Chapter 151: Character Games In a Nutshell Part 1
In games like Galaxia Heroes: Chaos the competitive elements are, in a nutshell, extravagant and completely unnecessary. In games like that the bread and butter is the unique sense of experience you get from playing Heroes and Villains.
When it comes to the Galaxia series, it is not the original series but rather a series of comic books adapted into a game. A game where you could jump from building to building like a true Hero or commit heinous crimes like a true Villain would. It was that kind of experience this game was offering.
And it is only now that doing things like that became possible, all thanks to the technology that became advanced enough to make that happen. Before that, the options given to Heroes and Villains alike were severely limited.
「But if it wasn’t for ShanFro, this world wouldn’t be born in the first place.」
ShangriLa Frontier, a true and utter Paradigm Shift when it comes to the world of gaming…… I don’t know to what extent the developers of Galaxia Heroes: Chaos were leaning on it, but it is an undeniable fact that they managed to create something which wasn’t able to be realized ever before.
In other words, the players weren’t only using the skin of their characters in order to play. They needed to become their characters, either Heroes or Villains. A true Role-Play. That’s the premise of this game. You cannot hope to survive in Chaos City by merely pretending. You must truly become one of its denizens.
「Because a Heroic Gauge is needed to secure the cube, I need a way to efficiently fill it up…… Now, how should I go on about that……?」
Role Playing. An act that lets you fully immerse yourself into the world of the game and actually become the character you are playing as.
「In other words, for Galaxia fans this game is truly a Godly game.」
「It’s not like I don’t like you or that I have something against you…… But I must see it with my own eyes! How good you actually are!」
Suddenly, a dual wielding samurai looking like a hybrid of human and a plant confronts me on the main street. If I remember correctly, this character’s name is…… Yggdryer, I believe?
He was once a Hero, but after being abducted by a mad scientist and being experimented upon, he was remodeled into the form that he is today, and became a Villain who can control plants in various ways. As for his gameplay mechanics……
「A dull character specializing in setting up traps and counters, right?」
「I’ll show you…… that the forty percent win rate against Kei of yours is nothing but a fluke!」
In the next moment, a “Trap Seed” that was planted in the wall of the nearby building goes off and there’s a thick vine of ivy coming my way in order to immobilize me.
「Sweet, sweet……!!」
I happen to know the gist of the way in which this character tends to work. It is an attack that can be activated at will by the player, but because of that it can only attack in a straight line. However, if you let it hit you, you’ll become rooted for a moment or two and will be open for any kinds of attacks.
There were currently two vines coming my way, one aiming at my ankle and one aiming at my neck. It was troublesome to some extent, but it was nothing that a good old shift of position wouldn’t take care of.
I bend my body and jump just like a rabbit in order to avoid the attacks that were coming my way. After landing I dash using the momentum I managed to gain, getting out of the way of a thorny whip that suddenly sprung up from Natsume-san’s body.
Certainly, I understand the gist of every character in this game by now. However, that does not mean that I know every single trick or strategy that was to them and the ways in which you could utilize them to their full potential.
But still, the information I have on me is more than good enough! With that alone, the knowledge about the type and distance of attacks, I can generally predict the way in which my opponent is going to attack me and how exactly he is going to do it!
「No way, he managed to avoid it all……!?」
「Hmm, what was it again? Oh, that’s right, that’s right…… I’ll show you the secret of Arashiba Lamba!」
By the time I came here I had rescued seven people from the rubble around the city and saved two husbands from the flaming buildings and car wreckages. I’ve managed to accumulate my Heroic Gauge quite a lot and acquire some bonuses because of that.
With that, I activate Ranzo’s special skill: “Storm Stream”. It is a skill that allows me to greatly reduce the distance between myself and my enemy seemingly in an instant. Right now it allowed me to move five meters in a split second.
「Now come and get it……!!」
If my opponent was Pencilgton, she would have surely anticipated such a move from me and prepared some nasty trap in advance. If it was indeed like that, I would have been helplessly defeated without being able to actually do anything about it. But even so, I would have been able to somehow turn that around and emerge victorious for sure. But this time around my opponent was a professional gamer, so I needed to stay vigilant at all times.
Yggdryer’s special attack is a deadly close-range technique that sadly I couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. I only know that it fires a thorny spear into the ground that then spreads around like a circle. Now, everything boils down to how Natsume-san decides to use that attack. From then on out, I can plan my next actions accordingly.
「It’s not the power I need to watch out for, but rather the scope of it……!」
The height of this attack is three meters at best, so the most logical conclusion would be to simply jump over it. Because no matter what, the only solution to escape it was to go up, everywhere else would spell a certain doom for me.
「High Jump!」
「He nailed the timing perfectly……!?」