u/leowire

That flash game was pretty cool.

I’m playing through the story modes of this game again, and there’s a huge difference in quality between the Story Mode and the Original Story. Even the voice acting, which was criticized, is better in this mode. It feels like the entire budget for the Story Mode was focused on this one.

I wish Bandai would make a new Naruto and Naruto Shippuden story mode with animations like these, but staying more faithful to the original when it comes to the fights and fixing the stages. For example, in neither Storm nor Ultimate Ninja have we ever had fights like Rock Lee vs. Sasuke PTS, even though that happened in the anime. So imagine having every fight from the anime, with the entire game being made with the same animation quality as this special mode. It would be incredible even without boss fights. Sure, they could reuse some of the ones from previous Storm games, but they would definitely need to make new ones as well.

You know what’s worse? All of this could actually be possible just by changing the name of the “Story Mode” to “The Tale of Naruto Uzumaki.” This mode would remain the same, focusing on the Boss Fights and the narrative from Hagoromo’s perspective. Meanwhile, the “True Story Mode” would have fights in the traditional versus style, but with the story being told in the same way as the Boruto story, featuring all the fights from the anime. It would be tedious, but incredibly rewarding.

In my head, this would be the biggest redemption Naruto Connections could have for me. And I honestly think it could be possible if Bandai actually focused on this game, but unfortunately, that’s probably dreaming way too big.

I personally think (and I think everyone feels the same way) that Connections is way too easy, so for the handicap, I looked for settings that would give me the feeling of the older Storm games, and I managed to do it.

I set Damage to 40%, which is really rewarding whenever I manage to pull off long combos.

For Chakra Recovery, I set it between 40% and 50%. This makes me think about whether I should or shouldn’t use jutsus or chakra dashes.

I set Guard Durability to 10%, so any attack from the AI will be very aggressive, forcing me to dodge instead of blocking, while still not making the guard completely useless.

I leave Support Recovery at 50% to bring back the feeling of Storm 4, and it makes me think carefully before using a support.

Substitution Recovery is the most interesting one for me. I set it to 10%, meaning I basically only have 4 substitutions per round. There’s absolutely no way the substitutions will recharge before the second round, so every substitution has to be carefully thought out.

I set Ninja Tool Recovery to 50%. It doesn’t make much of a difference to the gameplay, so I might lower it to something else.

These settings made Storm Connections offline much more challenging and strategic, since you have to think before using any resource. For people who don’t like playing online like me, it’s pretty interesting. The battles started lasting around 1 minute of pure strategy.

Just to be clear, I was the one who scored the goal.

I decided last week to delete all my save files for every Storm game and start over from scratch, but first beating the Story Mode of each Storm (up until then, I had beaten S1, S4, and Connections). However, after beating S2 and S3, my opinion of Connections got even worse.

Don't get me wrong, I like Connections' combat, but it's always way too frantic—there isn't a single moment where you stop to think, 'Okay, what am I going to do after fully charging my chakra?' It's just non-stop brawling from start to finish.

But the real issue is that Connections is just a heap of completely poorly executed ideas. They could have kept the trashy story mode as long as they retained the animations FROM THE STORM GAMES, instead of badly cropped screenshots from the anime.

Connections is closer to a Mugen game than an actual spin-off of the Storm series, but I still hold out hope that something good will come out of it in the future—I hope they do the same thing they did with Sparking Zero.

P.S.: I only used Creative Mode to take this screenshot

A torch placed on the ceiling

The game is really hard since some areas are closed off and there’s no room to fall back.

I finished Dead Space 2 today. I really liked it, but I felt Isaac’s pain regarding the guilt and suffering he carries over Nicole’s death. In the final stretch of the game, that becomes more and more evident, and somehow I ended up empathizing with him.

Isaac can’t fix anything. He can’t do anything except accept it. He even tries to save Ellie and sacrifice himself, not only because of some attachment to her, but almost as if he’s trying to redeem himself for something that wasn’t even his fault. I mean, how could he possibly have known about the Ishimura?

And for a moment, I started to think the hallucinations were some kind of echo of Nicole’s memory, but it really was the Marker influencing him from the very beginning. But what truly broke me was him accepting death while sitting beneath the Marker.

Anyway, 10/10 game, I enjoyed it a lot. Now I’m going to start Dead Space 3.

On my way here, I found a ruined village and portal, so I built a basic house and leveled the land to create this plantation you see here, but I don't have much left :(

And the most embarrassing part is, I died in a really stupid way, basically getting stuck in a small hole with water while a little zombie chased me. My goal after I finish planting is to explore the map to find a desert biome, but maybe I'll need to mine first, I have very few ores left.