What Games are you playing 2015?

[Dhyerwolf]

When you have to watch an LP to make in order to make the game seem better after already playing it, that's generally not a good sign. I looooooooooved watching BG 2 LP (before the one I was watching was hit by copyright issues), but it definitely wouldn't make playing through the game any more bearable.

[Cmdr_King]

You'd think, but it's a shockingly common thing, especially with some distance of years.  It also seems a lot more common in screenshot LPs.  Basically when you're digesting a game most slowly like that you start to actually find nuances that fly over head when you're in the moment trying to slog through enemies with all of the HP.

[Niu]

Has anyone picked up Legend of Legacy? I've been curious about it since I see on Japanese shelves all the time and I heard it just came out in the states. And it seems like a new SaGa game (minus actual corporate Squeenix involvement) would be something the DL would be excited about?

No one's picked up Disgaea 5 either, I guess, but that's less surprising (and somewhat more depressing personally...)

The game is headed by Koizumi, who was Kawazu's right hand man and Saga's cheif battle engineer.
Aka, he is the man behind the SaGa's pain in the ass battle mechanic.

Legend of Legacy is a turn based dungeonc crawling game with some SaGa mechanic but even less plot than SaGa.
The game is small, so don't expect it'll have the same content as SaGa.
The game is mostly on SaGa mechanic nostalgy and awsome Hamauzu music.

Is this supposed to deter me from Legend of Legacy? Honestly it worked more like a sales pitch...

To put it simply, unless you have a lot of love for SaGa, you can just walk away from the game and purchase the OST instead.

[Cotigo]

Has anyone picked up Legend of Legacy? I've been curious about it since I see on Japanese shelves all the time and I heard it just came out in the states. And it seems like a new SaGa game (minus actual corporate Squeenix involvement) would be something the DL would be excited about?

No one's picked up Disgaea 5 either, I guess, but that's less surprising (and somewhat more depressing personally...)

The game is headed by Koizumi, who was Kawazu's right hand man and Saga's cheif battle engineer.
Aka, he is the man behind the SaGa's pain in the ass battle mechanic.

Legend of Legacy is a turn based dungeonc crawling game with some SaGa mechanic but even less plot than SaGa.
The game is small, so don't expect it'll have the same content as SaGa.
The game is mostly on SaGa mechanic nostalgy and awsome Hamauzu music.

Is this supposed to deter me from Legend of Legacy? Honestly it worked more like a sales pitch...

To put it simply, unless you have a lot of love for SaGa, you can just walk away from the game and purchase the OST instead.

DJ's taste is fucking terrible, of course he has a lot of love for SaGa.

[Veryslightlymad]

FFXII:

Was in, then ran away from, the Lhusu mines

Vaan: You dumbass. Not 5 minutes after the smart party decides "No names", you call the WORST POSSIBLE PERSON by name in front of a stranger. What the hell, bro? (Also, the game doesn't really explain why he suddenly believes and trusts Basch, and that's kind of a big deal.) Vaan rolled his way into using a nasty spear, and is my secondary healer/the CPU healer.

Balthier: Continues to generally be the man. For all his protests about saving girls and whathaveyou, he still comes along, generally comes up with all the plans, and is charming. Has constant great lines. Dude, however, currently is kind of useless and dies a lot. Trying to come up with an option to mitigate that.

Fran: Continues to say nothing and be MVP/my leader. Gave her some more magic, because WHY NOT? Actually, having magic options makes everything slower and this game's controls punishes you severely for that. So.... yay. Good game design, Square.

Basch: Finally joined. Hasn't been around long enough to diversify himself. I like that the game kept him with the half-starved prisoner look, instead of magically making him all buff again after he got out.

[SnowFire]

(Also, the game doesn't really explain why he suddenly believes and trusts Basch, and that's kind of a big deal.)

I was a bit taken aback by this too, but...  it actually makes some sense, and fits FF12's narrative style.  The standard milk-out-all-possible-melodrama approach would be to have some kind of elaborate dance of distrust as Vaan closely monitors "Basch" looking for some kind of slip, and maybe there's some kind of big misunderstanding or "evidence" found later that swings Vaan one way and then the other, etc. etc.  This is all very dramatic & all but why are they even working together if Vaan thinks he might be evil.  FF12 just gets that out of the way at the beginning.  Vaan believes Basch's story and isn't going to get all huffy at somebody he acknowledges isn't actually responsible for his brother's death.  (And presumably he wouldn't have helped break him out of prison if he didn't believe his story!)

So yeah, there isn't a "reason" in the sense of DECISIVE EVIDENCE from Phoenix Wright, but just general "okay this story, while crazy and slightly paranoid, makes sense and I don't think he's bullshitting me."

[Veryslightlymad]

The thing is, they could have had it both ways. Just have a throwaway line with Vaan stating "Oh, you mean that guy from earlier who looked exactly like you, but also seemed pretty evil? Yeah, OK. Maybe he DID kill my brother."

[Veryslightlymad]

FFXII Leviathan:

Super hard for no reason! This game's controls are just about the worst. Guys decide to walk into trip wires, because apparently you have to explicitly tell them not to. (Balthier gets bonus shame points for deliberately backing up 3 or 4 steps to fire his gun when he doesn't have to, tripping a wire for literally no reason.) Boss fight was a nightmare. 6 enemies at once targetting one dude is just uncalled for. I finally managed to beat it out by finding a random sword on the dungeon, equipping it on Basch, and also equipping an auto-counter relic on Basch. Go Basch.

Vaan: Not much use for him. He's there. He deals better damage than Balthier, so he's in my party when I have to actually do things.

Balthier: No good lines because this dungeon is awful and takes forever. Found an Assassin's Dagger and gave him THAT, because mother fucker will NOT stop triggering alarms by walking backward through them. I hate the friendly AI in this game. Not sure what I'm ultimately gonna do with this guy.

Fran: Continues to be MVP-esque. Learned Dark, which is, apparently, super good. Also managed to equip this random mage armor I had floating around, making her deal even more damage, and, somehow, giving her the best defense on my team. So... uh, go Fran.

Basch: As mentioned, I found a very good sword and a counter-attack relic. I couldn't find the relic on the grid, so he has access to tons of relics I don't have. Also, since it was right there, I bought my very first quickening for him. Quickenings are stupid.
~~~~~~

As I get further into the game, I realize that the reason so many folks must hate it is because of the god awful controls/gameplay. The story actually isn't bad at all. Balthier is super cool, Basch seems interesting. Vaan isn't ALWAYS an idiot. Those gameplay flaws, though. They're kinda dealbreakers.

[Meeplelard]

The thing is, they could have had it both ways. Just have a throwaway line with Vaan stating "Oh, you mean that guy from earlier who looked exactly like you, but also seemed pretty evil? Yeah, OK. Maybe he DID kill my brother."

Honestly, I would have preferred something like that myself.  I rewatched that sequence recently and yeah, there's nothing having Vaan acknowledge that Basch could be telling the truth; he just goes from "I don't buy it!" to "You didn't kill my brother, the empire did" in the manner of a dungeon with no real reason.  I don't think Vaan even says as much as "Your story makes sense, but I have a hard time buying it!" which at least that would suggest that he LISTENED to Basch's side and thus we can conclude he was thinking about it, but I seem to recall he basically just blew it off as an excuse.

Balthier at least made sense with the whole "Twin Brother?  Seems awfully convenient an excuse, but I guess it's plausible enough, so sure, I'll buy it."  Considering Balthier has absolutely no emotional stakes with Basch the way Vaan does, it makes sense he's willing to just roll with it, especially since from his perspective, it's "well, he is another able-bodied adult, it only helps us to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he has much to gain from NOT stabbing us in the back, at least until we leave."

[Twilkitri]

Super Robot Wars Impact - played through

Final turn count was 1029. Got 58 skill points all up - didn't realise the game even had skill points for a while, decided that if it wasn't going to tell me what the conditions were I wasn't going to bother trying to meet them.

Some of the skill point conditions are kind of poor, in any case. There was one map early on which I beat before the enemy you needed to kill for the skill point even showed up. There was one extremely-late map where you get a skill point for killing a particular enemy, who doesn't retreat, and the objective is kill-all-enemies - the only possible way to avoid that would be to do the same as above, which would require incredible coordination given that the enemy shows up once there are less than 17 enemies remaining at the start of the enemy turn.

There's at least one map where the enemy you needed to kill for the skill point didn't show up at all because of the branches I had taken beforehand.

There's a stage early on with an enemy you need to at least make retreat for the skill point. It shows up on the Turn 3 Enemy phase. It goes away on the Turn 5 Player phase. So, you essentially get a single turn to lay into it - except it appears on the other side of a river from where you're guarding a launch, so most of your units typically won't even be able to attack it unless you knew ahead of time and sent them over there.

I don't remember elevation being in Alpha 1 so I'm going to assume it wasn't and that it was brought in for this game. I guess it made some maps look a little nicer but also made things occasionally difficult to see? Also, as far as I could tell, non-flying units took movement penalties for changing elevation, while flying units didn't even if they were grounded... and there were no other noticeable mechanical effects. All up, not very enamoured with it. (Also kind of hilarious when you have one unit at the top of a cliff getting support attacks from a unit at the bottom of the cliff.)

Support attacks! And defences, to a lesser extent. Game, why won't you let me choose who is going to be the supporter. I know that Advance had problems with supports as well but I can't remember what they were, so I'm not sure whether this game handles them better or not (I feel like Advance at least wouldn't let you choose what attack they were going to make, but can't remember if it would let you choose the supporter? Impact does at least let you choose which attack they're going to make). There must be some logic behind which unit it decides to go with, but it's definitely not based on which has the higher damage potential/is more armoured & healthful.

Speaking of damage, something strange is going on with the damage formulas. Several times I saw attacks with lower power doing more damage than attacks with the same typing, terrain rankings, and being-criticals-or-not-tedness. Unfortunately I don't remember any examples offhand. I definitely remember Combattler V doing more damage with SEM Spark than with Grandasher at one point, but I don't recall if this was an example of that as I don't remember the typings/rankings for each attack.

Lighter notes:
* CC Zaku is actually worth using in this game.
* Maybe SRW allows this all the time and I've just never thought to try it, but you can eventually have Yurika take over Gai's Aestevalis (once she gets the nanomachine skill) and do Double Gekigan Flare with Akito. (Sadly they don't get fancy dialogue or anything.) Also she eventually gets the ability to teleport the Nadesico around which I don't recall being normal.

As far as I can remember, I got Rein Weissritter instead of True Getta in Compact 2, so I went with True Getta this time around. (Also because Rein can't use Rampage Ghost for whatever reason.) I can't say that I care much for this version of True Getta, seems to eat through energy like it's going out of style.

Man it takes an annoyingly long time to save/load this game. I hope they managed to get things working a bit quicker for the other PS2 SRWs when I eventually get around to them.



While I was slogging through that I also found some time to play some other small things.



Picross e6 - played through

So the gimmick in Picross e6 is that instead of having one set of regular Picross boards and one set of Mega Picross boards, it just has one big set of boards which you can play in either regular Picross mode or Mega Picross mode (setting aside one page of boards which are too large to play in Mega mode). I'm divided on this.

In theory, it means you can play through all the regular Picross boards and never have to touch Mega Picross mode, and you've played everything. In practice if you do that you don't get a medal for Mega Picross, and if you play through all boards on both modes to get the medals for each mode you're essentially playing each board two times over.

I ended up getting the medals for both modes. Despite still thinking Mega Picross is terrible. At least each mode has the boards in somewhat different orderings. (Also it was a couple weeks after finishing regular Picross mode that I started on Mega Picross mode, so the boards weren't particularly fresh in my mind or anything.)

Micross is also still terrible.

They need to come up with a good gimmick.



Undertale - played through twice

Pretty amusing. I suck at dodging when the battles start actually trying. Music often good. I assume that there isn't much I can say about it that hasn't already been said recentlyish. Not going to do a genocide run, although I might dig up an LP of it to look through at some point.

[Meeplelard]

Tales of Encount:

Narrator: When we last left our hero of few words...
Ivar: NOW HANG ON! This is an unfair injustice!
Narrator: Huh?
Ivar: I was totally in the previous section and you completely left me out!
Narrator: Who are you again?
Ivar: I'm Ivar! The Handmaiden of the great Lady Milla Maxwell!
Narrator: ...ok, but she's not in this game yet...
Ivar: I'm also a JUNIOR AGENT OF SPIRIUS CORPS!  I totally owned Ludger with a sucker punch and...
Narrator: ...got effortlessly beaten by Jude using a basic wrestling arm-lock, a fighting style I might remind you Jude is not specialized in...
Ivar: THAT'S NOT THE POINT! I DEMAND RESPECT AND-...*punched in the face*
Jude: Can we get on with the story already?  You're just wasting our time...again...I think that's the only thing you truly excel in...
Ludger: Agreed.
Alvin: Yeah, I mean, I'm the only one who can shoot these enemies back...it doesn't help I'm the only one focused on actually fighting them and you're busy dealing with that idiot.
Ivar: I said RESPECT ME damn it!
Elle: This guy is annoying.
Ludger: ...
Ivar: FINE! I'll prove I am important! Here, take these Guns, Ludger!  Why don't I use them? Because I'd be too dangerous! I need to limit my abilities you see! In fact, I'll even let you use me as target practice for-...
*Ludger shoots Ivar repeatedly in a means reminiscent to Dante's Ebony and Ivory*
Ivar: OW! What was that for!?
Jude: You literally just asked him to do that...
Ivar: Bah! This is nothing!  You'll see my true strength later! *Ivar limps off*
Alvin: ...on the bright side...we now have a 2nd person capable of wielding fire arms?
Ludger: Yes.

*the three dudes beat up robots, and Exodus agents, Elle remains useless*
Alvin: There's just no end to these guys!
Jude: Yeah, but we have to push through!
*Big dark energy blows up a robot*
Alvin: ...what was that?
Ludger: Good question.
School Girl: Oh, that was me!
Jude: Oh, Elize!  Barely recognized you!  Wait, are you the Rieze Maxian good will ambassadors?
Elize: Yeah, my school was going here on a field trip touring the place and well...you can probably figure out the rest.
Alvin: Wait, if you're here, does that mean...
Teepo: WAH-HEY! IT'S OUR LITTLE FRIEND!!!!
Alvin: ...just what I need...him...
Elle: What is that thing!? It looks stupid!
Elize: This is my friend Teepo.
Jude: Speaking of friends, where are your classmates?
Elize: Oh, Mr. Balan diverted the enemies so the rest of us can get into a safe spot.  Luckily, I had Teepo with me so I was able to scout around and defend myself.
Jude: Glad you're alright, Elize, think you can help us locate Balan?
Elize: Sure!
Alvin: Wait, is it just me, or does this seem like an awfully cheap excuse at a full cast reunion of the first game?
Teepo: Awww, you're just saying that because you're being mean!
Alvin: Awww, you figured me out!
Jude: Let's be fair, Alvin.  She IS our first true healer, do you really want to do this dungeon without her?
Alvin: ...fine, I'll put up Teepo.
Ludger: Let's go.

*Dungeon crawling and a temporal distortion nonsense later, the team reaches the roof.  On the way, Elle and Teepo are competing in an Annoying Everyone Off! ...Elle is "winning"...*

Jude: This looks like the roof.
Alvin: Jude, we were literally here one year ago dealing with problems in the first game.  Did you seriously forget that already?
Jude: I'm just making an establishing statement for the people playing this game ok?
Alvin: Fair enough.
Elize: Say, does that giant orb over there look familiar.
Volt: BZZZZT! ZZZZZZT! VOLTORB!!!!
Elle: OMG! A POKEMON!
Jude: Actually, that's a Spyrite nam-...
Elle: WE HAVE TO CATCH IT!
Alvin: What Jude is trying to say...
Elle: GIVE ME THE DAMN POKEBALLS NOW!
Elize: There are no Pokemon in this universe!
Teepo: Though Spyrites are basically the same thing when you think about it.
Jude: Which leads me to what I was ABOUT to say: That's Volt, a Spyrite of a greater spirit that...should be dead...because we killed it one year ago...
Alvin: So, Dr. Matthis, what's your analysis?
Jude: Heck if I know, things die when they are killed and we definitely killed it last year...unless they brought it back...yeah I'm going to question Balan on that because I definitely didn't give it the ok!
Elle: LIGHTNING IS SCARY! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Teepo: Can we just kill the thing so she stops crying!?
Alvin: What do you know, something we agree on!

*one annoying boss fight later, Ludger goes into DEMON MODE and stabs the damn thing causing it to explode, Temporal Distortion ends and everyone back to first floor*
Alvin: We were on the roof, right?
Elize: I think so...
Alvin: Then what the heck are we doing down here?
Ludger: Doesn't matter.
Elle: BUT I WANT TO KNOW THE ANSWER NOW!
Alvin: Kid...
Elle: Yeah?
Alvin: ...shut up
Elle: ok!
Jude: So...back to the roof?
Ludger: Back to the roof.

*back on the roof*
Jude: So...where's Balan?
Alvin: Oh I know all his hiding spots. HEY BALAN COME OUT HERE YOU BUM!
Balan: Huh, Alvin? That you?
Alvin: No.
Balan: oh, ok, thought it was.
Alvin: ...seriously get down here, Exodus is gone.
Jude: Balan, good to see you again...why was Volt up here? I thought we all agreed NOT TO USE GREAT SPIRITS FOR SPYRITES!
Balan: ...we didn't recreate Volt...that would be the dumbest idea possible.
Jude: Huh, but we totally fought him here.
Elle: LIGHTNING IS SCARY AND BAD AND AAAAAAAAAH!!!!
Jude: ...we had to put up with that for the past 20 minutes because of him.
Balan: You sure? I've been up here the entire time and no Volt.
Jude: Well that's strange.  So where to next.
Flying Woman: It's been a long time, Jude!
Jude: huh!? Muzet!? What are you doing here!? ...you're not going to be a boss fight are you?
Muzet: Why would I be that?
Jude: You were kind of the final boss of the previous game...
Muzet: What about Gaius?
Jude: Fine, you were the CO-Final Boss of the previous game, happy?
Muzet: Better!
Jude: Anyway, why are you here?
Muzet: Bad things are happening, and Milla is missing and I thought maybe you knew where she was.
Jude: ...wait, Milla's missing? Isn't she suppose to be, you know, busy sort of maintaining the world's spirits?
Muzet: Yes, yes she is...then she decided to stop doing that, came here in human form and well...
Jude: ...I see...no, I don't know where she is.
Muzet: Oh, that's too bad, well best I go look for her!  She's kind of important after all.
Elle: Who...was that?
Teepo: That's Milla's big sister!
Elle: Whose Milla?
Alvin: NO! We are NOT giving this brat a crash course in the entire first game's plot.
Ludger: Home.
Elize: I'll go with you! I want to know what's happening.
Alvin: Ok, that DEFINITELY is an excuse just to have another party member.
Teepo: And we all know you're only complaining because you don't like me.
Alvin: And that is one thing I have NEVER kept secretive!

*back at Trigleph*
Jude: So our next destination is Marksburg because someone has been looking for Julius there.
Alvin: Yeah, but how are we going to get there?
*Ludger's phone goes off*
Ludger: Hello?
Nova: PAY YOUR DAMNED DEBT NOW! Toodles ^_^
Jude: Guess that answers THAT!

*one Jude character quest later that we're skipping because frankly, I don't feel like going over it.  Just know that Jude used basic logic and legal reasoning to defeat a black market guy, Ludger pays that part of the debt and they head off to Marksburg*

Jude: So there's suppose to be someone looking for Julius here.
Alvin: Well I guess we best start looking!
Teepo: Hey! Look! Someone is over there.
Elize: Hey, I was about to say that!
Jude: Even though the chances of that being relevant are incredibly small...
Ludger: There.
Jude: Fine, we'll go.
*team talks to person*
Girl: Here kitty kitty kitty! ... I SAID HERE DAMN IT! Come on, please
Jude: Wait...Leia? What are you doing here?
Leia: huh? Jude? Oh, just trying to get this cat!
Jude: I thought you were a reporter now...
Elize: Wait, Leia's a reporter? Since when?
Teepo: Yeah, that's as crazy as Alvin being a salesman!
Alvin: *cough*
Leia: Well, it's part of my job! See, this cat is Julius and getting him is the big scoop and...
*Ludger attempts to get him, gets scratched*
Ludger: Pain...
Jude: wait...that cat is Julius!?  So the person hunting Julius was you...and it's not the Julius we were looking for...
Alvin: So this is yet ANOTHER case we're just meeting someone for the sake of a reunion...to hell with it, I'm getting that cat back for you, Elize, you're with me!
Elize: Why?
Alvin: Because I need to use Teepo as bait.
Teepo: HEY!
Elize: I'll help but only if you promise not to use Teepo in such a way.
Alvin: ...I'll try?
*Leia joins, Alvin and Elize leave temporarily for plot convenience*
Elle: Wait, is she your GIRLFRIEND JUDE!?
Jude: Uh, no, she's just a childhood friend, that's all?
Elle: HEY! YOU TOTALLY LIKE EACH OTHER! MEANIE
Jude: Uh...what? I...uhh...Leia, back me up here...
Leia: It's...just like...he...said...uhh...say, what's your name anyway?
Ludger: Ludger.
Leia: Ludger! Yeah, that's it! Tell that kid...what's her name?
Elle: I'm Elle, REMEMBER IT!!!
Leia: Yeah, tell Elle there's nothin-...wait, Jude, are you...
Jude: HOW DID I GET MYSELF INTO THIS!?
Ludger: Why me...

*team moves on*
Elle: Hey, that glasses man looks familiar...
Ivar: AHA!!! Fearing cat, you will know the sting of my...OH GOD MY FACE!!!
Leia: What's he doing here?
Jude: ...do you want the alleged answer or the speculative rightly truthful one?
Leia: Yes.
Ivar: YES! SEE EVEN THE MIGHTIEST OF BEASTS RUN SCARED OF ME AND MY MIGHTY HAMMER!
Ludger: Sure...
Ivar: And thus, HERE YOU GO! I have no need for such a mighty weapon, I am mighty without!  Come on, I dare you to try and beat me with that-...
*Ludger smashes Ivar over the head with the sledgehammer, wielding it like he's god damned ninja somehow*
Ivar: Aha! A clever tactic attacking me while my guard is down!
Leia: Uh, I'm pretty sure that was less "clever" and more "releasing pent up rage on a fool" but sure, you keep telling yourself that.
Ivar: I would love to school you some more, but now I MUST GET GOING! *Ivar limps off screen clearly beaten...badly...*
Leia: Please tell me we won't have to deal a whole extra game with him...
Jude: I'm afraid so...
Leia: Aww...why can't you have picked a COOLER more competent rival!?
Jude: Hey, I didn't CHOOSE him to be my rival...actually thinking on it, I'm pretty sure he chose me...and I can't even begin to fathom WHY.
Leia: Anyway, let's go back to Duval, I have a source I need to contact!

*at Duval*
Leia: Ah, there you are Jolyne!
Jolyne: I'm not going to give you information for free you know...
Leia: This is Jude Matthis, the guy who is working on Spyrite Technology, and this is Ludger Kresnik, the wanted man who is the brother of that other wanted man...I'm pretty sure we can pay you information!
Jolyne: You win.  Anyway, there's this guy in the street...a DEMON if you will...go check him out, good news story!
Jude: I guess we're going to alleyway now, huh?
*at the alleyway*
Elle: This place is scary!
Leia: Why are we bringing her along again?  She can't fight, and she's not a booster for another character justifying the existence...
Jude: I'm still trying to figure that part out.  Ludger, do you know why she's with us?
Ludger: No.
Elle: Because I said so *sticks tongue out*
Leia: So I hear this is a black market for Spirit Fossils and...
Random Dude: DID YOU SAY SPIRIT FOSSILS!? I GOT A WHOLE BUNCH OF THEM FOR LESSER SPIRITS HERE! YOU GOT MONEY! I GOT GOODS!
Jude: This seems a little too convenient...
Random Dude: GET HIM BOYS!!!
*guy holds Jude at gunpoint*
Jude: ...you do realize I could turn around and beat you pretty damn fast right?
Random Gun Guy: Ha! It's not like you're the main character or anything!
Jude: No, but he is!
*Ludger steps on Rollo's tail, Rollo screams, gun guy startles, Jude knocks guy out*
Jude: Ok, start talking!
Random Guy: RIEZE MAXIA SCUM! YOU ARE MONSTERS WITH YOUR SPIRIT ARTES AND SUCH! US NORMAL ELYMPIANS WITH OUR GUNS ARE THE TRUE MASTER RACE!
Jude: That...doesn't even begin to make sense.  Well, no, I get the fear and monster part but how is being clearly inferior a "master race" and...
Leia: You're applying too much logic to idiot racist thinking, Jude...
Jude: ...touche...
*Spacial Distortion Bullcrap happens*
Ludger: ...Deja Vu.
Jude: Ok, I think see where this is going.
Random Dude: Aha, you there, you look like you're looking for something.
*Jude catches gun guy coming behind him*
Jude: Ok, speak up, WHY DO YOU HATE US!?
Random Dude: YOU GUYS ARE RIEZE MAXIA SCUM!  WE WILL MURDER YOU MONSTROUS CREATURES!
Familiar Old Voice: Monsters using Spirits? I see...
*3 knives cause a triangle around them and capture the dudes*
Rowen: I believe I'm the one you're looking for.
Jude: Rowen! How convenient!
Random Dude: Oh no, we of this organization are going to get back at you MONSTERS of Rieze Maxia and...
Rowen: Monsters? Why yes, yes we are *immolates the guys*
Leia: Uh...Rowen...what did you do?
Rowen: Murdered them because they killed Gaius and Lady Drissele and...
Ludger: Imposter.
Jude: Yeah, most likely, SHOW YOUR TRUE SELF!
*Rowen turns black and evil*
Jude: Boss fight?
Ludger: Boss fight.
Leia: *sigh* Didn't even get a real dungeon...
*one boss fight later, more Lance bullshit by Ludger, distortion ends*

Random Dude: What!? People don't just disappear! They truly are monsters.
Jude: Uh, we're right behind you actually...no, we do not have an explanation for it and I can assure you it's not Spirit Artes.
Random Dude: bah, shoot them!
Manly Voice: That's enough, actually.
Random Dude: And who are you?
*revealed to be Gaius*
Gaius: Does it matter? Put the guns down.
Random Dude: Why should I?
Gaius: Because I just sliced them out of your hands when you weren't looking and am now holding you at sword point.
Random Dude: HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!
Gaius: Villain of the first game.
Random Dude: ...oh...
Gaius: So tell me, what are your plans with the boosters and spyrix?
Random Dude: We were going to create a Greater Spyrite and cause it to make a havok thus have people lose faith in the process! There, happy!?
Gaius: That's...actually a very clever plan...wouldn't you say so Rowen?
Rowen: Yes, indeed, good thing we're going to stop it.
Random Dude: See!? YOU ARE MONSTERS! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US!
*Gaius puts down sword*
Gaius: Actually, you're wrong; we're going to let you live.  Proof we aren't monsters.
Random Dude: But you just said you were the villain!
Gaius: Past tense is key there...
Random Dude: Yeah well...RUN AWAY!!!
Jude: Well, not how I expected to see either of you but...uhh...hi Gaius and Rowen.
Rowen: Pleasure to see you again.
Gaius: I see you're doing well.
Jude: So what are you two doing over here? I mean, one of you is King of Rieze Maxia, and the other is Prime Minister...you are literally the two biggest people in Rieze Maxia.
Gaius: Investigation.  Need to find out what's going on over here first hand.  By the way, my name is Erost while I'm up here...kind of can't give away that I'm KING OF RIEZE MAXIA walking around.
Rowen: Something is afoot, if you don't mind, I'd like to rejoin my comrades.
Gaius: Works for me.
Alvin: Oh yeah, we're conveniently back at this point too.
Elize: Yep.
Rowen: Ah, the whole gang is back together...and with some new faces.
Ludger: Indeed.
Elle: YOU'RE OLD AND STUPID AND WHY DO WE HAVE TO HAVE YOU!?
Rowen: So where do we go from here?
*Ludger's phone rings*
Spirius Agent: GO TO ALDAHI SEAHAVEN! NEXT MISSION IS THERE!
Ludger: ...Aldahi Seahaven apparently.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN AT ALDAHI SEAHAVEN!?  ANd...oh screw it you already know how this is going down.  Just tune in next time.

[Veryslightlymad]

FFXII:

Played a crap ton of this today. How much? Uh.... I went from wherever I was all the way to after Belial. So... a ways. It certainly feels like a ways.

Vaan: Upgraded his spear to an even better spear. Has a shit ton of HP. Luckily hasn't done anything too stupid since last time, but he did watch his girl get hit on by both Balthier AND that little twit Larsa, so he's really gotta up his game. I can see that after FFX, Square liked making you an observer to someone else's story, because for all that Vaan is there, it really feels like a story focused on Basch/Ashe/Balthier. Oh, well.

Balthier: Found a different gun and gave it to him, and hey, he suddenly deals a bunch of damage. Gotta love not giving a shit about enemy defense. Guns are weird in this game. ITD is interesting, but even so, wow, they have terrible power. I still haven't figured out what I want to do with him, but I gave him a Belial, because it was there, and I figured "Well, at least it gives him a definite use for the next several battles or whatever." In plot, continues to generally be the man. They must have had a blast writing this guy.

Fran: Continues to be my jill of all trades. Dark is real good for much of this part of the game. I keep finding decent bows, so I'm just sort of rolling with it in that direction. Pretty much necessary for killing the trash mobs if they go full zerg swarm. Finally did some stuff, plot wise.

Basch: My only character with quickening. Actually, he has two. So.... Basch is a guy that I stuff in my party if I want a competent-to-very good physical fighter, but if a boss is giving me difficulty, I can sub him in and delete it, now. I really wish him and Vossler switched places.

Ashe: Sort of a paladin in my file. So tanky. She really likes blocking enemy attacks with her shield and generally gumming up the works. She also has a boatload of HP, but not like, Vaan levels. I feel like she's basically following Yuna's act, which kind of waters her down. Otherwise, she's cool enough.

Penelo: Rejoins with about a billion LP and the freedom to go in any direction you give her. I wound up giving her a pole, because I had one lying around and holy shit, poles are awesome. They combo like crazy, boost your evade to absurd levels, and hit Mdef instead of def, so even though ostensibly she should be my fourth strongest character, against certain enemies she does about 100 damage more than any other party member---with ONE hit. She usually gets more. I decided I wanted to give her a bunch of high armor/strength/evade equips, and now she's an ultra-tank that just ruins the shit out of tougher random encounters. PLUS she has all the magic variety that Fran does. And that's just what I chose to do. I love that she starts with so much LP, that, this random orphan girl that you pick up can just be turned into whatever, you know. I mean, I made her a crazy bo-fighter, but someone else could have easily turned her into a super mage or some sort of viking berserker.

Really though, everyone is the same, but I'm digging that I've built them differently enough to be notable, so far. I gave everyone in my party Raise, because why the hell would I not give everyone in my party raise?

[Dhyerwolf]

Balthier: No good lines because this dungeon is awful and takes forever.

...
...
...
Do you know what's coming?

[Grefter]

Human Resource Machine - Another game that proves I only pretend to be smart and am actually a fucking moron.

I want to talk about why it makes me stupid, but that would only be me trying to pretend I am smart.  So just accept that I am not smart and move on.  literally proving that I shouldn't work in the field that I do because I can't do basic fucking variable handling.

[Fenrir]

I am some kind of Human Resource Machine God and have finished half the levels with all the stars in like one hour so far.

On the other hand , unfortunately, being good at this is actually not related to intelligence in any way

[Fenrir]

Maybe knowing code actually makes you worse at this

[Fenrir]

Oh yeah I also finished Talos Principle. Fantastic.
While the rewind machine was a fantastic idea, I felt like it slowed puzzle execution down too much.
I tried to get one other star (I had 7) then just dropped the idea and youtubed the super special ending. It's actually not super special at all!
I'll try the DLC later.

[Grefter]

I don't actually know code is part of the problem.

I couldn't optimize like the first thing on the tier that has year 20ish and fought to even solve it, then ragequit on sorting Zero terminating strings.  Nearly fucking broke stuff when I solved it today but still wouldn't get it to work because I hadn't realised that 000 would want to output 00 instead of just 0  because it is very specifically 0 TERMINATING, not 0 working as start and end of a string and the game not really telling you WHAT is wrong with the code when it flips its shit because your set works for the current set, but it wants to output a new one that breaks it.  SO I was expecting to only output 0 and then would move on to the next output which I thought was right and it is all NAH MOTHERFUCKER IT SHOULD BE 0 and I go... but I fucking DID 0.

I also have no idea how to strip a command and I am sure there is some deliberately inefficient command structures I can use to reduce # of actions but inflating # commands that I haven't internalized, but far more frustrating is not working out how to drop a command on a code you have just got working and miss the target by 1...

Fucking INFURIATING.  And this is why I don't actually code.

Vermintide - Do you like Left4Dead?  Do you want Left4Dead with level progression and loot?  Well you should probably have checked out Payday 2 or Warframe or both, but this is also like that but MUCH more like Left4Dead because Skaven are mostly melee mobs and a bunch of the special enemies are straight rips of classic L4D enemies (the smokers/Pack Rats are much shorter range at least).  It also has probably a more robust melee system than even Left4Dead 2.  I only did 2 maps both as the dwarf, but like 1/4 of the way through the first map I got the feel for the rhythm of blocking and shield bashing to control crowds and regenerate your defense/stamina, compared to L4D where you just pretty much don't want to really get locked into Melee it feels really nice.

Oh and there is no friendly fire, so it is safe to play with Super.

Apparently the difficulty scales up by reducing healing AND increasing incoming damage which pushes my buttons a bit (I hate difficulty levels scaling with two vectors, it is way way way too easy to fuck up AND can very easily make the game not feel like the thing you originally enjoyed).  It does do some pretty neat things with sacrificing item slots for better chances at loot.  You can give up portability of your healing slot to get Tomes that buff your odds of loot drops at end of the level.  You can still pick up and use healing items that you find, but you can't take more with you.  There is Grimoires for your buff potion slots that you can't put down that do the same.  Unfortunately you can also really easily throw them away by accident (which I did of course) by toggling to that slot and clicking.  But essentially you can forego standard bonuses while you play for long term rewards, which is play I usually quite like.

SO we will see how I feel about that, but from a short session it feels like  neat little thing with a lot of potential which is wayyyy more than I expected when I originally saw it.  I first saw it as a Warhammer fantasy tie in (which I never really give many fucks about) for a game setting that has literally just been killed by Games Workshop.  (Like it is cool as a thing that exists and to know some lore of, but balls to most of the games that aren't Chaos in the Old World).  When I found out it is a coop game though I was more on board, then finding out a few more things, like some progression to keep me interested beyond just finishing the campaign, different character types so some asynchronous play and I was pretty sold.

It is a good thing that there is auras around friendly characters though, because everything is so grey and brown that I would still fuck up the human sillhouettes for rats in a flurry otherwise.  This is why grimdank is terrible settings for shooters.

Also I should probably not have let the death of Warhammer phase me.  I mean like, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines came out JUST as Old WoD was killed off as well and Bloodlines is amazing, BG2 came out at the death of 2nd Edition, so clearly there is some pedigree there.

[Fenrir]

Yeah nevermind I got up to Year 20 and FUCK THAT SHIT.
I mean I can finish the level but optimizating this? Jesus

[Shale]

Tal, SRWI damage math is absolutely cuckoo in a number of ways. Hell, it's the first, and God willing only, game where Shin Getter 1 is generally acknowledged to be a worse unit than Boss Borot.

[Magic Fanatic]

Hunger Quest - Just picked this up as a mobile game because it was in the recommended queue for Pictlogica.  Seems fairly fun from the outset, though the fact that new jobs are basically bought kind of annoys me.

[Grefter]

Human Resource Machine - I finished Zero Terminating Sum (year 21).  It was a shit solution but it did the job.  I tried the "hard" thing of that tier afterwards (year 22), which is grab an input, then output the Fibonacci Sequence until you reach the number closest to the input.  I fucked up and built a count to that number of sequences into the Fibonacci sequence instead.  So rework it to check and see if the next Fibonacci number is > than the input and that works.  I know my loop functions were a bit inefficient and I could have cropped a command or two which might have actually met the optimisation goals.  Probably 15 minutes total spent on the "hard" puzzle.

Then try Year 23 and I have no fucking clue man.  I worked out a shitty way to do it, but it uses all 8 variables just to compare 4 outputs and then it breaks if your Terminating 0 is the fifth output (or if you have more than 4 values to compare).  It would be super inefficient but it would work if I had more Variables and the outputs were limited.  I can't fucking work out how to do it.  I know I could do it with a running count (and a ceiling on the number of variables to compare).  However there is no way to define a variable as a starting point for running a Count (sometimes they prepopulate something with 0 which I could use...).

I just... fuck me.  This game makes me hate myself.

Edit - I beat like year 24 as well.  Then went back and realised I didn't have 17 done, but finished that as well.

26 I can't work out either (which is sort 3 things in numerical order).  I can do all kinds of things, but I can't compare things.

[Cotigo]

I just... fuck me.  This game makes me hate myself.

Yeah, that's the game's fault. Sure.

10/10 GOTY amirite

[Fenrir]

gref: i haven't gotten there yet

But can't you Like substract x from y and if negative then x is bigger and if positive y is bigger?


Jesus this game is math edutainment

[Dark Holy Elf]

Star Ocean 3 - Re-beaten. I defeated Luther on the first try though it was a bit dicy with some Analeptic use after Perfect Symmetry wrecked people a few times. Didn't see Insanity Prelude. Mostly used Scatter Beam chains and Poison Cloud/Mirror Slice combos to smash things, it worked pretty well. Adray, as mentioned, helps extend healing resources and that's about it. No idea why mages are so bad at comboing in this game compared to 4.

The ending was pretty goofy. The one new ending scene I hadn't watched on my first playthrough was Albel's. Which is about him having an anime showdown with a vampire or something? What the fuck was that? I kinda regret getting Albel, every time he opens his mouth he makes scenes dumber, although lategame scenes in SO3 don't have much to lose to be fair.

So yeah. As much as I like a lot of the writing, and I even like the idea of the plot twist, I don't really like how the scene-writing and character work derails hard in the late-going. So many scenes which are just... awkwardly directed, with characters repeating themselves, and a total lack of interesting character conflicts which dominated the Elicoor arc. Oh well. The gameplay, at least, remains quite fun, if sometimes rather rough around the edges (I'm now pretty certain I prefer SO4 from a pure gameplay perspective, functional mages + characters not being underlevelled + rotatable camera + visible enemy HP + buffs/debuffs visible + rush mode; SO3 has fury which is cool but not implemented as well as I'd like). It was certainly an enjoyable game to revisit. I won't bother with the aftergame this time.