LET'S PLAY UPDATES (DECEMBER 2023)

I suppose double posting is technically illegal, but I really don't want to include my thoughts on "Shaman King: Power of Spirit" and my short Numidia campaign in Rome: Total War in their own topics.

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Shaman King: Power of Spirit
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I'll admit this licensed PS2 game is a bit of an odd boy since it's a combination of a fighting game and a strategy RPG. Albeit the fighting game elements are restricted to Yoh, the series main character. If you use anyone else in a battle your simply presented with information on how much health and energy they'll have left after the fight as well as how much health and energy the enemy will have left. Another oddity with this game is that you can use an endless number of healing items without ending your turn. So you can consume one or more items, move, and attack an enemy in the same turn. Another oddity is that units have a range of influence which allows them to pull in additional units into a fight. So you'll usually be forced to move units in groups of two or three so they can't be individually jumped and wiped out.

You can also use items or special skills to attack enemies at range. This is especially useful when you have to deal with huge enemies since they can use attacks that send out shockwaves that knock the player down, but if these enemies are low on health. It's pretty easy to knock them over with Yoh's basic attack combo. In fact, it was this little factoid that allowed me to beat the game's final boss and achieve the game's good ending.

Though if I had to pick the game's biggest weakness it's the AI for the player's allies. The AI for those units tends to be really hesitant to get into battle oddly enough which can result in instances where you'll be partaking in a two on two battle where your teammate will simply abandon you and allow both opponent's to gang up on you. And this can lead to you losing battles that should be pretty easy to win.

Another crappy part about the game is the reward for beating the game. If you beat the game it unlocks a versus mode so you can play as the other characters in one on one fights. And I imagine most people are going that sounds awesome since who wouldn't a chance to fight as Tao Ren or Ryunosuke Umemiya. The issue here is that this mode is a two-player mode. So if you want to have any fun with this mode you'll either need to convince someone to take on the role of being the second player or you'll just have to live with playing as your favorite character while hacking away at a sandbag essentially.

All and all I'd say this game is middling at best since most of it's mechanics are pretty basic. There isn't anything here that makes this game standout and in a lot of ways battles in this game become a bit more time consuming than I like since most battles in this game are packed with small fries meant to slow you down.

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Numidia (Short Campaign)
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The big problem with Numidia in Rome: Total War is that it's unit roster is pretty limited. As a result your going to be spending most of your time in this game using the same handful of units over and over again. In fact, you'll be spending most of your time spamming cavalry and archers. The archers help provide some range and give you a unit to soften up enemy infantry lines before falling back for safety reasons. You'll then rely on your cavalry to utterly smash the enemies remaining forces. And this strategy plays out over and over again. And sometimes if your lucky enough to engage in a field battle you'll probably just use cavalry spam to win. Especially if your playing on the Medium/Medium difficulty like I was since you can use a mass cavalry strike to shatter an enemies morale and then easily mop them up as they flee. This is especially effective against the Roman factions since they lack access to an early spear unit to counter your cavalry.

All and all I think it was pretty good idea to end the campaign after twenty episodes since the battles were starting to get pretty boring.