User:Erasculio

From Guild Wars Wiki

Contents 1 Who are you? 2 Anything you want to say? 3 What characters do you have? 3.1 Necromancer 3.2 Mesmer 3.3 Elementalist 3.4 Ranger 3.5 Ritualist 3.6 Assassin 3.7 Warrior 3.8 Dervish 3.9 Paragon 4 What are your favourite games? 4.1 Which games you don't like? 4.2 What are you playing now? 4.3 What do you plan to play?

[edit] Who are you?

Just one more Guild Wars player. And since everyone is so keen on those personality tests, I'm a INTJ (rather consistently, since the first time I did those tests was years ago).

[edit] Anything you want to say?

Here are my suggestions for Guild Wars 2.

Here's my suggestion for an account based title collecting achievements over all characters.

And here are my suggestions about what weapons to add to the Valor statue in the Hall of Monuments.

[edit] What characters do you have?

[edit] Necromancer

My necromancer was the first character I ever created, back at the October 2004 World Preview Even for Prophecies. She's not my main character, as I don't have a main character, but it is on her that I have felt many of the main changes on the game.

For example, back on the WPE, all minion spells took 5 seconds to recharge. It was funny - the event began on Lion's Arch with our level 15 characters, and when doing the first mission (Alessio), PUGs would be far, far away before I had managed to cast a single Animate Bone Horror >.> In other hand, Soul Reaping gave two points of energy per rank on it (without any of the current limits it has), so I could use skills as if I had infinite energy. I remember being very happy when my entire group died and yet I managed to kill the enemies, thanks to all the energy those deaths gave me. Of course, we were against three terrible menacing Fire Imps (-_-#), but it did felt like a huge accomplishment to kill them at the time.

Later, during the Prophecies Beta Weekend Events (more...)

[edit] Mesmer

[edit] Elementalist

Third character ever created, used mostly for some mindless exploding fun xD (more...)

[edit] Ranger

[edit] Ritualist

[edit] Assassin

[edit] Warrior

A character that has been created and left somewhat abandoned. I have never been too fond of the Warrior profession, but all the pretty weapon skins they have convinced me to make one (especially after seeing the Zodiac weapons, hence this character being Canthan) (more...)

[edit] Dervish

My second to last character, and one of my favourite ones (more...)

[edit] Paragon

My last character, probably the most powerful among them all (more...)

[edit] What are your favourite games?

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, Planescape: Torment and The Longest Journey are tied together as my favourite game. All of them share some trais - nice gameplay, nice graphics (for their time) but above all very strong stories, with excelent character development and great plots. Very good soundtracks help their feeling of imersion, as well.

For second place, Lunar: The Silver Star, Lunar: The Silver Star Story and Lunar 2:Eternal Blue Complete tie as well. All of them great games, but they still didn't have the same impact the original Lunar 2: Eternal Blue had on me.

For third place, Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant and Wizardry 8 tie together, as fitting for the beginning (middle?) of the story and its conclusion. Wizardry VII is pretty much why I learned English; playing a game filled with old English when I was 12 years old drove me to understand everything said in it, and in the end I learned the language with very little formal education on it (although I'm far from being fluent, as anyone who reads this knows very well : P; I'm happy to be able to read anything, though). Wizardry 8 took more than a decade to be finished, being a very long wait for the end of that story, but it was worth it, even if out of nostalgic value.

And now I give up on listing games by any order. My memory isn't good enough to remember everything I have ever played and rank everything; but my other favourite games, by genre, are:

• Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey. Another sequel that took years to be finished, and isn't even the end of the story itself, it has worse gameplay than the original (the actions sequences feel a bit out of place, and the puzzles are very simple) but the story and the imersion continue to be as excelent as ever.

• Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, one more adventure game driven by its story and by an amazing soundtrack. The other parts of the trilogy are games I have never been able to play, unfortunately, and don't think I ever will.

• Phantasy Star, yes, the original Master System one. Released when I was in my early teen years, me and my older brother had a lot of fun playing it together; I think it was the first console RPG I ever played. The first person dungeons were a trademark that was lost from the second game, but it was rather nice to make the maps for each and every cave and building in the game. One day someone will translate the PlayStation 2 remake and I'll play the game again on all its next gen glory...

• Phantasy Star IV, the end of the Phantasy Star series. It's good (and still a rarity, IMO) when a series finishes with a game meant to be the end; such was the case here, and PS IV tied up all loose ends from (almost) all the games. A nice, fun and light story with great character moments and plenty of nostalgic value. I plan to play PS 2 and 3 (I have them already, in fact), now it's just a matter of having enough time.

• The Final Fantasy series. So far I have played I, II (PlayStation 1 version), V, VI (Super NES version) and IX, although I plan to one day play all of them (ideally on the best possible version; I have a Nintendo DS so III and IV are already here, I just need time). Between the ones I have played, my favourite is FF6, thanks to the great characters and the great soundtrack. It was fun to take my favourite character, Celes, and give her so many anti-magic stuff that her Magic Block rate was above 100%. Whenever an enemy cast Fire 3, I would see the party being roasted, and the "tlint" of Celes blocking the spell with her shield : D The FF games interesting thanks to the feeling of despair they create - everything, from story to graphics to music give the impression that the bad guys have won, and all you have left to do is damage control.

• StarCraft, the best RTS game I have ever played. The setting, the story and the soundtrack were really good, but the diversity in gameplay is what truly caught me here. Three different races, each with completely different gameplay and many viable strategies, yet almost perfectly balanced - that's the best I could ask from a RTS, IMO. The expansion, Brood War, was also great... But to say the truth, my favourite StarCraft campaign, after the original, is the (never finished, and to be never finished) Antioch Chronicles.

• Emperor: Battle for Dune, a continuation of the mother of all RTS games, once again within the Dune universe (which I happen to be a fan of). The gameplay was interesting, although not that much revolutionary, and many units were the same between the three factions (as they have always been), but the game really shines on the details: the cutscenes and the story match exactly the David Lynch Dune movie, in all its over the top glory, and the graphics and music for each side is distinctive enough.

• Dawn of War, mostly the original game (the expansions are interesting, but the first game is the best one, IMO). An unique setting perfectly translated to the game (everything: the animations, the dialogues, the story, all of it makes clear what the Warhammer40k universe is about) together with a strategy game having inovative (to me, at least) elements. Here's to hoping that Dawn of War 2 won't be just a MMORP-lite.

• Final Fantasy Tactics, which isn't exactly a RTS, but... The story is great (despite the very VERY bad translation : P), but what I really like is the freedom of creating an army as we want. All abilities and professions available combine to give us plenty of options in how to fight. The Gameboy Advance sequel is interesting, but isn't really in this list thanks to all the childish elements and the annoying card system; I have yet to play the Nintendo DS sequel (or the PSP remake, something I won't be able to play anytime soon).

• Jedi Knight and Jedi Academy, both games I still play once in a while. Both games translated very well what it would feel like to play as a Jedi, and the mechanics of both lightsabers and Force powers were very interesting. The over the top cutscenes in JK and the many different missions in JA are worth mentioning.

• Heretic, my favourite FPS (and really, the only one I like - I play the Jedi games on third view all the time), filled with atmosphere, from the great soundtrack to the really, really funny weapons (shooting chains that grab the oponent, lift him and tear him apart always makes me smile). One mission managed to make my (older) brother sleepless for a couple nights. Both Hexen games weren't as interesting, but Heretic II was great - a very short third person game that also oozed atmosphere, and also had some great weapons.

• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. I like the exploring element of both games, together with the great soundtrack and the interesting story. But what I like the most here is the number of abilities the main character has - we may completely change our playstyle on the fly (which is the reason why these games are here, and Symphony of the Night isn't).

• Parasite Eve was actually recomended by my Biology teacher, although I wouldn't play it until years later. A good story with a great soundtrack, but the "scientific" idea behind the game was what really caught my attention. I actually think it does have, very deep down, some real merit.

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic featured some classic RPG elements (the feat system I'm not so fond of, and etc) but really shone thanks to a great storyline and amusing ways to interpret the Force powers. The sequel wasn't as great, unfortunately.

• Guild Wars: Nightfall, Factions and GW:EN (in that order). What made me play Guild Wars was the skill system - I really like how we have many options of equally (...yeah, yeah) powerful skills and different professions with very different gameplay. PvE-wise, Nightfall is the best chapter to me, with an interesting story in a very well crafted world and a great soundtrack. Prophecies isn't that good, IMO, so it's not in this list.

• Marvel Super Heroes, the good old arcade game. I have never been fond of Street Fighter thanks purely to how it looks ugly to me. MSH had more interesting graphics with far more over the top animations, it was an easier game to learn to play. Fun when feeling like pushing some people : D The next few games in the series, X-Men vs Street Fighter and Marvel vs Street Fighter, weren't as good, IMO. But...

• Marvel vs Capcom was rather nice, with many of the best elements from MSH and some interesting new aditions, like some cool new characters (Strider FTW!). I have yet to play MvC2, though.

[edit] Which games you don't like?

• MMORPGs: I don't like the basic premises in them. I have the feeling that most have way too many time sinks (which make perfect sense in those games that have a monthly fee) disguised as features, too shallow of a PvE content, too much focus on levels and items, too many things (skills, spells, areas, enemies, items, etc) that lose their value once you level up past them. The only MMORPG I play is Guild Wars, thanks to how we have at least the ability of changing the world (I will never forget a WoW quest to rescue a guy found lying sick in a forest clearing...and once the guy was saved, he said he was feeling better but he would rather stay where he was, with his sick look, thank you), but even Guild Wars isn't an online game to me - it's a game that happens to have an online part.

• WarCraft III: I have it and the expansion, but both are very "meh" to me. They are very polished products, as all things Blizzard make are, but still uninteresting...No idea if it's because I didn't like the graphics (too cartoony for my taste), if because the lore feels boring (really hate the "savage but noble" things for the Orcs) or if because the gameplay feels a bit weird, but I didn't like this game.

• Half Life: never liked it. I was never that interested in FPS, and Half Life lacked graphics, soundtrack and mood to interest me. Plus, using real life guns is boring : D Making the enemies burst in pieces FTW.

[edit] What are you playing now?

• Guild Wars: still a lot of things I want to do, one of my characters is in the beginning of her first chapter...I hope I have time to do everything before GW2 comes.

• Assassin's Creed: an interesting game. The Assassinations are the "meat" of the game, IMO - I like to do every mission objective just to gather as much information as possible and then carefull make a plan...Only to see it fail completely in the last minute, and then having to rely on pure improvisation.

• DarkStar One: a space combat simulator with some RPG elements. I like space combat games, although the last one I have played was Wing Command (the original one...). It's a good game, although a bit repetitive at times.

[edit] What do you plan to play?

• Jade Empire
• Mass Effect
• The Witcher (Enhanced Edition)
• Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin on the DS
• Final Fantasy III and IV on the DS
• Final Fantasy VII and VIII on the PS
• FF X and XII on the PS2 (one day...)
• Shadow of the Colossus and ICO on the PS2 (one day...)
• Okami and Rez on the PS2 (I'll never find those, but anyway...)
• Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions on the PSP (although this one is very unlikely)
• Dawn of War 2 (maybe)
• StarCraft 2 (maybe)
• Guild Wars 2 (maybe)