Recent Posts

71

Tournaments / Re: Futurama 2023 Week 5 + Rankings!

« Last post by Cmdr_King on February 06, 2024, 09:44:17 PM »

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)- I think, been a while since this one came up for me so I forget how I take it.

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas)- I don't think evade/blocking is really a thing in Cthulhu?  So Mei-ling just needs to dodge one of Cthulhu's two opening turns via lightsaber abuse and he can't win again until turn 5, which Mei-ling should be able to swing.

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses)- No vote

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)- Without crunching the numbers Ivy just clean 2HKOs them yeah?

Rankings

For each of these games, please indicate if you would like to add it to the pool of Ranked games


Persona
Persona 5
Triangle Strategy- Rank the lot.  P1 is a bit dicey for some but eh, I've worked with weirder, the other two are clearly clean fits.

72

Tournaments / Futurama 2023 Week 5 + Rankings!

« Last post by Cmdr_King on February 06, 2024, 08:09:15 PM »

Godlike

Yuna (Final Fantasy X) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas)

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree) vs Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Light

Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage) vs Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)

Rankings

For each of these games, please indicate if you would like to add it to the pool of Ranked games


Persona
Persona 5
Triangle Strategy

73

Tournaments / Re: Futurama 2023 Week 4

« Last post by Cmdr_King on February 06, 2024, 07:43:24 PM »

Godlike

Heat (Digital Devil Saga)- i vs Yuna (Final Fantasy X)- iiiii
Goddess (Final Fantasy VI) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)- iiiiiii

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier)- iiiiiii vs Kyra Tierney (Phantasy Star IV)
Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas)- iii vs Anna Pascal (Triangle Strategy)

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou 2)- ii vs Divine Punisher Shaman (Etrian Odyssey V)
Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses)- iii vs Ba'Thraz (Chained Echoes)

Light

Amalia (Chained Echoes) vs Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage)- ii
Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics)- iiii vs Zelkov (Fire Emblem Engage)


Data Mine

Bravely Default II (random, elf, Snowfire, Pyro, )
Chained Echoes (djinn, elf, Pyro, )
Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance (CK, djinn, random, )
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny (CK, djinn, )
Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless (djinn, random, )
Fire Emblem Engage (CK, random, elf, Snowfire, )
Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree (Nama, random, )
Octopath Traveler II (Nama, djinn, random, elf, Pyro, )
Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess (CK, djinn, )
Rhapsody III: Memories of Marl Kingdom (djinn, )
This Way Madness Lies (CK, djinn, random, elf, Pyro, )
Triangle Strategy (Nama, djinn, random, elf, Snowfire, Pyro, )

74

General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2024? Battle strength determined by frilly outfits

« Last post by Twilkitri on February 03, 2024, 05:29:40 AM »

Rakuen (Steam)

RPGMaker-based adventure game. (No combat.) Decent, although unfortunately I didn't care for half the musical sequences.


Prose & Codes (Steam)

Essentially a decent amount of substitution ciphers of text taken from copyright-free books. So I found it pretty entertaining.

I was playing on progressive difficulty, where for each genre the puzzles start off having 6 letters pre-solved and that number goes down the further you go, with the last ten or so puzzles in each genre having nothing pre-solved. You can also play the entire game with nothing pre-solved, or with fixed amounts of letters pre-solved. (I don't know if the pre-solved letters are curated for each puzzle or if they're randomly selected.)

There's a followup which uses text from poems rather than prose but as a person who isn't really into poetry I don't intend to play it.

75

Tournaments / Re: Futurama 2023 Week 4

« Last post by Pyro on February 01, 2024, 09:07:19 PM »

Godlike

Heat (Digital Devil Saga) vs Yuna (Final Fantasy X)
Goddess (Final Fantasy VI) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Kyra Tierney (Phantasy Star IV)
Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas) vs Anna Pascal (Triangle Strategy)

Middle

Minorio Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou 2) vs Divine Punisher Shaman (Etrian Odyssey V)
Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses) vs Ba'Thraz (Chained Echoes)[/b]: 2HKOs and goes first?

Light

Amalia (Chained Echoes) vs Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage)
Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics) vs Zelkov (Fire Emblem Engage)


Data Mine

Bravely Default II
Chained Echoes
Octopath Traveler II
This Way Madness Lies
Triangle Strategy

76

General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2024? Battle strength determined by frilly outfits

« Last post by DjinnAndTonic on January 31, 2024, 11:54:08 PM »

Tried out the first bit of Granblue Fantasy: Relink

I keep trying to get into this IP since it's just *everywhere* in Japan, and it has strong "old-school FF" vibes. But it just keeps falling short of being engaging. The gacha game of course has all the gacha problems, so I dropped that quickly. I tried watching the anime, and I definitely sat through all 26 episodes, but nothing deeper than the character names stuck with me. I tried the fighting game, which is gorgeous and created by favorite fighting game developer, but the story was so far removed from everything I'd gleaned from the gacha and anime that I couldn't get into the story or characters there either (despite Ladiva being the absolute best).

And so here I am, trying again with the console RPG. The story just skips over the intro bits, which is a little jarring if you haven't played the gacha or watched the anime I guess. The characters feel pretty flat as a result, but I'm hoping the goal is that they're jumping further along into the story to get to the 'good parts'. Since the intro of GBF is very boilerplate 'boy adventurer meets girl who fell from the sky' JRPG fluff.

The battle system is a little too ARPG for what I was looking for at the moment, so I'll have to come back to it after I finish SO6 and need a new ARPG.

tl;dr - GBF is popular and Djinn still hasn't figured out why...

77

Tournaments / Re: Futurama 2023 Week 4

« Last post by Dark Holy Elf on January 28, 2024, 03:04:41 PM »

Heat (Digital Devil Saga) vs Yuna (Final Fantasy X)
I'll just note since it came up a bit ago that, while DL "interps" that are sometimes in-game nerfs (e.g. FFX characters all starting at 0 Overdrive) are necessary...  Vritra probably does win this if given the arms on turn 1?  Saying they start pre-dead is always a tad arbitrary, even if it makes Heat a more reasonable Godlike rather than Bluelike.

Definitely not convinced this is true. Yuna still goes first and if I look at the Magus Sisters vs. Vritra I'm definitely favouring the former, he just does not have the offence to overwhelm them and sooner or later they'll punch through his defensive game.

But more generally I do agree that it's a bit of a "compromise" interp about whether support is allowed in fights or not - my general view is "no unless the support is summoned as part of gameplay". If you want to argue it would be more true to in-game to just allow the tentacles from the battle start, that's fair, but I'd point out it's also more true to in-game for Heat to sit around not resummoning them for a few turns after you kill them.


Re Tank Drop and Love Token, while I could potentially see going either way on that one, I don't think it matters? It only kicks in 1/3 of the time as a counter to physicals, so it shouldn't kick in after one Tank Drop, and if Belial needs more than two to win she'll have bigger problems (but nobody seems to consider Goddess to have enough pdur for that, certainly not me). I suppose you could scale it up to account for the fact that one Belial attack represents multiple PCs attacking Goddess in-game, but the combination of that and "works on Tank Drop" (when it doesn't work on physical swordtechs, tools, or blitzes) seems highly suspect.

78

Tournaments / Re: Futurama 2023 Week 4

« Last post by SnowFire on January 28, 2024, 05:00:24 AM »

Heat (Digital Devil Saga) vs Yuna (Final Fantasy X)
I'll just note since it came up a bit ago that, while DL "interps" that are sometimes in-game nerfs (e.g. FFX characters all starting at 0 Overdrive) are necessary...  Vritra probably does win this if given the arms on turn 1?  Saying they start pre-dead is always a tad arbitrary, even if it makes Heat a more reasonable Godlike rather than Bluelike.
Goddess (Final Fantasy VI) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4)
I'm not so certain about seeing Tank Drop as getting around Love Token counters, but not inclined to give Goddess judgment calls.

Light

Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics) vs Zelkov (Fire Emblem Engage)
Chickens.

Data Mine

Bravely Default II
Chained Echoes - Own, will probably play some day.
Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny
Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless
Fire Emblem Engage
Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree
Octopath Traveler II - Own, need to start.
Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess
Rhapsody III: Memories of Marl Kingdom
This Way Madness Lies - Own, need to start.
Triangle Strategy - Technically unfinished, but I'm deep enough in to consider myself votable on it.

79

Tournaments / Re: Futurama 2023 Week 4

« Last post by Dark Holy Elf on January 28, 2024, 02:28:48 AM »

Godlike

Heat (Digital Devil Saga) vs Yuna (Final Fantasy X)
Goddess (Final Fantasy VI) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4): Belial 2HKOs with Tank Drop, but Goddess is probably something like 150% speed so doesn't get instant doubled and OHKOs. So... Belial puts up distortion instead? Yeah, that probably stops everything Goddess does, her MT focuses so at best the barrier existing should make it do half damage = not OHKO. And Belial should 3-2. Charm's deadly but not turn 1.

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Kyra Tierney (Phantasy Star IV): Kyra's only argument requires giving Telele a judgement call and Telele does not deserve judgement calls. (Even with that judgement call Mei-ling might still win.)
Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas) vs Anna Pascal (Triangle Strategy): Close. Take Cover gives Anna a definite shot, since it blocks most of what Cthulhu does. The problem is that Cthulhu can still apply Hyper Plague on his first hyper turn, and this kills Anna around turn 5 (opening Torment + four turns of poison + Tentacles defend Tentacles again). Anna... can't really kill Cthulhu before then while keeping regen up. Unstoppable is a major issue since she can't just go for a blitz or Cthulhu will murder her with something (he keeps the fourth move as damage, maybe Berserk), she needs to Take Cover again on the turn she kills him, so it takes too long to get there.

Middle

Dedue Molinaro (Fire Emblem Three Houses) vs Ba'Thraz (Chained Echoes): Goes first and 2HKOs? Ba'thraz was impressive in earlier matches but here he just doesn't get enough time.

Light

Amalia (Chained Echoes) vs Ivy (Fire Emblem Engage): Ivy 2HKOs and counters, Amalia... best bet is to use Aura to turn that into a 3HKO, though Ivy's class skill means she'll still unreliably 2HKO making a slow win risky. Like... even with that, her only hope is to use her terrible MT physical to avoid counters and she'll still lose when Grasping Void kicks in after a turn she stops to heal.
Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics) vs Zelkov (Fire Emblem Engage): Probably fast enough to avoid doubles, in particular I was also thinking about the point that Mediator is probably faster than the stat topic implies due to Sprint Shoes being their obvious default accessory. Match entirely hinges on that, Mediator wins on turn 3 and Zelkov is clearly not 2HKOing but equally clearly is at least 4HKOing.

On reflection Mediator is an extremely good Light (if they belong there at all), "wins on turn 3 with above average speed and fine durability and incredibly good equipment options" (and is even better against mages due to Solution) is quite the combo there.


Data Mine

Bolding the ones I've played

Bravely Default II
Chained Echoes
Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny
Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless
Fire Emblem Engage
Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree
Octopath Traveler II
Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess
Rhapsody III: Memories of Marl Kingdom
This Way Madness Lies
Triangle Strategy

80

Tournaments / Re: Futurama 2023 Week 4

« Last post by Random Consonant on January 27, 2024, 03:23:10 PM »

Godlike

Goddess (Final Fantasy VI) vs Belial (Wild ARMs 4) - Endgame FF6 bosses surviving double Tank Drop is really not something I see happening ever.

Heavy

Mei-ling (SaGa Frontier) vs Kyra Tierney (Phantasy Star IV) - Think so.
Cthulhu (Cthulhu Saves Christmas) vs Anna Pascal (Triangle Strategy)

Middle

Minoriko Aki (Labyrinth of Touhou 2) vs Divine Punisher Shaman (Etrian Odyssey V) - You don't really beat Minoriko with mdef-subject magic attacks unless you're really good at it.  Shaman... is not really good at it.

Light

Mediator (Final Fantasy Tactics) vs Zelkov (Fire Emblem Engage) - Zelkov 4HKOs even after factoring in the added damage from poison and probably doesn't double (he's +4.6 AS against the average that factors smash weapons, Mediator is above average and, as far as my own views are concerned, is probably one of the generics that would want to default to sprint shoes instead of a bracer or magic bracer), so he runs into the same problems as Heather does here.

Data Mine

Bravely Default II - Played
Chained Echoes - Not played
Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance - Played
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny - Not played
Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless - Played
Fire Emblem Engage - Played
Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree - Played
Octopath Traveler II - Played
Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess - Not played
Rhapsody III: Memories of Marl Kingdom - Not played
This Way Madness Lies - Played
Triangle Strategy - Played