Xaldin007
Dynasty Warriors 8: XL CE - Lu Bu Story Mode 1 - Ten Eunuchs Rebellion (Ultimate)
updated
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Oh right, the DLC also includes more Create-a-Warrior customization options. Chronicle mode is too grindy for me to 100% a second time, so I probably won't be showing any of that.
The DX version of SW4 basically just means it comes with all the DLC, which is just a few outfits for select characters (mostly girls, unlike DW games not EVERYONE gets DLC outfits so most characters still only have 1), the 8 DLC stages, the 5 DLC songs (yes, there's only 5, but at least they're unique remixes of SW1 songs), 4 DLC horses, some reusable items, and new weapons for all the characters.
You don't get the weapons at the start. If you look online, some people say you get them by clearing the DLC stages, this is a lie. I cleared them all and they didn't unlock. Some people say they unlocked without even touching the DLC stages. So all I can assume is that they unlock automatically after you fulfill some arbitrary requirement such like "play for 20 hours" or something. The DLC weapons are even stronger than the unlockable Rare Weapons in game, so they'd ruin the balance if available from the start, but the game's not really hard anyways. I played the DLCs on Easy with LV1 characters, since they were high difficulty stages and that was a breeze. Harder difficulties are still easy just so long as you're leveled up.
I see a lot of people being like "oh boy, this is finally on PC!" but if you played it on PS4 before, then you really have no reason to buy this, the DLC doesn't justify the $50 price tag on a 10 year old game. And Spirit of Sanada is the better game for the same price, so just get that if you really want SW4 on PC. SW4-II isn't bad compared to regular SW4 either, and that was already on PC, so I don't see what the big deal is about this specific game being on PC now. Just weird the first of the SW4 games was the last to get ported.
Edit: Some people have told me the ports for SW4-II and SoS run badly, so do your research into them if you opt to buy one of them instead. I didn't play those on PC so I can only vouch for how they run on console. I didn't even buy this game myself, it was given to me, so that's the only reason I've got some videos of it.
With these Free Mode stages being so short and nothing really happening in them, I just have nothing to say for majority of them. There's a reason it took me so long to get around to finally recording these. They're almost all boring.
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They were, however, all harmed by the time it was over.
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Not every stage has a "Free Mode only" version either. For example, since Chibi is played on all sides in Story Mode already, it doesn't get an "enemy" version. And some unique ones like Seek the Secret Ingredients don't get an enemy version just because...they didn't feel like it, I guess.
I'm not gonna have a lot to say about a lot of these and I don't want to swamp everyone's feed with a ton of short videos, so I'll just be releasing these videos 3 per day. It will likely take a while.
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We fight Jenova Lifeclinger first, who has some attacks I never quite got the hang of dodging. For the fight against her, your party appears to be comprised of whoever has the highest affection with Cloud, so I got Yuffie and Red XIII. There's a bit of extra dialogue for whoever gets chosen too, so that was nice.
Sephiroth joins the fight once Jenova's dealt with, but Zack joins our party out of nowhere, so we have him to help against some of Sephiroth's phases. The first fight against Sephiroth is pretty easy, which might be so the player can get a grip on how to use Zack. Honestly, we reaaaaally should have had a chance to properly play Zack earlier in the game, like during all those times the game cut away to show things happening in his timeline. I've always been bad with timing mechanics and his whole gimmick is charging his attacks with Triangle, but the bosses he fights don't give him a chance to just stand around and hold triangle, so you want to do the quick charge by pressing it just after finishing an attack. It's just awkward having to get to use to something brand new in the FINAL fight. Especially later on when we have to use Zack alone.
The hardest and most awkward part of this for me was having to fight Sephiroth Reborn as the rest of the party, because I didn't know one phase of him would cycle through elements to where he was immune to all damage that wasn't with the opposing element, and also didn't know which party would be fighting that phase, so I didn't have access to all the elemental attack types for that particular party. Sure would have been nice if Yuffie was part of that team, being able to use any element anytime she wants...
The final fight against Sephiroth is with Cloud and Aerith. Honestly I'd kind of preferred it if the final boss fight was just Jenova and then this version of Sephiroth. Most of the fights in between were just annoying more than anything and really took me out of it when it just felt like I was screwed over in a lot of those fights by having no idea what to expect next and not be set up properly as a result.
After all that is some more story scenes and the credits sequence, which is like 25 minutes long on its own. Cloud doesn't really seem to have gotten over his hallucinations, seeing Aerith when no one else does and seeing the sky torn open when no one else does. And hiding the Black Materia from everyone, it all makes you feel weary of him which I honestly don't think I'll be into when the 3rd game comes around. But we'll see. I was expecting Aerith to survive as the big change for the Remake games, but I guess they figured it'd be too obvious so we still get a dead Aerith. Well, a kind of dead Aerith.
I think the ending sort of fell flat, but overall, I had a blast with this game. The journey itself was a ton of fun, running around exploring with the party was great, the characters were fun and bounced off of each other well, and I really like the way the combat feels, especially when playing as Cloud. The good outweighs the bad, to the point I'm probably going to still consider this my game of the year no matter what comes out later.
After that, we have a lengthy story section. Cloud has quickly been losing himself since stepping foot in the temple and now he's gone into full crazy mode after getting his hands on the Black Materia. It's a weird feeling having a character you've controlled for so long start acting like this. I did appreciate the line delivery Cloud's VA has for these scenes, especially when trying to get the Black Materia back from Aerith.
Once all that's resolved, we have a brief fight against some Whipsers, which are just as tanky as they were in the last game. More of a time consuming fight than anything. Then Cloud goes ahead on his own and prepares for the final boss fight.
58:50 - Eleana & Tseng
As we progress the dungeon, we encounter some unique enemies. Cloud's party faces an Ironclad, which we actually already fought in the UPA arena battle. So it's super easy to deal with now without 4 more fights in front of it.
After that, we run into Reno & Rude for a boss fight against them. Reno more or less has his same gimmicks from Remake, putting out mines and stunning you. You can attack them to get rid of those. They'll do combo attacks which is a good time to hit them with your own Synergy attack before they even start theirs. Not too difficult.
Aerith's party will encounter some Hecteyes, which like to make themselves invulnerable to damage, so it's one of the few enemies you want to use the subversion materia on to remove their buffs. The game even has a subversion materia lying around for you to pick up just in case you didn't have one yet.
Then Aerith's party will face Eleana & Tseng. Tseng can overpower Aerith quickly so it's best to switch off of her as soon as possible so he focuses on either Red or Yuffie, characters that can dodge his attacks better. Dodging his final combo hit will leave him pressured for a bit. Eleana is pretty much the same. As usually with the Turks, they'll try to do combo attacks so save a Synergy for when that happens.
The party joins up after that fight. Then we end up in this "trial" area where everyone has to individually confront the part of their past that haunts them the most. It's neat to see some of it, but a lot of it we already knew about.
Now we enter the final dungeon of the game. It's a neat area with a mechanic around flipping gravity around and walking on the ceiling and walls to progress and find stuff. Some of the best accessories in the game can be found here, as well as everyone's final weapons. The first fight when entering the temple can be a bit of a doozy since there's just so many Shinra soldiers coming in and some new ones that have attacks you won't be sure how to dodge yet. There's some Ancient Wyverns with high HP, but are really weak to wind and fold quickly when Staggered.
The Red Dragon is the first boss. Not the most exciting name, but it is apt. Red's main gimmick comes in phase 2, where she begins flying and will start prepping Crimson Breath. You really want to destroy her chest at any opportunity because this will reduce Crimson Breath's range. At full power, Crimson Breath III will hit the entire arena and deal enough damage to kill everyone without defensive measures in place. On hard mode, the boss ALWAYS uses its strongest Crimson Breath regardless of if you destroyed the chest or not. Certain enemies on hard seem to just ignore their mechanics and no one is sure if this is a bug or intentional, but it makes an otherwise easy boss fight into a really annoying one you need a highly specific setup to beat on hard.
The strats for hard mode are either casting defensive spells on the whole party and having Barret tank with Lifesaver to survive Crimson Breath, or dealing such ridiculous amounts of ice damage in a short time to kill the boss before it ever uses it at all. I actually stopped my hard mode playthrough against this boss because I just wasn't having fun having to change my entire materia loadout to deal with a mechanic I SHOULD have been able to get around if it worked right and hard mode didn't turn it's Assess hint into an outright lie.
Anyways, a bit after that the party gets separated with Cloud leading one group and Aerith leading the other.
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This is just beating the Shinra employee in a few minigame challenges and then being reward with a cutscene of Cloud breakdancing at the end. I do like that the big quests end with a cutscene, makes it feel more worth the effort.
After this, all that will be left is to progress the main story and finish the game.
Also we see a scene with Chadley at the end for completing all of the World Intel gathering.
When Odin leaves, then it becomes a DPS check against Alexander because if you don't deal a significant amount of damage to him in time, then he shows up and Zantetsukens. But having a moment to just focus on one makes the fight a lot easier than having to deal with both at the same time.
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If you look up online I'm sure you can find tons of fast clears on this, because there's definitely ways to abuse the game's mechanic for high damage output with magic. But you generally won't have access to that by reaching this point naturally, so this is a more genuine first time through here.
There's one pretty minor sidequest left before going to Gilgamesh, and that's travelling the ocean to locate the 4 pirate lords or whatever they were called that were part of the monster pirate king's crew. Defeating them gets parts we can use to create the Corsair's Compass, which allows us to find Flotsam, a crafting material to make endgame items. The Corsair's Compass also has a nifty effect where it'll split the ATB gauge into 3 for a character after they perform 5 different actions, so it's a way to get 3 ATB gauges without using Synergy. Although, end game hard gameplay can't really make use of it because that's pretty much all about fast burn so it's just too slow to really be useful. And can be difficult to even use naturally.
The 4 bosses aren't much to write home about, just some upgraded versions of enemies we've fought before. Weirdly, they don't appear anywhere else in the game. This game reuses bosses all the time for post game stuff so I'm not sure why they didn't reuse any of them just for more variety. Maybe because they're easier and lack fight dictating mechanics lol.
After all that's done, then we head to Gilgamesh's place, the Enkidojo. But before we can fight him, he tasks us with completing his trials to buff his gear. This involves fighting all the summons we've acquired up to this point...in pairs of 2. These are probably going to be the hardest fights of your normal playthrough. I attempt the Bahamut/Titan duo fight and it doesn't go so well. I'll be uploading my fights against them in individual videos.
With this done, we'll have completed all the protorelics and can now go to Gilgameshi's domain.
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We start by finishing off a quest to participate in one-man party fights in Gus's arena. Yuffie's is harder than it looks if you aren't actively being aggressive because her two enemies will use Graviga and just obliterate her HP, and then it just takes 1 hit to kill her. But if you just keep using Windstorm or something you can knock them out of it. The other fights didn't give me much trouble, aside from Cloud's Joker fight. Joker has some hard to dodge attacks and has a chance to use a move that just drops Cloud to 1 HP, so that was a pain to deal with. I do like Gus's battle theme for these fights though.
Speaking of themes, I love that they brought back a remix of the heavy metal chocobo theme for the UPA quest chocobo race. That was one of my favorite things from FFXIII-2, where it played when you rode a red chocobo. The colosseum fight the UPA guy sets up is pretty annoying ,but all the difficulty arises from the first two fights. The two Gigantuars can just rinse you if they decide to use Needle Rain back to back, particularly your allies who will TRY TO BLOCK the move instead of just move out of the damn way. Dodging their 1000/5000/10000/ needle attack isn't too hard, but if they catch you against a wall or something it can end you quick if it's powered up. After that is a fight against like 10 Tonberries, which is a lot of instant death to deal with. You can either equip anti-instant death stuff or just equip Petrify materia and spam that, petrifying them all with AoE attacks.
The next fight is against a single Ember Zu which is...so not an issue. Then you fight a Gigantoad and two Jokers, but they're a lot easier to handle in a group than when Cloud was solo. Then you just fight one Ironclad, whose whole gimmick is just "it hits hard". So yeah, not hard to deal with once you learn it's moveset. I think it did come close to wiping me here on my first attempt though, but refighting it on Hard on my own more recently, it was the second easiest thing here after the Zu. The late game and especially post-game hard content in Rebirth feels pretty unbalanced if I'm honest, where some fights are just absurdly hard and some are piss easy ,with no real rhyme or reason. Sometimes it's the first fights that are hard, sometimes it's the last one.
We have some standard quests to go through, and a quest at Shinra Manor to go through some of Hojo's trials and fight a boss at the end. Then we finally wrap up the Queen's Blood questline. My deck for Queen's Blood at this point had mostly been a deck revolving around placing bombs down and having Yuffie replace them to deal a ton of damage to the enemy, which I affectionally called "Yuffie Bomb". I was just trying it for fun at first, then it ended up actually winning most of my matches somehow. Also, Vincent helping in the QB questline at the end is basically the closest we get to him actually helping the party in any way lol.
After that is a whole bunch of Musclehead Colosseum bouts to clear all the ones currently available. More unlock after you've cleared the main game but they're all pretty boring. It's just the same group of like 5 bosses fought together in different combinations. (i.e. you fight Mindflayer and Great Malboro together in one, then could fight Mindflayer and King Zu in another, and Great Malboro and King Zu in another. It's very repetitive and feels more like bullshit difficulty than anything.)
Corneo fights us atop Abzu, his pet monster from Remake. Abzu is weak to fire and becomes vulnerable after whiffing attacks that have it charge, but the tracking is annoyingly good so you either need to be dodging well in advance, use something like Brumal Form, or be Tifa and have the best dodge in the game.
Then we fight Rude and Eleana again, who haven't changed much from their last fight. I think they've got a few new attacks but mostly it's just exploiting their weaknesses and saving a Synergy attack for when they try to start theirs.
Then we end with fighting Rufus Shinra, who is more of a gimmick fight than anything. Rufus hard counters most forms of attacks by just outright blocking and counterattacking. In the first game, you'd have had Counterstance by the time you reach him, which makes it MUCH easier to fight him head on since Cloud can just punish him the same way Rufus punishes him. But we don't have that, so most of this fight was me just trying to figure out what methods work against him. Like in Remake, you can stagger him immediately if you land Braver, but the timing on it feels much more strict this time around as he feels much more aggressive and prone to use special moves.
He later summons Darkstar, and honestly it's best just to nuke the dog as soon as it appears with a Limit Break. Ideally Rufus will get caught up in it as well. A summon can help too. Once you do manage to stagger Rufus, he doesn't actually have that much health, so you can deal a ton of damage to him and probably bring him down in 2 staggers.
Then we have a whacky chase scene where we go after Cait Sith for stealing a plot device from us and giving it to Shinra. He's removed from the party from here out all the way until the final boss fight. Not that the player would care lol.
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So after a brief prologue of a dance number, the party takes the role of characters within Loveless, with Cloud being the protagonist, Barret and Red being villains, Cait the narrator, and whichever female has the highest affection towards him as the Goddess. It's basically a big QTE section but it's pretty forgiving and a lot of fun to see Barret and Red ham it up while Cloud just goes along with it all so seemlessly.
After that Aerith finishes the event with a song she'd been working on. It's pretty well done, though a bit obvious that the singer isn't her proper VA.
Then we finally get the Skywheel date scene, which has Cloud ride it with whichever party member he has the highest affection with, or with Cait, Cid, and Vincent all at once if you somehow got to this point without raising anyone's affection high enough. The scene is slightly extended if their affection is past I think 80%. Yuffie was for me so we get to see her full scene here.
I like her date scene quite a bit, she brings the fun-loving energy she's had throughout the game into it right at the start and it's adorable when you see her start to realize how nervous she is when she tries to get herself to make a move on Cloud. It's done in a very "real" way, where she starts by asking about him and Tifa, and since he didn't say he definitely had feelings for her, her tactic is to try to outright sabotage their relationship by saying Tifa had forgotten all about him (she obviously hadn't). It might seem kind of callous, but it's a very real thing people do when they want to get together with someone and worry they might be interested in someone else.
That's how I interpreted it anyways. I doubt the relationship scenes here will be referenced in the 3rd game, and I do hope they have it again in the next one, but I kind of hope it's implemented differently so I'm not having to avoid doing certain quests or saying dickish things to characters out of fear of raising other character's affinity too high. Just let the player choose.