What games are you playing 2014?

[Meeplelard]

SOS Nul-abilities were crucial for Tidus SCC too, in particular it was the only way to immunity to...Ice I think it was?  which there was no way I could get around fast enough against Omnis even with the Caladbolg.  Luckily, he nukes you with Ultima right before it, and you can HP twink Tidus to barely survive that!

FF10 replays tend to always involve me investing loads of money in things I expect to be useful, but ultimately never end up using anyway.  Like this playthrough, Tidus' Slowtouch weapon sounds cool because hey, Tidus won't learn Slow on Auron's grid, and Yuna's going to take forever to get it and may skip it outright!  Turns out I never bother to use it anyway...

...and soon going to sell like everything (Sellable) of Tidus' besides the Sonic Steel, because Caladbolg unlock.

[Fenrir]

Man FFX is not really a good game for solos at all compared to a lot of RPGs and you still all did it. You all love your FFX.


I got Doublecast and that was the end of my path.
Flare is waaay further on the expert sphere grid, locked behind a few level 3 and 4 spherelocks or whatever they're called.
I decided to wait until I got the appropriate keychainspheres.
Then ten seconds later I just teleported to Auron's first sphere node to get Haste instead. WOOO

Then I think I'm going for the Rikkuish path because she also has Flare, only locked behind level 2 annoyingspheres. Yep.


Seymour Nachos went "Cool, you have Stoneward... But do you have Stoneproof?" and of course I died. Jesus Christ FFX.
Fortunately he only uses it below 24000 HPs, and Doublecast Firaga + Overdrive > 24001 HPs. He actually died from his little buddy panicking and stealing his last 4000 Hps from him.


I then averted my eyes from the Tidus sex



About Auron, well he really has the role of the wise old mentor guy in the team (despite his youth), and there isn't often a guy like him in every RPG party... Especially FF8

[Fenrir]

Is there any plot reasons why your team of heretics hunted by Yevon can play blitzball competitively? Does the Blitzball league grant asylum?
That's like Ben Laden playing in the World Cup

[Shale]

I tried replaying FFX once but the International edition crashed out on me at the fight where you team up with Seymour against Sin and I can't bear the thought of wading through the first part of the game *again*.

SRWZ3: Beat, finally, on a loaner game played on a loaner PS3, because Internet friends are the best. The thing just gets steamrolled after 2/3 of the way through, as much as any game in the series that I can remember, but it was a good time. TTGL, for pete's sake. So awesome.

Theatrhythm CC: Got this for the 3DS I got for my birthday. Lots of fun as a rhythm game, but the RPG elements are completely lost on me. The way they implement the genres doesn't really mesh, unless you miss a lot of notes.

[Luther Lansfeld]

It's definitely more of a thing in the original Theathrhythm. I think they decided to downplay the RPG elements in the sequel because, well, they aren't really all that great. I generally think it's an upgrade because you are freer to play the game with whoever you want, which is the point of a silly silly crossover game, no?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Man FFX is not really a good game for solos at all compared to a lot of RPGs and you still all did it. You all love your FFX.

I dunno, I would certainly consider it a better game for solos than FF5-6 because of more interesting skills/equipment stuff (e.g. SOS Nuls!) and much more interesting enemy design. In the FF5 solo I felt I could only ever lose because of fatal status* (some of that is FF5 enemies being undamaging, some of it is the fact that one PC = overlevelled in those games).

It's also a better game for solos than say Grandia 3 or Shadow Hearts 3, two games I considered doing one for but realised they would just be way too hard because of the fact the games are just harder to start with + the way enemies can gang up on you (especially in Grandia). Like yeah you could probably get around this by grinding a lot but that would be stupid.

And then lots of games have solos which don't work well because they revive your other party members to full (or even just 1 HP + they can't target themselves and/or escape individually like in FFX) and so much of the "solo" strategy is hoping your allies take some hits for you, and I just find that very unappealing. WA4's high on my list of favourite RPGs ever (especially gameplaywise) but a solo has never been terribly tempting in that game for me, for that reason.

I haven't done any other solos; if you feel like recommending any good ones, feel free!


*EDIT: and Atomos of course

[Meeplelard]

It's definitely more of a thing in the original Theathrhythm. I think they decided to downplay the RPG elements in the sequel because, well, they aren't really all that great. I generally think it's an upgrade because you are freer to play the game with whoever you want, which is the point of a silly silly crossover game, no?

Yeah, pretty much this.  In the first game, stats mattered more because you wanted to kill as many bosses as possible in Dark Notes to get as many shards as possible, and you wanted at least one half-decent speedster for FMS' to get that Boss unlock.  This led to situations like "Any FMS based PC is useless because someone like Terra or Shantotto is good enough and actually effective in BMS."  Naturally, defensive characters were not worth much unless you simply wanted to survive to the end of a song, not caring about rating.

Here, you just want to kill one Boss and you've gotten the significant rewards for a Medley; multiple gets you more bells and whistles, but is not crucial.  Also recruiting characters is way easier in Curtain Call than it is the original, it cannot be stressed enough. 

Generally speaking, if you don't care about the RPG Element, then just equip a bunch of defensive skills, stat ups, etc., just so you can survive to the end of the song.  The RPG element is more extra fluff like how many enemies you can kill in a BMS, how far can you travel on an FMS, how many enemies can you kill with a "hands free" style, etc.  It's basically there for getting trophies.  You do want to factor this in to some degree when doing Medleys to insure you kill the notable bosses for Shards, but beyond that, not a big deal.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Hyrule Warriors - Got the Level 3 Summoning Gate and grabbed Ganondorf's Level 3 weapon as well. Now I'm working on getting some Gold Skulltulas and maybe going to grab Level 3's for the characters that you get in Adventure Mode as well as Darunia. At some point I should work on the Master Quest too.

Smash 4 - Did the Smash Tour to unlock a new stage. It's more fun than Smash Run because it doesn't try to be a shitty platformer, but it's still kinda weird. I like that it intersperses Smash gameplay in the core of the game instead of the fucking bizareness of Smash Run. Ran into one map that spawned like a Galaga every few seconds. It was pretty hilarious. Also been trying to git gud at the free-for-all mode.

[Fenrir]

The solo gameplay in FFX is very good; when I said it wasn't a great game for solos, I mostly talked about the annoyances: Long unskippable cutscenes (sometimes before bosses), needing characters to flee at the starting of every battle (this requires 4 button presses per fleeing attempt and can fail), generally slow battle pace.

I actually really liked FF5 solo? I didn't feel I could die much less to damage than in FFX. (Admittedly Lulu is pretty tanky...) I had a lot of difficult fights like Exdeath 1 and had to switch strategies a lot.
BUT I don't know about you but I also had an additional no-monk rule because monk made every other class obsolete in that context. This meant I also didn't have HP+30%.


Persona 3 Portable was my favourite solo, I think, since the game just showers you with options, has a ton of interesting battles and lets you fly through the dating sim aspect. Pretty cool Yattaf too.

You'd probably enjoy SaGa Frontier 1 solo (Just not with Emelia as her first boss requires grinding) It's also a great way to rediscover the game and one of the only ways (...outside speedruns?) to make all that SaGa Frontier knowledge actually have a real use. Random battles outside the lab become threatening, you have to balance learning techs and being good in battles, etc.
Romancing SaGa 3 was very similar and better as a solo game, but a lot more difficult so you'd really have to know the game first. I'm also totally biased towards it because it has my favourite Yattaf

[Captain K.]

I haven't done any other solos; if you feel like recommending any good ones, feel free!

Valkyrie Profile, my good man.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Oh yeah, absolutely agreed about the long cutscenes, they do suck. You must remember that I cut my teeth on FFT challenges so I'm used to that sort of garbage, you don't want to know how many times I've seen Barinten get thrown off a roof, or Wiegraf's whiny speech, or Gafgarion telling Ramza to haul ass back to Igros.


Exdeath 1 I recall being easy outside the chance of Doom to start the battle (which you can cast Return to get around). Golem/Carbuncle, or just Protect/Shell if you'd rather run White/Mix than Summon (but Summon provides offence). You could also get all the defensive buffs if you dropped Time Mage, but I love my Haste too much. FF5 buffs are amazing things. In fairness, FFX's are too, but the game designers are a bit more aware of this and bosses remove positive status more, and/or have other tricks to circumvent them). FFX's enemy damage scale is also a bit higher to start with, but the biggest thing is that in FF5 solos you get a big level boost which roughly doubles your HP.

I didn't find Monk very useful at all, past the earlygame, as usual with FF5. Barehanded was nice if you needed to give other jobs physical damage (although that falls off by mid world 2 even with the level boost IIRC) but that was about it. I certainly didn't get HP+30. The one thing I banned to ensure I actually had to make choices was Mix (since Mix has like every buff ever but is annoying to farm things for) but that wasn't really necessary or anything.


Saga Frontier does feel like one worth trying at some point!

[Fenrir]

Does Barinten getting thrown off a roof actually ever get old?
I don't remember the specifics with ExDeath 1 but I had to choose between time magic and... Damage? Healing? I might have just not mastered the right jobs. I certainly didn't bother with Mix.

Captain K, are you crazy, this sounds like the worst game for solos. You have almost no options and have to rely on the RNG Gods all the time. And how do you get past Bloodbane anyway? This is B ending only?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Guts/Angel Curio/Auto Item blahblahblah will get you past most everything with enough luck. For Bloodbane... you're thinking of Heal every 10 turns above half HP or whatever it is? Hmm, you'd need to muster 11k damage per turn to avoid that. Seems tricky for a solo but doable, probably something involving Charge and Reverie and such. (Or you could use Lawfer and a Combo Jewel and soul crush every turn or two with the Dinosaur, broke'd.) I do have to agree that I don't think VP is really in its element in solos, since so much of that game is the interplay of comboing your different PCs' attacks together.

Yeah I suppose for Exdeath 1 you'd really want to have at least one of Summon 4, Time 4 (or at least 2; 4 is just for Return), or White 5 going into the fight so you can have two useful skillsets. I was probably taking that for granted.

Does Barinten getting thrown off a roof actually ever get old?

Not really, no.

[SnowFire]

Not really a fan of replaying most games these days, let alone doing a solo challenge (at least when things get grindy & slow - e.g. FF12 solo is surely doable, and surely super-boring), but one time I tried one was Arc the Lad 4 of all games.  You get some super accessories in a NG+ which include things like "double XP" IIRC.  Since the system to that game was pretty great but way too easy, I figured I'd try a Kharg / Darc solo, but...  it doesn't ACTUALLY get harder, because that game has subtractive defense, so if you overlevel your solo character - which is going to happen - you basically stop taking damage.  So I pretty well abandoned the run, it wasn't interesting.  Alas.

[Fenrir]

I just saw a video of a(n over enthusiastic) guy playing VP solo and he couldn't get past Bloodbane because of Heal yeah (but could have with the RNG planets aligned). That was with Valkyrie, Lawfer would have an easier time.
A big problem is that Bloodbane used heal even with nearly no HPs left, I wonder when the rumour that he doesn't use Heal at low HPs came from?

Dude had 90 000 HPs
He used Auto Item / Throw / Splash / Charge, said Reverie didn't help there.
He needed to use Combo Jewel to get a PWS with a sword and that wasted a ton of turns. He tried Might Potions.
He needed Bloodbane to never guard/dodge and to never hit successfuly with status, and he needed to have perfect timing for his attacks.

(BTW he mentioned Captain K of course)


Snowfire: Yeah it's like Fire Emblem. In FE if you only use one guy you just cruise through all the midgame because you have one overleveled dude in a game with substractive defense.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Sounds about right re Bloodbane. As far as Heal at low HPs goes... maybe he can use it in the Gravity Blessing range but not the Death Sanction range? I know I did some challenge which required skipping Heal and it worked. Though, IIRC VP AI changes at lower HP thresholds are sometimes a bit fuzzy and enemies sometimes do things they aren't "supposed" to.

The FE thing is very true. I've never even done a solo with a Def-based character but I've done Lyn and Colm and high evade has the same effect; being overlevelled in many of these games is just brutal on the enemies. The only reason FE solos get under control is you hit the level cap and stop improving past a certain point which lets the enemies catch up. That and sometimes the enemies have win conditions that don't require killing you, these are often some of the hardest maps (Sands of Time, Last Hope, etc.).

[Fenrir]

The guy experimented a bit later in the video.

At low HPs on the 10th turn, if he attacked (and missed) Bloodbane used Heal, if he used an item Bloodbane used Gravity Blessing. So there's a bit of randomness there.

Probably the easiest way to play through an average Fire Emblem is to just use around 5 characters, and raise a few prepromotes near the end. The first few and the last few maps are a tiny bit more difficult than usual, while the rest of the game is utterly crushed.
Pokemon is even more unbalanced; use only one Pokemon and destroy the entire game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, you even get the benefit of supports if you go for ~5 characters, which are often a pretty big deal.

[jsh357]

I did a solo run with Lucius in FE7.  Only on Eliwood normal mode, though.  It was laughably easy.  If you were going to take on a hard mode, I imagine Marcus would be the best pick.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Marcus Solo gets walled so hard at the final chapter. Actually many FE7 solos do, I think Meeple gave up on beating his Hector one there for instance. I'm actually pretty impressed Lucius was able to get through that, though blah blah depends on stats etc. RNG abuse can go a long way if you're willing to do that.

HM actually barely matters for the final chapter, and everything before then is largely fairly easy on a solo (aside from some rough spots getting started depending on the character, and as mentioned a few points where you can lose a battle without dying)... so yeah mode shouldn't matter too much I wouldn't think.

[Fenrir]

Doesn't surprise me that much about Hector, as he has low mdef, pretty bad ranged weapons, and crazy as usual but not that crazy FE evasion. I think mages are at their best for this kind of challenge. Erk would have had an even easier time I think.
I tried a Seth solo on hard mode in FE8, it was very easy until that battle in the volcano.

FFX: Why did we never rank Biran? He has plot. Probably art. He's a better rank than Kimahri.
Biran vs Suikoden 5 Zahhak.

Defender X was super mean, getting turns out of nowhere with some real ultramurderdamage. I don't think I'd have gone anywhere without Haste here. Yojimbo was a real total weakling in comparison. He is lucky I am willing to spend 300k just to rename him "Fred". It's canon now, by the way. He's Fred.

[Fenrir]

Wait, Biran scales? That's no fun. Nevermind then.
And I just noticed the FFX boss stat topic just now. Damn it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah Biran and Yenke are fucked up in the DL sadly. Well, given the way they scale it's pretty inarguable that they're some shade of bad, but how bad eludes science.

Also Erk seems all but hopeless against the Dragon. 20/20 Erk with Excalibur does 0 damage there; even with RNG abuse and/or stat boosters to cap his stats the most he can do is 6 (12 if he doubles, which needs capped speed pretty much). So he'll need to eat 10 dragon attacks to win and that just needs too many Elixirs since you only have five inventory slots. Lucius does much better there due to Aureola hitting weakness.

[SnowFire]

Erk + Elixir mules solo, then?!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well, I would question if that is still a "solo" but yeah that would work (again, assuming you RNG abuse him or get lucky). Can't call a solo where you have to bend the rules like that an easy one, though!~