Messages

1

General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: May 08, 2013, 02:20:08 PM »

I beat ME2 and I don't remember anyone called Kasumi

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General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: April 20, 2013, 05:12:30 AM »

Heart of the swarm is way more heavy on the action RPG stuff than wings of liberty was. You're given kerrigan plus a handful of suped up versions of zerg units like roaches and hydras, and made to fight an HP bloated boss with big flashy telegraphed attacks. Not really a fan :/

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Tournaments / Re: RPGDL 2013 Season 1, Week 2: Filling your dark soul with glorious Light

« on: April 09, 2013, 01:31:07 AM »

Godlike

Diva (SaGa Frontier) vs Indalecio (Star Ocean: The Second Story)
Tanzer (SaGa Frontier) vs Lenneth Valkyrie (Valkyrie Profile Series): Mechanically, Tanzer is a single part boss who tripleacts. The tendrils are just a bit of extra graphical flair, and there's no real case against their moves. Easy one rounding.
Belial (Wild ARMs 4) vs X (Mega Man X: Command Mission)

Heavy

Sa-Lews (Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millenium) vs Vayne Aurelius (Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis)
Tohru Adachi (Persona 4) vs Freyjadour Falenas (Suikoden V)
Sync (Tales of the Abyss) vs Ziggurat 8 (Xenosaga Series)


Middle

chaos (Xenosaga Series) vs Gardevoir (Pokémon)
Raynie (Radiant Historia) vs Cray (Breath of Fire IV)
Isabel (Suikoden V) vs Leehalt Alcester (Wild ARMs 3)
Caellach (Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones) vs Kyle (Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete)

Light

Riddel (Chrono Cross) vs Pierre (Chrono Cross)
Palmer (Final Fantasy VII) vs Cinnamon (Mega Man X: Command Mission)
Thomas (Suikoden III) vs Doll (SaGa Frontier)
Shady Thousand (Wild ARMs 3) vs Lucius (Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword)

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Discussion / Re: DLCon 8: California

« on: March 22, 2013, 05:29:26 AM »

Not doing the LA con, but I might show up to the post-con bay area meetup you were talking about in the travel thread.

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General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: February 12, 2013, 10:41:31 AM »

10/10 for daring to do rankings at all, but other than Suiko2, FFT needs a score bump as well.  You've got manly bro rivalries, "Someone to Love" who is your sister who also is the vessel for a demon, and it turns out Judas was the good guy while Jesus Christ was actually Satan and the 12 Disciples were his/her/its demonlord buddies.

I don't remember any "manly bro rivalries."

Fen gave FFT a 1/5 in story, which makes sense. The anime stuff you described is there, but it plays second fiddle to the main focus of the game, which is always warring nations and scheming politicians and starving commoners and shit.

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General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: February 07, 2013, 03:31:04 AM »

Tried out Ni No Kuni for a few hours and hated it.

Both the main plot and the sidequests are filled with unskippable walls of sappy text that doesn't interest me at all, and the merit stamp awards you get for doing quests seem pretty important. There's tons of backtracking too. So far it feels like a really small RPG with tons of rote filler to pad it out.

Combat feels a lot like an infinity engine game - it's a real time system where your characters auto attack enemies by default, and you can pause the game to navigate menus and give out orders to your PCs. Each PC has a short cooldown on performing non-attack actions (like spell casting and item use), and spells have cast times. The strength of this kind of system lies running it in seamless areas with a top down view and lots of PCs to control. It feels just wrong with an over the shoulder camera, 1 or 2 people, and a separate combat screen.

At least the voice acting is top quality.

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Tournaments / Re: RPGDL 2012 Season 3 Week 4: Mostly... actually interesting matches. Huh.

« on: January 08, 2013, 03:22:11 AM »

Godlike

Thanatos (Secret of Mana) vs Terra Branford (Final Fantasy VI)
Rubicante (Final Fantasy IV) vs Cid Raines (Final Fantasy XIII)

Heavy

Alicia (Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria) vs Nina (Breath of Fire)

Middle

Palom (Final Fantasy IV) vs Hippopressor (Mega Man X: Command Mission)

Light

Tia (Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals) vs Zhuzhen Liu (Shadow Hearts)
Chemist (Final Fantasy Tactics)  vs Rinoa Heartlily (Final Fantasy VIII)

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Tournaments / Re: Redoing an old season- S9, Week 2

« on: January 05, 2013, 04:22:30 PM »

Godlike:

Jade (BoF1) vs Arc (AtLC)
Lavos (CT) vs Indalecio (SO2)
Kuja (FF9) vs Sephiroth (FF7)

Heavy:

Aldelbert Steiner (FF9) vs Ramza Beoulve (FFT)
T260G (SaGa) vs Fogel (OB)

Middle:

Rand (BoF2) vs Sprigg (CC)
Gijimu (S2) vs Destin Faroda (OB)
Setzer Gabianni (FF6) vs  Alice Elliot (SH1)


Light:

Riddel Viper (CC) vs Rikku (FFX)
Nara (DQ4) vs Meg (Suikos)

Mostly just one sided stomps, withy the exception of Lavos vs. Indalecio which is just a stat comparison. Rather boring week.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: December 26, 2012, 06:25:17 AM »

Yeah, I actually just figured that out and stopped being a jerk to everybody... (except Milhouse)
I'd have liked events raising fate levels by a fixed amount, and nothing else mattering. I'm tired of the dating sim parts of SMT.


Turns out the red haired girl is terrible. So now my team is Frans/Jungo (5 fate)/Joe (4 fate)/Makoto (3 fate). The nurse is allright too, but I don't like the way she's portrayed as SO OLD even though she's like 25? JRPGs. Having two non-mages in the team is far less of a problem than I thought.

Still a cool game. I'm forgetting about work and playing it non stop.
Frans reached 40 magic, and I'm now raising agility... Vitality really doesn't seem to matter that much since he can get Anti-Phys with 5 vit. He is completely overpowered. Jungo's almost as good but not quite, with Mow Down / Pierce / Marksmen.

You honestly want Repel Phys, just as a warning.

Airi suffers from terminal tsundere and is one of my least favorite characters in the game honestly.  Keita is worse and that's about it.

Haha, I love that comment.
With the passive skill that always gives one extra turn at agi 13, Frans doesn't really have much use for stat points other than vitality anyway.
I just saw someone's death on day 6, it was gruesome and completely threw me off guard.

This game twists the alignment system so that Law vs Chaos becomes Libertarianism vs Communist?  There's a way bigger focus on the worst parts about liberalism though. (To be fair, that's easier to convey in an apocalyptic setting) It's kinda interesting, I liked what Strange Journey did with that a lot more though.

The endings make both paths look pretty awful.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: December 14, 2012, 03:33:38 PM »

Is civ4's modding scene as strong as it was a few years back? The one I was really into was fall from heaven, but the developer of that mod left

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Tournaments / Re: RPGDL 2012 Season 3 Week 1: Mostly Elfboy Fanservice

« on: December 14, 2012, 03:09:43 PM »

Godlike

Yu Narukami (Persona 4) vs Citan Uzuki (Xenogears)
Jessica Albert (Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King) vs Thanatos (Secret of Mana): DQ8 buffs had a tendency to wear off pretty quick IIRC, so if jessica casts bounce, thanatos can just sit with his head underground and wait it out
Terra Branford (Final Fantasy VI) vs Deamoned (Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter)
Jade (Breath of Fire) vs Layna (Soul Nomad & The World Eaters)

Heavy

Jowy Atreides (Suikoden II) vs Tidus (Final Fantasy X)
Scias (Breath of Fire IV) vs Maya Schroedinger (Wild ARMs 3)
Hect (Grandia III) vs Queen Zeal (Chrono Trigger)

Middle

Palom (Final Fantasy IV) vs Nadia 'Marle' Guardia (Chrono Trigger)
Elaine (Suikoden III) vs Stocke (Radiant Historia)
Anita (Suikoden II) vs Hippopressor (Mega Man X: Command Mission)
Tear Grants (Tales of the Abyss) vs Rouge (SaGa Frontier)

Light

Augst Henricksen (Wild ARMs 4) vs Rhys (Fire Emblem Series)
Tia (Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals) vs Norn (Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen)
Zhuzhen Liu (Shadow Hearts) vs Cyan Garamonde (Final Fantasy VI)

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 23, 2012, 12:55:22 AM »

I figure the heavenly throne imparts shininess.

But yeah, I had honestly planned to go for the Restorer route but seeing the AO scenes made me think "nah, I like this guy".  While he's clearly not human, it's also pretty clear that he's sincere in what he says and he tries to reign in some of the mistakes he makes in terms of unnerving people.  And honestly in the context of how that universe works it really feels like the best ending, albeit I get why it's not in game mechanics terms.

I picked ronaldo's route because I'm very lazy with social links in these games, so I wouldn't get to recruit very many people after the split up, and I wanted ronaldo's crew the most.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 07, 2012, 03:41:58 AM »

Pretty sure they might be random from a pool associated to their home country.

Edit - actually easy to test.  Was he from South Africa?

I'm like 99.9999% sure the pool is class-based and not nation-based.  Banzai was German, Snake Eyes was British.  Whiskey was American, though, that made sense.

I had a "zulu" from australia, myself. Sniper, just like andy's.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: September 12, 2012, 05:51:12 PM »

I was a one route guy in deus ex, but plenty of people I saw talk about the game said they explored everything.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: September 05, 2012, 04:56:29 PM »

SC2: After quitting for almost a year, I did placement matches. My internet crashed during 2 of them and I ended up getting silver. Even though I went 3-2 overall, even though I crushed the diamond guy I faced.

I guess I'm just going to quit WoL for good and wait for the expansion.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: August 10, 2012, 03:22:16 AM »

On the other hand, there was plenty of "oh, DA:O's trash fights were so repetitive and dull, DA2's are so much more fast paced and fun!"

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: August 10, 2012, 03:04:10 AM »

DA2 got panned for having more blatantly recycled dungeons than Oblivion and ridiculous reinforcements in combat that come out of nowhere more than anything else. Also the ending because what the fuck.

The combat thing gets harped on a lot these days, but when DA2 first came out it seemed like most people were praising the combat as a step up from DA:O.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: August 07, 2012, 12:28:26 PM »

I had an old post with my thoughts on things in regards to Fenrir's thoughts.  Granted with new out-of-game info from the developers and artbooks and stuff some theories get really worked apart.  Plus the usual Dark Souls "no one is happy ever".

Dark Souls: Because Faith guy is synonymous with Luck at this point he's now become the designated weapon trophy guy.  Yay?  Gonna have to gank Priscilla though and grind up weapons.  Joy.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/localising-dark-souls

According to this interview, you're not supposed to fully understand what's going on. The guy who designed and wrote dark souls was trying to recreate the feeling of reading a fantasy novel, in english, when you don't really understand english.

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Tournaments / Re: Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Pick a Team, Rules & Brainstorming topic

« on: June 24, 2012, 11:24:09 PM »

Stoic only rikku would pretty much never get an OD. Your full HP is 30% of a stoic bar, IIRC, so unless she were taking a ton of MT attacks that could be healed off, the bar would almost never fill. The standard approach to fighting rikku is already "kill her fast so that no heals can save her, or ignore her".

full reset sounds like the better idea, if only because having an interp call like that floating around is not a good thing.

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RPGDL Discussion / Re: Critical design flaws

« on: June 12, 2012, 04:14:14 AM »

3. 'Exploration' sidequests/forced minigames/certain types of fetchquesting

Offenders: FF13-2, FF9, Dragon Quest 7

Dragon Quest 7 has the worst intro of all fucking time. Why? You spend three hours talking to people in towns, 'exploring' a dungeon with no monsters and solving puzzles before you get a single fight or bit of the main story. In a game filled with terrible design choices (Dharma, JP caps, the way it handled changing party members), this one stands out as the worst.  FF13-2's ore quest is another wonderful example there. Plotless, gameplayless sidequest that has you wandering around blindly to find items to finish the game. It's not fun or interesting and just makes you run to a FAQ. FF9 towns... well, see Lindblum. Don't force me to explore your town and do dumb sidequests. I'll do that on my own if I want. Arcs this like kill replay value and just make the game less fun to play in the end.

I wouldn't write these arcs off as "bad no matter what". Instead I would say:

If you're going to add an arc like this to a game, make the setting interesting.

Puzzle sections of Lufia 2 are pretty popular and fondly remembered because players liked the puzzles themselves.
In Baldur's Gate 2 you have to explore athkatla doing sidequests till you have 15,000 gold for the plot requirement + whatever you spend on items, but the quests themselves have a lot of interesting content so people tend to like this part of the game.
A lot of DLers like the city settings of Suikoden games, especially 5, because they actually enjoy listening to the characters talk - so a section of game devoted to running around chatting with people doesn't seem like a bad thing.

You can't half ass this sort of thing, putting together a long but barebones quest structure with a few fucktard NPCs shouting 2 generic lines at you, but you can do it right with effort.

You say these arcs kill replay value. I say replay value is usually stillborn. Most people I've talked to only replay games they really like on the first go - standards here tend to be pretty strict.

 It feels to me like "replay value" isn't its own category of game evaluation at all, but rather just a synonym of "how good the game is".

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Tournaments / Re: Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 73

« on: June 07, 2012, 10:48:25 PM »

Rikku can farm up an OD in the loki surt fight pretty easily, and open the final battle with super mighty g (Protect/Shell/Haste/Regen, MT)

It helps to remember that by now, rikku gains OD just by getting turns, so aside from the first fight on each floor, she can mix every fight unless she was actually killed or statused out in the previous one.

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Tournaments / Re: Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 73

« on: June 02, 2012, 08:03:18 AM »

Are cloud of darkness and xande held to forms from a specific version of FF3?

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Tournaments / Re: Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 72

« on: May 31, 2012, 07:44:13 AM »

Rikku is very fast turn 1, and can throw up a Protect on herself certainly before Rude and Reno can act. Also, X-Buster is already quite strong (and is now being boosted 30% and it's MT and now KOS-MOS is fast (Meaning that it seems really unlikely that everyone on the FF 7 fight is even getting a turn).

I was thinking that protect + haste + 2 of the bosses dying means that rikku can actually heal back to full, even with the massive penalty. 5% healing goes a long way when you quadraturn and take half damage. You'd need to do 40% PCHP damage to cancel that out. Can any of these crap FF7 bosses muster that?

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Tournaments / Re: RPGDL 2012 Season 1, Week 5: Finals and DL Rankings

« on: May 24, 2012, 03:54:48 AM »

I can't believe apocrypha is going to win a godlike field. wtf, that's so wrong...


Legretta (Tales of the Abyss) vs Elincia (Fire Emblem Series)


For rankings, rank Mana Khemia 2 and Tales of Vesperia. No to the rest.

I single out MK2 and ToV as the best ideas because they are widely well received games with interesting duelers - the kind of duelers players will actually familiarize themselves with. With the rest of the games I forsee a bunch of half hearted kneejerk votes, be it because the game has weird translation issues (Soul Nomad, Brig), has boring blobs of stats as duelers (LoL, VH, ToE, ToP, ST), or is just plain old shit (BoD7, Lufia1, MMXCM, PS1, Pers1, XS3). Games in all 3 categories are going to have voters that can't be bothered to put effort into voting, and games in the last category aren't going to get any new players.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: May 23, 2012, 01:40:14 AM »

In my latest game of Endless Space, through random happenstance it came out that I started out in a part of the galaxy isolated from the rest except through one stable wormhole. Naturally I went about setting up a base on my end, then eventually crossed through to explore, and start setting up outposts on the other side of the wormhole when I make contact with another empire.

I know you're thinking "wait isn't that like exactly what happened in DS9?" Well, you'd be half right. On the other side of the wormhole was an empire but it wasn't so much the Dominion as it was an all-consuming enemy horde that exists only to kill. The Cravers are like part Borg, part Reaver. Their ships are cheaper, tougher and more powerful, while they get a bonus to all output from worlds they hold. After 50 turns their worlds are depleted and take huge output penalties, so they gotta keep conquering shit.

Fun enemy, except that last patch made them more formidable by breaking fleet cap sizes for them. At this point in the game my cap on command points was 7. Destroyers/corvettes are 1 point, battleships and cruisers 2, and dreadnoughts 4. Well, the Cravers come at me with fleets whose CP value reads 30/7, made up of ships with passive bonuses to HP and damage.

Currently I've been pushed out of the galactic core and am fighting them on my end of the wormhole. I'm hoping that if I can stall them for several more turns by continuing to hold the bottleneck, their worlds will deplete and I can turn shit around. Fortunately I'm no Federation, and it I was, I'd be the Captain Kirk kind.

The Cravers sound kind of like the Zuul in sword of the stars - same sort of flavor, same big mechanical drawback, similar bonuses.

Is your story a fluke or are the cravers actually good? The Zuul mostly just ate their starting planets down to bedrock then floundered...