy. Annoyingly, I would have been done maybe an hour earlier if the walkthrough on TA didn’t leave out some important foresight for the final achievement/battle. It tells you to just change your job for any characters that max out, but you should be focusing on specific ones for your main team: namely the knight, baker, dancer, sage, villager, and bard. Even better, there are special combinations of auto-skills you can get that increase their effectiveness. This would in turn make the final challenge (for beating the final boss in a ten-round endurance battle) much easier to reach by lessening the baked-in grind needed to achieve this. Ugh, guide writers have just been getting on my nerves lately. Even worse, they don’t mention that you can use the in-game currency to revive your whole party without invalidating your attempt, making this even easier! Otherwise, I couldn’t begin to tell you the narrative of the game, since I just bolted through all the dialogue, and there mechanics aren’t anything exceptional. Another nice and simple “free” completion from these promotions.
And, no, I have no idea what dragon was sunk.
Achievements unlocked: 30 (+30) | Completed
Truly imaginative names!
Oh look, Vampire Survivors got more achievements! Jumped into the game via Cloud at work and entered in a secret code to unlock one of the new achievements. I’m sure it won’t be hard to knock this new batch out like all the previous ones.
Achievements unlocked: 212 (+1) | Completion: 96%
Highest ratio: 10.29
EXTRA: Room 1665 (Vampire Survivors)
Lowest ratio: 1.00
A Journey Begins (Dragon Sinker: Descendants of Legend)
