What games are you playing 2014?

[Grefter]

Well using Chaos and Fire is kind of defeating the point of the game pushing you to try to use two weapons to bypass enemy weakness.

And just like Vagrant Story you can totally brute force past it through various methods (and the community really does seem to do so, but I might be misreading it).

[AndrewRogue]

That would be the game pushing for you to try to have a weapon you swap to wouldn't it?  It always seems to be a design point the games try to push you towards and community actively pushes back against (probably because it is shitty and grindy mechanic).

Sounds like DS2 does it better with more focus on weapon durability (and then fucks it up by putting in dual wielding lol)

My understanding is it was more a reaction to the fact that Lightning Weapons were stupidly good for 99% of DS1, even after nerfing. I remember they were the defacto build early on for sure.

I dunno what this durability thing people talk about in DS2 is. My Greatsword lasts eternally.

[Grefter]

I assume attack speed and damage per attack is something in the performance there.  Noting that most of my understanding for durability issues here comes from El Cid.  As much as we all love Cid he does have a penchant for frail fast hitting weapons.

I assume Fenrir's Great Club shenanigans avoided a lot of durability issues.

[Fudozukushi]

I ran my clubs into durability issues a few times(good lord the 10 failed summons in a row against the Gargs almost broke my Giant Warrior Club) and the Old Whip will break in the middle of anything instantly.

[Cotigo]

Well unfortunately I already dumped 20 DEX into the Iaito so that's where I stand now. Given this convo I may just stay there on Dex, get the Iaito to Lightning, and focus on Endurance/Vit. I have ignored Vit up til this point (15 or so) and it is causing me problems.

Also, turns out, I *CAN* Invade people, I just have to be patient and not run around like a dunkass. I have killed like 3 people so far and it is great! Except that i am out of invasion items and need to get to a covenant that just lets me invade at will asap.

Beat the Hydra and got the equipment Cid recommended. I am Kawaii As Fuck now, though I usually wear armor and gloves instead but keep the skirt and tiara. Got the Rusted Iron Ring, got totally owned by the Stray Demon, and said fuck it. Now on my way to finish off Blighttown and get better pyro spells.

[Fenrir]

Nice waifu.
Nice face.

20 dex is already some investment, might as well focus on vit/dex and stay with normal.

About the covenant that lets you invade people indefinitely, to join this you need to do crazy stuff and beat one nightmare of a boss.
Keep in mind that it becomes unavailable extremely shortly after you get the ability to warp between bonfires. But you might not even want to try and get it on your first playthrough. (There's always NG+. You can go fight the boss and join the covenant right away, before Taurus Demon)


The Old Whip and Channeler's Trident are the only DS2 weapons with low durability (not counting all the old rusted shit), anything else is just fine. I can't main them so I just don't use them at all. Using a few weapons is very impractical until the endgame, so I don't think Souls games are really pushing using a lot of weapons, it's very impractical until the endgame. Notable exceptions:
- Bows are good utility. But you can keep them barely upgraded
- Some blunt weapons for Demon's Souls earlygame / Dark Souls 2 earlygame
- A divine weapon for Nito / the catacombsIf you're new, you might not even know that divine weapons have the undead slaying property. If you're 1337, you just take the occult club in Anor Londo, downgrade it to divine, and use that without even bothering to upgrade it

Vagrant Story was trickier about it (I remember barely doing any damage often, but switching weapons was so slow that I couldn't imagine doing anything else. In Souls games resistance means only doing half damage or so and you can beat anything with any build, with the notable exception of pyromancy doing 0 damage against one boss.


I didn't even notice it playing Dark Souls 2, but one of the biggest improvement over Dark Souls 1 is being able to roll in every direction (instead of four) when locked on to an enemy.

[Fenrir]

[Cotigo]

20 dex is already some investment, might as well focus on vit/dex and stay with normal.

Yeah I'm kind of regretting it already. Really I should have just kept focusing on Pyromancy and Vitality/Endurance, since that's all I have that can actually deal damage now. Oh well hopefully the Iaito will suck less once I finish grinding for Titanite.

EDIT: Didn't realize the smith sold titanite. Upgraded to +8. Weapon no longer sucks. Am suddenly OK with Dex/VIT Build

[Reiska]

Final Fantasy III: PC version, which is a port of the smartphone port of the DS remake.  I decided to do a "magic-heavy" run to see if magic is really as bad as it's cracked up to be in FF3r.

Short answer: No.

I set a restriction for myself: at any given time, I could have no more than a single PC in a primarily physically-inclined job.  After beating Jinn, I made a party of Thief/Red Mage/White Mage/Black Mage and got started.

The early game went incredibly smoothly; make no mistake, offensive magic is really good in early FF3r.  -aras do much more damage to bosses than anything else at your disposal, and with few exceptions the scariest moves early bosses use are all magical, and thus slamming into the mages' better mdef.  Salamander did put up a decent fight, but leftover Antarctic Winds brought his limit phase to a swift end.  No other bosses were really notable, and MP was never an issue: staff itemcasts hitting elemental weaknesses are just as good offense at these levels, if not better, than nearly any melee.  (Even not hitting weaknesses they're pretty respectable.)

With the Fire Crystal, I switched the Red Mage to a Scholar.  Also about this time, Thief was hitting the sort of JLs where stealing battle items starts happening.  This brings me to a point: Assuming you can keep it alive (which isn't THAT much harder than any other mage class), a Thief/Scholar duo absolutely trivializes an awful lot of bosses in FF3r.  Kraken went down in 2 or 3 rounds under Zeus' Weath and Blizzaga.

Water Crystal brought no job changes right away.  Goldor was tedious because of his mdef - only my Thief could really do appreciable damage to him - but his offense was anemic at best and easily healed through.  With the Enterprise back in hand I went and bought harps and switched the Thief to a Bard temporarily to prepare for the next boss, because I assumed it was going to be the hardest part of the run: Garuda.

As it turned out, that expectation proved to be dead wrong - -aga itemcasts from a Scholar are freaking 3HKO on Garuda.  Combine this with Black Mage's Blizzaga being a 6HKO, and what you have between the two is a solid 2RKO - and you can easily have a pile of Arctic Winds from stealing by now without grinding for them.  (I had about ten.)  The Bard switched back to Thief after Garuda, in any case.

Got the Nautilus, looted the underwater dungeons.  The weaknesses with magic start to be apparent here: non-wind weaknesses become rarer, melee damage finally starts pulling ahead of your itemcasted -aras from the Saronia rods, and BM's status seems to never work.  Some of these enemies also manage 3HKOs on backrow mages.  I ended up having to switch Scholar back to Red Mage here once I picked up enough updated gear; keeping Scholar alive was just too difficult. 

Right now I'm at the Cave of Shadows.  I switched the Thief to Dark Knight for this section: spitting enemies suck, and when my mages are 3HKOing at best, I kind of need the help.

[Meeplelard]

Lightning Returns Abridged EPISODE 2: Noel, the only character who kind of makes sense!

Hope: So...your next task is to find a bunch of numbers scattered around the town.
Lightning: Ok, off I go!
*Lightning appears in a weird place*
Lightning: Where am I?
Lumina: You're in your mind ^_^!!!!
Lightning: What are you doing here?
Lumina: ^_^
Lightning: ...ok, why am I here?
Lumina: Because this is the one place God can't see, pretty neat right ^_^?
Lightning: Why does that matter?
Hope: *with static* LIGHTNING!? WHERE'D YOU GO!?!!
Lumina: See, anything he knows, God knows!  God's not Omniscient ^_^!
Lightning: Whatever, I've got a job to do.
Lumina: You're not doing God's work, you've got your own agenda ^_^!
Lightning: What are you talking about? I'm doing this for Serah because Gods basically holding her soul hostage.
Lumina: You're lying to yourself, good bye ^_^!
Lightning: ...what was that all about?

*back at Luxerion*
Hope: So...yeah, there are numbers plastered on walls...go find them.
*Lightning finds 3 of the numbers through various means*
Hope: Oh guess what? The last number is in an area which doesn't open until 12 AM tonight, you know 6 hours before you gotta teleport back?
Lightning: So...I need to do whatever for the next like 10 hours because of stupid time restrictions?
Hope: Exactly.
*10 hours later, Lightning gets to the Warren*
Lumina: Hi there, nice to meet you again ^_^!
Lightning: What are you doing here?
Lumina: I'm here to help ^_^!
Lightning: Ok, how can you help me?
Lumina: There's an Oracle Drive in here, go see it!  The Shadow Hunter saw one too, that's why he wants you dead, you know what those are right ^_^?
Lightning: ...leave me alone...
Lumina: Not until you leave yourself alone, tee hee ^_^!
*Lumina leaves, Lightning goes to see the Oracle Drive after getting the number, which shows a picture of her destroying the world and being killed by someone familiar*
Lightning: This is a vision of the future?
Hope: What do you see?
Lightning: Me destroying the world and being killed by the Shadow Hunter...by the way, hi Noel, I know you're the Shadow Hunter and standing behind me.
Noel: Awww, was it really that obvious?
Lightning: Why are you trying to kill me?
Noel: Didn't you just see the image? YOU'RE GOING TO DESTROY THE WORLD!
Lightning: I'm trying to save it, leave me alone!
Noel: Ok, but only because now is not the right time to kill you!
*He leaves*
Lightning: ...so about that 4th number I just got...
Hope: Right, let's go to that phone-booth now and answer a phone call!
*Lightning re-enacts exactly what she saw the previous day*
Lightning: Alright, Children of Etro, here I come!!
*she reaches the ceremony site in the graveyard*
Cultist #1: Praised be to Etro, such that we will kill this girl who MIGHT BE THE SAVIOR!
Cultist  #2: Acknowledge the Pink Hair she has, which means she has a higher chance of being the SAVIOR than others!
Cultist #3: Praised be to Etro who IS TOTALLY NOT DEAD FOR 500 YEARS AND THE REAL PATH TO SALVATION!
Lightning: Hi guys, you want the savior?
Cultist #4: IT'S THE SAVIOR! KILL HER!!!
*Lightning starts fighting guys off, killing them*
Hope: Be careful, we're not trying to kill people, but save them.
Lightning: There's a difference?
Hope: Yes! YOu can take souls without killing people!
Lightning: ...that was not in the manual...say, why isn't Noel with these guys?
Noel: Because I have NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM! ...ok, more accurately, they were working with me because I promised I'd kill the Savior, but then they got anxious because no Savior was showing up and they started kill anyone who looks remotely like you...
Lightning: So you're saying I should be happy that the only one you want dead is me, and that everyone else wasn't your idea?
Noel: I didn't say that at all! I'm just saying I'm not linked with those idiots!
Cultists: DEATH TO THE SAVIOR AND THIS KID!
Noel: ...look, we can talk later, can we just have a 5 minute truce to deal with these freaks?
Lightning: Ok.
*they win*
Noel: So...yeah...NOW WE FIGHT!
Lightning: You're that serious about killing me?
Noel: I am! ...but this isn't the right spot, follow me to the Warren, there's something you need to see there!  That's where I'll do the deed. *he leaves*
Hope: You know Lightning, if you don't follow him, he won't kill you.
Lightning: But I need to save his soul! Serah would never forgive me if I didn't.
*back at the Warren*
Lumina: Hi again ^_^!
Lightning: Wonderful...
Lumina: For the record, he saw a different Oracle Drive than you did, and I was totally the person who showed it to him, pretty sweet right ^_^?
Lightning: Ok, seriously, what is up with you?
Lumina: You know there was only one person Noel ever loved, and she died in his arms, right ^_^?
Lightning: That could refer to two different people you realize...
Lumina: I'm talking about Yeul, OF COURSE! Seriously, you can be so stupid at times >_< ^_^!
Lightning: Oh, ok...wait, if we're talking about Yeul, why is Noel's theme playing in the background?
Lumina: My last night here for you...same old song...just once more~^_^! *she leaves*
Lightning: ...I'm not even going to try and make sense of any of that...
Hope: So...yeah...pursuit of Noel?
Lightning: On it.
*she chases him down until there's a guy standing in front of a wooden door*
Child of Etro Dude: SHOW THE SIGN OF ETRO NOW! YOU CANNOT PASS ME OR THIS WOODEN DOOR!
Lightning: So Hope, how do we get one of those?
Hope: Beat up a Cultist and steal it from them?
Lightning: Where am I going to find one of those?
Cultist Random Encounters: THE SAVIOR! GET HER!!!
Lightning: ...nevermind...

*more chase sequence through a dungeon later, Lightning meets Noel by an Oracle Drive*
Noel: Did you see the image!? IT SHOWS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS!
Lightning: It looked just like the one I saw...how is it different?
Noel: Because damn it, it says Yeul will be back!
Lightning: If I save the world, everyone will survive, even you...well ok, not everyone, but SOME PEOPLE as opposed to none!
Noel: And the way I see it, if you die, the world is saved, and I get Yeul back...not sure how that works, but damn it, Yeul!
Lightning: And I want Serah back, so we are at an impass!
Noel: Ok, I guess I must KILL YOU! *Noel attacks, and fails to do anything significant*
Lightning: I'm more powerful than ever thanks to God!  Though thinking on it, wow, I am probably the single biggest jRPG Protagonist cheater for canon plot powers.  First l'Cie, then Etro, then Bhunivelze...didn't have to do any work other than be in the right place at the right time.
Noel: And here I've been fighting for 500 YEARS getting stronger, I know I can take you!
Lightning: You don't have it in you to kill me! You have Emotions, I don't! Therefore I'm better!!
Noel: That's just bull.  You're getting angry right now, you're acting on love of your sister, and clearly show a sense of hope in your eyes; those are all emotions! DON'T PRETEND YOU'RE EMOTIONLESS!
*they fight, Noel gets down to one knee*
Lightning: See? You can't beat me.
Noel: Yes. I. CAN!!! *attacks Lightning at full force, knocks her down, throws Knife, and misses Lightning, hitting Oracle Drive instead...on purpose*
Lightning: You...spared me?
Noel: ...it's not what Yeul would have wanted.  I realize that now.  The Oracle Drive is just an image, not the truth; it's up to me to help change the future.  There was a lot of hope in us 500 years ago...Hope, Snow and I all wanted to fight the Chaos, so we did, but in only 500 years, and even in that's almost gone.  Also, Hope disappeared, wonder where he went...
Lightning: Actually...
Hope: DO NOT TELL HIM! I REPEAT! DO NOT TELL HIM! ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!
Lightning: ...I wonder happened to Hope myself...
Noel: Anyway, thanks Lightning, I'll do my best to fight fiends and such until the end of days!
Lightning: So...mission success?
Lumina: Unfortunately >_< ^_^!
Lightning: Can you cut to the chase?
Lumina: Oh sure, I showed him the Oracle Drive and expected him to kill you ^_^
Lightning: But your planned failed.
Lumina: Nope! I was kind of hoping it'd end this way ^_^!
Lightning: ...logic doesn't work with you, does it?
Lumina: no, logic doens't work with YOU, tee hee ^_^!
Hope: So...uhh...yeah, Lightning, I hear there's this saint in Luxerion...you should go meet her.
Lightning: It's Vanille, isn't it?
Hope: How do you know that?
Lightning: Because seriously, who else would it be? If the character is important, it needs to be someone from the previous games, and they teased her in the intro to this area.  Not to mention I can't see Fang being it.
Hope: Ok, fair enough.

*Minor fetchquest for Lightning to get into Cathedral later*
Lightning: Hi Vanille.
Vanille: Lightning! It's so nice to see you!
Lightning: So you've awakened from the crystal, huh?
Vanille: Yeah, 13 years ago.  Then I found I could hear the SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, so I joined the order.
Lightning: Where's Fang?
Vanille: Oh, she awoke with me too...then left to go find something or other...
Lumina: Yeah, Vanille's the Saint, pretty cool right ^_^!
Lightning: ...what are you doing here?
Vanille: Oh, that's just Lumina, she's been helping me out here, she's harmless.
Lumina: ^_^!
Lightning: ...you're not cheating on Fang, are you?
Vanille: What?! NO! She's just helping me with Chaos and such.  Here, let me show you!
*they go the room behind*
Lightning: Why is there so much Chaos in the Saint's room?
Vanille: Because so many people died and I can hear them all.  Million's of souls, and only I can listen!  Lightning, you need to set them all free by destroying the Chaos, please!
Lightning: ...that didn't answer my question...
Vanille: I need to stay here, ok!? The people need me!
Lumina: You can't save her soul~ You can't save her soul~ ^_^!
Lightning: Ok, but I will be back, don't worry, you just keep doing your job!

*6 AM hits*
Hope: Lightning, I'm bringing you back up to the Arc now!
*in Lightning's mind again*
Lumina: ^_^!
Lightning: ok, what this time.
Lumina: Mock Mock Mock Mock Mock ^_^!
Lightning: What are you talking about?
Lumina: This stuff is important but I'm being oddly cryptic because lalalalala~^_^!
Lightning: Huh?
Lumina: The watchers dance! Lalalalala! Lalalalala! ^_^!
Lightning: ...yeah, I'm just going to leave now, good bye.

*at the Ark*

Hope: It has been a long time, Lightning.  Our current situation is as follows.
*picture of Yggdrassil, days extend to Day 3, 6 days left*
Hope: Our current situation is...if things do not change, than all is lost! Do you wish to know the status of your item stock?
*Lightning does some menu based stuff*
Hope: Lightning, about your performance...send us souls Brave and True! These are all the Eradia Points I can grant you at this time! The Lord Bhunivelze is pleased with you.  He begs me give you these Artifacts!
*get new equipment*
Hope: Lightning, I have a request to make of you.  SEND US SOULS THAT ARE SIGNIFICANT!  May fate guide your hand!

---
I am leaving out any segment where Lightning goes into detail about the previous games because those only exist for people who, for whatever reason, skipped those two.

[Fenrir]

Up to 30 Vit you get more and more HPs per level (like 35/level near the end) then you only get like 20 and it only goes lower from then on. So 30 Vit is a pretty good goal.

Roguesouls: Hey I discovered that getting the Great Club is not that bad. I can do it in about 15 minutes. It smashes earlygame bosses.
I made a Great Club + Elite Knight Set high poise + midroll build, and it's much better than a sorcerer build for survival even if it's melee range only. Usually I die because I get ganked by dogs or something and can't do anything about it. High poise > That.

I died once against Ceaseless Discharge. I was running far from a ledge, he hit me with his flame laser for non lethal damage and I was teleported into the lava pit. As far as I'm concerned this is BS and I don't count this as a death.
I considered an AFK death as an actual death before, but glitch deaths = NO

So yeah I'm still going and Sen's fortress is next (And I'll probably die there, honestly)

Edit: Oh yeah forgot to mention that Great Club = Awesome.
it doesn't have a wide arc attack like in DS2 and its R2 suuuucks, but the running attack, the jumping attack and the rolling attack are actually pretty useful.

[Sierra]

Jumping Great Club R2 literally all you need ever. It's an excellent weapon even in DS1 despite being worlds slower and stiffer than in DS2. The thing that gets me killed with it, though (in both games) is fucking up that jumping attack and then getting stabbed during the painfully long windup for a regular R2.

Re: DS2 weapon durability, I dunno, I've had stuff like great hammers come pretty close to breaking just running through a single area. On paper there really isn't much of a gap between a dinky little dagger's durability score and that of Not!Sinner's giant fuckoff sword. It really seems like across weapon types they balanced it so that your gear would last you through an entire zone but try anything more than that without resting and shit's gonna fall apart. I'm not really sure I see the logic behind this; as I said, it is mostly just a nuisance.

Oh and Dusk's outfit is my favorite thing to wear in DS1, let's all act shocked.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Hope: Our current situation is...if things do not change, then all is lost! Do you wish to know the status of your item stock?

I chuckled.


Rondo of Swords: Path A finished. Not nearly as good as Path B. Game still has some worthwhile writing, I'm gonna go ahead an shortlist it on the "good JRPG plot" list. Gameplay is even often times fun when you have full documentation, though there is some serious negatives from the Errand System (seriously, how do you fuck up -shopping- in a JRPG, they've been doing that fine since Dragon Quest...). Probably a 4/10 game altogether, 2/10 if you're playing it blind, and 8/10 if you're like me and love this kind of SaGa Frontier-ish broken mess with enough redeeming qualities that it's worth the work you put into finding those qualities.

Stat topic notes for anyone who has played the game/read the LP who has an opinion on equipment legality... I'm not allowing any equips outside of initial equips (these do almost nothing anyway) and some character-unique consumable items. I'm not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but the only other option I can think of is to just give everyone a flat +72 Def in amulets because those are the only 'storebought' equips that anyone would even want. This just serves to dilute the durability curve and give the tanky melee types better magic res (which is really not unique at all). This does make the mages love you forever (they are sooooo squishy without amulets). Not really sure which is better. Kitting everyone out with amulets is certainly true to in-game if you know what you're doing with the arcane shopping system. But it doesn't really seem right to just hand out roughly 1.5-2x durability to the whole cast.

[Fenrir]

Yeah, the jump attack is tricky. You should see the rollstab though, it's really good too.
I died in the Painting Guardian hangout place. Fell off near that chandelier. Tried killing the others with poison arrows from a bow I couldn't wield properly, but it didn't work I just didn't want to invest stat points into Dex.
Oh well, good run.

[Clear Tranquil]

I have a tip for Meeple, always remember to look at your feet!~

[Meeplelard]

I have a tip for Meeple, always remember to look at your feet!~

I am an interesting scenario with money by doing that actually.  On one hand, I have more than enough that I can throw potions around willy-nilly and not worry about being able to restock because Gil.  On the otherhand, I still can't afford the most expensive gear so I can't say "I have more than enough than what I know what to do with!"  I have bought everything else in the potential price range granted.

I'm actually further than what I showed in the Abridged scenario, just no real plot developments, only side quest stuff which I'm purposely skipping because it's hard enough to remember the events of the plot.

That said, for non-Toriyama plot...

Mario Kart 8: 1st place in 50 CC in all courses...except Lightning...stupid last minute Rainbow Road mess up *grumbles*

Metroid Fusion: Just got Power Bombs!

[Twilkitri]

Mario Super Picross - played through

Brings in 20x20 and 25x20 boards, which is fine in theory, but the 25x20 boards take forever and there are far too many of them. And just when it looks like you've finished all the puzzles, it brings in the Ultra set. Then finishing that brings in the EX set, and finishing that opens up an unmarked EX puzzle which if you finish opens up a second EX set, and finishing that opens up several more unmarked EX puzzles. And then it's finally over after those, supposedly for a total of 300 puzzles. I like Picross and all but argh.



Picross e4 - played through

So the gimmick in Picross e2 was Micross, which were terribly boring. And the gimmick in Picross e3 was Mega Picross, which was just plain terrible. What is the gimmick in Picross e4? To have both Micross and Mega Picross. OH BOY

If you have save data for Picross e1-e3 then it unlocks more Mega Picross puzzles BEST BONUS (to top it off, they're apparently all Mega Picross versions of standard puzzles from those games, although I haven't actually checked). At least there are only two Micross boards. They're still boring.

I guess it also has some 20x15 boards in the standard mode, whereas e1-e3 only ever went as high as 15x15. 20x15 is nowhere near as bad as 25x20 and there's nowhere near as many of them, so that was fun.

One nice thing about Picross e4 is that the 'free' rules (no time limit in exchange for no notification if you tap out an incorrect tile) are available for all puzzles rather than being constrained to particular modes like in the previous games in the series. I don't care much for the normal rules because I feel that the game telling you that you've tapped out an incorrect tile kind of defeats the purpose.

[Luther Lansfeld]

MK8 - Unlocked Mirror Mode! Let the getting my ass kicked commence.

[Meeplelard]

Mega Man 3 Gameboy: Completed.  Game has a lot of issues and I won't go through them; very skippable entry, not worth playing, etc.

[Cotigo]

Dark Souls:

Ugh, I hate the Iaito (At least, I hate it since I don't have the stats to make it work), so I restarted... and caught up to where I was in an evening. This game, man.

Decided I was happy with the Gargoyle Halberd and stuck with that, will probably make it Lightning when I can. Almost ready to ascend my Pyro glove, too. Stat wise, I put more points into Attunement and actually have spell charges now, it's weird. This game is so much more fun when you don't try to put points into everything at once.

Is there a way to make Firestorm not burn through all it's charges at once?

[Niu]

To Meeple-

You actually don't need passwords at the phone booth. You can break it at force. Just have a lot of Blizzard ready as you'll have to fight a pretty strong fire based foe.
The time used for find the password can be used to do some quest in Yusnan instead.

They put a lot of character work in Lightning this time. She will have monologues for each individual quest she completed, so remember to take a look at those by opening up the menu once in a while.
A couple of things she said is really heartfelt. One of the few things I appreciated from the character works they did, when the writing of this game is mostly ass.

As for the costumes, Cloud's DLC is broken and worth getting. If you don't want DLC, I suggest you fetch the Amazon custom by working on Wild Land first.

Do Snow's quest after finishing up Luxerion. Than go do Wild Plain. You want the goodies from the quest there as well as the stuff in Caius' dungeon.
Save Dead Dune for the last. That place is extremely time consuming and dull.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls:

Ugh, I hate the Iaito (At least, I hate it since I don't have the stats to make it work), so I restarted... and caught up to where I was in an evening. This game, man.

Decided I was happy with the Gargoyle Halberd and stuck with that, will probably make it Lightning when I can. Almost ready to ascend my Pyro glove, too. Stat wise, I put more points into Attunement and actually have spell charges now, it's weird. This game is so much more fun when you don't try to put points into everything at once.

Is there a way to make Firestorm not burn through all it's charges at once?

Yeah, I've always found the Souls games to heavily reward specialization. You really can't be even competent on every front without grossly overlevelling. (I am perfectly fine with this approach since it ensures replays will be a different experience.) And re: Firestorm, nope, that's the way it's programmed, for all practical purposes it's a single-shot spell. Still has tactical uses against mobs and fuckhuge targets. Attunement is something that's handled a little neater in DS2, boosting it increases your number of charges per spell and casting speed in addition to spell slots (and Firestorm properly says single-digit charges instead of this crazy "You have twenty charges but casting it uses 17" nonsense).

[SnowFire]

Djinn: A decent compromise (since the RoS shopping system is obtuse and you're not necessarily guaranteed to get what you want) might be to assume that the cast only gets 2 accessory slots for amulets, or, equivalently, only has reliable access to crappy amulets.  I'm not sure even allowing the full 3 good amulets makes Selmer etc. that much happier anyway - I get the impression RoS defense is subtractive to a degree, as it certainly sounds like Margus decked out with 3 amulets basically doesn't die, which will still make the mages suck comparatively.  (Check out the FF6 defense curve for comparison - a few super-tanks like Mog & Gau who get close to 255 defense in the DL make everyone else sadface.) 

Also, if a player for some reason did want to send a mage out to go duel an enemy, you probably would equip 'em with amulets and hope for the best.  (although if Selmer in particular is so insanely fragile such that he dies to anything more damaging than Mint anyway, he might well want to shuck off defense and get more offense anyway, on the theory that the only matches he wins are the ones where he goes first and OHKOs...) 

[DjinnAndTonic]

Well, Selmer actually gets Invoke Life (+40% HP) and Stand Fast (+20% Def), so it turns out he's the second most durable mage. Marie and Igraine are actually looking like the durability failures, but notably, all the mages easily outdamage the melee fighters against endgame enemy averages. Arios with Ars Magna and his Card skills is pumping out like 1400 RoS damage. The only other attack breaking 1000 is Serdic's OverBreak level 3 and most melee is hovering around 300 dmg.

And yes, RoS Defense is subtractive. Amulets would also add to the cast's magical durability. The damage formulas are:

(2*ATK-DEF) * Terrain Modifier * (Direction Modifier+Class Modifier) * Active Skill Modifier * Passive Skill Modifier, rounded down after each modifier - notably only Direction and Passive Skill Modifiers are DL-relevant.

(Pow*SpellModifiers*3/2-EqDef) * (1 + 3/2*(C_Mag*SkillModifiers - T_Mag) / 100), so magical durability is basically 2/3*Amulets + Magic stat?

Subtractive in all cases.

Hmm... 2 amulets seems like a fair compromise and also lets the starting equips matter. Only 3 PCs get any starting equips that effect their damage so I won't have to run the calculations over and over and I can let the topic reader decide which method they prefer.

[Pyro]

Tales of Symphonia HD:

Playing this reminds me of everything I dislike about some of the Tales games... The character work and such is not well done, there aren't any particularly charismatic characters, and the gameplay is rather dull all told.

I suppose I may be a bit harsh on Lloyd since he can be likable enough sometimes when he is being reasonable and coming up with a plan to do something, but as a whole the cast is rather bad. Genis is insufferable at times, Raine is played too much for laughs with the whole beating people thing, Kratos has the personality of a tin can, and Collette is played up a little TOO sickly sweet. Maybe things get much better and I just don't remember real character development that is supposed to happen later, or maybe Sheena/Zelos are more amusing than I remember... But I doubt it.

The gameplay is standard Tales but lacks a real... selling point. I suppose the selling point is "ARPG!!!" but that's just not very endearing. It can require some strategy when facing down boss fights with multiple foes. The customization system sucks and now I am reminded of why I didn't recall actually using it. Compared to ToX and ToV this is very disappointing.

"Compared to ToV and ToX this is very disappointing" pretty much sums up my feelings on ToS1. ToS2 I recall being likable even after I finished ToV, so I look forward to that. I have a gripe that the HD collection doesn't allow one to play ToS2 until ToS1 is beaten. Lame.