Messages

26

General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: February 09, 2011, 06:22:58 PM »

Paper Mario: Beat chapter 7. I liked the crystal palace. The mirror gimmick added just enough complexity and was played well with the duplighosts.

The Crystal King almost got me. I didn't manage to time the block against his freezing attack until the very last time (that successful block left me with 1 HP) and spent most of the time with Mario being frozen. This was extra problematic since the Crystal King can heal himself. I also didn't have the feeling fine badge equipped and my "don't use Powerbounce" condition stands. Remove any of those factors and the boss would have been a piece of cake.

Time to mop up some sidequests.

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General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: February 08, 2011, 01:53:35 PM »

Paper Mario: Beat chapter 6.

I liked the visuals of the flower field and it's inhabitants, but I didn't like it's design as a stage. It was to much running into a stop and having to backtrack. The boss also gave me the most trouble so far, but was still rather easy. I'd assume that the normal strategy it to Powerbounce it and then kill the spawning clouds with Spiny Surge. However, since I banned Powerbounce, I instead went with the strategy of having Bow Fan Smack the boss while Mario kills the clouds with Multibounce. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time timing the Multibounce against enemies with different heights, so the fights ended up being me slowly fumbling the boss' HP down. It was still easy since all attacks the boss has either deals crap damage or are telegraphed meaning Bow can just hide Mario when it comes. As a result, I could just switch between Focus and Refresh and that way keep going forever.

The princess part of the game was just weird. She finally got to use an item that allows her to disguise herself as Bowser's guards, yet somehow gets less done than before. Maybe that was intentional, when the princess just sneaks out without a plan, she just happens to stumble across useful information, while when she actually has the means to expect a success, she gets nowhere.

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General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: February 05, 2011, 10:31:46 PM »

Paper Mario: Beat chapter 5.

The jungle was kind of long winded, but not that bad. I liked the volcano.

I finally toped off BP and can now start upgrading HP and FP. Of course, the first HP upgrade I made after that was used to allow me to remove a HP+ badge. Still, I've only got one FP+ badge left equipped, and after that I have to increase HP or FP. I also got the Ultra Stone and then hit two upgrade blocks in the volcano. The first upgrade went to Bow and that worked out really well. The next upgrade went to Sushie since she has a water/ice attack in a fire dungeon.

The boss was beaten by Bow using Fan Smack until it dies and Mario mainly using Focus and Refresh. The second form looks like it could have been tricky had it lived longer. Bow can kill it in four turns meaning it only gets three turns and it has a "summon more guys" setup that requires more turns to work properly.

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General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: February 01, 2011, 07:32:58 PM »

Paper Mario: Beat the toy box. I liked the level in the sense that it's a toy land. The non serious and setting of Paper Mario allows the use of environments that wouldn't work in, say, a Final Fantasy game. I'm glad that is taken advantage of. Unfortunately, the train was made more annoying than it had to be.

Currently I'm at level 13. I have chosen 1 HP upgrade, 3 FP upgrades and 8 BP upgrades. I'm equipping 1 HP plus and 2 FP plus badges though, so it's not that one sided.

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General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: January 30, 2011, 07:52:37 PM »

Paper Mario: Finished chapter 3. I liked the haunted forest and the boo mansion, but Tubba Blubba's castle was rather boring. The castle has one single enemy to fight against and non combat enemies which throws you out if they grab you. One a positive side, the next area looks like it will be really fun.

Bow is so far my favorite partner in terms of personality, although not many partners has a personality to begin with.

So far I've upgraded HP once, FP twice and BP eight times. Two BP upgrades are used for HP+ and FP+ though. Still, BP is definitely the most fun stat to upgrade.

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General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: January 28, 2011, 11:14:07 PM »

Paper Mario: Tutan Koopa defeated as well as the second Blooper.

You get a new hammer in the desert temple, but Tutan Koopa spends most of the fight to high up for the normal hammer attack. Besides that though, he doesn't have much going for him. I dealt with the chain chomps with quake hammer which both ignores defense and can actually reach Tutan Koopa.

The second Blooper was much easier than the first one since it had the same timing and by now I could usually guard against his attack. I also had Parrakarry who's perfect for that fight.

I made the mistake of upgrading Bombette first. Her new skill is strong, but way to expensive. She doesn't have much use of her extra power either. Kooper would have been a better option since he has a free attack that cannot be countered and his second skill hits multiple targets, meaning the increase in power is applied multiple times. There were more upgrade blocks available soon though.

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General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: January 27, 2011, 04:55:39 PM »

Paper Mario: Just went into the sewers and did whet was possible to do after beating the ninja koopas. Blooper turned out to be rather hard at this point, although only because I made some mistakes and I refuse to use Power Bounce. I ended up winning with 1 HP left and no way of healing. As a reward I got a status move. I'll see if status moves are actually useful in this game.

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General Chat / Re: Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

« on: January 24, 2011, 09:01:54 PM »

Demon's Souls: Ach, I'm really bad at this.

Yeahhh, I think flailing pathetically at the first dungeon for an hour is enough to tell me this one's not really for me.

For whatever it's worth, what you're doing seems to be the standard procedure when playing that game.

Paper Mario: Started it and freed the first star spirit. I've gotten three levels up so far and I choose Flower, Badge and Badge. One Badge upgrade is used to equip HP Plus though, and will probably remain so until I max out on Badge points.

I've placed a condition to not use any skill that can potentially deal infinite damage. I'm OK with the button timing mechanics, but Multi-bounce and Multi-bonk takes that aspect a little to far.

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Discussion / Re: Andrew Rambles Incoherently About Games and Game Design

« on: January 17, 2011, 02:35:24 PM »

I agree that long cutscenes are, as a rule, a bad thing. Sometimes it can be a necessary evil (although if that necessary evil happens to often the writer should rethink the story), but generally cutscenes should be kept short.

However, for me the problem isn't necessary the disconnect between gameplay and story.

One reason I like RPGs is because they tend to switch activity a lot. I'm not only talking about cutscenes vs gameplay, but there's also a big difference between running around in a town and running trough a dungeon. Sometimes I play more action oriented games and usually the result is that I initially find them more fun than RPGs, but I still grow tired of them much quicker.

For me the long cutscenes are more a problem of bad pacing, I get tired of them, but the game keeps showing me more of it. That and often the cutscenes aren't good enough to warrant them existing for to long, but that's another story.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: December 25, 2010, 12:35:21 AM »

Monsterworld IV: Beaten.

Aegis island is fun enough, although not as fun as the volcano and Stream Sanctuary. The small and big gimmick was the most fun part of that place and I wish it was implemented as a feature rather than as a short gimmick. On the plus side, I do think the warlock of heaven is the best boss of the game. It's hard to avoid it's attacks, but it is never unfair.

The final stage is just refighting enemies and mini bosses encountered trough he whole game. There is one unique enemy though, but it's design makes me think it was originally supposed to be on Aegis island. The final boss isn't interesting either.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: December 24, 2010, 08:07:29 AM »

Monsterworld IV: Stream sanctuary and ice pyramid beaten.

The stream sanctuary is fun and my second favorite stage. Good platforming, good use of the pepelongo and I find it the most esthetically pleasing. There is a risk you end up running in circles if you make a mistake or get lost, but movement trough the stream sanctuary is quick due to it's namesake streams.

The ice pyramid however is the worst stage. It has the slippery floor, which is always fun in platformers, long hallways that you can easily end up having to run trough multiple times and makes poor use of the pepelongo. There are few uses for the double jump the pepelongo provides and it's main use in the pyramid is to find secret doors which is implemented in an irritating way.

The ice pyramid does have a good idea for the pepelongo though. You can send it into a cold stream and it will freeze to an ice-block which you can use as a platform. This could have been a setup for a good puzzle. Normally you can double jump with the pepelongo, but if it's frozen inside an ice block, it obviously cannot provide you that service. Even better, instead of having to exit and re-enter a room to reset the puzzle, you can just press A to command the pepelongo to thaw. There should be a way the designers could have used that to create some fun and simple puzzles, but that wasn't to be.

Speaking of the pepelongo, it grows between stages. After the volcano the growth doesn't do much except, as I mentioned in an earlier post, force the game to close of old areas. After the stream sanctuary however, the pepelongo grows so big Asha can no longer walk while holding it, making control a bit worse. This is nothing compared to what happens after the ice pyramid though.

Game: "You know that pepelongo which allows you to double jump, interact with the environment in various ways and overall makes the game more fun? Guess what, you're done using it! From now on the pepelongo ceases to be a gameplay element and is restricted to story only!"

The next stage is more fun than the ice pyramid, but I still wish I had my pepelongo.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: December 23, 2010, 06:04:27 PM »

Monsterworld IV: Beat the infernal warlock. The volcano is my favorite stage as it makes the best use of the Pepelongo (I hope I got the name right this time) and there's nothing in it that detracts from the enjoyment. The fact that Asha doesn't have so many hearts now also works to the stage's favor. The boss is a bit bland though, the first form is to easy while the second form is almost unavoidable.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: December 22, 2010, 09:57:48 PM »

Monsterworld IV: I was rather stressed when I played it the last time and didn't get to enjoy it as much as I could have, so I decided to play it again.

I already found out something I didn't realize before, the very first enemy type you encounter can't hurt you at all. In this game, most enemies will not hurt you by touch, they have to attack you to cause damage. The first enemy you encounter is never considered to be attacking.

I beat the first dungeon and then got a papelongo. To raise a papelongo: put a papelongo egg into water. Once it hatched, feel free to use it as a steppingstone on lava, to clog up a high pressure geyser, to freeze it into a block of ice and whatever you want to. In return, the papelongo will help you get to places you otherwise wouldn't be able to reach. No wonder everyone in town wants one. Fortunately, there's a guy selling yellow papelongos like they were balloons. Asha of course didn't buy one and instead raided the castle treasury for an extra unique blue one.

Anyway, in most games, buying something for 500 gold early in the game will have a negligible effect later on when things cost over ten times as much. This game however managed to figure out a way to make early purchases impact the economy later on. You find gold bars that you can sell to a rich fat woman. However, if you wait until later, she will pay you more for them. She pays 1,000 after the first dungeon and will eventually go up to 10,000. Therefore, it's better to wait a bit and not sell every gold bar immediately. It doesn't pay to overdo that strategy though, you do have quite a margin. I think that saving the gold bar in the castle treasury until you get 10,000 gold for them and holding off selling gold bars in dungeons until you beat them (as opposed to exiting them and immediately selling) is enough to get all the legendary equipment. Do not however save the gold bar you can loot in the rich woman's house for later though as that chest will eventually disappear.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: December 18, 2010, 07:32:36 PM »

Monsterworld IV: Beat it. It's a much shorted game than Wonderboy III and V, but I find it more fun while it lasts.

Fighting is fun, at least while the game is balanced (I'll get more into balance later) as all of Asha's moves are useful, but not overpowered. I even found some effects that I don't think was intended to be an actual combat move useful. For example, if Asha comes into contact with an enemy and that enemy isn't attacking, she will bounce off of it unharmed. Sometimes I deliberately had Asha jump into an enemy to get her to bounce off into a better position.

You have a Papelongo with you, some sort of flying pet, that helps with the platforming elements. You can either throw it forward which will cause it to interact with the environment or you can use it to double jump. It's simple and works great.

The game is also really cute. The main character is a cute girl who's accompanied by a cute pet. When Asha finds an item in a treasure chest, she looks really happy and when she downstabbs, she looks really into it and so on.

There are two design decisions that hampers the game though.

I decided not to upgrade my shield in this playtrough since shields raises defense and I wanted to know if defense actually does anything. As it turned out, against the unbeatable plot boss I did take more damage than in previous playtroughs, but every other enemy in the game still only did one heart of damage. Environmental hazzards such as jumping into a bottomless pit, being crushed by a block and so on also only does one heart of damage. This is a problem since Asha will get more and more hearts as she progress. At the end she had about 25 hearts and an elixir that restores all hearts. Even if you play safe an uses the elixir with three hearts left, that's still 47 times enemies has to hit Asha to kill her. The first time you play the game this is actually plausible, as the game goes on enemy attack pattern and the platforming becomes really awkward. This is a pity since Asha has both great combat and platforming moves and deliberately frustrating them isn't a good idea. A setup where it's easier to avoid damage, but if Asha does get hit anyway she takes more damage, would have been better.

The game already has a damage=attack-defense system programmed in, it's just that said system isn't used in a meaningful way. Well, shields are nevertheless useful as they provide elemental defense (about 1/3 chance of not getting hurt by the elements in question) and the best shield covers everything except some environmental hazards.

The other problem is that the papelongo grows or otherwise changes between stages. This sounds like a fun quirk at first, but it ends up getting in the way of the game. The papelongo interacts with the environment in many ways and those interactions has unique animations. For example, he may blow out a fire. Now, designing new animations for a bigger papelongo was to much of a work to bother doing, so old areas are walled off together with the max health powerups you may have missed. For the last two stages the papelongo also goes trough a change that really makes the gameplay less fun. It's part of the story that the papelongo grows and develops, but for a game with such a barebone story, it doesn't pay to let story impair with the gameplay.

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General Chat / Re: Puny Miscellaneous Links for Mortals: 2010

« on: December 18, 2010, 06:36:01 AM »

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/106243-Woman-Missing-Some-Brain-Is-Totally-Fearless-As-a-Result

A woman is totally fearless due to brain damage and it doesn't work so well for her as fiction would have us believe.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: December 16, 2010, 11:51:00 PM »

If I had to guess one of the reasons why FF13 is considered "Easy" by many, it'd be because there's the fact that there's no penalty to dying at all. 

Very likely, I've seen it happen quite a lot of times that a lack of penalty for death is interpret as the game being easy.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: December 16, 2010, 04:12:13 PM »

Monsterworld IV: Sometimes called Wonderboy VI, although that title wouldn't make any sense since you control a girl in this one.

Anyway, compared to Wonderboy V, this game is less exploration and more action. Combat and platforming is more refined and once you beat a place, you can't return to it. Make sure you pick up all power up items unless you feel comfortable without them.

I beat the first dungeon. I will try not to upgrade my shield since I want to see if the drop in defense actually does something. In earlier playtrough I upgraded my shield and enemies always did 1 heart of damage with the exception of an auto lose plot battle. I'll see if any enemy will deal more damage or at least he plot boss does it.

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General Chat / Re: Puny Miscellaneous Links for Mortals: 2010

« on: December 12, 2010, 05:06:36 AM »

The analysis of Metroid Other M is awesome. My theory is that the abusive relationship wasn't intentional, but that sexist ideas from the writer slipped in and he doesn't realize it because his writing skills are crap.

Anyway, for some Zelda analysis: http://garethrees.org/2004/12/01/ocarina-of-time/

Thanks to Max McGee for bringing my attention to that article.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: October 03, 2010, 06:58:36 PM »

Final Fantasy Legend 3: Beat it.

The game started out rather strong, but became less interesting later. Traveling trough time is fun, traveling trough pureland is not. Pureland had a mysterious feel, but that mysterious feel gets lost if you spend more time there than anywhere else. I think it would have served the game much better had it made the past, present and future maps bigger and downsized pureland and underworld instead. Heck, was there any point to underworld period?

The difficulty came in wave. Bosses went easy->hard->easy->hard->easy where the last couple of bossed rode the easy wave. The first hard->easy change came when I got Cure 2 and the second when I got Cure A and shortly thereafter Cure B as well.

The transformation system was fun, albeit broken. Monsters seem near useless, I could not see what they have over beasts, but I could definitely see what they lacked. Robots are extremely overpowered as soon as you can afford to buy 135 or so capsules, which happens earlier than midgame, and will then gradually sink to only being a little overpowered as the game progress. Cyborgs and Beasts loses any disadvantage they may to humans once you get a mystic weapon and Beasts will do so even earlies when their martial arts catches up with human weapons. I think the gameboy wasn't ready for that challenge. Heck, from what I've heard the SaGa Frontier didn't really manage to balance having characters with different growth methods correctly, so I can't expect an earlier game in the series to do anything but worse.

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General Chat / Re: Puny Miscellaneous Links for Mortals: 2010

« on: September 30, 2010, 12:31:22 AM »

http://kotaku.com/5650027/man-builds-computer-inside-computer-game

A man is building a fully working computer... inside a video game. Seems really interesting, maybe one of our programming savvy members can put this in perspective?

He intends to build a memory, but I wonder how big that computer can be. How far away from the player can those red wire thingies transport a signal until Minecraft considers it to far away to bother process it?

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: September 23, 2010, 02:43:17 PM »

Final Fantasy Legend 3: Made it to underworld. I know I'm supposed to defeat some sort of entity that floods the world, but I've forgotten most of the story. An NPC would say something in line of "you have to go to floatland/pureland/underworld" but I can never recall even hearing about those places prior to that nor do I know what those places are. Apparently there was some rebels who went to pureland before me. Who are they rebelling against and did I ever meet them? I don't know, but I do know I made it to the underworld.

The bosses suddenly ramped up in difficulty. Twice they killed my whole party except for Robot Sharon who then proceeded to solo it. As a result, she's two or three levels above the rest. She's at level 31 now and any further levels are now useless for her.

Then it turned out I missed a group heal spell which would have made the boss fights easier. I missed the spell because the shop looked to me like an obstacle rather than a building and I only found it by accident. Other than the group heal spell, the shop also gave me the second best martial arts. I took the opportunity to turn Arthur into a beastman and was happy with the result. He is now better at everything than human Arthur was. I also got the first Mystic sword in a dungeon which makes Cyborg a very good class to turn into as well. The mutants has more to lose than humans from turning into other classes, but one of them should be enough so Gloria became more metallic. Curtis will remain a mutant in case I need someone to spam multi target spells.

Things became much better now. Arthur and Gloria has more HP, deals more damage and are much faster. Granted, once they hit level 31 they won't become any stronger from leveling any more, but unless the end is much further away than I expect, humans and mutants should not catch up in terms of stats.

47

Discussion / Re: Rate the characters 2: RATE HARDER!

« on: September 22, 2010, 08:09:11 PM »

Legaia 2
Lang - 4/10. Uninteresting character. His characterisation adds enough to prevent him from being boring, but no more than that.
Maya - 8/10. Adorable personified. She has the best characterization of the whole game. There's no character development though beyond "hey I got my voice back and will from now on behave as if I've always been able to speak!" and despite the game hyping her powers as being important, it doesn't feel that way.
Kazan - 6,5/10. I like that they made a teacher type who's experienced rather than wise. That turned out to be much more fun than expected, but like Maya he doesn't have anything apart from characterisation. If anything, his backstory with Rauss is a discredit.
Sharon - 6,5/10. Well, she is rather funny. Like the rest of the cast, she got nothing apart from characterisation. Her dream of becoming a pirate is not as bad as Kazan's backstory, but still rather silly.
Ayne - 4/10. Was there any point to him? Well, he does have a few amusing scenes, but for the most part he may as well not have been there.

Bubba - 5/10. Rather amusing, especially him being a bishop.
Elliot - 2/10. First the game tried to make me hate him. Then at the last second the game tried to make me feel sorry for him. The result was that I neither felt sorry for him, but didn't either feel any satisfaction for beating him either.
Marienne - 2/10. See Elliot.
Doplin - 3/10. Mostly an idiot. He was portrayed as a total scumbag, but I couldn't care less about him using Elliot and Marienne.
Velna - 5/10. Props for simple agreeing with the villains goal, but for her own reasons. Yet somehow she came of as non important despite being second in command and having an unique power.
Rauss - 3/10. Really silly backstory and no real character to speak of besides wanting to test his mettle against a worthy opponent. His insanity effect was cool though.
Avalon - 1/10. Stupid backstory and inefficient as a villain. He came of as a credible threat at first, but then he decided to just allow the heroes to run free. Either you try to get rid of them or you try to use them, but don't just sit there and do nothing. Instead of him being an active threat, he was just given a stupidly amount of power that required complete nonsense to counteract.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: September 22, 2010, 04:22:27 PM »

Final Fantasy Legends 3: Just got to pureland.

I finished a dungeon and noticed I had over 300k money. This is enough to give a robot the maximum amount of stats I can give it from capsules. I turned Sharon into a robot and then force feed her. The result is a character who has at least twice as much HP and damage as the rest. The other characters are going to gradually catch up as Sharon will barely have any further growth, but chance is the game will end before they ever get there.

I could with not that much grinding turn Arthur into a fully juiced up robot as well, but I have decided to only use one robot. My plan it to try turning him into a beastman one one of the best martial arts moves becomes available. If that doesn't work as well as I hope it will, I'll turn him into a cyborg instead once I get one of the mystic weapons.

Other than that, the game stopped being challenging even before I broke Sharon. The game doesn't seem to take into account whether or not I have an overpowered fifth character with me and what healing magic I have. Healing magic work like this; Cure heals 30% of max HP, Cure 2 60% and Cure 3 fully heals. Bosses have consistently had moves which overpowers Cure, but not Cure 2.

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General Chat / Re: Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

« on: September 22, 2010, 12:11:59 AM »

Final Fantasy Legend III: Decided to give it a try since what I know about it sounds cool. I assumed it probably isn't as cool as it sounds and I was right. Still not that bad though as long as I have the Game Lists FAQ and frame skip button ready.

So far I've stuck with humans and mutants. I'll give robot a try as soon as I have enough money to buy a crapload of capsules which I actually could do now with not that much grinding. I'll also see how the cyborg is holding up then.

I've recently started mucking around in the future. So far I've refused to do more than light grinding and had some close calls against bosses as a result. I've just got Cure 2 and with luck that makes the game easier (assuming future bosses aren't made much stronger to compensate for the better healing.)

50

Discussion / Re: Rate the characters 2: RATE HARDER!

« on: September 05, 2010, 09:56:19 PM »

Final Fantasy 5
Butz/Bartz- 4/10. Somewhat above a silent main, but not much.
Lenna/Reina- 4/10. The only outstanding trait she has is her willingness to risk her life for Hiryus.
Faris- 6/10. Fun the few times her personality was actually relevant.
Galuf- 7/10. Had the most plot attached to him and a great exit scene.
Cara/Krile- 7/10. Manages to show the most personality with the least amount of screentime. Cute and somewhat cool.
Kelgar- 2/10. "Grr, how dare you release the trash we dumped in your world without giving you adequate information about?" Also could have been removed and very little would have changed.
Xezat- 6/10. Did his part of the plot and had a good exit.
Cid- 4/10. Mostly uninteresting.
Mid- 4/10. Mostly uninteresting.
King Tycoon- 3/10. Fully uninteresting.
Ghido/Gill/Guido- 4/10. Him laying on his back was funny, but mostly he's playing the boring sage type character.
Boco/Boko- 4/10. He's a giant chicken with a name.

Exdeath- 3/10. Why declare someone an evil tree and then make him behave as a dull human?
Gilgamesh- 6/10. Mostly good for laugh, but I didn't find him that fun. Good job at staying in character even when sacrificing himself.


Xenogears
Fei- 6/10. He had a lot of interesting things happening to him, but he himself was rather dull.
Elly- 5/10. She was interesting early on as she struggled between her loyalty and her feelings for Fei. Once that struggle vanished and she turned into some sort of saint, she did nothing but to annoy me.
Citan- 9/10. Awesome. He managed to pull of an impressive amount of roles without any of them coming of as awkward.
Bart- 6/10. Most XG characters who aren't Fei, Elly or Citan falls into the trap of just being there. Bart does however occasionally gain relevance.
Rico- 4/10. Doesn't get much resolution in his own arc and spends the rest of the game just being there.
Billy- 5/10. Seemed good at first. We had a 16 years old who acted more mature than his age, but sometimes that act would fail. He also carried some interesting burdens. However, the resolution was disappointing and after that he just was there.
Maria- 4/10. Another "just there" character.
Chu-Chu- 2/10. The "just there" character with the shortest arc. Her only scene of relevance consisted of her pouring crap into Maria's arc.
Emeralda- 4/10. Just there.

Margie- 6/10. Good enough for the scenes she is in. I rather liked her.
Big Joe- 6/10. Funny, but not that funny.
Dan- 3/10. Annoying, but gave me the option of beating him up.
Hammer- 7/10. Served his purposes well. Rather amusing, but I was not impressed at his attempt at a serious scene.
Jesiah Black- 2/10. Well, he had more plot relevance than a lot of playable characters. Unfortunately, a lot of it consist of being the man who knows that the church is evil. Mostly he just annoyed me.
Sigurd- 5/10. Not anything special, but serves his purpose.

Dominia- 2/10. Annoying recurring boss fight which could have been avoided had the XG cast had the sense to kill the elementals after defeating them.
Kelvena- 2/10. See Dominia.
Tolone- 2/10. See Dominia.
Seraphita- 2/10. See Dominia.
Emperor Cain- 6/10. He looked like a stereotypical evil mastermind, but turned out to be something else.
Ramsus- 8/10. One of the coolest antagonists. Props to the game to start with a stable character and have him slip towards insanity rather than start with the insanity and backstory the explanation. He could have been a 10/10 material, but he needed to do something useful once he figured out he was deceived.
Grahf- 7/10. The most stylish XG character. I did not buy the explanation for his existence though.
Miang- 7/10. Worked well as a manipulator. She had her goal and did what it toke to accomplish it.
Krelian- 5/10. He did a good job at tying the plot together. He managed to manipulate a lot of events to go his way. However, his backstory is very disappointing since considering the length he went, the motivation seemed really weak. Him not getting killed at the end is also a slap in the face.