Final Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project Episode & Making Astral Collision Part 4

This week, I finally finish the Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project by discussing lessons learned over the course of making it. I talk a lot about aspects related to making a game (or series of games) that have ideas similar to how Guild Wars 1 works.

I continue working on Astral Collision in the second video, where I finish the first draft of the world map. Some stuff I know I'll need to tweak, and other stuff I may tweak (as playtesting reveals the need to do so), but I at least figure out where everything is gonna go and which world map regions originate from which hero's world.

Review of Guild Wars 1 Common Skills & Making Astral Collision Part 3

For the Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project this week, I cover the last of the actual skills! That's right, I talk about all of the Common Skills, which are skills that can be used by any profession. Next week, I plan to make a summary of lessons learned from this whole endeavor, then it'll be off to new territory!

I also continue working on Astral Collision. I imagine I will be doing that for quite some time...anyway, this episode involves a lot of math, as I work on figuring out power formulas for a couple of the weapons. Of course, I talk a lot about what I'm wanting those formulas to do and why!

Paragon Skill Review & Making Astral Collision Part 2

This week I reviewed the Paragon profession's skills for my Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project. I talked about the design of the Paragon a lot in the introduction part.

I also continued working on Astral Collision, and probably will for a while yet. I experimented around with some new (for me) editing techniques for this video, with a couple of sped-up sections! I also don't have a great idea for how to name individual episodes, so I think I'm going to use the very generic name scheme I've got going here.

Guild Wars Skill Review Project for Dervish & Introduction to Let's Make a Game: Astral Collision

This week I reviewed the Dervish skills for the Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project. That means next week is the Paragon, and the week after are the PvE-Only skills not associated with a profession (and also Resurrection Signet). I'm thinking I might do those all in one video...

And this Sunday, I've started a new series where I make a game. I introduce it, and the game I've started making (Astral Collision) in this episode. Hopefully it's interesting to people! While this game is in RPG Maker MV, I'm planning on using Unity for future installments.

Guild Wars 1: Ritualist Skill Review & How to Make a Team Build

This week saw me complete the Ritualist portion of the Skill Review Project. So that's what Saturday was all about.

On Sunday, I decided to take a break from the Prebuild challenge that I was doing to talk about how to make a team build in Guild Wars 1. This is something I have somehow neglected to do thus far, a fact that was brought to my attention by a friend of mine.

Guild Wars 1: Assassin Skill Review & PvP Prebuilds only Challenge Run Continues

This week I covered the Assassin profession in my Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project. I've been both enjoying and getting a lot out of this project, but I'm also looking forward to the conclusion—it takes up a lot of time! Just three professions left to go...

I also continued my PvP Prebuilds only challenge run, this time making it over the Shiverpeaks and through the Gates of Kryta!

Guild Wars 1: Skill Review Project Monk & Start of a Challenge Run

On Saturday, I reviewed the Monk skills for my Guild Wars 1 skill review project.

On Sunday, I started a challenge run series, where I play through the missions of Guild Wars: Prophecies while only allowing myself to use some old PvP prebuilds (many of which are terrible, and some of which don't even work correctly anymore).

Guild Wars 1: Skill Review Project for Necromancer & Wayfarer's Reverie

This week, I reviewed the Necromancer for the Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project.

I also decided to play the Wayfarer's Reverie quests. All in one go. This...ended up longer than I was expecting. But, hey, I did it with four different characters! So you do get to see different playstyles across the course of the video.

Guild Wars 1: Ranger Skill Review & Journey from Lion's Arch to Ascalon City

This week, I did the Skill Review for the Ranger. I've again made it six parts, as that hopefully makes it more approachable!

I also learned last time that my female Dervish, Elandra, hadn't yet been to Ascalon, so the last video from this week is the journey from the port city of Lion's Arch to the ruined capital of Ascalon City.

Guild Wars 1: Skill Review Project Mesmer & Eye of the North Finale

This weekend saw a ton of videos drop on Saturday, as I split the Skill Review for the Mesmer up into sections (six, to be exact), so as to hopefully make it more approachable, as I felt the 3+ hour long videos I had made previously to be intimidatingly long.

I also beat Eye of the North on Elandra Yggdrasill, my female Dervish!

Guild Wars 1: Elementalist Skill Review & Orozar Highstone's Quests

The first episode this weekend was the very long Elementalist part of my Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project. Part of what made this episode so much longer than the previous one was wanting to go into more game design detail, which I think makes the content better, at the cost of making it longer. I intend to respond to this outcome by breaking up the next part into multiple videos. They'll all still come out the same day (according to current plans, anyway), but it should be more palatable!

The second video continues Elandra's journey through the Eye of the North content.

Guild Wars 1: Skill Review—Warrior & A Gate Too Far

The first (extremely long) video is the first of my profession-specific Guild Wars 1 skill review videos. In it, as you'd expect given the name, I review the Warrior's skills.

In the second video, I play more Guild Wars 1, completing the A Gate Too Far mission, which almost completely closes out the third leg of the first part of the Eye of the North story.

Guild Wars 1 Skill Review Project Intro & More Eye of the North

The first video this weekend is the start of what will (according to current plans) ultimately be a twelve part series analyzing the skills in Guild Wars 1. I'm looking forward to it, as I've been wanting to do this for a while!

The second episode continues my journey through Eye of the North on my female Dervish.

Food & Cooking in RotN and Oola's Lair & the G.O.L.E.M. project in GW1

In the first video this weekend, I analyze the design of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night's food and cooking system, which does a lot to add micro-reward structures to the game.

My Guild Wars 1: Eye of the North adventures continue in the second video.

Game Design about Trade-Offs and Guild Wars 1 Buildcrafting

I wanted to talk about trade-offs in game design—things that force the player to make choices—and I chose to do this by using Dark Souls 1. Hopefully this is the first in many weekend videos about game design or game analysis, as that's something I think can be my channel's niche.

The second video is some more Guild Wars 1 stuff. However, much of the first part of the video is the process of me constructing a team build, and going over my thought process. I also discuss some skills, which I suppose is game designery? Regardless, I had fun playing the game again! It'd been too long.

Video Game Content June 10-16, 2019

There was enough variety in the content this week that it didn't make sense to me to try to make separate posts, so here's all of it!

The first two videos are from a game called Airscape: The Fall of Gravity. It's a challenging platformer. I ended up deciding to not finish the game, as I wasn't interested in conquering the platforming challenge. I suspect part of the reason was lingering frustration with Hollow Knight's White Palace, even a week removed.

Next comes a trio of Guild Wars 1 videos. To some extent, these are content fillers. That doesn't mean I think they're bad by any means, it simply means they aren't a proper Let's Play series. I'm still in a bit of a limbo, as many of the games I want to start are (as far as I can tell, anyway) longer RPGs, and I want to start playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for the channel the week it comes out (it releases June 18). I also don't want to interrupt a series. This makes figuring out what to do a bit awkward. On the other hand, it has meant I've experimented some!

Next, we have the next part of the Hollow Knight Epilogue. I get to the final boss for the better ending I'm going for, but I'm going to have to actually beat that boss in a future episode, as it proves to be quite challenging!

And finally, the last video is the first in a new series I'm doing that'll be a retrospective on Dark Souls II, the much-maligned middle-child of the Dark Souls trilogy. This episode specifically examines the issues with the game being named "Dark Souls II," and everything that comes with that.

Hollow Knight Epilogue 6 and Unwaking Waters

I made a LOT more progress in this week's Hollow Knight episode than I was expecting! It starts with the Lost Kin fight, which was significantly easier for me than I expected. This meant I could make my way to the Super Meat Boy inspired White Palace!

The second video is the Guild Wars: Factions mission of Unwaking Waters with the story quests surrounding it. It was a much needed bit of relaxing after the challenge of the Hollow Knight episode!

Hollow Knight Epilogue Episodes 4 & 5 and Gyala Hatchery

I ended up recording another two episodes of Hollow Knight this week. Unfortunately, something was off with my microphone settings, which resulted in it being too quiet and cutting out in spots. This isn't helped by the fact that the game was way too loud. That's something I'll have to fix for the next time.

Anyway, I went after the last two spirit warriors I'd previously missed, then took a stab at beating the White Defender. He proved...challenging.

In the Sunday video, I return to Guild Wars 1 and doing stuff on my Ranger, this time the Gyala Hatchery mission, though the episode itself starts with the prerequisite quest wherein I retrieve a chest of turtle eggs.

VOD of Consciousness Round-Up (2018 Season, Episodes 254-262)

Hello! This week (+2 days, because 2018 is ending on a Monday) saw me cover most of the Wintersday event in Guild Wars 1. I had fun recording all of this, and am very glad to have it more spread-out than Halloween ended up being.

This also marks the end of VOD of Consciousness round-ups, because today's episode was the last VOD of Consciousness episode. New years are times of change, and that's definitely happening here. VODoC had a good run, but, well, you all saw the announcement video, right? (If not, you should be able to find it previously posted here!)

Thank you for watching, and please continue to join me with the new content I'm making!

-- Sientir

VOD of Consciousness Round-Up (2018 Season, Episodes 247-253)

This week I focused on doing stuff on my Ranger, Anna Yggdrasill. I collected heroes and skills and began pursuing the Prophecies storyline. Recording these episodes made me really appreciate the structure of Prophecies when it comes to acquiring skills in a way that I'd forgotten over the years. It's definitely something I'm thinking about as a game designer.