I have a problem with games, and I think it’s half me and half games. Yes, that’s games in general. I’ve been writing about how I love indie games that shoot for the stars while ultimately falling flat, but they’re frustrating to play at times.
Today, I played more Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) after skipping yesterday. I just didn’t have it in me yesterday to play. And as I was playing today, I was thinking about how I had reach that point in the game where I was overcome with a sense of tedium because I was doing what’s known in gaming as grinding. Also known as farming. Or more particularly in this case, trying to do all the side quests, but also getting enough money to do all the things I need to do with said money.
I’ve realized that there is always a point in any game where I’m just grinding or farming or whatever. At least in any game where I have to level up/buy anything/pay off debts. At the same time that I’m playing Promise Mascot Agency, I’m also playing Dark Souls Remastered in order to get Big Hat Logan’s big hat.
By the way. I found out something unpleasant while doing my current OG DS playthrough.Quick backstory: I always play as some kind of pyro in this game. I also rarely play the second half as it’s…I’m just going to say it–shitty. The team was rushed to put out the game, so the second half definitely does not have the same care as does the first half. Plus, the boss runs are painful. And the bosses are, ah, uninspired, shall we say.
Anyway, I went to do Seath, who I’ve never had much trouble with as a pyro. He melts in fire, and it usually takes a minute or two. This time, howeve,r I noticed something really odd. Even after breaking Seath’s crystal, I was not doing any damage with him with some of my pyros. Not reduced damage, but NO damage. I had never seen this before. I knew that Seath was not immune to fire, so I had no idea what was going on. I also only had 16 health, which meant Seath could kill me in two angry swipes of his tail.
I was flummoxed. I had fought him a dozen times and NEVER saw that. I looked it up, and the best anyone could guess was that because Seath was highly resistant to fire (!), you had to have a highly-leveled pyro glove in order to do damage. Except, I could do damage–just not to his front. So maybe wonky hit boxes? Straight in his face–no damage. To the side and fairly close-up, damage. I think my pyro glove was +6 or +7 at this point, when I usually have it fully upgraded. That’s +15 regular levels and +5 ascension levels if you get to +10 with the original levels to unlock the secret pyromancy teacher.
Got all that?
I wasted three or four attempts trying to make pyro work. Oh, and the run to the boss is frustrating because it has invisible paths and two giant golden golems who could kill me in one hit. I had very low health at that point. I always have something other than health that I needed to level up or improve, so I was skimping on Vitality.
I finally managed to do it after roughtly ten total attempts by running around him in a wide circle, cursing him constantly, and waiting until he did his laser breath before swiping him once or twice with my +10 Zwei. Which missed nearly as often as it hit. Then, BHL went mad and killed me with one Soul Spear. I got him on the next try and his big hat is now my big hat. Am I going to keep playing? I’m not sure.
My point in mentioning it, though, is that I grinded (ground?) several times so I could level up and so I could buy BHL’s spells. You have to do that before he’ll go mad. That’s 183,000 souls. Which is several levels in the start of the game. I rarely do his questline because it’s so finicky and pricy. I decided to do it this time because I saw a friend of mine in BHL’s garb and realized it’d been a long time since I did his questline.
In Promise Mascot Agency, I’m now trying to clean up the side quests. Those are represented by dots on the map, and there are quite a lot of them. I went out to an island (I can ‘drive’ in water, and I now can glide) to clean a shrine, and then I got stuck and had to respawn before doing the side quest there. The game spawned me back in the main area, much to my rage and dismay. I made the instant decision to not go out again yet. I was not up for it.
I’m feeling like I’m doing things mindlessly right now. I send out as many mascots as I can to jobs, but I have to be mindful I need one to do the Grand Prix (kind of like a pageant for mascots). I missed one as I was trying to make it to the island, so my ranking dropped something like 8 spots. I’m assuming once I get to the top, I get something? I don’t know, and quite frankly, I don’t care.
It’s just another thing I have to do that stresses me out. As I said in previous posts, I think this game could have cut out half the side quests/mini-games, and no one would miss them. I did the crane game again, and it was rage-inducing. I would happily never do that again, but I feel obligated to do so.
So my loop is sending out all the mascots, sending money every five minutes or so, and trying to do all the side quests. That includes cleaning up the trash, finding all the truck upgrades, finding the upgrades for the hero cards, and more mascots/subcontractors/hero cards. I didn’t even mention the subcontractors!
As a way to have passive income, I bought out some establishments around town or out of town and put subcontractor mascots in them. I have to find the subcontractors’ cards around town before I can buy them, er, employ them, and put them in the establishments. Once I do that, though, they bring in money without me having to do anything else.
There are also governmental plans to improve different things around time–most of them have an NPC associated with them. Once I fix up that thing, the NPCs who are mascot support heroes (which are most if not all of them) increase their stats in appreciation.
Oh, another thing that I have to keep doing is buying items to give to the mascots as they go on job. They are called mascot help items, and you can get them from the NPCs or from vending machines around town. I have to buy dozens at a time now because I have fifteen or so mascots. I buy a variety of them, but I don’t even look as I hand them out like candy. I also don’t look to see which mascot I’m sending because if there are three green checkmarks, that mascot is the best fit for that job. You can send one with the first two green and the third red (meaning it’s not a perfect fit for the job), but not if the first or second are red.
The first is whether the mascot is available or not. The second is if they have the stamina to do the job. The third is if they are a good fit for that job.
I don’t mind doing the loop. Much. But there’s something numbing about just doing the same thing over and over again. There’s something comforting about it, but it’s, as I said, numbing. This is the part that’s on me. When I am in this loop, I am almost physically unable not to do the loop. While it’s fine at the time, I always feel a bit emptier afterwards. And as if I were in a daze.
I also reach a tension point of wanting to be done with the game. This is on me beacuse I tend to obsess over one game to the exclusion of any other. Or in this case, two. Any From game doesn’t really count because I’ve played them all so many times.
I’m done for today. Probably more tomorrow.