Happy Fourth of July, everyone who doesn't read this journal.

I've been watching Bubblegum Crisis and Babylon 5 DVDs over the past few weeks. I spent a couple episodes with the dubbed version of BGC and it's not half-bad. Nene's English voice is pretty annoying (ok, Nene is annoying, but that's just me), but the rest of it is ok. Some of the dialogue is pretty bad, but it's more a writing thing and maybe a bit of delivery. One small thing that got to me is the Gulf and Bradley executive from the beginning of episode seven: White suit, cowboy hate, walking fat Texan stereotype, not even an half-assed attempt to tack on an accent.

Anyway, the English versions of the songs range from bad to forgettable pop to pretty decent , kinda like the original versions. Hey  Mr. Dandy is terrible in both languages. It's just unsalvageably bad. Never the End is sappy in Japanese, cringe-worthy in English. Rock Me is kinda embarrassing. Say Yes is actually pretty good, as are Victory and a couple others. Unfortunately, most of them are just played in the background for a minute or two and it's very hard to make out the words or make any kind of judgment about quality. They also seem to have fallen into a black hole of obscurity and I almost regret that. They are at least better than the things Anime News Network put up as examples of what happens when you force the voice actors to sing... like the Ranma movie.



I've been doing some poking at Anime News Network and it's pretty interesting what the cast of BGC got up to after the series. Sakakibara Yoshiko (Sylia) had played Taeko Yasuko in the Area 88 OVA and Kushana in Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind... and Integra Hellsing. I knew there was a reason I liked Sylia. And Linna's actress was Sumire Kanzaki from Sakura Taisen, Sailor Mars, and Manami Kasuga from KOR (all that threw me for a loop... I must be pretty bad at  placing voices).

I've just finished the second season of Babylon 5 and it's pretty good. Some of my favourite episodes are in this season: Knives, The Geometry of Shadows (and hilarious commentary from Sheridan, Ivanova, and Garibaldi), The Fall of Night. Some of my favourite moments are also in the season: Sheridan spacing a teddy bear, Ivanova dealing with the Lumati ambassador, the Psi-Corps commercial from And Now For a Word, a couple others. Am I the only person who gets cheap laughs by replacing 'telepath' with 'gay' in the context of that commercial? 'The other kids hate me because I'm different and they know it' (or something like that).

Season 3 has a lot of episodes I like and this is where things really get moving. The first two seasons seem mostly about setting up the world and getting the cast into place, which was not helped by replacing the station's commander. Looking through the episode guide, I find a few episodes I thought were in season 4 for some reason. Have I mentioned I have a very poor sense of time?

Anyway, it'll be a good season to go through and I have season 4 after that, which is where most of the heavy fighting occurs. I got it for $25 at Best Buy, which is pretty good. Still hard to believe that it's already been ten years since the series ended. I don't know if I'll buy season 5 at any point. The episodes I've seen were pretty bad and season 4 wrapped up most of the major plotlines pretty well.

Another year older, another year closer to the grave. You've heard all the cliches.

So yeah, happy birthday to me. DeepDiscount.com has a sale on right now, so I ordered the Bubblegum Crisis box set last Friday for just under $30. It just got here so I'll be watching that over the next few days. It comes with a whole heap of music videos for the songs from the series. Great songs, too, if you don't mind a bit of 80s. And the series is very very 80s. Probably won't post anything about it. Great series, everyone should watch it. Well, everyone who likes anime.

I finished Fire Emblem 7 a few days ago. I got all the extra chapters and 32x comes right before the final battle and is basically an excuse to give Hector a huge pile of EXP. Spiral maze filled with Snipers and Generals? Hand him a Hand Axe and a Wolf Beil (got at least two spares from his quest to get Armads) and let him rip. It was a bit of a push to get 32x since chapter 32 has a large map (for this game; it's not a patch on FE4's maps) and Hector walks slowly. Like I said in my last post, I decided to train Nino this time around and she turned out ok, with great dodging and decent Magic power.

Chapter 32 basically requires a three-pronged attack: one group going due north, a second due east along the southern edge, and a third northeast through the mountains. Pegasus or wyvern units can roam at will to take out the long-range magic and ballistas on the map. The northern route has cavaliers, some infantry, and pegasus reinforcements. A well-trained Raven can take it with a little backup. The southern route just has cavalry, which Hector and Oswin can munch on for EXP. The center is a bit odd, but not too bad.

Once you move in on the boss, some Generals will spawn at the fort below her. If Hector or Oswin can move up in time, they'll rip right through them. If not, just use magic.

The last chapter has some tough enemies, who take a lot of effort to kill but drop great weapons. Nergal is a bit tricky to kill, but Athos with Luna is always a good last resort. Same goes for the Dragon, but Hector with Armads and decent speed works at least as well. Anyway, before taking Nergal himself, you have to take out a Druid with a Berserk staff, one of the most dangerous status staves in the game. I completely forgot about that and he hit Dart, my Berserker (yeah, yeah, stop laughing). That...ended messily.

So that wraps up this run through Hector's campaign. I might do Eliwood's campaign some time. Hector has a few extra maps, two more recruitable characters, and a general increase in difficulty. But I don't want to do Hard Mode because it cuts EXP gains down sharply, which is the most BS method of increasing difficulty they could have chosen. Extra enemies, stronger enemies, better equipment for enemies would all have been ok. But cutting down on EXP is just cheesy.

Then again, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones was too easy because it had unlimited EXP available if you just went monster hunting long enough. And had the cash to buy weapons for it. I booted up a Creature Campaign and (almost) soloed the Tower of Valni with Lute (a Sage, and a very good one); I had to take Colm (Rogue; basically a thief who doesn't need lockpicks) along on a couple levels to open chests. Lots of drops, lots of cool stuff. Then I tried to solo the Lagdou Ruins. She can one-hit most Tower enemies, so that was ok. Ruins enemies are a good bit stronger and much much more numerous so that was not so ok unless I just gave her five Fire tomes (200 shots) and prayed for lots of criticals. Also, the Ruins seem to love destroyable walls, which just eat up even more ammo.

Or I could've cheated and used a certain special Dark tome that has unlimited uses and absurdly high power, but the characters who can use it aren't as good as Lute. So, yeah. I'm thinking about running through Sacred Stones again at some point. The storyline's decent for a Fire Emblem game and I don't remember the characters being much more annoying than usual.

Rhapsody's coming along ok. I'm not consulting any FAQs unless I get really stuck, so I'm probably missing stuff left and right. The dungeons are almost all cut-and-paste rooms in two flavours: cave and generic stone. Maybe the cave will be blue coloured for ice or red for a volcano. Enemies are mostly palette swaps and combat is pretty basic. The game layout is pretty interesting: status information and a map on the top screen, actual playing on the bottom. And I only just noticed that you can play with the stylus; Cornet will follow it around the screen and most of the menus are stylus-compatible.

Week and a half until Chrono Trigger comes out.

Can't sleep, so I'll ramble about games. And that emoticon is not at all how I feel on nights like this.

Just one five-turn shopping spree and two or three chapters from the end of Fire Emblem 7. Despite what I said in my last post, I'm training Nino. I gave her the Drops and raised her from level 6 to level 20 in one chapter. Admittedly, this took up a lot of EXP that could've gone to other units, but it was more or less worth it. She's a good fast unit, though plagued by lowish magic growth like all my magic users not named Lucius this time around. And that guy doesn't dodge very well without a cover save due to hideous luck (slightly offset by high speed, but lack of luck can break a dodger).

Vaida is dead because I didn't bother to recruit her. Or rather, I forgot she showed up again in that chapter, didn't remember how to recruit her, and didn't want to play the whole bloody chapter over again just to recruit a subpar character in a class I don't like. For some reason, I just don't like wyvern riders very much. The only reason I used Altenna in FE4 was because she was incredibly awesome and used the Gae Bolg, a legendary weapon that was just as much of a gamebreaker as the others. Pegasus knights are dodging machines and I'm very much partial to those. They're also good against mages because of their high magic resistance, which wyverns trade for higher defense and strength. Or maybe it's a personality thing: I just like Fiora and Farina more than Heath and Vaida.

Anyway, Eliwood has turned out surprisingly well this go around. He is basically a cavalier/paladin with a different job title. He's also pretty similar to Celice from FE4, though Celice was immune to critical hits, got a gamebreaker of a weapon, and had some pretty crazy stat growth. Eliwood is...average, like the cavaliers. And for some strange reason, 'average' stat growth in Fire Emblem either produces stellar characters or nearly unusable ones.

Anyway, I need to get lots of kills for Hector in the next few chapters if I want him to be useful at the end. The main lord of the story is at a serious disadvantage since he promotes so late. And in the case of Hector, his movement is also pretty short so it's not as easy to get him into the action. But I have a plan for the second-to-last chapter that should net him a few levels.


I gave Rhapsody a try today. It's basically a musical dressed up as an RPG. Not a particularly difficult game, certainly not as difficult (so far) as Nippon Ichi's later strat-RPG titles. The art style is closer to La Pucelle than Disgaea and those bloody cats show up. The main character's special attacks are kinda silly: food rains down from the sky to crush your enemies. I'm not kidding. Slices of cake, spiky hard candy, a giant flan, and apparently a stack of pancakes are all options.

The plot so far is about an ordinary girl named Cornet who can talk to puppets who has fallen in love (or just developed a crush on) the local prince and among other things enters a beauty contest dressed in a giant bear costume. Kururu, her companion, is basically Papillon in purple (though I'm pretty sure Papillon wasn't a puppet) and shares her love of giant paper fans. The resident rich bitch Etoile looks oddly like Relena from Gundam Wing for some reason and after meeting her father Sir Rosenqueen, I understand why that store has Netherworld branches.

Nippon Ichi's sense of humour is strongly present. A lot of the jokes are music based, such as Etoile saying 'Money, money, money/ Always sunny/ In a rich woman's world.' It's a decent game if you really really like Nippon Ichi or want a funny slightly odd RPG to pass a few hours. Otherwise, it's just a funny slightly odd RPG that's more a niche title than anything else.

Bought myself a DS yesterday. And it's shiny and black and already picking up fingerprints. But it's so much better than my old battered first-generation GBA. I plugged in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow today and I could see! Used to be, I needed to get into weird positions with a light over my shoulder just right to even make out my character and now I can see everything. Fire Emblem's brighter colour palette doesn't really need the light, but it's good. The buttons feel a bit cramped, but ok except for the difficulty of hitting the A+B+Select+Start reset combo.

The only actual DS game I own at the moment is Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure because it's a Nippon Ichi title and distantly connected to La Pucelle. And might have provided a bonus boss for the first Disgaea. I saw a DS port of Disgaea, but I won't be picking that up. It's a funny game, and a great game, but I don't think owning a second copy of it is worth the price when I can barely get myself to play it on PS2. Probably won't be getting Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, either, mostly because the first game was so disappointing after the shininess wore off.

And Chrono Trigger will be coming out on the DS at the end of the month! Time for Robo to get it on. But, seriously, time for Ayla to kick some ass.

I plowed through the desert level of Fire Emblem today. Got all the items, destroyed the two (not so) ambiguously gay bosses, and managed to get the 700 EXP needed to do the bonus chapter. The bonus chapter's pretty hard, but nets you a nice set of silver weapons and some other gear. Oswin + Javelin = ownage against archers and other physical attackers. Oswin, Raven, Lucius, Canas, Dart, Rebecca and Fiora are promoted now, which gives me some good magical power and four great physical attackers. And one semi-decent sniper; her strength is a bit low. My three lords are now level 20 so they're benched until story events give me the bloody Heaven Seals. That's really the only downside to using Lyn to kill everything in her story: she gets benched for too much of the main story.

That looks about the right size for my main team to finish out the story, sadly. I'm trying to remember if I get another Guiding Ring later on since Serra is also level 20 with terrible Magic but otherwise passable stats. Priscilla is doing pretty well and will definitely be promoted so I can have a mobile healer. Then again, I do have an Earth Seal. Bartre isn't so hot so I'll probably miss Karla this time around unless there's another Arena I can abuse to recover from Farina's 20K hiring fee. Nino probably won't be getting trained and I don't think I'll be using Afa's Drops since I don't have any low level people I really really like and think would benefit from 5% extra growth.

Odin Sphere is going well, though I haven't played it the last few days. From the looks of the story archive, I have a fair ways to go yet on Gwendolyn's story and right now I'm about to head into a volcano (or something like that). So, first, upgrade the last 5-slot bag to 8-slots, then grind some spare cash and buy a couple 'Cooler' potions to keep the heat from damaging her too badly. I'm sure I'll find the recipe for it early in the level, but it's better to be safe.

I'm not doing NaNo this year, but I'll definitely be writing something. Or starting something and dropping it. Something like that. Haven't been able to get myself to set any of my ideas down lately.

And it looks like Georgia lost 49-10. And it was 14-3 at the half when I gave up. Florida is our bane as usual. On the other hand, Tech beat FSU 31-28 so one of my teams won today.

lennoxmacbeth linked me to an interesting little CNN piece about an ad that got pulled from Japanese TV:


Actual ad here: EMobile Monkey Ad

It's a monkey in a suit at a podium at something a lot like an Obama rally with red 'Change' signs. The panel of what look to be American expats are mostly offended by how it's apparently calling Obama a monkey and dehumanizing blacks. But the company's mascot is a monkey and that animal has very different baggage on the far side of the Pacific. Oh, and the guy from Temple University at the end just sounds like a pompous prick.

I suppose this raises some questions about racism and cultural sensitivity, but to me it just looks like CNN groping for a story and a group of slightly culture-shocked expats. The history behind monkeys and Africans just isn't there in the Japanese consciousness. For that matter, it looks like the average Japanese citizen knows about as much about Barack Obama as the average American knows about Ma Ying-Jeou (the new Taiwanese President and one smarmy piece of work like most politicians) or perhaps Nicolas Sarkozy. To me (admittedly, I'm about as Japanese as dim sum), the ad's not so much calling Obama a monkey as trying to appropriate some of his success and charisma. And it doesn't look half as stupid as some American cell phone ads. Looking at you, Alltel and AT&T.

I'm not going to deny that the Japanese can be racist as a people, or that the ad would never be greenlit Stateside. It's what happens when a nation is insular and homogeneous enough that the politicians quite frankly don't have to give a damn about minorities. China can be about the same way (~90% are Han Chinese; no one ever remembers the other groups unless they're brought out for ceremonies or something). But demanding that they pay obeisance to American political correctness for ads that would never be seen by American audience? That just sounds arrogant. Besides, it's a cute monkey.


In other news, I've picked up Odin Sphere. The game where you run around and beat the crap out of wild critters (and some humans) with glowing crystals that gain power by sucking up dead enemies' souls. Oh, and you can grow fruits that serve as health potions...which are nourished by the souls of dead enemies. And there's an alchemy system that lets you make things like antidote potions, a painkiller potion that cuts damage in half (very very important for boss fights), and bombs. And your characters get magic...which is fueled by the souls of dead enemies. Strangely, chickens do not eat souls.

I'm playing this game with the English voices, which are no worse than most video game voice acting. Gameplay's not too bad once you get used to the control scheme except for the complete lack of enemy flinch animations. I'm whaling on an enemy and it just keeps right on swinging unless I hit it with a knockdown move. The two kinds of experience (Psypher or weapon; and HP) aren't too hard to manage since the Phozons (souls) that act as EXP for your weapon also power your magic and Health EXP comes from food that you'll be carrying anyway.

Inventory management is a bit of a pain since it works through bags. It looks like you can carry up to five or six, and the largest so far have eight slots and cost 75G (pricey at this stage of the game, but I'm grinding to replace my 5-slot bags; got a 6-slot, but that's ok for now). With seeds, potions, alchemy ingredients, and food, you'll want to max out on bags ASAP. Money is handled a bit differently from most games. Instead of a generic bag of Gil, GP, or bottle caps, you have a bag of actual coins of different value. And just like real life, you tend to wind up with a pile of the lowest value coins that aren't good for much.

The storytelling looks to be what TVTropes calls The Rashomon. It's told as a series of 'books,' interlinked storylines for the different player characters with a lot of overlap. The first one available is Gwendolyn, 'The Valkyrie,' a pretty effective lady with a spear and nice diving attack. I'm looking forward to seeing how the witch Velvet handles with her chains. For those who care about graphics, it's all sprites. And backgrounds that look more or less painted. Very much a 2D game, but it looks good and plays just fine.

Dona eis requiem

Spent the afternoon with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's been a few years since I last saw it and it's better once things have faded a bit. And infinitely better without friends who can quote the movie at you. I'd even forgotten things like Tim the Enchanter and a few early bits. Very funny, I might give the commentary tracks a try later.

Michael Palin has also been on my mind for the last few months because of a woman he's not at all related to (I'm pretty sure). Of course, he's not qualified to run for Veep, but he'd probably be a better candidate. At the least, he'd attract a few joke votes.


Anyway, my Fire Emblem play has stalled a bit because I really really hate the desert level. Low movement for nearly everyone, loads of magic users, and an EXP-stealing git on the far side of the map (and another one nearby). I'll be bringing a thief to get the buried treasures (need a map for that). Hector and Lyn are level 20, Eliwood is 18 or 19 and actually has decent stats. A couple other characters are close to being ready to promote, which might be a problem since I need to gain a lot of EXP on the map to get a bonus level. Anyway, first move will be to dash Florina and Fiora across the map to kidnap Pent and drop him somewhere he can't steal kills. Maybe bring Dart or Bartre to get some kills and extra EXP (bench Eliwood since he can't gain much), and Erk since magic users move more easily in the sand. Oh, and drag a Barrier Staff

The night and fog levels have been a pain for me, mostly because they're fog and night levels. Good thing thieves and the Torch staff are easy to get. I've been stealing lockpicks off enemy thieves since I killed the one carrying the Member Card (it was blocking  me from recruiting Legault) and secret shops are the only other source of lockpicks. Not that it matters much; chests and doors are relatively rare.

Dynasty Warriors 5 and DW5: Empires are the other games I've been playing lately. Empires is a bit tedious, but it's kinda fun to use max-level characters to stomp your enemies at the start of each scenario.  I'm still not sure what troop numbers do in terms of gameplay, but they don't matter much as long as you don't utterly suck at the game. I should probably create and train a character with Lu Bu's moveset to use in scenarios where the guy has already died.

Edit: Poking around Wikipedia and a couple other sites, it seems that the line is Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requiem, not Ie Jesu. It's part of the Requiem Mass, specifically, the last lines of the Dies Irae.

To fix that, here's something leilia posted up.

Literary meme
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.

She gave me V, which is a perfectly good letter if I could just remember anyone that used it in a name. On the other hand, it used to be part of U (something like that) and I suppose that gives me some cheating room. Oh, and so was W.

1. Amberley Vail from the Caiphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM (sorry, TV Tropes joke) novels. A blonde Inquisitor with a slightly off-kilter sense of humour, an entourage of kooks, and a love for disguises, she is definitely not your stereotypical Warhammer40K character. There's definitely something between here and Cain and she seems to see through him in a way no one else can. Also, she makes power armour look good. Oh, and one central conceit of the series is that she's editing Cain's secret memoirs and adding footnotes.

2.  Havelock Vetinari from the Discworld novels. Everyone's favourite ruthless tyrant, just because he does not act like one most of the time. He prods the city of Ankh-Morpork a little from time to time to make things work. Until he has to consign some men to the cells to start investigating their crimes. Still an improvement over the previous Patricians. He is a very interesting little bundle of Tropes.

3. Oscar Francois de Jarjeyes from Rose of Versailles. What? There's no rule that the character's name has to have a V in it. Besides, I didn't want to post Vimes since that'd be too many Discworld characters and no Susan. Anyway, I have a bit of a thing for the whole women pretending to be men thing or at least the women with swords and shiny uniforms. Tragic, doomed, driven by duty, Oscar is a fascinating character and I really should watch the rest of Rose of Versailles again. I keep stopping around episode 20 (the halfway point) for some reason.

4. Faris from Final Fantasy V. Yep, definitely cheating here but I don't care. But, hey, hot pirate captain. What's not to like? I'm raising her as a Mystic Knight at the moment with a good mixture of physical and magic classes if I remember right. Swapping Galuf (heavy heavy physical emphasis) for Krile (heavy magical emphasis) at that stage of the game was a bit annoying since Krile has to learn magic from the ground up. Faris is more ambidextrous and has an interesting if cliched storyline.

5. Ulysses, or Odysseus to use his Greek name. One of my favourite of the kings and princes who assembled at Troy, even though he's a tricky little bastard who pretty much tried to dodge the draft by feigning madness. Intelligent man, but very much looking out for number one at all times. Also shows up in Age of Mythology if I remember right, but was kinda lame there.

So. V names aren't all that common and most of the ones I can come up with are historical instead of fictional (Vindex, Vercingetorix, Vlade Tepes, Vladimir I. Lenin, and so on.). Besides, it's all for fun, no?

I'm about twenty hours into the game, ready to begin the last act. It plays a lot like the X-Men Legend games: you control four superheroes running around bashing enemies and occasionally running into bosses. Oh, and hunting down little items that can be hidden in annoying places. This time around, in addition to the usual concept art, simulator mission disks, and stat boosts, we have action figures of Daredevil and Black Panther; find five of each (out of nine) to unlock the two heroes.  What makes this hard is the fact that everything except the action figures is marked with a nice obvious little glowing ring or contrasts nicely with the background. The action figures blend in distressingly well. I'm just finished collecting the sets and I needed some help from GameFAQs.

Enemy (and ally) AI is just as atrocious as in the X-Men games. Captain America seems to think he can fly and continually walks off ledges. Allies almost never use powers on their own. And I'm starting to really really hate how coins often bounce right into places where they can't be picked up.

Unlocking a character late in this game is a pretty bad thing since characters are set to auto-assign powers by power in this game. While you can redistribute points at any time, a power cannot be removed once it has been bought. And the game prioritizes buying every power ahead of developing a coherent build. It also really really likes to buy the Xtreme Powers, which I tend to file under 'Flashy but pointless.' Then again, it's not like I intend to ever use Daredevil or Black Panther.

A few skills are worth putting just a single point into, though. The Invisible Woman and Mr. Fanastic have great defensive boosts that basically make them immune to projectiles. Investing more points just increases duration and it's easier to just recast it a little more often. Spider-Woman has a team healing aura that's capped at 2% of max health/second and initially lasts for 30 seconds, which is plenty between fights.

Ultimate Alliance allows you to set up a custom hero team, which has its own 'reputation' (read: experience) meter that grows when you defeat bosses and complete objectives. You can do things like add roster slots, give team members bonus HP or MP, increase damage, and increase experience gained. These bonuses only apply to guys on the roster, but you can sub anyone you want onto the active team. All of this adds up to big incentive to pick a team and stick with it. 

My current team is Invisible Woman, Captain America, Deadpool, and Spider-Woman. Iron Man, Dr. Strange, and Ms. Marvel are in bench slots (probably shouldn't have bothered with Ms. Marvel). I mostly use Deadpool to run around the bases and talk to people because he's Deadpool. The team is projectile-heavy and lacks a real tank, but that's not really a problem. It's also limited to physical and 'energy' attacks, which is not a major problem except against one particular boss.

Cap is, well, Cap. Shield Throw, some melee skils, nothing remarkable. Just a good solid guy who can deal very good damage in close quarters with that bouncing shield. Iron Man can do the same with bouncing lasers or just throw around a more conventional projectile. He also has a very nice team boost ability that greatly reduces energy use for powers. Deadpool has some decent sword moves and can unleash bullets from his pistols until energ runs out; not much else to say about him. Dr. Strange has Black Magic, which has a chance to instantly kill an enemy and turn it into a crate full of HP/MP or money.

Spider-Woman and the Invisible Woman are my main ranged attackers and I usually control one of them. Spider-Woman is a cannon with Venom Blast maxed out and one of the Mandarin's Rings equipped. Park her out of the melee, charge up like Samus, and unload. Sue is more of a machine gun type; I use Invisibility to give her a larger chance of getting critical hits and keep the enemy's attention off her while throwing out Kinetic Bolts like crazy. With Ulik's Fists and the right costume (and money invested), she has a critical rate well above 25 or 30 percent. Both characters have good trap skills to hold an enemy down while you shoot.

Ms. Marvel is very very similar to Spider-Woman. Her Prism skill hits one enemy for pretty good damage and then splits to hit two or three more guys behind him. Luminous is weaker than Venom Blast and has shorter range, but it covers a decent arc and has a good effect on crowds. Like Venom Blast, its power consumption can be a bit high for spamming and has some trouble with aiming.

Like X-Men Legends, Ultimate Alliance features alternate costumes. These are unlocked by taking control of a character and killing enemies. 30 kills unlocks the second costume and 175 kills unlocks the second one. The fourth costume is unlocked by obtaining a bronze rank on the character's simulator mission. Each costume has three properties: Defense (straight damage reduction; maxes around 10 points or so) and two special things that really make a difference. Things like critical rate bonuses, damage bonuses, and extra HP or MP. I'm a bit too lazy to bother unlocking all the costumes for everyone; the second costume pretty much automatically comes with the fourth, though.

For a lot of characters, the default costume is decent. Dr. Strange gets bonus damage for his magic and extra MP. Captain America gets bonus damage for his shield (very useful) and extra EXP (waste of money; it only comes to a few percentage points). I like Spider-Woman's Spidergirl costume and her default Classic costume since they give extra damage for her powers.Ms. Marvel's costumes tend to be kinda ugly (especially the only one with worthwhile bonuses), while Deadpool's are just plain ugly aside from his Classic outfit. It takes somewhere around 45000 credits to max out one characteristic so it'd take some serious grinding to get your team fully kitted out. I should probably just dump the money into the Sue's critical rate and Spider-Woman's power damage first since I use them so much. Power points can also be purchased, but are ridiculously expensive.

Anyway, if you can find it cheap or for rent, it's not a bad way to kill a few afternoons.